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13,665 | Hausdorff maximal principle | In mathematics, the Hausdorff maximal principle is an alternate and earlier formulation of Zorn's lemma proved by Felix Hausdorff in 1914 (Moore 1982:168). It states that in any partially ordered set, every totally ordered subset is contained in a maximal totally ordered subset.
The Hausdorff maximal principle is one of many statements equivalent to the axiom of choice over ZF (Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of choice). The principle is also called the Hausdorff maximality theorem or the Kuratowski lemma (Kelley 1955:33).
The Hausdorff maximal principle states that, in any partially ordered set, every totally ordered subset is contained in a maximal totally ordered subset (a totally ordered subset that, if enlarged in any way, does not remain totally ordered). In general, there may be many maximal totally ordered subsets containing a given totally ordered subset.
An equivalent form of the Hausdorff maximal principle is that in every partially ordered set there exists a maximal totally ordered subset. To prove that this statement follows from the original form, let A be a partially ordered set. Then ∅ {\displaystyle \varnothing } is a totally ordered subset of A, hence there exists a maximal totally ordered subset containing ∅ {\displaystyle \varnothing } , hence in particular A contains a maximal totally ordered subset. For the converse direction, let A be a partially ordered set and T a totally ordered subset of A. Then
is partially ordered by set inclusion ⊆ {\displaystyle \subseteq } , therefore it contains a maximal totally ordered subset P. Then the set P {\displaystyle P} satisfies the desired properties.
The proof that the Hausdorff maximal principle is equivalent to Zorn's lemma is very similar to this proof.
If A is any collection of sets, the relation "is a proper subset of" is a strict partial order on A. Suppose that A is the collection of all circular regions (interiors of circles) in the plane. One maximal totally ordered sub-collection of A consists of all circular regions with centers at the origin. Another maximal totally ordered sub-collection consists of all circular regions bounded by circles tangent from the right to the y-axis at the origin.
If (x0, y0) and (x1, y1) are two points of the plane ℝ, define (x0, y0) < (x1, y1) if y0 = y1 and x0 < x1. This is a partial ordering of ℝ under which two points are comparable only if they lie on the same horizontal line. The maximal totally ordered sets are horizontal lines in ℝ. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In mathematics, the Hausdorff maximal principle is an alternate and earlier formulation of Zorn's lemma proved by Felix Hausdorff in 1914 (Moore 1982:168). It states that in any partially ordered set, every totally ordered subset is contained in a maximal totally ordered subset.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Hausdorff maximal principle is one of many statements equivalent to the axiom of choice over ZF (Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of choice). The principle is also called the Hausdorff maximality theorem or the Kuratowski lemma (Kelley 1955:33).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Hausdorff maximal principle states that, in any partially ordered set, every totally ordered subset is contained in a maximal totally ordered subset (a totally ordered subset that, if enlarged in any way, does not remain totally ordered). In general, there may be many maximal totally ordered subsets containing a given totally ordered subset.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "An equivalent form of the Hausdorff maximal principle is that in every partially ordered set there exists a maximal totally ordered subset. To prove that this statement follows from the original form, let A be a partially ordered set. Then ∅ {\\displaystyle \\varnothing } is a totally ordered subset of A, hence there exists a maximal totally ordered subset containing ∅ {\\displaystyle \\varnothing } , hence in particular A contains a maximal totally ordered subset. For the converse direction, let A be a partially ordered set and T a totally ordered subset of A. Then",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "is partially ordered by set inclusion ⊆ {\\displaystyle \\subseteq } , therefore it contains a maximal totally ordered subset P. Then the set P {\\displaystyle P} satisfies the desired properties.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The proof that the Hausdorff maximal principle is equivalent to Zorn's lemma is very similar to this proof.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "If A is any collection of sets, the relation \"is a proper subset of\" is a strict partial order on A. Suppose that A is the collection of all circular regions (interiors of circles) in the plane. One maximal totally ordered sub-collection of A consists of all circular regions with centers at the origin. Another maximal totally ordered sub-collection consists of all circular regions bounded by circles tangent from the right to the y-axis at the origin.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "If (x0, y0) and (x1, y1) are two points of the plane ℝ, define (x0, y0) < (x1, y1) if y0 = y1 and x0 < x1. This is a partial ordering of ℝ under which two points are comparable only if they lie on the same horizontal line. The maximal totally ordered sets are horizontal lines in ℝ.",
"title": "Examples"
}
]
| In mathematics, the Hausdorff maximal principle is an alternate and earlier formulation of Zorn's lemma proved by Felix Hausdorff in 1914. It states that in any partially ordered set, every totally ordered subset is contained in a maximal totally ordered subset. The Hausdorff maximal principle is one of many statements equivalent to the axiom of choice over ZF. The principle is also called the Hausdorff maximality theorem or the Kuratowski lemma. | 2022-12-15T20:29:10Z | [
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Order theory"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff_maximal_principle |
|
13,666 | Hel (mythological being) | Hel (from Old Norse: hel, lit. 'underworld') is a female being in Norse mythology who is said to preside over an underworld realm of the same name, where she receives a portion of the dead. Hel is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century. In addition, she is mentioned in poems recorded in Heimskringla and Egils saga that date from the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively. An episode in the Latin work Gesta Danorum, written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus, is generally considered to refer to Hel, and Hel may appear on various Migration Period bracteates.
In the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and Heimskringla, Hel is referred to as a daughter of Loki. In the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, Hel is described as having been appointed by the god Odin as ruler of a realm of the same name, located in Niflheim. In the same source, her appearance is described as half blue and half flesh-coloured and further as having a gloomy, downcast appearance. The Prose Edda details that Hel rules over vast mansions with many servants in her underworld realm and plays a key role in the attempted resurrection of the god Baldr.
Scholarly theories have been proposed about Hel's potential connections to figures appearing in the 11th-century Old English Gospel of Nicodemus and Old Norse Bartholomeus saga postola, that she may have been considered a goddess with potential Indo-European parallels in Bhavani, Kali, and Mahakali or that Hel may have become a being only as a late personification of the location of the same name.
The Old Norse divine name Hel is identical to the name of the location over which she rules. It stems from the Proto-Germanic feminine noun *haljō- 'concealed place, the underworld' (compare with Gothic halja, Old English hel or hell, Old Frisian helle, Old Saxon hellia, Old High German hella), itself a derivative of *helan- 'to cover > conceal, hide' (compare with OE helan, OF hela, OS helan, OHG helan). It derives, ultimately, from the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *ḱel- 'to conceal, cover, protect' (compare with Latin cēlō, Old Irish ceilid, Greek kalúptō). The Old Irish masculine noun cel 'dissolution, extinction, death' is also related.
Other related early Germanic terms and concepts include the compounds *halja-rūnō(n) and *halja-wītjan. The feminine noun *halja-rūnō(n) is formed with *haljō- 'hell' attached to *rūno 'mystery, secret' > runes. It has descendant cognates in the Old English helle-rúne 'possessed woman, sorceress, diviner', the Old High German helli-rūna 'magic', and perhaps in the Latinized Gothic form haliurunnae, although its second element may derive instead from rinnan 'to run, go', leading to Gothic *haljurunna as the 'one who travels to the netherworld'. The neutral noun *halja-wītjan is composed of the same root *haljō- attached to *wītjan (compare with Goth. un-witi 'foolishness, understanding', OE witt 'right mind, wits', OHG wizzi 'understanding'), with descendant cognates in Old Norse hel-víti 'hell', Old English helle-wíte 'hell-torment, hell', Old Saxon helli-wīti 'hell', or Middle High German helle-wīzi 'hell'.
Hel is also etymologically related—although distantly in this case—to the Old Norse word Valhöll 'Valhalla', literally 'hall of the slain', and to the English word hall, both likewise deriving from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- via the Proto-Germanic root *hallō- 'covered place, hall'.
The Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, features various poems that mention Hel. In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, Hel's realm is referred to as the "Halls of Hel." In stanza 31 of Grímnismál, Hel is listed as living beneath one of three roots growing from the world tree Yggdrasil. In Fáfnismál, the hero Sigurd stands before the mortally wounded body of the dragon Fáfnir, and states that Fáfnir lies in pieces, where "Hel can take" him. In Atlamál, the phrases "Hel has half of us" and "sent off to Hel" are used in reference to death, though it could be a reference to the location and not the being, if not both. In stanza 4 of Baldrs draumar, Odin rides towards the "high hall of Hel."
Hel may also be alluded to in Hamðismál. Death is paraphrased as "joy of the troll-woman" (or "ogress") and ostensibly it is Hel being referred to as the troll-woman or the ogre (flagð), although it may otherwise be some unspecified dís.
Hel receives notable mention in the Prose Edda. In chapter 34 of the book Gylfaginning, Hel is listed by High as one of the three children of Loki and Angrboða; the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr, and Hel. High continues that, once the gods found that these three children are being brought up in the land of Jötunheimr, and when the gods "traced prophecies that from these siblings great mischief and disaster would arise for them" then the gods expected a lot of trouble from the three children, partially due to the nature of the mother of the children, yet worse so due to the nature of their father.
High says that Odin sent the gods to gather the children and bring them to him. Upon their arrival, Odin threw Jörmungandr into "that deep sea that lies round all lands," Odin threw Hel into Niflheim, and bestowed upon her authority over nine worlds, in that she must "administer board and lodging to those sent to her, and that is those who die of sickness or old age." High details that in this realm Hel has "great Mansions" with extremely high walls and immense gates, a hall called Éljúðnir, a dish called "Hunger," a knife called "Famine," the servant Ganglati (Old Norse "lazy walker"), the serving-maid Ganglöt (also "lazy walker"), the entrance threshold "Stumbling-block," the bed "Sick-bed," and the curtains "Gleaming-bale." High describes Hel as "half black and half flesh-coloured," adding that this makes her easily recognizable, and furthermore that Hel is "rather downcast and fierce-looking."
In chapter 49, High describes the events surrounding the death of the god Baldr. The goddess Frigg asks who among the Æsir will earn "all her love and favour" by riding to Hel, the location, to try to find Baldr, and offer Hel herself a ransom. The god Hermóðr volunteers and sets off upon the eight-legged horse Sleipnir to Hel. Hermóðr arrives in Hel's hall, finds his brother Baldr there, and stays the night. The next morning, Hermóðr begs Hel to allow Baldr to ride home with him, and tells her about the great weeping the Æsir have done upon Baldr's death. Hel says the love people have for Baldr that Hermóðr has claimed must be tested, stating:
If all things in the world, alive or dead, weep for him, then he will be allowed to return to the Æsir. If anyone speaks against him or refuses to cry, then he will remain with Hel.
Later in the chapter, after the female jötunn Þökk refuses to weep for the dead Baldr, she responds in verse, ending with "let Hel hold what she has." In chapter 51, High describes the events of Ragnarök, and details that when Loki arrives at the field Vígríðr "all of Hel's people" will arrive with him.
In chapter 12 of the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, Hel is mentioned in a kenning for Baldr ("Hel's companion"). In chapter 23, "Hel's [...] relative or father" is given as a kenning for Loki. In chapter 50, Hel is referenced ("to join the company of the quite monstrous wolf's sister") in the skaldic poem Ragnarsdrápa.
In the Heimskringla book Ynglinga saga, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, Hel is referred to, though never by name. In chapter 17, the king Dyggvi dies of sickness. A poem from the 9th-century Ynglingatal that forms the basis of Ynglinga saga is then quoted that describes Hel's taking of Dyggvi:
I doubt not but Dyggvi's corpse Hel does hold to whore with him; for Ulf's sib a scion of kings by right should caress in death: to love lured Loki's sister Yngvi's heir o'er all Sweden.
In chapter 45, a section from Ynglingatal is given which refers to Hel as "howes'-warder" (meaning "guardian of the graves") and as taking King Halfdan Hvitbeinn from life. In chapter 46, King Eystein Halfdansson dies by being knocked overboard by a sail yard. A section from Ynglingatal follows, describing that Eystein "fared to" Hel (referred to as "Býleistr's-brother's-daughter"). In chapter 47, the deceased Eystein's son King Halfdan dies of an illness, and the excerpt provided in the chapter describes his fate thereafter, a portion of which references Hel:
Loki's child from life summoned to her thing the third liege-lord, when Halfdan of Holtar farm left the life allotted to him.
In a stanza from Ynglingatal recorded in chapter 72 of the Heimskringla book Saga of Harald Sigurdsson, "given to Hel" is again used as a phrase to referring to death.
The Icelanders' saga Egils saga contains the poem Sonatorrek. The saga attributes the poem to 10th-century skald Egill Skallagrímsson, and writes that it was composed by Egill after the death of his son Gunnar. The final stanza of the poem contains a mention of Hel, though not by name:
Now my course is tough: Death, close sister of Odin's enemy stands on the ness: with resolution and without remorse I will gladly await my own.
In the account of Baldr's death in Saxo Grammaticus' early 13th century work Gesta Danorum, the dying Baldr has a dream visitation from Proserpina (here translated as "the goddess of death"):
The following night the goddess of death appeared to him in a dream standing at his side, and declared that in three days time she would clasp him in her arms. It was no idle vision, for after three days the acute pain of his injury brought his end.
Scholars have assumed that Saxo used Proserpina as a goddess equivalent to the Norse Hel.
It has been suggested that several imitation medallions and bracteates of the Migration Period (ca. first centuries AD) feature depictions of Hel. In particular the bracteates IK 14 and IK 124 depict a rider traveling down a slope and coming upon a female being holding a scepter or a staff. The downward slope may indicate that the rider is traveling towards the realm of the dead and the woman with the scepter may be a female ruler of that realm, corresponding to Hel.
Some B-class bracteates showing three godly figures have been interpreted as depicting Baldr's death, the best known of these is the Fakse bracteate. Two of the figures are understood to be Baldr and Odin while both Loki and Hel have been proposed as candidates for the third figure. If it is Hel she is presumably greeting the dying Baldr as he comes to her realm.
The Old English Gospel of Nicodemus, preserved in two manuscripts from the 11th century, contains a female figure referred to as Seo hell who engages in flyting with Satan and tells him to leave her dwelling (Old English ut of mynre onwununge). Regarding Seo Hell in the Old English Gospel of Nicodemus, Michael Bell states that "her vivid personification in a dramatically excellent scene suggests that her gender is more than grammatical, and invites comparison with the Old Norse underworld goddess Hel and the Frau Holle of German folklore, to say nothing of underworld goddesses in other cultures" yet adds that "the possibility that these genders are merely grammatical is strengthened by the fact that an Old Norse version of Nicodemus, possibly translated under English influence, personifies Hell in the neutral (Old Norse þat helvíti)."
The Old Norse Bartholomeus saga postola, an account of the life of Saint Bartholomew dating from the 13th century, mentions a "Queen Hel." In the story, a devil is hiding within a pagan idol, and bound by Bartholomew's spiritual powers to acknowledge himself and confess, the devil refers to Jesus as the one which "made war on Hel our queen" (Old Norse heriaði a Hel drottning vara). "Queen Hel" is not mentioned elsewhere in the saga.
Michael Bell says that while Hel "might at first appear to be identical with the well-known pagan goddess of the Norse underworld" as described in chapter 34 of Gylfaginning, "in the combined light of the Old English and Old Norse versions of Nicodemus she casts quite a different a shadow," and that in Bartholomeus saga postola "she is clearly the queen of the Christian, not pagan, underworld."
Jacob Grimm described Hel as an example of a "half-goddess": "one who cannot be shown to be either wife or daughter of a god, and who stands in a dependent relation to higher divinities", and argued that "half-goddesses" stand higher than "half-gods" in Germanic mythology. Grimm regarded Hel (whom he refers to here as Halja, the theorized Proto-Germanic form of the term) as essentially an "image of a greedy, unrestoring, female deity" and theorized that "the higher we are allowed to penetrate into our antiquities, the less hellish and more godlike may Halja appear". He compared her role, her black color, and her name to "the Indian Bhavani, who travels about and bathes like Nerthus and Holda, but is likewise called Kali or Mahakali, the great black goddess" and concluded that "Halja is one of the oldest and commonest conceptions of our heathenism". He theorized that the Helhest, a three-legged horse that in Danish folklore roams the countryside "as a harbinger of plague and pestilence", was originally the steed of the goddess Hel, and that on this steed Hel roamed the land "picking up the dead that were her due". He also says that a wagon was once ascribed to Hel.
In her 1948 work on death in Norse mythology and religion, The Road to Hel, Hilda Ellis Davidson argued that the description of Hel as a goddess in surviving sources appeared to be literary personification, the word hel generally being "used simply to signify death or the grave", which she states "naturally lends itself to personification by poets". While noting that "whether this personification has originally been based on a belief in a goddess of death called Hel [was] another question", she stated that she did not believe the surviving sources gave any reason to believe so, while they included various other examples of "supernatural women" who "seem to have been closely connected with the world of death, and were pictured as welcoming dead warriors". She suggested that the depiction of Hel "as a goddess" in Gylfaginning "might well owe something to these".
In a later work (1998), Davidson wrote that the description of Hel found in chapter 33 of Gylfaginning "hardly suggests a goddess", but that "in the account of Hermod's ride to Hel later in Gylfaginning (49)", Hel "[speaks] with authority as ruler of the underworld" and that from her realm "gifts are sent back to Frigg and Fulla by Balder's wife Nanna as from a friendly kingdom". She posited that Snorri may have "earlier turned the goddess of death into an allegorical figure, just as he made Hel, the underworld of shades, a place 'where wicked men go,' like the Christian Hell (Gylfaginning 3)". She then, like Grimm, compared Hel to Kali:
On the other hand, a goddess of death who represents the horrors of slaughter and decay is something well known elsewhere; the figure of Kali in India is an outstanding example. Like Snorri's Hel, she is terrifying to in appearance, black or dark in colour, usually naked, adorned with severed heads or arms or the corpses of children, her lips smeared with blood. She haunts the battlefield or cremation ground and squats on corpses. Yet for all this she is "the recipient of ardent devotion from countless devotees who approach her as their mother" [...].
Davidson further compared Hel to early attestations of the Irish goddesses Badb (described in The Destruction of Da Choca's Hostel as dark in color, with a large mouth, wearing a dusky mantle, and with gray hair falling over her shoulders, or, alternatively, "as a red figure on the edge of the ford, washing the chariot of a king doomed to die") and the Morrígan. She concluded that, in these examples, "here we have the fierce destructive side of death, with a strong emphasis on its physical horrors, so perhaps we should not assume that the gruesome figure of Hel is wholly Snorri's literary invention."
John Lindow stated that most details about Hel, as a figure, are not found outside of Snorri's writing in Gylfaginning, and that when older skaldic poetry "says that people are 'in' rather than 'with' Hel, we are clearly dealing with a place rather than a person, and this is assumed to be the older conception". He theorizes that the noun and place Hel likely originally simply meant "grave", and that "the personification came later". Lindow also drew a parallel between the personified Hel's banishment to the underworld and the binding of Fenrir as part of a recurring theme of the bound monster, where an enemy of the gods is bound but destined to break free at Ragnarok. Rudolf Simek similarly stated that the figure of Hel is "probably a very late personification of the underworld Hel", that "on the whole nothing speaks in favour of there being a belief in Hel in pre-Christian times", and noted that "the first scriptures using the goddess Hel are found at the end of the 10th and in the 11th centuries". He characterized the allegorical description of Hel's house in Gylfaginning as "clearly ... in the Christian tradition". However, elsewhere in the same work, Simek cites an argument made by Karl Hauck [de] that one of three figures appearing together on Migration Period B-bracteates is to be interpreted as Hel.
In January 2017, the Icelandic Naming Committee ruled that parents could not name their child Hel "on the grounds that the name would cause the child significant distress and trouble as it grows up".
Hel is one of the playable gods in the third-person multiplayer online battle arena game Smite and was one of the original 17 gods. Hel is also featured in Ensemble Studios' 2002 real-time strategy game Age of Mythology, where she is one of 12 gods Norse players can choose to worship. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hel (from Old Norse: hel, lit. 'underworld') is a female being in Norse mythology who is said to preside over an underworld realm of the same name, where she receives a portion of the dead. Hel is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century. In addition, she is mentioned in poems recorded in Heimskringla and Egils saga that date from the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively. An episode in the Latin work Gesta Danorum, written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus, is generally considered to refer to Hel, and Hel may appear on various Migration Period bracteates.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and Heimskringla, Hel is referred to as a daughter of Loki. In the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, Hel is described as having been appointed by the god Odin as ruler of a realm of the same name, located in Niflheim. In the same source, her appearance is described as half blue and half flesh-coloured and further as having a gloomy, downcast appearance. The Prose Edda details that Hel rules over vast mansions with many servants in her underworld realm and plays a key role in the attempted resurrection of the god Baldr.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Scholarly theories have been proposed about Hel's potential connections to figures appearing in the 11th-century Old English Gospel of Nicodemus and Old Norse Bartholomeus saga postola, that she may have been considered a goddess with potential Indo-European parallels in Bhavani, Kali, and Mahakali or that Hel may have become a being only as a late personification of the location of the same name.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Old Norse divine name Hel is identical to the name of the location over which she rules. It stems from the Proto-Germanic feminine noun *haljō- 'concealed place, the underworld' (compare with Gothic halja, Old English hel or hell, Old Frisian helle, Old Saxon hellia, Old High German hella), itself a derivative of *helan- 'to cover > conceal, hide' (compare with OE helan, OF hela, OS helan, OHG helan). It derives, ultimately, from the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *ḱel- 'to conceal, cover, protect' (compare with Latin cēlō, Old Irish ceilid, Greek kalúptō). The Old Irish masculine noun cel 'dissolution, extinction, death' is also related.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Other related early Germanic terms and concepts include the compounds *halja-rūnō(n) and *halja-wītjan. The feminine noun *halja-rūnō(n) is formed with *haljō- 'hell' attached to *rūno 'mystery, secret' > runes. It has descendant cognates in the Old English helle-rúne 'possessed woman, sorceress, diviner', the Old High German helli-rūna 'magic', and perhaps in the Latinized Gothic form haliurunnae, although its second element may derive instead from rinnan 'to run, go', leading to Gothic *haljurunna as the 'one who travels to the netherworld'. The neutral noun *halja-wītjan is composed of the same root *haljō- attached to *wītjan (compare with Goth. un-witi 'foolishness, understanding', OE witt 'right mind, wits', OHG wizzi 'understanding'), with descendant cognates in Old Norse hel-víti 'hell', Old English helle-wíte 'hell-torment, hell', Old Saxon helli-wīti 'hell', or Middle High German helle-wīzi 'hell'.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hel is also etymologically related—although distantly in this case—to the Old Norse word Valhöll 'Valhalla', literally 'hall of the slain', and to the English word hall, both likewise deriving from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- via the Proto-Germanic root *hallō- 'covered place, hall'.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, features various poems that mention Hel. In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, Hel's realm is referred to as the \"Halls of Hel.\" In stanza 31 of Grímnismál, Hel is listed as living beneath one of three roots growing from the world tree Yggdrasil. In Fáfnismál, the hero Sigurd stands before the mortally wounded body of the dragon Fáfnir, and states that Fáfnir lies in pieces, where \"Hel can take\" him. In Atlamál, the phrases \"Hel has half of us\" and \"sent off to Hel\" are used in reference to death, though it could be a reference to the location and not the being, if not both. In stanza 4 of Baldrs draumar, Odin rides towards the \"high hall of Hel.\"",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Hel may also be alluded to in Hamðismál. Death is paraphrased as \"joy of the troll-woman\" (or \"ogress\") and ostensibly it is Hel being referred to as the troll-woman or the ogre (flagð), although it may otherwise be some unspecified dís.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hel receives notable mention in the Prose Edda. In chapter 34 of the book Gylfaginning, Hel is listed by High as one of the three children of Loki and Angrboða; the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr, and Hel. High continues that, once the gods found that these three children are being brought up in the land of Jötunheimr, and when the gods \"traced prophecies that from these siblings great mischief and disaster would arise for them\" then the gods expected a lot of trouble from the three children, partially due to the nature of the mother of the children, yet worse so due to the nature of their father.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "High says that Odin sent the gods to gather the children and bring them to him. Upon their arrival, Odin threw Jörmungandr into \"that deep sea that lies round all lands,\" Odin threw Hel into Niflheim, and bestowed upon her authority over nine worlds, in that she must \"administer board and lodging to those sent to her, and that is those who die of sickness or old age.\" High details that in this realm Hel has \"great Mansions\" with extremely high walls and immense gates, a hall called Éljúðnir, a dish called \"Hunger,\" a knife called \"Famine,\" the servant Ganglati (Old Norse \"lazy walker\"), the serving-maid Ganglöt (also \"lazy walker\"), the entrance threshold \"Stumbling-block,\" the bed \"Sick-bed,\" and the curtains \"Gleaming-bale.\" High describes Hel as \"half black and half flesh-coloured,\" adding that this makes her easily recognizable, and furthermore that Hel is \"rather downcast and fierce-looking.\"",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In chapter 49, High describes the events surrounding the death of the god Baldr. The goddess Frigg asks who among the Æsir will earn \"all her love and favour\" by riding to Hel, the location, to try to find Baldr, and offer Hel herself a ransom. The god Hermóðr volunteers and sets off upon the eight-legged horse Sleipnir to Hel. Hermóðr arrives in Hel's hall, finds his brother Baldr there, and stays the night. The next morning, Hermóðr begs Hel to allow Baldr to ride home with him, and tells her about the great weeping the Æsir have done upon Baldr's death. Hel says the love people have for Baldr that Hermóðr has claimed must be tested, stating:",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "If all things in the world, alive or dead, weep for him, then he will be allowed to return to the Æsir. If anyone speaks against him or refuses to cry, then he will remain with Hel.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Later in the chapter, after the female jötunn Þökk refuses to weep for the dead Baldr, she responds in verse, ending with \"let Hel hold what she has.\" In chapter 51, High describes the events of Ragnarök, and details that when Loki arrives at the field Vígríðr \"all of Hel's people\" will arrive with him.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In chapter 12 of the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, Hel is mentioned in a kenning for Baldr (\"Hel's companion\"). In chapter 23, \"Hel's [...] relative or father\" is given as a kenning for Loki. In chapter 50, Hel is referenced (\"to join the company of the quite monstrous wolf's sister\") in the skaldic poem Ragnarsdrápa.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the Heimskringla book Ynglinga saga, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, Hel is referred to, though never by name. In chapter 17, the king Dyggvi dies of sickness. A poem from the 9th-century Ynglingatal that forms the basis of Ynglinga saga is then quoted that describes Hel's taking of Dyggvi:",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "I doubt not but Dyggvi's corpse Hel does hold to whore with him; for Ulf's sib a scion of kings by right should caress in death: to love lured Loki's sister Yngvi's heir o'er all Sweden.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In chapter 45, a section from Ynglingatal is given which refers to Hel as \"howes'-warder\" (meaning \"guardian of the graves\") and as taking King Halfdan Hvitbeinn from life. In chapter 46, King Eystein Halfdansson dies by being knocked overboard by a sail yard. A section from Ynglingatal follows, describing that Eystein \"fared to\" Hel (referred to as \"Býleistr's-brother's-daughter\"). In chapter 47, the deceased Eystein's son King Halfdan dies of an illness, and the excerpt provided in the chapter describes his fate thereafter, a portion of which references Hel:",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Loki's child from life summoned to her thing the third liege-lord, when Halfdan of Holtar farm left the life allotted to him.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In a stanza from Ynglingatal recorded in chapter 72 of the Heimskringla book Saga of Harald Sigurdsson, \"given to Hel\" is again used as a phrase to referring to death.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Icelanders' saga Egils saga contains the poem Sonatorrek. The saga attributes the poem to 10th-century skald Egill Skallagrímsson, and writes that it was composed by Egill after the death of his son Gunnar. The final stanza of the poem contains a mention of Hel, though not by name:",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Now my course is tough: Death, close sister of Odin's enemy stands on the ness: with resolution and without remorse I will gladly await my own.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the account of Baldr's death in Saxo Grammaticus' early 13th century work Gesta Danorum, the dying Baldr has a dream visitation from Proserpina (here translated as \"the goddess of death\"):",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The following night the goddess of death appeared to him in a dream standing at his side, and declared that in three days time she would clasp him in her arms. It was no idle vision, for after three days the acute pain of his injury brought his end.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Scholars have assumed that Saxo used Proserpina as a goddess equivalent to the Norse Hel.",
"title": "Attestations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "It has been suggested that several imitation medallions and bracteates of the Migration Period (ca. first centuries AD) feature depictions of Hel. In particular the bracteates IK 14 and IK 124 depict a rider traveling down a slope and coming upon a female being holding a scepter or a staff. The downward slope may indicate that the rider is traveling towards the realm of the dead and the woman with the scepter may be a female ruler of that realm, corresponding to Hel.",
"title": "Archaeological record"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Some B-class bracteates showing three godly figures have been interpreted as depicting Baldr's death, the best known of these is the Fakse bracteate. Two of the figures are understood to be Baldr and Odin while both Loki and Hel have been proposed as candidates for the third figure. If it is Hel she is presumably greeting the dying Baldr as he comes to her realm.",
"title": "Archaeological record"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Old English Gospel of Nicodemus, preserved in two manuscripts from the 11th century, contains a female figure referred to as Seo hell who engages in flyting with Satan and tells him to leave her dwelling (Old English ut of mynre onwununge). Regarding Seo Hell in the Old English Gospel of Nicodemus, Michael Bell states that \"her vivid personification in a dramatically excellent scene suggests that her gender is more than grammatical, and invites comparison with the Old Norse underworld goddess Hel and the Frau Holle of German folklore, to say nothing of underworld goddesses in other cultures\" yet adds that \"the possibility that these genders are merely grammatical is strengthened by the fact that an Old Norse version of Nicodemus, possibly translated under English influence, personifies Hell in the neutral (Old Norse þat helvíti).\"",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Old Norse Bartholomeus saga postola, an account of the life of Saint Bartholomew dating from the 13th century, mentions a \"Queen Hel.\" In the story, a devil is hiding within a pagan idol, and bound by Bartholomew's spiritual powers to acknowledge himself and confess, the devil refers to Jesus as the one which \"made war on Hel our queen\" (Old Norse heriaði a Hel drottning vara). \"Queen Hel\" is not mentioned elsewhere in the saga.",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Michael Bell says that while Hel \"might at first appear to be identical with the well-known pagan goddess of the Norse underworld\" as described in chapter 34 of Gylfaginning, \"in the combined light of the Old English and Old Norse versions of Nicodemus she casts quite a different a shadow,\" and that in Bartholomeus saga postola \"she is clearly the queen of the Christian, not pagan, underworld.\"",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Jacob Grimm described Hel as an example of a \"half-goddess\": \"one who cannot be shown to be either wife or daughter of a god, and who stands in a dependent relation to higher divinities\", and argued that \"half-goddesses\" stand higher than \"half-gods\" in Germanic mythology. Grimm regarded Hel (whom he refers to here as Halja, the theorized Proto-Germanic form of the term) as essentially an \"image of a greedy, unrestoring, female deity\" and theorized that \"the higher we are allowed to penetrate into our antiquities, the less hellish and more godlike may Halja appear\". He compared her role, her black color, and her name to \"the Indian Bhavani, who travels about and bathes like Nerthus and Holda, but is likewise called Kali or Mahakali, the great black goddess\" and concluded that \"Halja is one of the oldest and commonest conceptions of our heathenism\". He theorized that the Helhest, a three-legged horse that in Danish folklore roams the countryside \"as a harbinger of plague and pestilence\", was originally the steed of the goddess Hel, and that on this steed Hel roamed the land \"picking up the dead that were her due\". He also says that a wagon was once ascribed to Hel.",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In her 1948 work on death in Norse mythology and religion, The Road to Hel, Hilda Ellis Davidson argued that the description of Hel as a goddess in surviving sources appeared to be literary personification, the word hel generally being \"used simply to signify death or the grave\", which she states \"naturally lends itself to personification by poets\". While noting that \"whether this personification has originally been based on a belief in a goddess of death called Hel [was] another question\", she stated that she did not believe the surviving sources gave any reason to believe so, while they included various other examples of \"supernatural women\" who \"seem to have been closely connected with the world of death, and were pictured as welcoming dead warriors\". She suggested that the depiction of Hel \"as a goddess\" in Gylfaginning \"might well owe something to these\".",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In a later work (1998), Davidson wrote that the description of Hel found in chapter 33 of Gylfaginning \"hardly suggests a goddess\", but that \"in the account of Hermod's ride to Hel later in Gylfaginning (49)\", Hel \"[speaks] with authority as ruler of the underworld\" and that from her realm \"gifts are sent back to Frigg and Fulla by Balder's wife Nanna as from a friendly kingdom\". She posited that Snorri may have \"earlier turned the goddess of death into an allegorical figure, just as he made Hel, the underworld of shades, a place 'where wicked men go,' like the Christian Hell (Gylfaginning 3)\". She then, like Grimm, compared Hel to Kali:",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On the other hand, a goddess of death who represents the horrors of slaughter and decay is something well known elsewhere; the figure of Kali in India is an outstanding example. Like Snorri's Hel, she is terrifying to in appearance, black or dark in colour, usually naked, adorned with severed heads or arms or the corpses of children, her lips smeared with blood. She haunts the battlefield or cremation ground and squats on corpses. Yet for all this she is \"the recipient of ardent devotion from countless devotees who approach her as their mother\" [...].",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Davidson further compared Hel to early attestations of the Irish goddesses Badb (described in The Destruction of Da Choca's Hostel as dark in color, with a large mouth, wearing a dusky mantle, and with gray hair falling over her shoulders, or, alternatively, \"as a red figure on the edge of the ford, washing the chariot of a king doomed to die\") and the Morrígan. She concluded that, in these examples, \"here we have the fierce destructive side of death, with a strong emphasis on its physical horrors, so perhaps we should not assume that the gruesome figure of Hel is wholly Snorri's literary invention.\"",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "John Lindow stated that most details about Hel, as a figure, are not found outside of Snorri's writing in Gylfaginning, and that when older skaldic poetry \"says that people are 'in' rather than 'with' Hel, we are clearly dealing with a place rather than a person, and this is assumed to be the older conception\". He theorizes that the noun and place Hel likely originally simply meant \"grave\", and that \"the personification came later\". Lindow also drew a parallel between the personified Hel's banishment to the underworld and the binding of Fenrir as part of a recurring theme of the bound monster, where an enemy of the gods is bound but destined to break free at Ragnarok. Rudolf Simek similarly stated that the figure of Hel is \"probably a very late personification of the underworld Hel\", that \"on the whole nothing speaks in favour of there being a belief in Hel in pre-Christian times\", and noted that \"the first scriptures using the goddess Hel are found at the end of the 10th and in the 11th centuries\". He characterized the allegorical description of Hel's house in Gylfaginning as \"clearly ... in the Christian tradition\". However, elsewhere in the same work, Simek cites an argument made by Karl Hauck [de] that one of three figures appearing together on Migration Period B-bracteates is to be interpreted as Hel.",
"title": "Scholarly reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In January 2017, the Icelandic Naming Committee ruled that parents could not name their child Hel \"on the grounds that the name would cause the child significant distress and trouble as it grows up\".",
"title": "As a given name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Hel is one of the playable gods in the third-person multiplayer online battle arena game Smite and was one of the original 17 gods. Hel is also featured in Ensemble Studios' 2002 real-time strategy game Age of Mythology, where she is one of 12 gods Norse players can choose to worship.",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| Hel is a female being in Norse mythology who is said to preside over an underworld realm of the same name, where she receives a portion of the dead. Hel is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century. In addition, she is mentioned in poems recorded in Heimskringla and Egils saga that date from the 9th and 10th centuries, respectively. An episode in the Latin work Gesta Danorum, written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus, is generally considered to refer to Hel, and Hel may appear on various Migration Period bracteates. In the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and Heimskringla, Hel is referred to as a daughter of Loki. In the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, Hel is described as having been appointed by the god Odin as ruler of a realm of the same name, located in Niflheim. In the same source, her appearance is described as half blue and half flesh-coloured and further as having a gloomy, downcast appearance. The Prose Edda details that Hel rules over vast mansions with many servants in her underworld realm and plays a key role in the attempted resurrection of the god Baldr. Scholarly theories have been proposed about Hel's potential connections to figures appearing in the 11th-century Old English Gospel of Nicodemus and Old Norse Bartholomeus saga postola, that she may have been considered a goddess with potential Indo-European parallels in Bhavani, Kali, and Mahakali or that Hel may have become a being only as a late personification of the location of the same name. | 2001-08-18T05:01:24Z | 2023-12-06T19:17:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hel_(mythological_being) |
13,667 | Hawar Islands | The Hawar Islands (Arabic: جزر حوار; transliterated: Juzur Ḥawār) are an archipelago of desert islands; all but one are owned by Bahrain, while the southern, small, and uninhabited Jinan Island (Arabic: جزيرة جينان; transliterated: Jazirat Jinan) is administered by Qatar as part of its Al-Shahaniya municipality. The archipelago is situated off the west coast of Qatar in the Gulf of Bahrain of the Persian Gulf.
The islands used to be one of the settlements of the Bahraini branch of the Dawasir who settled there in the early 19th century. The islands were first surveyed in 1820, when they were called the Warden's Islands, and two villages were recorded. They are now uninhabited, other than a police garrison and a hotel on the main island; access to all but Hawar island itself is severely restricted. Local fishermen are allowed to fish in adjacent waters and there is some recreational fishing and tourism on and around the islands. Fresh water has always been scarce; historically it was obtained by surface collection and even today, with the desalination plant, additional supplies have to be brought in.
Despite their proximity to Qatar (they are only about 1 nautical mile (1.9 km) from the Qatari mainland whilst being about 10 nautical miles (19 km) from the main islands of Bahrain), most of the islands belong to Bahrain, having been a part of a dispute between Bahrain and Qatar which was resolved in 2001. The islands were formerly coincident with the district or Minṭaqat Juzur Ḥawār (مِنْطَقَة جُزُر حَوَار) and are now administered as part of the Southern Governorate of Bahrain. The land area of the islands is approximately 52 km (20 sq. mi.).
Although there are 36 islands in the group, many of the smaller islands are little more than sand or shingle accumulations on areas of exposed bedrock molded by the ongoing processes of sedimentation and accretion. The World Heritage Site application named 8 major islands (see table hereafter), which conforms to the description of the islands when first surveyed as consisting of 8 or 9 islands. It has often been described as an archipelago of 16 islands. Janan Island, to the south of Hawar island, is not legally considered to be a part of the group and is owned by Qatar.
Hawari separatists have a representative in France, who advocates the creation of an independent Emirate of Hawar islands. The source, however, does not say what real support the separatist movement has in Hawar Islands. The flag of the separatist movement was seen in Paris on 1 May 2002. The flag is a dark red rectangle with a white triangle at hoist. The triangle is separated from the red field by a green border, and there are two thin green stripes in the upper and lower parts of the flag. A 14-ray yellow sun outlined in brown is placed inside the white triangle. Dark red stands for the national pride and the fatherland, green for spring, and white for purity.
The islands are home to many bird species, notably Socotra cormorants. There are small herds of Arabian oryx and sand gazelle on Hawar island, and the seas around support a large population of dugong.
The islands were listed as a Ramsar site in 1997. In 2002, the Bahraini government applied to have the islands recognised as a World Heritage Site due to their unique environment and habitat for endangered species; the application was ultimately unsuccessful.
The islands were formerly coincident with the region or Minṭaqat Juzur Ḥawār (مِنْطَقَة جُزُر حَوَار) and are now administered as part of the Southern Governorate of Bahrain.
Jinan Island is administered as part of Al-Shahaniya Municipality of Qatar.
The islands' ecology draws numerous birds, oryx, gazelles, and Socotra cormorants. The islands are connected through a short 25 km ferry ride from Manama and are reported to have a potential to be developed as a beach tourism destination.
By far the largest island is Hawar, which accounts for more than 41 km (15 sq. mi.) of the 54.5 km (21 sq. mi.) land area. Following in size are Suwād al Janūbīyah, Suwād ash Shamālīyah, Rubud Al Sharqiyah, Rubud Al Gharbiyah, and Muhazwarah (Umm Hazwarah).
The following were not considered as part of the Hawar islands in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgment, being located between Hawar and the Bahrain Islands and not disputed by Qatar, but have been included in the Hawar archipelago by the Bahrain government as part of the 2002 World Heritage Site application.
Janan (or Jinan) Island, a small island south of Hawar island, was also considered in the 2001 ICJ judgment. Based on a previous agreement when both Qatar and Bahrain were under British protection, it was judged to be separate from the Hawar islands and so considered by the court separately. It was awarded to Qatar. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Hawar Islands (Arabic: جزر حوار; transliterated: Juzur Ḥawār) are an archipelago of desert islands; all but one are owned by Bahrain, while the southern, small, and uninhabited Jinan Island (Arabic: جزيرة جينان; transliterated: Jazirat Jinan) is administered by Qatar as part of its Al-Shahaniya municipality. The archipelago is situated off the west coast of Qatar in the Gulf of Bahrain of the Persian Gulf.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The islands used to be one of the settlements of the Bahraini branch of the Dawasir who settled there in the early 19th century. The islands were first surveyed in 1820, when they were called the Warden's Islands, and two villages were recorded. They are now uninhabited, other than a police garrison and a hotel on the main island; access to all but Hawar island itself is severely restricted. Local fishermen are allowed to fish in adjacent waters and there is some recreational fishing and tourism on and around the islands. Fresh water has always been scarce; historically it was obtained by surface collection and even today, with the desalination plant, additional supplies have to be brought in.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Despite their proximity to Qatar (they are only about 1 nautical mile (1.9 km) from the Qatari mainland whilst being about 10 nautical miles (19 km) from the main islands of Bahrain), most of the islands belong to Bahrain, having been a part of a dispute between Bahrain and Qatar which was resolved in 2001. The islands were formerly coincident with the district or Minṭaqat Juzur Ḥawār (مِنْطَقَة جُزُر حَوَار) and are now administered as part of the Southern Governorate of Bahrain. The land area of the islands is approximately 52 km (20 sq. mi.).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Although there are 36 islands in the group, many of the smaller islands are little more than sand or shingle accumulations on areas of exposed bedrock molded by the ongoing processes of sedimentation and accretion. The World Heritage Site application named 8 major islands (see table hereafter), which conforms to the description of the islands when first surveyed as consisting of 8 or 9 islands. It has often been described as an archipelago of 16 islands. Janan Island, to the south of Hawar island, is not legally considered to be a part of the group and is owned by Qatar.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hawari separatists have a representative in France, who advocates the creation of an independent Emirate of Hawar islands. The source, however, does not say what real support the separatist movement has in Hawar Islands. The flag of the separatist movement was seen in Paris on 1 May 2002. The flag is a dark red rectangle with a white triangle at hoist. The triangle is separated from the red field by a green border, and there are two thin green stripes in the upper and lower parts of the flag. A 14-ray yellow sun outlined in brown is placed inside the white triangle. Dark red stands for the national pride and the fatherland, green for spring, and white for purity.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The islands are home to many bird species, notably Socotra cormorants. There are small herds of Arabian oryx and sand gazelle on Hawar island, and the seas around support a large population of dugong.",
"title": "Flora and fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The islands were listed as a Ramsar site in 1997. In 2002, the Bahraini government applied to have the islands recognised as a World Heritage Site due to their unique environment and habitat for endangered species; the application was ultimately unsuccessful.",
"title": "Flora and fauna"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The islands were formerly coincident with the region or Minṭaqat Juzur Ḥawār (مِنْطَقَة جُزُر حَوَار) and are now administered as part of the Southern Governorate of Bahrain.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Jinan Island is administered as part of Al-Shahaniya Municipality of Qatar.",
"title": "Administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The islands' ecology draws numerous birds, oryx, gazelles, and Socotra cormorants. The islands are connected through a short 25 km ferry ride from Manama and are reported to have a potential to be developed as a beach tourism destination.",
"title": "Tourism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "By far the largest island is Hawar, which accounts for more than 41 km (15 sq. mi.) of the 54.5 km (21 sq. mi.) land area. Following in size are Suwād al Janūbīyah, Suwād ash Shamālīyah, Rubud Al Sharqiyah, Rubud Al Gharbiyah, and Muhazwarah (Umm Hazwarah).",
"title": "List of islands"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The following were not considered as part of the Hawar islands in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgment, being located between Hawar and the Bahrain Islands and not disputed by Qatar, but have been included in the Hawar archipelago by the Bahrain government as part of the 2002 World Heritage Site application.",
"title": "List of islands"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Janan (or Jinan) Island, a small island south of Hawar island, was also considered in the 2001 ICJ judgment. Based on a previous agreement when both Qatar and Bahrain were under British protection, it was judged to be separate from the Hawar islands and so considered by the court separately. It was awarded to Qatar.",
"title": "List of islands"
}
]
| The Hawar Islands are an archipelago of desert islands; all but one are owned by Bahrain, while the southern, small, and uninhabited Jinan Island is administered by Qatar as part of its Al-Shahaniya municipality. The archipelago is situated off the west coast of Qatar in the Gulf of Bahrain of the Persian Gulf. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-04T14:04:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawar_Islands |
13,669 | Hans-Dietrich Genscher | Hans-Dietrich Genscher (21 March 1927 – 31 March 2016) was a German statesman and a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 1969 to 1974, and as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1992 (except for a two-week break in 1982, after the FDP had left the Third Schmidt cabinet), making him the longest-serving occupant of either post and the only person to have held one of these positions under two different Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991 he was chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
A proponent of Realpolitik, Genscher has been called "a master of diplomacy". He is widely regarded as having been a principal "architect of German reunification". In 1991, he played a pivotal role in international diplomacy surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia by successfully pushing for international recognition of Croatia, Slovenia and other republics declaring independence, in an effort to halt "a trend towards a Greater Serbia". After leaving office, he worked as a lawyer and international consultant. He was President of the German Council on Foreign Relations and was involved with several international organisations, and with former Czech President Václav Havel, he called for a Cold War museum to be built in Berlin.
Genscher was born on 21 March 1927 in Reideburg (Province of Saxony), now a part of Halle, in what later became East Germany. He was the son of Hilda Kreime and Kurt Genscher. His father, a lawyer, died when Genscher was nine years old. In 1943, he was drafted to serve as a member of the Air Force Support Personnel (Luftwaffenhelfer) at the age of 16. At age 17, close to the end of the war, he and his fellow soldiers became members of the Nazi Party due to a collective application (Sammelantrag) by his Wehrmacht unit. He later said he was unaware of it at the time.
Late in the war, Genscher was deployed as a soldier in General Walther Wenck's 12th Army, which ostensibly was directed to relieve the siege of Berlin. After the German surrender he was an American and British prisoner of war, but was released after two months. Following World War II, he studied law and economics at the universities of Halle and Leipzig (1946–1949) and joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) in 1946.
In 1952, Genscher fled to West Germany, where he joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He passed his second state examination in law in Hamburg in 1954 and became a solicitor in Bremen. During these early years after the war, Genscher continuously struggled with illness. From 1956 to 1959 he was a research assistant of the FDP parliamentary group in Bonn. From 1959 to 1965 he was the FDP group managing director, while from 1962 to 1964 he was National Secretary of the FDP.
In 1965 Genscher was elected on the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP list to the West German parliament and remained a member of parliament until his retirement in 1998. He was elected deputy national chairman in 1968. From 1969 he served as minister of the interior in the SPD-FDP coalition government led by Chancellor Willy Brandt.
In 1974 he became foreign minister and vice chancellor, both posts he would hold for 18 years. From 1 October 1974 to 23 February 1985 he was Chairman of the FDP. It was during his tenure as party chairman that the FDP switched from being the junior member of social-liberal coalition to being the junior member of the 1982 coalition with the CDU/CSU. In 1985 he gave up the post of national chairman. After his resignation as Foreign Minister, Genscher was appointed honorary chairman of the FDP in 1992.
After the federal election of 1969 Genscher was instrumental in the formation of the social-liberal coalition of chancellor Willy Brandt and was on 22 October 1969 appointed as federal minister of the interior. In 1972, while minister for the interior, Genscher rejected Israel's offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany to deal with the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. A flawed rescue attempt by German police forces at Fürstenfeldbruck air base resulted in a bloody shootout, which left all eleven hostages, five terrorists, and one German policeman dead. Genscher's popularity with Israel declined further when he endorsed the release of the three captured attackers following the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft on 29 October 1972.
In the SPD–FDP coalition, Genscher helped shape Brandt's policy of deescalation with the communist East, commonly known as Ostpolitik, which was continued under chancellor Helmut Schmidt after Brandt's resignation in 1974. He would later be a driving factor in continuing this policy in the new conservative-liberal coalition under Helmut Kohl.
In the negotiations on a coalition government of SPD and FDP following the 1976 elections, it took Genscher 73 days to reach agreement with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
As Foreign Minister, Genscher stood for a policy of compromise between East and West, and developed strategies for an active policy of détente and the continuation of the East–West dialogue with the USSR. He was widely regarded a strong advocate of negotiated settlements to international problems. As a popular story on Genscher's preferred method of shuttle diplomacy has it, "two Lufthansa jets crossed over the Atlantic, and Genscher was on both".
Genscher was a major player in the negotiations on the text of the Helsinki Accords. In December 1976, the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City accepted Genscher's proposal of an anti-terrorism convention in New York, which was set among other things, to respond to demands from hostage-takers under any circumstances.
Genscher was one of the FDP's driving forces when, in 1982, the party switched sides from its coalition with the SPD to support the CDU/CSU in their Constructive vote of no confidence to have incumbent Helmut Schmidt replaced with opposition leader Helmut Kohl as Chancellor. The reason for this was the increase in the differences between the coalition partners, particularly in economic and social policy. The switch was controversial, not least in his own party.
At several points in his tenure, he irritated the governments of the United States and other allies of Germany by appearing not to support Western initiatives fully. "During the Cold War, his penchant to seek the middle ground at times exasperated United States policy-makers who wanted a more decisive, less equivocal Germany", according to Tyler Marshall. Genscher's perceived quasi-neutralism was dubbed Genscherism. "Fundamental to Genscherism was said to be the belief that Germany could play a role as a bridge between East and West without losing its status as a reliable NATO ally." In the 1980s, Genscher opposed the deployment of new short-range NATO missiles in Germany. At the time, the Reagan Administration questioned whether Germany was straying from the Western alliance and following a program of its own.
In 1984, Genscher became the first Western foreign minister to visit Tehran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In 1988, he appointed Jürgen Hellner as West Germany's new ambassador to Libya, a post that had been vacant since the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, a tragedy which U.S. officials blamed on the government of Muammar Gaddafi.
Genscher's proposals frequently set the tone and direction of foreign affairs among Western Europe's democracies. He was also an active participant in the further development of the European Union, taking an active part in the Single European Act Treaty negotiations in the mid-1980s, as well as the joint publication of the Genscher-Colombo plan with Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Emilio Colombo which advocated further integration and deepening of relations in the European Union towards a more federal Europe. He later was among the politicians who pushed hard for monetary union alongside Edouard Balladur, France's finance minister, and Giuliano Amato, circulating a memorandum to that effect.
Genscher retained his posts as foreign minister and vice chancellor through German reunification and until 1992 when he stepped down for health reasons.
Genscher is most respected for his efforts that helped spell the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s when Communist eastern European governments toppled, and which led to German reunification. During his time in office, he focused on maintaining stability and balance between the West and the Soviet bloc. From the beginning, he argued that the West should seek cooperation with Communist governments rather than treat them as implacably hostile; this policy was embraced by many Germans and other Europeans.
Genscher had great interest in European integration and the success of German reunification. He soon pushed for effective support of political reform processes in Poland and Hungary. For this purpose, he visited Poland to meet the chairman of Solidarity Lech Wałęsa as early as January 1980. Especially from 1987 he campaigned for an "active relaxation" policy response by the West to the Soviet efforts. In the years before German reunification, he made a point of maintaining strong ties with his birthplace Halle, which was regarded as significant by admirers and critics alike.
When thousands of East Germans sought refuge in West German embassies in Czechoslovakia and Poland, Genscher held discussions on the refugee crisis at the United Nations in New York with the foreign ministers of Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1989. Genscher's 30 September 1989 speech from the balcony of the German embassy in Prague was an important milestone on the road to the end of the GDR. In the embassy courtyard thousands of East German citizens had assembled. They were trying to travel to West Germany, but were being denied permission to travel by the Czechoslovak government at the request of East Germany. He announced that he had reached an agreement with the Communist Czechoslovak government that the refugees could leave: "We have come to you to tell you that today, your departure ..." (German: "Wir sind zu Ihnen gekommen, um Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass heute Ihre Ausreise ..."). After these words, the speech was drowned in cheers.
With his fellow foreign ministers James Baker of the United States and Eduard Shevardnadze of the Soviet Union, Genscher is widely credited with securing Germany's subsequent peaceful unification and the withdrawal of Soviet forces. He negotiated the German reunification in 1990 with his counterpart from the GDR, Markus Meckel. On 12 September 1990 he signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany on behalf of West Germany. In November 1990, Genscher and his Polish counterpart Krzysztof Skubiszewski signed the German-Polish Border Treaty on the establishment of the Oder–Neisse line as Poland's western border. Meanwhile, he strongly endorsed the plans of the Bush Administration to assure continued U.S. influence in a post-Cold War Europe.
In 1991, Genscher successfully pushed for Germany's recognition of the Republic of Croatia in the Croatian War of Independence shortly after JNA entered Vukovar. After Croatia and Slovenia had declared independence, Genscher concluded that Yugoslavia could not be held together, and that republics that wanted to break from the Serbian-dominated federation deserved quick diplomatic recognition. He hoped that such recognition would stop the fighting. The rest of the European Union was subsequently pressured to follow suit soon afterward. The UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar had warned the German Government, that a recognition of Slovenia and Croatia would lead to an increase in aggression in the former Yugoslavia.
At a meeting of the European Community's foreign ministers in 1991, Genscher proposed to press for a war crimes trial for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, accusing him of aggression against Kuwait, using chemical weapons against civilians and condoning genocide against the Kurds.
During the Gulf War, Genscher sought to deal with Iraq after other Western leaders had decided to go to war to force it out of Kuwait. Germany made a substantial financial contribution to the allied cause but, citing constitutional restrictions on the use of its armed forces, provided almost no military assistance. In January 1991, Germany sent Genscher on a state visit to Israel and followed up with an agreement to provide the Jewish state with $670 million in military aid, including financing for two submarines long coveted by Israel, a battery of Patriot missiles to defend against Iraqi missiles, 58 armored vehicles specially fitted to detect chemical and biological attacks, and a shipment of gas masks. When, in the aftermath of the war, a far-reaching political debate broke out over how Germany should fulfill its global responsibilities, Genscher responded that if foreign powers expect Germany to assume greater responsibility in the world, they should give it a chance to express its views "more strongly" in the United Nations Security Council. He also famously held that "whatever floats is fine, whatever rolls is not" to sum up Germany's military export policy for restless countries – based on a navy's unsuitability for use against a country's own people.
In 1992, Genscher, together with his Danish colleague Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, took the initiative to create the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the EuroFaculty.
More than half a century after Nazi leaders assembled their infamous exhibition "Degenerate Art", a sweeping condemnation of the work of the avant-garde, Genscher opened a re-creation of the show at the Altes Museum in March 1992, describing Nazi attempts to restrict artistic expression as "a step toward the catastrophe that produced the mass murder of European Jews and the war of extermination against Germany's neighbors." "The paintings in this exhibition have survived oppression and censorship", he asserted in his opening remarks. "They are not only a monument but also a sign of hope. They stand for the triumph of creative freedom over barbarism."
On 18 May 1992, Genscher retired at his own request from the federal government, which he had been member of for a total of 23 years. At the time, he was the world's longest-serving foreign minister and Germany's most popular politician. He had announced his decision three weeks earlier, on 27 April 1992. Genscher did not specify his reasons for quitting; however, he had suffered two heart attacks by that time. His resignation took effect in May, but he remained a member of parliament and continued to be influential in the Free Democratic Party.
Following Genscher's resignation, Chancellor Helmut Kohl and FDP chairman Otto Graf Lambsdorff named Irmgard Schwaetzer, a former aide to Genscher, to be the new Foreign Minister. In a surprise decision, however, a majority of the FDP parliamentary group rejected her nomination and voted instead to name Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel to head the Foreign Ministry.
Ahead of the German presidential election in 1994, Genscher proclaimed his lack of interest in the position, but was nonetheless widely considered a leading contender. After a poll taken for Stern magazine showed him to be the favored candidate of 48 percent of German voters, he reiterated in 1993 that he would "in no case" accept the presidency.
Having finished his political career, Genscher remained active as a lawyer and in international organizations. In late 1992, Genscher was appointed chairman of a newly established donors' board of the Berlin State Opera. Between 1997 and 2010, Genscher was affiliated with the law firm Büsing, Müffelmann & Theye. He founded his own consulting firm, Hans-Dietrich Genscher Consult GmbH, in 2000. Between 2001 and 2003, he served as president of the German Council on Foreign Relations. In 2001, Genscher headed an arbitration that ended a monthlong battle between German airline Lufthansa and its pilots' union and resulted in an agreement on increasing wages by more than 15 percent by the end of the following year.
In 2008, Genscher joined former Czech President Václav Havel, former United States Ambassador to Germany John Kornblum and several other well-known political figures in calling for a Cold War museum to be built at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. In 2009 Genscher expressed public concern at Pope Benedict XVI's lifting of excommunication of the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X. Genscher wrote in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: "Poles can be proud of Pope John Paul II. At the last papal election, we said We are the pope! But please—not like this." He argued that Pope Benedict XVI was making a habit of offending non-Catholics. "This is a deep moral and political question. It is about respect for the victims of crimes against humanity", Genscher said.
On 20 December 2013, it was revealed that Genscher played a key role in coordinating the release and flight to Germany of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos. Genscher had first met Khodorkovsky in 2002 and had chaired a conference at which Khodorkovsky blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin's pursuit of his oil company. Khodorkovsky asked his lawyers during a 2011 prison visit to let Genscher help mediate early release. Once Putin was re-elected in 2012, German Chancellor Angela Merkel instructed her officials to lobby for the president to meet Genscher. The subsequent negotiations involved two meetings between Genscher and Putin – one at Berlin Tegel Airport at the end of Putin's first visit to Germany after he was re-elected in 2012, the other in Moscow. While keeping the chancellor informed, Khodorkovsky's attorneys and Genscher spent the ensuing months developing a variety of legal avenues that could allow Putin to release his former rival early, ranging from amendments to existing laws to clemency. When Khodorkovsky's mother was in a Berlin hospital with cancer in November 2013, Genscher passed a message to Khodorkovsky suggesting the prisoner should write a pardon letter to Putin emphasizing his mother's ill health. Following Putin's pardoning of Khodorkovsky "for humanitarian reasons" in December 2013, a private plane provided by Genscher brought Khodorkovsky to Berlin for a family reunion at the Hotel Adlon.
Genscher signed on in 2014 to be a member of the Southern Corridor Advisory Panel, a BP-led consortium which includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International. The panel's purpose is to facilitate the expansion of a vast natural-gas field in the Caspian Sea and the building of two pipelines across Europe. The $45 billion enterprise, championed by the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, has been called by critics "the Blair Rich Project".
Genscher died at his home outside Bonn in Wachtberg on 31 March 2016 from heart failure, 10 days after his 89th birthday.
Genscher has been awarded honorary citizenship by his birthplace Halle (Saale) (in 1991) and the city of Berlin (in 1993). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hans-Dietrich Genscher (21 March 1927 – 31 March 2016) was a German statesman and a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 1969 to 1974, and as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1992 (except for a two-week break in 1982, after the FDP had left the Third Schmidt cabinet), making him the longest-serving occupant of either post and the only person to have held one of these positions under two different Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991 he was chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "A proponent of Realpolitik, Genscher has been called \"a master of diplomacy\". He is widely regarded as having been a principal \"architect of German reunification\". In 1991, he played a pivotal role in international diplomacy surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia by successfully pushing for international recognition of Croatia, Slovenia and other republics declaring independence, in an effort to halt \"a trend towards a Greater Serbia\". After leaving office, he worked as a lawyer and international consultant. He was President of the German Council on Foreign Relations and was involved with several international organisations, and with former Czech President Václav Havel, he called for a Cold War museum to be built in Berlin.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Genscher was born on 21 March 1927 in Reideburg (Province of Saxony), now a part of Halle, in what later became East Germany. He was the son of Hilda Kreime and Kurt Genscher. His father, a lawyer, died when Genscher was nine years old. In 1943, he was drafted to serve as a member of the Air Force Support Personnel (Luftwaffenhelfer) at the age of 16. At age 17, close to the end of the war, he and his fellow soldiers became members of the Nazi Party due to a collective application (Sammelantrag) by his Wehrmacht unit. He later said he was unaware of it at the time.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Late in the war, Genscher was deployed as a soldier in General Walther Wenck's 12th Army, which ostensibly was directed to relieve the siege of Berlin. After the German surrender he was an American and British prisoner of war, but was released after two months. Following World War II, he studied law and economics at the universities of Halle and Leipzig (1946–1949) and joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) in 1946.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1952, Genscher fled to West Germany, where he joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He passed his second state examination in law in Hamburg in 1954 and became a solicitor in Bremen. During these early years after the war, Genscher continuously struggled with illness. From 1956 to 1959 he was a research assistant of the FDP parliamentary group in Bonn. From 1959 to 1965 he was the FDP group managing director, while from 1962 to 1964 he was National Secretary of the FDP.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1965 Genscher was elected on the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP list to the West German parliament and remained a member of parliament until his retirement in 1998. He was elected deputy national chairman in 1968. From 1969 he served as minister of the interior in the SPD-FDP coalition government led by Chancellor Willy Brandt.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1974 he became foreign minister and vice chancellor, both posts he would hold for 18 years. From 1 October 1974 to 23 February 1985 he was Chairman of the FDP. It was during his tenure as party chairman that the FDP switched from being the junior member of social-liberal coalition to being the junior member of the 1982 coalition with the CDU/CSU. In 1985 he gave up the post of national chairman. After his resignation as Foreign Minister, Genscher was appointed honorary chairman of the FDP in 1992.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "After the federal election of 1969 Genscher was instrumental in the formation of the social-liberal coalition of chancellor Willy Brandt and was on 22 October 1969 appointed as federal minister of the interior. In 1972, while minister for the interior, Genscher rejected Israel's offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany to deal with the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. A flawed rescue attempt by German police forces at Fürstenfeldbruck air base resulted in a bloody shootout, which left all eleven hostages, five terrorists, and one German policeman dead. Genscher's popularity with Israel declined further when he endorsed the release of the three captured attackers following the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft on 29 October 1972.",
"title": "Federal Minister of the Interior"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the SPD–FDP coalition, Genscher helped shape Brandt's policy of deescalation with the communist East, commonly known as Ostpolitik, which was continued under chancellor Helmut Schmidt after Brandt's resignation in 1974. He would later be a driving factor in continuing this policy in the new conservative-liberal coalition under Helmut Kohl.",
"title": "Federal Minister of the Interior"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the negotiations on a coalition government of SPD and FDP following the 1976 elections, it took Genscher 73 days to reach agreement with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As Foreign Minister, Genscher stood for a policy of compromise between East and West, and developed strategies for an active policy of détente and the continuation of the East–West dialogue with the USSR. He was widely regarded a strong advocate of negotiated settlements to international problems. As a popular story on Genscher's preferred method of shuttle diplomacy has it, \"two Lufthansa jets crossed over the Atlantic, and Genscher was on both\".",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Genscher was a major player in the negotiations on the text of the Helsinki Accords. In December 1976, the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City accepted Genscher's proposal of an anti-terrorism convention in New York, which was set among other things, to respond to demands from hostage-takers under any circumstances.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Genscher was one of the FDP's driving forces when, in 1982, the party switched sides from its coalition with the SPD to support the CDU/CSU in their Constructive vote of no confidence to have incumbent Helmut Schmidt replaced with opposition leader Helmut Kohl as Chancellor. The reason for this was the increase in the differences between the coalition partners, particularly in economic and social policy. The switch was controversial, not least in his own party.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "At several points in his tenure, he irritated the governments of the United States and other allies of Germany by appearing not to support Western initiatives fully. \"During the Cold War, his penchant to seek the middle ground at times exasperated United States policy-makers who wanted a more decisive, less equivocal Germany\", according to Tyler Marshall. Genscher's perceived quasi-neutralism was dubbed Genscherism. \"Fundamental to Genscherism was said to be the belief that Germany could play a role as a bridge between East and West without losing its status as a reliable NATO ally.\" In the 1980s, Genscher opposed the deployment of new short-range NATO missiles in Germany. At the time, the Reagan Administration questioned whether Germany was straying from the Western alliance and following a program of its own.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1984, Genscher became the first Western foreign minister to visit Tehran since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In 1988, he appointed Jürgen Hellner as West Germany's new ambassador to Libya, a post that had been vacant since the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, a tragedy which U.S. officials blamed on the government of Muammar Gaddafi.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Genscher's proposals frequently set the tone and direction of foreign affairs among Western Europe's democracies. He was also an active participant in the further development of the European Union, taking an active part in the Single European Act Treaty negotiations in the mid-1980s, as well as the joint publication of the Genscher-Colombo plan with Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Emilio Colombo which advocated further integration and deepening of relations in the European Union towards a more federal Europe. He later was among the politicians who pushed hard for monetary union alongside Edouard Balladur, France's finance minister, and Giuliano Amato, circulating a memorandum to that effect.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Genscher retained his posts as foreign minister and vice chancellor through German reunification and until 1992 when he stepped down for health reasons.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Genscher is most respected for his efforts that helped spell the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s when Communist eastern European governments toppled, and which led to German reunification. During his time in office, he focused on maintaining stability and balance between the West and the Soviet bloc. From the beginning, he argued that the West should seek cooperation with Communist governments rather than treat them as implacably hostile; this policy was embraced by many Germans and other Europeans.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Genscher had great interest in European integration and the success of German reunification. He soon pushed for effective support of political reform processes in Poland and Hungary. For this purpose, he visited Poland to meet the chairman of Solidarity Lech Wałęsa as early as January 1980. Especially from 1987 he campaigned for an \"active relaxation\" policy response by the West to the Soviet efforts. In the years before German reunification, he made a point of maintaining strong ties with his birthplace Halle, which was regarded as significant by admirers and critics alike.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "When thousands of East Germans sought refuge in West German embassies in Czechoslovakia and Poland, Genscher held discussions on the refugee crisis at the United Nations in New York with the foreign ministers of Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1989. Genscher's 30 September 1989 speech from the balcony of the German embassy in Prague was an important milestone on the road to the end of the GDR. In the embassy courtyard thousands of East German citizens had assembled. They were trying to travel to West Germany, but were being denied permission to travel by the Czechoslovak government at the request of East Germany. He announced that he had reached an agreement with the Communist Czechoslovak government that the refugees could leave: \"We have come to you to tell you that today, your departure ...\" (German: \"Wir sind zu Ihnen gekommen, um Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass heute Ihre Ausreise ...\"). After these words, the speech was drowned in cheers.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "With his fellow foreign ministers James Baker of the United States and Eduard Shevardnadze of the Soviet Union, Genscher is widely credited with securing Germany's subsequent peaceful unification and the withdrawal of Soviet forces. He negotiated the German reunification in 1990 with his counterpart from the GDR, Markus Meckel. On 12 September 1990 he signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany on behalf of West Germany. In November 1990, Genscher and his Polish counterpart Krzysztof Skubiszewski signed the German-Polish Border Treaty on the establishment of the Oder–Neisse line as Poland's western border. Meanwhile, he strongly endorsed the plans of the Bush Administration to assure continued U.S. influence in a post-Cold War Europe.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1991, Genscher successfully pushed for Germany's recognition of the Republic of Croatia in the Croatian War of Independence shortly after JNA entered Vukovar. After Croatia and Slovenia had declared independence, Genscher concluded that Yugoslavia could not be held together, and that republics that wanted to break from the Serbian-dominated federation deserved quick diplomatic recognition. He hoped that such recognition would stop the fighting. The rest of the European Union was subsequently pressured to follow suit soon afterward. The UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar had warned the German Government, that a recognition of Slovenia and Croatia would lead to an increase in aggression in the former Yugoslavia.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "At a meeting of the European Community's foreign ministers in 1991, Genscher proposed to press for a war crimes trial for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, accusing him of aggression against Kuwait, using chemical weapons against civilians and condoning genocide against the Kurds.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During the Gulf War, Genscher sought to deal with Iraq after other Western leaders had decided to go to war to force it out of Kuwait. Germany made a substantial financial contribution to the allied cause but, citing constitutional restrictions on the use of its armed forces, provided almost no military assistance. In January 1991, Germany sent Genscher on a state visit to Israel and followed up with an agreement to provide the Jewish state with $670 million in military aid, including financing for two submarines long coveted by Israel, a battery of Patriot missiles to defend against Iraqi missiles, 58 armored vehicles specially fitted to detect chemical and biological attacks, and a shipment of gas masks. When, in the aftermath of the war, a far-reaching political debate broke out over how Germany should fulfill its global responsibilities, Genscher responded that if foreign powers expect Germany to assume greater responsibility in the world, they should give it a chance to express its views \"more strongly\" in the United Nations Security Council. He also famously held that \"whatever floats is fine, whatever rolls is not\" to sum up Germany's military export policy for restless countries – based on a navy's unsuitability for use against a country's own people.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1992, Genscher, together with his Danish colleague Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, took the initiative to create the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the EuroFaculty.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "More than half a century after Nazi leaders assembled their infamous exhibition \"Degenerate Art\", a sweeping condemnation of the work of the avant-garde, Genscher opened a re-creation of the show at the Altes Museum in March 1992, describing Nazi attempts to restrict artistic expression as \"a step toward the catastrophe that produced the mass murder of European Jews and the war of extermination against Germany's neighbors.\" \"The paintings in this exhibition have survived oppression and censorship\", he asserted in his opening remarks. \"They are not only a monument but also a sign of hope. They stand for the triumph of creative freedom over barbarism.\"",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 18 May 1992, Genscher retired at his own request from the federal government, which he had been member of for a total of 23 years. At the time, he was the world's longest-serving foreign minister and Germany's most popular politician. He had announced his decision three weeks earlier, on 27 April 1992. Genscher did not specify his reasons for quitting; however, he had suffered two heart attacks by that time. His resignation took effect in May, but he remained a member of parliament and continued to be influential in the Free Democratic Party.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Following Genscher's resignation, Chancellor Helmut Kohl and FDP chairman Otto Graf Lambsdorff named Irmgard Schwaetzer, a former aide to Genscher, to be the new Foreign Minister. In a surprise decision, however, a majority of the FDP parliamentary group rejected her nomination and voted instead to name Justice Minister Klaus Kinkel to head the Foreign Ministry.",
"title": "Vice Chancellor and Federal Foreign Minister"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ahead of the German presidential election in 1994, Genscher proclaimed his lack of interest in the position, but was nonetheless widely considered a leading contender. After a poll taken for Stern magazine showed him to be the favored candidate of 48 percent of German voters, he reiterated in 1993 that he would \"in no case\" accept the presidency.",
"title": "Activities after politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Having finished his political career, Genscher remained active as a lawyer and in international organizations. In late 1992, Genscher was appointed chairman of a newly established donors' board of the Berlin State Opera. Between 1997 and 2010, Genscher was affiliated with the law firm Büsing, Müffelmann & Theye. He founded his own consulting firm, Hans-Dietrich Genscher Consult GmbH, in 2000. Between 2001 and 2003, he served as president of the German Council on Foreign Relations. In 2001, Genscher headed an arbitration that ended a monthlong battle between German airline Lufthansa and its pilots' union and resulted in an agreement on increasing wages by more than 15 percent by the end of the following year.",
"title": "Activities after politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 2008, Genscher joined former Czech President Václav Havel, former United States Ambassador to Germany John Kornblum and several other well-known political figures in calling for a Cold War museum to be built at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. In 2009 Genscher expressed public concern at Pope Benedict XVI's lifting of excommunication of the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X. Genscher wrote in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: \"Poles can be proud of Pope John Paul II. At the last papal election, we said We are the pope! But please—not like this.\" He argued that Pope Benedict XVI was making a habit of offending non-Catholics. \"This is a deep moral and political question. It is about respect for the victims of crimes against humanity\", Genscher said.",
"title": "Activities after politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On 20 December 2013, it was revealed that Genscher played a key role in coordinating the release and flight to Germany of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos. Genscher had first met Khodorkovsky in 2002 and had chaired a conference at which Khodorkovsky blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin's pursuit of his oil company. Khodorkovsky asked his lawyers during a 2011 prison visit to let Genscher help mediate early release. Once Putin was re-elected in 2012, German Chancellor Angela Merkel instructed her officials to lobby for the president to meet Genscher. The subsequent negotiations involved two meetings between Genscher and Putin – one at Berlin Tegel Airport at the end of Putin's first visit to Germany after he was re-elected in 2012, the other in Moscow. While keeping the chancellor informed, Khodorkovsky's attorneys and Genscher spent the ensuing months developing a variety of legal avenues that could allow Putin to release his former rival early, ranging from amendments to existing laws to clemency. When Khodorkovsky's mother was in a Berlin hospital with cancer in November 2013, Genscher passed a message to Khodorkovsky suggesting the prisoner should write a pardon letter to Putin emphasizing his mother's ill health. Following Putin's pardoning of Khodorkovsky \"for humanitarian reasons\" in December 2013, a private plane provided by Genscher brought Khodorkovsky to Berlin for a family reunion at the Hotel Adlon.",
"title": "Activities after politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Genscher signed on in 2014 to be a member of the Southern Corridor Advisory Panel, a BP-led consortium which includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Peter Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International. The panel's purpose is to facilitate the expansion of a vast natural-gas field in the Caspian Sea and the building of two pipelines across Europe. The $45 billion enterprise, championed by the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, has been called by critics \"the Blair Rich Project\".",
"title": "Activities after politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Genscher died at his home outside Bonn in Wachtberg on 31 March 2016 from heart failure, 10 days after his 89th birthday.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Genscher has been awarded honorary citizenship by his birthplace Halle (Saale) (in 1991) and the city of Berlin (in 1993).",
"title": "Recognition (selection)"
}
]
| Hans-Dietrich Genscher was a German statesman and a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 1969 to 1974, and as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1992, making him the longest-serving occupant of either post and the only person to have held one of these positions under two different Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991 he was chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). A proponent of Realpolitik, Genscher has been called "a master of diplomacy". He is widely regarded as having been a principal "architect of German reunification". In 1991, he played a pivotal role in international diplomacy surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia by successfully pushing for international recognition of Croatia, Slovenia and other republics declaring independence, in an effort to halt "a trend towards a Greater Serbia". After leaving office, he worked as a lawyer and international consultant. He was President of the German Council on Foreign Relations and was involved with several international organisations, and with former Czech President Václav Havel, he called for a Cold War museum to be built in Berlin. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-18T15:18:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Dietrich_Genscher |
13,675 | Henry Ainsworth | Henry Ainsworth (1571–1622) was an English Nonconformist clergyman and scholar. He led the Ancient Church, a Brownist or English Separatist congregation in Amsterdam alongside Francis Johnson from 1597, and after their split led his own congregation. His translations of and commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures were influential for centuries.
Ainsworth was born of a farming family of Swanton Morley, Norfolk. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, later moving to Caius College, but left without a degree. After associating with the Puritan party in the Church, he joined the Brownists, but submitted to the Church of England after being arrested in London, and again when he was arrested in Ireland.
By 1597, Ainsworth moved to Amsterdam and found a home in "a blind lane at Amsterdam", working as porter to a bookseller, and lived in severe poverty. According to Roger Williams, Ainsworth ‘lived on 9d a week with roots boiled’. When the pastor Francis Johnson came to the church from London, where he had been in prison, Ainsworth was elected as teacher (or doctor), thanks to his knowledge of Hebrew.
Ainsworth attempted to arbitrate the quarrel between Francis and Thomasine Johnson on the one side and his brother George Johnson on the other, where George accused Thomasine of dressing immodestly and Francis of ruling the church tyrannically. Though he may initially have sympathised with George, on 15 January 1598, Ainsworth chaired a church meeting which censured him. Francis and Ainsworth also ex-communicated their elder Matthew Slade for refusing to stop going to services in the Dutch Reformed Church. Ainsworth himself caused some scandal when it emerged that he had twice submitted to the Church of England, but he was not disciplined.
Though often involved in controversy, Ainsworth was not arrogant, but was a steadfast and cultured champion of the principles represented by the early Congregationalists. Amid all the controversy, he steadily pursued his studies. The combination was so unique that some have mistaken him for two different individuals. Confusion has also been occasioned through his friendly controversy with one John Ainsworth, who left the Anglican for the Roman Catholic church.
In 1604, Johnson and Ainsworth wrote a petition for toleration of their church and took it to England in the hope of delivering it to James I. In their attempts to get it to the king, they rewrote it twice, and on their return to Amsterdam published all three versions under the title An Apologie or Defence of svch trve Christians as are commonly (vnjustly) called Brovvnists.
In 1610, Johnson changed his mind about the democratic Congregational structure of the Ancient Church, arguing that authority lay with the ministers, not the people. After nearly a year of debate, on 15 December, Ainsworth and his followers split from Johnson, and successfully sued them for possession of the church building. John Robinson tried to mediate between the two factions, but ended up taking Ainsworth's side.
In 1620, after Johnson's church had departed for North America, but before Robinson's had left on the Mayflower, Ainsworth's church considered joining the latter in their journey and put some money into the project. Robert Cushman criticised the proposal, saying 'Our liberty is to them as ratsbane, and their rigour as bad to us as the Spanish Inquisition.' Though nothing came of the plan, the Ainsworth church still waved the pilgrims off from Leiden.
On 29 April 1607, Ainsworth married Marjory Appelbey, a widow from Ipswich with one daughter. In 1612, the elder in the Ancient Church, Daniel Studley, was accused of ‘many lascivious attempts’ the girl, and confessed to having 'clapped' her.
Henry Ainsworth died in 1622, leaving unfinished work on works on Hosea, Matthew and Hebrews.
Ainsworth was one of the most able apologists of the so-called Brownist movement. His first solo work The communion of saincts (1607) is summarised by the historian of Separatism Stephen Tomkins as arguing 'that the true church is a holy community while a church that incorporates the entire population is neither holy nor a community'. Tomkins describes his second book Covnterpoyson (1608) as 'the most compelling apologia that the Separatist movement ever produced'. It was written in reply to the puritan minister John Sprint and to Richard Bernard's The Separatist Schisme.
Ainsworth also wrote reply to John Smyth, who has been called "the first Baptist", entitled Defence of Holy Scripture, Worship and Ministry used in the Christian Churches separated from Antichrist, against the Challenges, Cavils and Contradictions of Mr Smyth (1609). Of Smyth's progression to becoming a Baptist, Ainsworth said he 'had gone ‘from error to error, and now at last to the abomination of Anabaptism’, which ‘in him was the worship … of the devil’.
His scholarly works include his Annotations—on Genesis (1616); Exodus (1617); Leviticus (1618); Numbers (1619); Deuteronomy (1619); Psalms (including a metrical version, 1612); and the Song of Solomon (1623). These were collected in folio in 1627. From the outset the Annotations took a commanding place, especially among continental scholars, establishing a scholarly tradition for English nonconformity. Tomkins notes that 'as late as 1866, W.S. Plumer’s commentary on Psalms cited Ainsworth as an authority more than a hundred times and the 1885 (English) Revised Version of the Bible drew on his work.'
His publication of Psalms, The Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre with Annotations (Amsterdam, 1612), which includes thirty-nine separate monophonic psalm tunes, constituted the Ainsworth Psalter, the only book of music brought to New England in 1620 by the Pilgrim settlers. Although its content was later reworked into the Bay Psalm Book, it had an important influence on the early development of American psalmody. An early critic of the Brownists said that ‘by the uncouth and strange translation and metre used in them, the congregation was made a laughing stock’, while the 1885 Dictionary of National Biography said that Ainsworth ‘had not the faintest breath of poetical inspiration’.
Ainsworth died in 1622, or early in 1623, for in that year was published his Seasonable Discourse, or a Censure upon a Dialogue of the Anabaptists, in which the editor speaks of him as a departed worthy. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Henry Ainsworth (1571–1622) was an English Nonconformist clergyman and scholar. He led the Ancient Church, a Brownist or English Separatist congregation in Amsterdam alongside Francis Johnson from 1597, and after their split led his own congregation. His translations of and commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures were influential for centuries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ainsworth was born of a farming family of Swanton Morley, Norfolk. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, later moving to Caius College, but left without a degree. After associating with the Puritan party in the Church, he joined the Brownists, but submitted to the Church of England after being arrested in London, and again when he was arrested in Ireland.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "By 1597, Ainsworth moved to Amsterdam and found a home in \"a blind lane at Amsterdam\", working as porter to a bookseller, and lived in severe poverty. According to Roger Williams, Ainsworth ‘lived on 9d a week with roots boiled’. When the pastor Francis Johnson came to the church from London, where he had been in prison, Ainsworth was elected as teacher (or doctor), thanks to his knowledge of Hebrew.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ainsworth attempted to arbitrate the quarrel between Francis and Thomasine Johnson on the one side and his brother George Johnson on the other, where George accused Thomasine of dressing immodestly and Francis of ruling the church tyrannically. Though he may initially have sympathised with George, on 15 January 1598, Ainsworth chaired a church meeting which censured him. Francis and Ainsworth also ex-communicated their elder Matthew Slade for refusing to stop going to services in the Dutch Reformed Church. Ainsworth himself caused some scandal when it emerged that he had twice submitted to the Church of England, but he was not disciplined.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Though often involved in controversy, Ainsworth was not arrogant, but was a steadfast and cultured champion of the principles represented by the early Congregationalists. Amid all the controversy, he steadily pursued his studies. The combination was so unique that some have mistaken him for two different individuals. Confusion has also been occasioned through his friendly controversy with one John Ainsworth, who left the Anglican for the Roman Catholic church.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1604, Johnson and Ainsworth wrote a petition for toleration of their church and took it to England in the hope of delivering it to James I. In their attempts to get it to the king, they rewrote it twice, and on their return to Amsterdam published all three versions under the title An Apologie or Defence of svch trve Christians as are commonly (vnjustly) called Brovvnists.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1610, Johnson changed his mind about the democratic Congregational structure of the Ancient Church, arguing that authority lay with the ministers, not the people. After nearly a year of debate, on 15 December, Ainsworth and his followers split from Johnson, and successfully sued them for possession of the church building. John Robinson tried to mediate between the two factions, but ended up taking Ainsworth's side.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1620, after Johnson's church had departed for North America, but before Robinson's had left on the Mayflower, Ainsworth's church considered joining the latter in their journey and put some money into the project. Robert Cushman criticised the proposal, saying 'Our liberty is to them as ratsbane, and their rigour as bad to us as the Spanish Inquisition.' Though nothing came of the plan, the Ainsworth church still waved the pilgrims off from Leiden.",
"title": "Separatist career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "On 29 April 1607, Ainsworth married Marjory Appelbey, a widow from Ipswich with one daughter. In 1612, the elder in the Ancient Church, Daniel Studley, was accused of ‘many lascivious attempts’ the girl, and confessed to having 'clapped' her.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Henry Ainsworth died in 1622, leaving unfinished work on works on Hosea, Matthew and Hebrews.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Ainsworth was one of the most able apologists of the so-called Brownist movement. His first solo work The communion of saincts (1607) is summarised by the historian of Separatism Stephen Tomkins as arguing 'that the true church is a holy community while a church that incorporates the entire population is neither holy nor a community'. Tomkins describes his second book Covnterpoyson (1608) as 'the most compelling apologia that the Separatist movement ever produced'. It was written in reply to the puritan minister John Sprint and to Richard Bernard's The Separatist Schisme.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Ainsworth also wrote reply to John Smyth, who has been called \"the first Baptist\", entitled Defence of Holy Scripture, Worship and Ministry used in the Christian Churches separated from Antichrist, against the Challenges, Cavils and Contradictions of Mr Smyth (1609). Of Smyth's progression to becoming a Baptist, Ainsworth said he 'had gone ‘from error to error, and now at last to the abomination of Anabaptism’, which ‘in him was the worship … of the devil’.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "His scholarly works include his Annotations—on Genesis (1616); Exodus (1617); Leviticus (1618); Numbers (1619); Deuteronomy (1619); Psalms (including a metrical version, 1612); and the Song of Solomon (1623). These were collected in folio in 1627. From the outset the Annotations took a commanding place, especially among continental scholars, establishing a scholarly tradition for English nonconformity. Tomkins notes that 'as late as 1866, W.S. Plumer’s commentary on Psalms cited Ainsworth as an authority more than a hundred times and the 1885 (English) Revised Version of the Bible drew on his work.'",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "His publication of Psalms, The Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre with Annotations (Amsterdam, 1612), which includes thirty-nine separate monophonic psalm tunes, constituted the Ainsworth Psalter, the only book of music brought to New England in 1620 by the Pilgrim settlers. Although its content was later reworked into the Bay Psalm Book, it had an important influence on the early development of American psalmody. An early critic of the Brownists said that ‘by the uncouth and strange translation and metre used in them, the congregation was made a laughing stock’, while the 1885 Dictionary of National Biography said that Ainsworth ‘had not the faintest breath of poetical inspiration’.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Ainsworth died in 1622, or early in 1623, for in that year was published his Seasonable Discourse, or a Censure upon a Dialogue of the Anabaptists, in which the editor speaks of him as a departed worthy.",
"title": "Works"
}
]
| Henry Ainsworth (1571–1622) was an English Nonconformist clergyman and scholar. He led the Ancient Church, a Brownist or English Separatist congregation in Amsterdam alongside Francis Johnson from 1597, and after their split led his own congregation. His translations of and commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures were influential for centuries. | 2023-04-27T09:56:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ainsworth |
|
13,677 | Hindus | Hindus (Hindustani: [ˈɦɪndu] ; /ˈhɪnduːz/) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent.
The term "Hindu" traces back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu (सिन्धु), referring to the river Indus. The Greek cognates of the same terms are "Indus" (for the river) and "India" (for the land of the river). The term "Hindu" also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Sindhu (Indus) River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims. Hindoo is an archaic spelling variant, whose use today is considered derogatory.
The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the Muslim invasions and medieval Hindu–Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and Bengali. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir, Tulsidas and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and contrasted it with Turaka dharma (Islam). The Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in a religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for groups such as Turks, Mughals and Arabs, who were adherents of Islam. By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about mid-20th century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon.
At approximately 1.2 billion, Hindus are the world's third-largest religious group after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million (94.3% of the global Hindu population), live in India, according to the 2011 Indian census. After India, the next nine countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United States, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. These together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world combined had about 6 million Hindus as of 2010.
The word Hindu is an exonym. This word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit word Sindhu, which means "a large body of water", covering "river, ocean". It was used as the name of the Indus River and also referred to its tributaries. The actual term 'hindu' first occurs, states Gavin Flood, as "a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus (Sanskrit: Sindhu)", more specifically in the 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I The Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhu in the Vedas, is called Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of Hi[n]dush, referring to northwestern India. The people of India were referred to as Hinduvān and hindavī was used as the adjective for Indian language in the 8th century text Chachnama. According to D. N. Jha, the term 'Hindu' in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term and did not refer to a religion.
Among the earliest known records of 'Hindu' with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Records on the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang. Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose "connotation overflows in the religious" according to Arvind Sharma. While Xuanzang suggested that the term refers to the country named after the moon, another Buddhist scholar I-tsing contradicted the conclusion saying that In-tu was not a common name for the country.
Al-Biruni's 11th-century text Tarikh Al-Hind, and the texts of the Delhi Sultanate period use the term 'Hindu', where it includes all non-Islamic people such as Buddhists, and retains the ambiguity of being "a region or a religion". The 'Hindu' community occurs as the amorphous 'Other' of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, according to the Indian historian Romila Thapar. The comparative religion scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that the term 'Hindu' retained its geographical reference initially: 'Indian', 'indigenous, local', virtually 'native'. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves and their "traditional ways" from those of the invaders.
The text Prithviraj Raso, by Chand Bardai, about the 1192 CE defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan at the hands of Muhammad Ghori, is full of references to "Hindus" and "Turks", and at one stage, says "both the religions have drawn their curved swords;" however, the date of this text is unclear and considered by most scholars to be more recent. In Islamic literature, 'Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, Futuhu's-salatin, composed in the Deccan under Bahmani rule in 1350, uses the word 'hindi' to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word 'hindu' to mean 'Hindu' in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion". The poet Vidyapati's Kirtilata (1380) uses the term Hindu in the sense of a religion, it contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks (Muslims) in a city and concludes "The Hindus and the Turks live close together; Each makes fun of the other's religion (dhamme)."
One of the earliest uses of word 'Hindu' in a religious context, in a European language (Spanish), was the publication in 1649 by Sebastio Manrique. In the Indian historian DN Jha's essay "Looking for a Hindu identity", he writes: "No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century" and that "The British borrowed the word 'Hindu' from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism." In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.
Other prominent mentions of 'Hindu' include the epigraphical inscriptions from Andhra Pradesh kingdoms who battled military expansion of Muslim dynasties in the 14th century, where the word 'Hindu' partly implies a religious identity in contrast to 'Turks' or Islamic religious identity. The term Hindu was later used occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the later Rajataranginis of Kashmir (Hinduka, c. 1450) and some 16th- to 18th-century Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts, including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhagavata. These texts used it to contrast Hindus from Muslims who are called Yavanas (foreigners) or Mlecchas (barbarians), with the 16th-century Chaitanya Charitamrita text and the 17th-century Bhakta Mala text using the phrase "Hindu dharma".
Scholar Arvind Sharma notes that the term "Hindus" was used in the 'Brahmanabad settlement' which Muhammad ibn Qasim made with non-Muslims after the Arab invasion of northwestern Sindh region of India, in 712 CE. The term 'Hindu' meant people who were non-Muslims, and it included Buddhists of the region. In the 11th-century text of Al Biruni, Hindus are referred to as "religious antagonists" to Islam, as those who believe in rebirth, presents them to hold a diversity of beliefs, and seems to oscillate between Hindus holding a centralist and pluralist religious views. In the texts of Delhi Sultanate era, states Sharma, the term Hindu remains ambiguous on whether it means people of a region or religion, giving the example of Ibn Battuta's explanation of the name "Hindu Kush" for a mountain range in Afghanistan. It was so called, wrote Ibn Battuta, because many Indian slaves died there of snow cold, as they were marched across that mountain range. The term Hindu there is ambivalent and could mean geographical region or religion.
The term Hindu appears in the texts from the Mughal Empire era. Jahangir, for example, called the Sikh Guru Arjan a Hindu:
There was a Hindu named Arjan in Gobindwal on the banks of the Beas River. Pretending to be a spiritual guide, he had won over as devotees many simple-minded Indians and even some ignorant, stupid Muslims by broadcasting his claims to be a saint. [...] When Khusraw stopped at his residence, [Arjan] came out and had an interview with [Khusraw]. Giving him some elementary spiritual precepts picked up here and there, he made a mark with saffron on his forehead, which is called qashqa in the idiom of the Hindus and which they consider lucky. When this was reported to me, I realized how perfectly false he was and ordered him brought to me. I awarded his houses and dwellings and those of his children to Murtaza Khan, and I ordered his possessions and goods confiscated and him executed.
Sikh scholar Pashaura Singh states, "in Persian writings, Sikhs were regarded as Hindu in the sense of non-Muslim Indians". However, scholars like Robert Fraser and Mary Hammond opine that Sikhism began initially as a militant sect of Hinduism and it got formally separated from Hinduism only in the 20th century.
During the colonial era, the term Hindu had connotations of native religions of India, that is religions other than Christianity and Islam. In the 18th century, Gentoo term was also used along with Hindu term. In early colonial era Anglo-Hindu laws and British India court system, the term Hindu referred to people of all Indian religions as well as two non-Indian religions: Judaism and Zoroastrianism. In the 20th century, personal laws were formulated for Hindus, and the term 'Hindu' in these colonial 'Hindu laws' applied to Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in addition to denominational Hindus.
Beyond the stipulations of British colonial law, European orientalists and particularly the influential Asiatick Researches founded in the 18th century, later called The Asiatic Society, initially identified just two religions in India – Islam, and Hinduism. These orientalists included all Indian religions such as Buddhism as a subgroup of Hinduism in the 18th century. These texts called followers of Islam as Mohamedans, and all others as Hindus. The text, by the early 19th century, began dividing Hindus into separate groups, for chronology studies of the various beliefs. Among the earliest terms to emerge were Seeks and their College (later spelled Sikhs by Charles Wilkins), Boudhism (later spelled Buddhism), and in the 9th volume of Asiatick Researches report on religions in India, the term Jainism received notice.
According to Pennington, the terms Hindu and Hinduism were thus constructed for colonial studies of India. The various sub-divisions and separation of subgroup terms were assumed to be result of "communal conflict", and Hindu was constructed by these orientalists to imply people who adhered to "ancient default oppressive religious substratum of India", states Pennington. Followers of other Indian religions so identified were later referred Buddhists, Sikhs or Jains and distinguished from Hindus, in an antagonistic two-dimensional manner, with Hindus and Hinduism stereotyped as irrational traditional and others as rational reform religions. However, these mid-19th-century reports offered no indication of doctrinal or ritual differences between Hindu and Buddhist, or other newly constructed religious identities. These colonial studies, states Pennigton, "puzzled endlessly about the Hindus and intensely scrutinized them, but did not interrogate and avoided reporting the practices and religion of Mughal and Arabs in South Asia", and often relied on Muslim scholars to characterise Hindus.
In contemporary era, the term Hindus are individuals who identify with one or more aspects of Hinduism, whether they are practising or non-practicing or Laissez-faire. The term does not include those who identify with other Indian religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism or various animist tribal religions found in India such as Sarnaism. The term Hindu, in contemporary parlance, includes people who accept themselves as culturally or ethnically Hindu rather than with a fixed set of religious beliefs within Hinduism. One need not be religious in the minimal sense, states Julius Lipner, to be accepted as Hindu by Hindus, or to describe oneself as Hindu.
Hindus subscribe to a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but have no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, nor a single founding prophet; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist. Because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion "defies our desire to define and categorize it". A Hindu may, by his or her choice, draw upon ideas of other Indian or non-Indian religious thought as a resource, follow or evolve his or her personal beliefs, and still identify as a Hindu.
In 1995, Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar was quoted in an Indian Supreme Court ruling:
Although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, Hindus share philosophical concepts, such as but not limiting to dharma, karma, kama, artha, moksha and samsara, even if each subscribes to a diversity of views. Hindus also have shared texts such as the Vedas with embedded Upanishads, and common ritual grammar (Sanskara (rite of passage)) such as rituals during a wedding or when a baby is born or cremation rituals. Some Hindus go on pilgrimage to shared sites they consider spiritually significant, practice one or more forms of bhakti or puja, celebrate mythology and epics, major festivals, love and respect for guru and family, and other cultural traditions. A Hindu could:
In the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" has been used in some places to denote persons professing any of these religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism or Sikhism. This however has been challenged by the Sikhs and by neo-Buddhists who were formerly Hindus. According to Sheen and Boyle, Jains have not objected to being covered by personal laws termed under 'Hindu', but Indian courts have acknowledged that Jainism is a distinct religion.
The Republic of India is in the peculiar situation that the Supreme Court of India has repeatedly been called upon to define "Hinduism" because the Constitution of India, while it prohibits "discrimination of any citizen" on grounds of religion in article 15, article 30 foresees special rights for "All minorities, whether based on religion or language". As a consequence, religious groups have an interest in being recognised as distinct from the Hindu majority in order to qualify as a "religious minority". Thus, the Supreme Court was forced to consider the question whether Jainism is part of Hinduism in 2005 and 2006.
Starting after the 10th century and particularly after the 12th century Islamic invasion, states Sheldon Pollock, the political response fused with the Indic religious culture and doctrines. Temples dedicated to deity Rama were built from north to south India, and textual records as well as hagiographic inscriptions began comparing the Hindu epic of Ramayana to regional kings and their response to Islamic attacks. The Yadava king of Devagiri named Ramacandra, for example states Pollock, is described in a 13th-century record as, "How is this Rama to be described.. who freed Varanasi from the mleccha (barbarian, Turk Muslim) horde, and built there a golden temple of Sarngadhara". Pollock notes that the Yadava king Ramacandra is described as a devotee of deity Shiva (Shaivism), yet his political achievements and temple construction sponsorship in Varanasi, far from his kingdom's location in the Deccan region, is described in the historical records in Vaishnavism terms of Rama, a deity Vishnu avatar. Pollock presents many such examples and suggests an emerging Hindu political identity that was grounded in the Hindu religious text of Ramayana, one that has continued into the modern times, and suggests that this historic process began with the arrival of Islam in India.
Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya has questioned the Pollock theory and presented textual and inscriptional evidence. According to Chattopadhyaya, the Hindu identity and religious response to Islamic invasion and wars developed in different kingdoms, such as wars between Islamic Sultanates and the Vijayanagara kingdom, and Islamic raids on the kingdoms in Tamil Nadu. These wars were described not just using the mythical story of Rama from Ramayana, states Chattopadhyaya, the medieval records used a wide range of religious symbolism and myths that are now considered as part of Hindu literature. This emergence of religious with political terminology began with the first Muslim invasion of Sindh in the 8th century CE, and intensified 13th century onwards. The 14th-century Sanskrit text, Madhuravijayam, a memoir written by Gangadevi, the wife of Vijayanagara prince, for example describes the consequences of war using religious terms,
I very much lament for what happened to the groves in Madhura, The coconut trees have all been cut and in their place are to be seen, rows of iron spikes with human skulls dangling at the points, In the highways which were once charming with anklets sound of beautiful women, are now heard ear-piercing noises of Brahmins being dragged, bound in iron-fetters, The waters of Tambraparni, which were once white with sandal paste, are now flowing red with the blood of cows slaughtered by miscreants, Earth is no longer the producer of wealth, nor does Indra give timely rains, The God of death takes his undue toll of what are left lives if undestroyed by the Yavanas [Muslims], The Kali age now deserves deepest congratulations for being at the zenith of its power, gone is the sacred learning, hidden is refinement, hushed is the voice of Dharma.
The historiographic writings in Telugu language from the 13th- and 14th-century Kakatiya dynasty period presents a similar "alien other (Turk)" and "self-identity (Hindu)" contrast. Chattopadhyaya, and other scholars, state that the military and political campaign during the medieval era wars in Deccan peninsula of India, and in the north India, were no longer a quest for sovereignty, they embodied a political and religious animosity against the "otherness of Islam", and this began the historical process of Hindu identity formation.
Andrew Nicholson, in his review of scholarship on Hindu identity history, states that the vernacular literature of Bhakti movement sants from 15th to 17th century, such as Kabir, Anantadas, Eknath, Vidyapati, suggests that distinct religious identities, between Hindus and Turks (Muslims), had formed during these centuries. The poetry of this period contrasts Hindu and Islamic identities, states Nicholson, and the literature vilifies the Muslims coupled with a "distinct sense of a Hindu religious identity".
Scholars state that Hindu, Buddhist and Jain identities are retrospectively-introduced modern constructions. Inscriptional evidence from the 8th century onwards, in regions such as South India, suggests that medieval era India, at both elite and folk religious practices level, likely had a "shared religious culture", and their collective identities were "multiple, layered and fuzzy". Even among Hinduism denominations such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, the Hindu identities, states Leslie Orr, lacked "firm definitions and clear boundaries".
Overlaps in Jain-Hindu identities have included Jains worshipping Hindu deities, intermarriages between Jains and Hindus, and medieval era Jain temples featuring Hindu religious icons and sculpture. Beyond India, on Java island of Indonesia, historical records attest to marriages between Hindus and Buddhists, medieval era temple architecture and sculptures that simultaneously incorporate Hindu and Buddhist themes, where Hinduism and Buddhism merged and functioned as "two separate paths within one overall system", according to Ann Kenney and other scholars. Similarly, there is an organic relation of Sikhs to Hindus, states Zaehner, both in religious thought and their communities, and virtually all Sikhs' ancestors were Hindus. Marriages between Sikhs and Hindus, particularly among Khatris, were frequent. Some Hindu families brought up a son as a Sikh, and some Hindus view Sikhism as a tradition within Hinduism, even though the Sikh faith is a distinct religion.
Julius Lipner states that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs is a modern phenomena, but one that is a convenient abstraction. Distinguishing Indian traditions is a fairly recent practice, states Lipner, and is the result of "not only Western preconceptions about the nature of religion in general and of religion in India in particular, but also with the political awareness that has arisen in India" in its people and a result of Western influence during its colonial history.
Scholars such as Fleming and Eck state that the post-Epic era literature from the 1st millennium CE amply demonstrate that there was a historic concept of the Indian subcontinent as a sacred geography, where the sacredness was a shared set of religious ideas. For example, the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shaivism and fifty-one Shaktipithas of Shaktism are described in the early medieval era Puranas as pilgrimage sites around a theme. This sacred geography and Shaiva temples with same iconography, shared themes, motifs and embedded legends are found across India, from the Himalayas to hills of South India, from Ellora Caves to Varanasi by about the middle of 1st millennium. Shakti temples, dated to a few centuries later, are verifiable across the subcontinent. Varanasi as a sacred pilgrimage site is documented in the Varanasimahatmya text embedded inside the Skanda Purana, and the oldest versions of this text are dated to 6th to 8th-century CE.
The idea of twelve sacred sites in Shiva Hindu tradition spread across the Indian subcontinent appears not only in the medieval era temples but also in copper plate inscriptions and temple seals discovered in different sites. According to Bhardwaj, non-Hindu texts such as the memoirs of Chinese Buddhist and Persian Muslim travellers attest to the existence and significance of the pilgrimage to sacred geography among Hindus by later 1st millennium CE.
According to Fleming, those who question whether the term Hindu and Hinduism are a modern construction in a religious context present their arguments based on some texts that have survived into the modern era, either of Islamic courts or of literature published by Western missionaries or colonial-era Indologists aiming for a reasonable construction of history. However, the existence of non-textual evidence such as cave temples separated by thousands of kilometers, as well as lists of medieval era pilgrimage sites, is evidence of a shared sacred geography and existence of a community that was self-aware of shared religious premises and landscape. Further, it is a norm in evolving cultures that there is a gap between the "lived and historical realities" of a religious tradition and the emergence of related "textual authorities". The tradition and temples likely existed well before the medieval era Hindu manuscripts appeared that describe them and the sacred geography. This, states Fleming, is apparent given the sophistication of the architecture and the sacred sites along with the variance in the versions of the Puranic literature. According to Diana L. Eck and other Indologists such as André Wink, Muslim invaders were aware of Hindu sacred geography such as Mathura, Ujjain, and Varanasi by the 11th century. These sites became a target of their serial attacks in the centuries that followed.
The Hindus have been persecuted during the medieval and modern era. The medieval persecution included waves of plunder, killing, destruction of temples and enslavement by Turk-Mongol Muslim armies from central Asia. This is documented in Islamic literature such as those relating to 8th century Muhammad bin-Qasim, 11th century Mahmud of Ghazni, the Persian traveler Al Biruni, the 14th century Islamic army invasion led by Timur, and various Sunni Islamic rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. There were occasional exceptions such as Akbar who stopped the persecution of Hindus, and occasional severe persecution such as under Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples, forcibly converted non-Muslims to Islam and banned the celebration of Hindu festivals such as Holi and Diwali.
Other recorded persecution of Hindus include those under the reign of 18th century Tipu Sultan in south India, and during the colonial era. In the modern era, religious persecution of Hindus have been reported outside India in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Christophe Jaffrelot states that modern Hindu nationalism was born in Maharashtra, in the 1920s, as a reaction to the Islamic Khilafat Movement wherein Indian Muslims championed and took the cause of the Turkish Ottoman sultan as the Caliph of all Muslims, at the end of the World War I. Hindus viewed this development as one of divided loyalties of Indian Muslim population, of pan-Islamic hegemony, and questioned whether Indian Muslims were a part of an inclusive anti-colonial Indian nationalism. The Hindu nationalism ideology that emerged, states Jeffrelot, was codified by Savarkar while he was a political prisoner of the British colonial authorities.
Chris Bayly traces the roots of Hindu nationalism to the Hindu identity and political independence achieved by the Maratha confederacy, that overthrew the Islamic Mughal empire in large parts of India, allowing Hindus the freedom to pursue any of their diverse religious beliefs and restored Hindu holy places such as Varanasi. A few scholars view Hindu mobilisation and consequent nationalism to have emerged in the 19th century as a response to British colonialism by Indian nationalists and neo-Hinduism gurus. Jaffrelot states that the efforts of Christian missionaries and Islamic proselytizers, during the British colonial era, each of whom tried to gain new converts to their own religion, by stereotyping and stigmatising Hindus to an identity of being inferior and superstitious, contributed to Hindus re-asserting their spiritual heritage and counter cross examining Islam and Christianity, forming organisations such as the Hindu Sabhas (Hindu associations), and ultimately a Hindu-identity driven nationalism in the 1920s.
The colonial era Hindu revivalism and mobilisation, along with Hindu nationalism, states Peter van der Veer, was primarily a reaction to and competition with Muslim separatism and Muslim nationalism. The successes of each side fed the fears of the other, leading to the growth of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism in the Indian subcontinent. In the 20th century, the sense of religious nationalism grew in India, states van der Veer, but only Muslim nationalism succeeded with the formation of the West and East Pakistan (later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh), as "an Islamic state" upon independence. Religious riots and social trauma followed as millions of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs moved out of the newly created Islamic states and resettled into the Hindu-majority post-British India. After the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu nationalism movement developed the concept of Hindutva in second half of the 20th century.
The Hindu nationalism movement has sought to reform Indian laws, that critics say attempts to impose Hindu values on India's Islamic minority. Gerald Larson states, for example, that Hindu nationalists have sought a uniform civil code, where all citizens are subject to the same laws, everyone has equal civil rights, and individual rights do not depend on the individual's religion. In contrast, opponents of Hindu nationalists remark that eliminating religious law from India poses a threat to the cultural identity and religious rights of Muslims, and people of Islamic faith have a constitutional right to Islamic shariah-based personal laws. A specific law, contentious between Hindu nationalists and their opponents in India, relates to the legal age of marriage for girls. Hindu nationalists seek that the legal age for marriage be eighteen that is universally applied to all girls regardless of their religion and that marriages be registered with local government to verify the age of marriage. Muslim clerics consider this proposal as unacceptable because under the shariah-derived personal law, a Muslim girl can be married at any age after she reaches puberty.
Hindu nationalism in India, states Katharine Adeney, is a controversial political subject, with no consensus about what it means or implies in terms of the form of government and religious rights of the minorities.
There are 1.2 billion Hindus worldwide (15% of world's population), with about 95% of them being concentrated in India alone. Along with Christians (31.5%), Muslims (23.2%) and Buddhists (7.1%), Hindus are one of the four major religious groups of the world.
Most Hindus are found in Asian countries. The top twenty-five countries with the most Hindu residents and citizens (in decreasing order) are India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, Myanmar, United Kingdom, Mauritius, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, Fiji, Qatar, Kuwait, Guyana, Bhutan, Oman and Yemen.
The top fifteen countries with the highest percentage of Hindus (in decreasing order) are Nepal, India, Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Bhutan, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Réunion, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The fertility rate, that is children per woman, for Hindus is 2.4, which is less than the world average of 2.5. Pew Research projects that there will be 1.4 billion Hindus by 2050.
In more ancient times, Hindu kingdoms arose and spread the religion and traditions across Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Nepal, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, and what is now central Vietnam.
Over 3 million Hindus are found in Bali Indonesia, a culture whose origins trace back to ideas brought by Hindu traders to Indonesian islands in the 1st millennium CE. Their sacred texts are also the Vedas and the Upanishads. The Puranas and the Itihasa (mainly Ramayana and the Mahabharata) are enduring traditions among Indonesian Hindus, expressed in community dances and shadow puppet (wayang) performances. As in India, Indonesian Hindus recognise four paths of spirituality, calling it Catur Marga. Similarly, like Hindus in India, Balinese Hindus believe that there are four proper goals of human life, calling it Catur Purusartha – dharma (pursuit of moral and ethical living), artha (pursuit of wealth and creative activity), kama (pursuit of joy and love) and moksha (pursuit of self-knowledge and liberation).
Hindu culture is a term used to describe the culture and identity of Hindus and Hinduism, including the historic Vedic people. Hindu culture can be intensively seen in the form of art, architecture, history, diet, clothing, astrology and other forms. The culture of India and Hinduism is deeply influenced and assimilated with each other. With the Indianisation of southeast Asia and Greater India, the culture has also influenced a long region and other religions people of that area. All Indian religions, including Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism are deeply influenced and soft-powered by Hinduism.
Quotations related to Hindus at Wikiquote Media related to Hindus at Wikimedia Commons | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hindus (Hindustani: [ˈɦɪndu] ; /ˈhɪnduːz/) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The term \"Hindu\" traces back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu (सिन्धु), referring to the river Indus. The Greek cognates of the same terms are \"Indus\" (for the river) and \"India\" (for the land of the river). The term \"Hindu\" also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Sindhu (Indus) River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims. Hindoo is an archaic spelling variant, whose use today is considered derogatory.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the Muslim invasions and medieval Hindu–Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and Bengali. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir, Tulsidas and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and contrasted it with Turaka dharma (Islam). The Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in a religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for groups such as Turks, Mughals and Arabs, who were adherents of Islam. By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about mid-20th century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "At approximately 1.2 billion, Hindus are the world's third-largest religious group after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million (94.3% of the global Hindu population), live in India, according to the 2011 Indian census. After India, the next nine countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United States, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. These together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world combined had about 6 million Hindus as of 2010.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The word Hindu is an exonym. This word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit word Sindhu, which means \"a large body of water\", covering \"river, ocean\". It was used as the name of the Indus River and also referred to its tributaries. The actual term 'hindu' first occurs, states Gavin Flood, as \"a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus (Sanskrit: Sindhu)\", more specifically in the 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I The Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhu in the Vedas, is called Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of Hi[n]dush, referring to northwestern India. The people of India were referred to as Hinduvān and hindavī was used as the adjective for Indian language in the 8th century text Chachnama. According to D. N. Jha, the term 'Hindu' in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term and did not refer to a religion.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Among the earliest known records of 'Hindu' with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Records on the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang. Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose \"connotation overflows in the religious\" according to Arvind Sharma. While Xuanzang suggested that the term refers to the country named after the moon, another Buddhist scholar I-tsing contradicted the conclusion saying that In-tu was not a common name for the country.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Al-Biruni's 11th-century text Tarikh Al-Hind, and the texts of the Delhi Sultanate period use the term 'Hindu', where it includes all non-Islamic people such as Buddhists, and retains the ambiguity of being \"a region or a religion\". The 'Hindu' community occurs as the amorphous 'Other' of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, according to the Indian historian Romila Thapar. The comparative religion scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that the term 'Hindu' retained its geographical reference initially: 'Indian', 'indigenous, local', virtually 'native'. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves and their \"traditional ways\" from those of the invaders.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The text Prithviraj Raso, by Chand Bardai, about the 1192 CE defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan at the hands of Muhammad Ghori, is full of references to \"Hindus\" and \"Turks\", and at one stage, says \"both the religions have drawn their curved swords;\" however, the date of this text is unclear and considered by most scholars to be more recent. In Islamic literature, 'Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, Futuhu's-salatin, composed in the Deccan under Bahmani rule in 1350, uses the word 'hindi' to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word 'hindu' to mean 'Hindu' in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion\". The poet Vidyapati's Kirtilata (1380) uses the term Hindu in the sense of a religion, it contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks (Muslims) in a city and concludes \"The Hindus and the Turks live close together; Each makes fun of the other's religion (dhamme).\"",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "One of the earliest uses of word 'Hindu' in a religious context, in a European language (Spanish), was the publication in 1649 by Sebastio Manrique. In the Indian historian DN Jha's essay \"Looking for a Hindu identity\", he writes: \"No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century\" and that \"The British borrowed the word 'Hindu' from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism.\" In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Other prominent mentions of 'Hindu' include the epigraphical inscriptions from Andhra Pradesh kingdoms who battled military expansion of Muslim dynasties in the 14th century, where the word 'Hindu' partly implies a religious identity in contrast to 'Turks' or Islamic religious identity. The term Hindu was later used occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the later Rajataranginis of Kashmir (Hinduka, c. 1450) and some 16th- to 18th-century Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts, including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhagavata. These texts used it to contrast Hindus from Muslims who are called Yavanas (foreigners) or Mlecchas (barbarians), with the 16th-century Chaitanya Charitamrita text and the 17th-century Bhakta Mala text using the phrase \"Hindu dharma\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Scholar Arvind Sharma notes that the term \"Hindus\" was used in the 'Brahmanabad settlement' which Muhammad ibn Qasim made with non-Muslims after the Arab invasion of northwestern Sindh region of India, in 712 CE. The term 'Hindu' meant people who were non-Muslims, and it included Buddhists of the region. In the 11th-century text of Al Biruni, Hindus are referred to as \"religious antagonists\" to Islam, as those who believe in rebirth, presents them to hold a diversity of beliefs, and seems to oscillate between Hindus holding a centralist and pluralist religious views. In the texts of Delhi Sultanate era, states Sharma, the term Hindu remains ambiguous on whether it means people of a region or religion, giving the example of Ibn Battuta's explanation of the name \"Hindu Kush\" for a mountain range in Afghanistan. It was so called, wrote Ibn Battuta, because many Indian slaves died there of snow cold, as they were marched across that mountain range. The term Hindu there is ambivalent and could mean geographical region or religion.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The term Hindu appears in the texts from the Mughal Empire era. Jahangir, for example, called the Sikh Guru Arjan a Hindu:",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There was a Hindu named Arjan in Gobindwal on the banks of the Beas River. Pretending to be a spiritual guide, he had won over as devotees many simple-minded Indians and even some ignorant, stupid Muslims by broadcasting his claims to be a saint. [...] When Khusraw stopped at his residence, [Arjan] came out and had an interview with [Khusraw]. Giving him some elementary spiritual precepts picked up here and there, he made a mark with saffron on his forehead, which is called qashqa in the idiom of the Hindus and which they consider lucky. When this was reported to me, I realized how perfectly false he was and ordered him brought to me. I awarded his houses and dwellings and those of his children to Murtaza Khan, and I ordered his possessions and goods confiscated and him executed.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Sikh scholar Pashaura Singh states, \"in Persian writings, Sikhs were regarded as Hindu in the sense of non-Muslim Indians\". However, scholars like Robert Fraser and Mary Hammond opine that Sikhism began initially as a militant sect of Hinduism and it got formally separated from Hinduism only in the 20th century.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During the colonial era, the term Hindu had connotations of native religions of India, that is religions other than Christianity and Islam. In the 18th century, Gentoo term was also used along with Hindu term. In early colonial era Anglo-Hindu laws and British India court system, the term Hindu referred to people of all Indian religions as well as two non-Indian religions: Judaism and Zoroastrianism. In the 20th century, personal laws were formulated for Hindus, and the term 'Hindu' in these colonial 'Hindu laws' applied to Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in addition to denominational Hindus.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Beyond the stipulations of British colonial law, European orientalists and particularly the influential Asiatick Researches founded in the 18th century, later called The Asiatic Society, initially identified just two religions in India – Islam, and Hinduism. These orientalists included all Indian religions such as Buddhism as a subgroup of Hinduism in the 18th century. These texts called followers of Islam as Mohamedans, and all others as Hindus. The text, by the early 19th century, began dividing Hindus into separate groups, for chronology studies of the various beliefs. Among the earliest terms to emerge were Seeks and their College (later spelled Sikhs by Charles Wilkins), Boudhism (later spelled Buddhism), and in the 9th volume of Asiatick Researches report on religions in India, the term Jainism received notice.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "According to Pennington, the terms Hindu and Hinduism were thus constructed for colonial studies of India. The various sub-divisions and separation of subgroup terms were assumed to be result of \"communal conflict\", and Hindu was constructed by these orientalists to imply people who adhered to \"ancient default oppressive religious substratum of India\", states Pennington. Followers of other Indian religions so identified were later referred Buddhists, Sikhs or Jains and distinguished from Hindus, in an antagonistic two-dimensional manner, with Hindus and Hinduism stereotyped as irrational traditional and others as rational reform religions. However, these mid-19th-century reports offered no indication of doctrinal or ritual differences between Hindu and Buddhist, or other newly constructed religious identities. These colonial studies, states Pennigton, \"puzzled endlessly about the Hindus and intensely scrutinized them, but did not interrogate and avoided reporting the practices and religion of Mughal and Arabs in South Asia\", and often relied on Muslim scholars to characterise Hindus.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In contemporary era, the term Hindus are individuals who identify with one or more aspects of Hinduism, whether they are practising or non-practicing or Laissez-faire. The term does not include those who identify with other Indian religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism or various animist tribal religions found in India such as Sarnaism. The term Hindu, in contemporary parlance, includes people who accept themselves as culturally or ethnically Hindu rather than with a fixed set of religious beliefs within Hinduism. One need not be religious in the minimal sense, states Julius Lipner, to be accepted as Hindu by Hindus, or to describe oneself as Hindu.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Hindus subscribe to a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but have no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, nor a single founding prophet; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist. Because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, arriving at a comprehensive definition is difficult. The religion \"defies our desire to define and categorize it\". A Hindu may, by his or her choice, draw upon ideas of other Indian or non-Indian religious thought as a resource, follow or evolve his or her personal beliefs, and still identify as a Hindu.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1995, Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar was quoted in an Indian Supreme Court ruling:",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Although Hinduism contains a broad range of philosophies, Hindus share philosophical concepts, such as but not limiting to dharma, karma, kama, artha, moksha and samsara, even if each subscribes to a diversity of views. Hindus also have shared texts such as the Vedas with embedded Upanishads, and common ritual grammar (Sanskara (rite of passage)) such as rituals during a wedding or when a baby is born or cremation rituals. Some Hindus go on pilgrimage to shared sites they consider spiritually significant, practice one or more forms of bhakti or puja, celebrate mythology and epics, major festivals, love and respect for guru and family, and other cultural traditions. A Hindu could:",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the Constitution of India, the word \"Hindu\" has been used in some places to denote persons professing any of these religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism or Sikhism. This however has been challenged by the Sikhs and by neo-Buddhists who were formerly Hindus. According to Sheen and Boyle, Jains have not objected to being covered by personal laws termed under 'Hindu', but Indian courts have acknowledged that Jainism is a distinct religion.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Republic of India is in the peculiar situation that the Supreme Court of India has repeatedly been called upon to define \"Hinduism\" because the Constitution of India, while it prohibits \"discrimination of any citizen\" on grounds of religion in article 15, article 30 foresees special rights for \"All minorities, whether based on religion or language\". As a consequence, religious groups have an interest in being recognised as distinct from the Hindu majority in order to qualify as a \"religious minority\". Thus, the Supreme Court was forced to consider the question whether Jainism is part of Hinduism in 2005 and 2006.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Starting after the 10th century and particularly after the 12th century Islamic invasion, states Sheldon Pollock, the political response fused with the Indic religious culture and doctrines. Temples dedicated to deity Rama were built from north to south India, and textual records as well as hagiographic inscriptions began comparing the Hindu epic of Ramayana to regional kings and their response to Islamic attacks. The Yadava king of Devagiri named Ramacandra, for example states Pollock, is described in a 13th-century record as, \"How is this Rama to be described.. who freed Varanasi from the mleccha (barbarian, Turk Muslim) horde, and built there a golden temple of Sarngadhara\". Pollock notes that the Yadava king Ramacandra is described as a devotee of deity Shiva (Shaivism), yet his political achievements and temple construction sponsorship in Varanasi, far from his kingdom's location in the Deccan region, is described in the historical records in Vaishnavism terms of Rama, a deity Vishnu avatar. Pollock presents many such examples and suggests an emerging Hindu political identity that was grounded in the Hindu religious text of Ramayana, one that has continued into the modern times, and suggests that this historic process began with the arrival of Islam in India.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya has questioned the Pollock theory and presented textual and inscriptional evidence. According to Chattopadhyaya, the Hindu identity and religious response to Islamic invasion and wars developed in different kingdoms, such as wars between Islamic Sultanates and the Vijayanagara kingdom, and Islamic raids on the kingdoms in Tamil Nadu. These wars were described not just using the mythical story of Rama from Ramayana, states Chattopadhyaya, the medieval records used a wide range of religious symbolism and myths that are now considered as part of Hindu literature. This emergence of religious with political terminology began with the first Muslim invasion of Sindh in the 8th century CE, and intensified 13th century onwards. The 14th-century Sanskrit text, Madhuravijayam, a memoir written by Gangadevi, the wife of Vijayanagara prince, for example describes the consequences of war using religious terms,",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "I very much lament for what happened to the groves in Madhura, The coconut trees have all been cut and in their place are to be seen, rows of iron spikes with human skulls dangling at the points, In the highways which were once charming with anklets sound of beautiful women, are now heard ear-piercing noises of Brahmins being dragged, bound in iron-fetters, The waters of Tambraparni, which were once white with sandal paste, are now flowing red with the blood of cows slaughtered by miscreants, Earth is no longer the producer of wealth, nor does Indra give timely rains, The God of death takes his undue toll of what are left lives if undestroyed by the Yavanas [Muslims], The Kali age now deserves deepest congratulations for being at the zenith of its power, gone is the sacred learning, hidden is refinement, hushed is the voice of Dharma.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The historiographic writings in Telugu language from the 13th- and 14th-century Kakatiya dynasty period presents a similar \"alien other (Turk)\" and \"self-identity (Hindu)\" contrast. Chattopadhyaya, and other scholars, state that the military and political campaign during the medieval era wars in Deccan peninsula of India, and in the north India, were no longer a quest for sovereignty, they embodied a political and religious animosity against the \"otherness of Islam\", and this began the historical process of Hindu identity formation.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Andrew Nicholson, in his review of scholarship on Hindu identity history, states that the vernacular literature of Bhakti movement sants from 15th to 17th century, such as Kabir, Anantadas, Eknath, Vidyapati, suggests that distinct religious identities, between Hindus and Turks (Muslims), had formed during these centuries. The poetry of this period contrasts Hindu and Islamic identities, states Nicholson, and the literature vilifies the Muslims coupled with a \"distinct sense of a Hindu religious identity\".",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Scholars state that Hindu, Buddhist and Jain identities are retrospectively-introduced modern constructions. Inscriptional evidence from the 8th century onwards, in regions such as South India, suggests that medieval era India, at both elite and folk religious practices level, likely had a \"shared religious culture\", and their collective identities were \"multiple, layered and fuzzy\". Even among Hinduism denominations such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, the Hindu identities, states Leslie Orr, lacked \"firm definitions and clear boundaries\".",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Overlaps in Jain-Hindu identities have included Jains worshipping Hindu deities, intermarriages between Jains and Hindus, and medieval era Jain temples featuring Hindu religious icons and sculpture. Beyond India, on Java island of Indonesia, historical records attest to marriages between Hindus and Buddhists, medieval era temple architecture and sculptures that simultaneously incorporate Hindu and Buddhist themes, where Hinduism and Buddhism merged and functioned as \"two separate paths within one overall system\", according to Ann Kenney and other scholars. Similarly, there is an organic relation of Sikhs to Hindus, states Zaehner, both in religious thought and their communities, and virtually all Sikhs' ancestors were Hindus. Marriages between Sikhs and Hindus, particularly among Khatris, were frequent. Some Hindu families brought up a son as a Sikh, and some Hindus view Sikhism as a tradition within Hinduism, even though the Sikh faith is a distinct religion.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Julius Lipner states that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs is a modern phenomena, but one that is a convenient abstraction. Distinguishing Indian traditions is a fairly recent practice, states Lipner, and is the result of \"not only Western preconceptions about the nature of religion in general and of religion in India in particular, but also with the political awareness that has arisen in India\" in its people and a result of Western influence during its colonial history.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Scholars such as Fleming and Eck state that the post-Epic era literature from the 1st millennium CE amply demonstrate that there was a historic concept of the Indian subcontinent as a sacred geography, where the sacredness was a shared set of religious ideas. For example, the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shaivism and fifty-one Shaktipithas of Shaktism are described in the early medieval era Puranas as pilgrimage sites around a theme. This sacred geography and Shaiva temples with same iconography, shared themes, motifs and embedded legends are found across India, from the Himalayas to hills of South India, from Ellora Caves to Varanasi by about the middle of 1st millennium. Shakti temples, dated to a few centuries later, are verifiable across the subcontinent. Varanasi as a sacred pilgrimage site is documented in the Varanasimahatmya text embedded inside the Skanda Purana, and the oldest versions of this text are dated to 6th to 8th-century CE.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The idea of twelve sacred sites in Shiva Hindu tradition spread across the Indian subcontinent appears not only in the medieval era temples but also in copper plate inscriptions and temple seals discovered in different sites. According to Bhardwaj, non-Hindu texts such as the memoirs of Chinese Buddhist and Persian Muslim travellers attest to the existence and significance of the pilgrimage to sacred geography among Hindus by later 1st millennium CE.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "According to Fleming, those who question whether the term Hindu and Hinduism are a modern construction in a religious context present their arguments based on some texts that have survived into the modern era, either of Islamic courts or of literature published by Western missionaries or colonial-era Indologists aiming for a reasonable construction of history. However, the existence of non-textual evidence such as cave temples separated by thousands of kilometers, as well as lists of medieval era pilgrimage sites, is evidence of a shared sacred geography and existence of a community that was self-aware of shared religious premises and landscape. Further, it is a norm in evolving cultures that there is a gap between the \"lived and historical realities\" of a religious tradition and the emergence of related \"textual authorities\". The tradition and temples likely existed well before the medieval era Hindu manuscripts appeared that describe them and the sacred geography. This, states Fleming, is apparent given the sophistication of the architecture and the sacred sites along with the variance in the versions of the Puranic literature. According to Diana L. Eck and other Indologists such as André Wink, Muslim invaders were aware of Hindu sacred geography such as Mathura, Ujjain, and Varanasi by the 11th century. These sites became a target of their serial attacks in the centuries that followed.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Hindus have been persecuted during the medieval and modern era. The medieval persecution included waves of plunder, killing, destruction of temples and enslavement by Turk-Mongol Muslim armies from central Asia. This is documented in Islamic literature such as those relating to 8th century Muhammad bin-Qasim, 11th century Mahmud of Ghazni, the Persian traveler Al Biruni, the 14th century Islamic army invasion led by Timur, and various Sunni Islamic rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. There were occasional exceptions such as Akbar who stopped the persecution of Hindus, and occasional severe persecution such as under Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples, forcibly converted non-Muslims to Islam and banned the celebration of Hindu festivals such as Holi and Diwali.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Other recorded persecution of Hindus include those under the reign of 18th century Tipu Sultan in south India, and during the colonial era. In the modern era, religious persecution of Hindus have been reported outside India in Pakistan and Bangladesh.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Christophe Jaffrelot states that modern Hindu nationalism was born in Maharashtra, in the 1920s, as a reaction to the Islamic Khilafat Movement wherein Indian Muslims championed and took the cause of the Turkish Ottoman sultan as the Caliph of all Muslims, at the end of the World War I. Hindus viewed this development as one of divided loyalties of Indian Muslim population, of pan-Islamic hegemony, and questioned whether Indian Muslims were a part of an inclusive anti-colonial Indian nationalism. The Hindu nationalism ideology that emerged, states Jeffrelot, was codified by Savarkar while he was a political prisoner of the British colonial authorities.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Chris Bayly traces the roots of Hindu nationalism to the Hindu identity and political independence achieved by the Maratha confederacy, that overthrew the Islamic Mughal empire in large parts of India, allowing Hindus the freedom to pursue any of their diverse religious beliefs and restored Hindu holy places such as Varanasi. A few scholars view Hindu mobilisation and consequent nationalism to have emerged in the 19th century as a response to British colonialism by Indian nationalists and neo-Hinduism gurus. Jaffrelot states that the efforts of Christian missionaries and Islamic proselytizers, during the British colonial era, each of whom tried to gain new converts to their own religion, by stereotyping and stigmatising Hindus to an identity of being inferior and superstitious, contributed to Hindus re-asserting their spiritual heritage and counter cross examining Islam and Christianity, forming organisations such as the Hindu Sabhas (Hindu associations), and ultimately a Hindu-identity driven nationalism in the 1920s.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The colonial era Hindu revivalism and mobilisation, along with Hindu nationalism, states Peter van der Veer, was primarily a reaction to and competition with Muslim separatism and Muslim nationalism. The successes of each side fed the fears of the other, leading to the growth of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism in the Indian subcontinent. In the 20th century, the sense of religious nationalism grew in India, states van der Veer, but only Muslim nationalism succeeded with the formation of the West and East Pakistan (later split into Pakistan and Bangladesh), as \"an Islamic state\" upon independence. Religious riots and social trauma followed as millions of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs moved out of the newly created Islamic states and resettled into the Hindu-majority post-British India. After the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu nationalism movement developed the concept of Hindutva in second half of the 20th century.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Hindu nationalism movement has sought to reform Indian laws, that critics say attempts to impose Hindu values on India's Islamic minority. Gerald Larson states, for example, that Hindu nationalists have sought a uniform civil code, where all citizens are subject to the same laws, everyone has equal civil rights, and individual rights do not depend on the individual's religion. In contrast, opponents of Hindu nationalists remark that eliminating religious law from India poses a threat to the cultural identity and religious rights of Muslims, and people of Islamic faith have a constitutional right to Islamic shariah-based personal laws. A specific law, contentious between Hindu nationalists and their opponents in India, relates to the legal age of marriage for girls. Hindu nationalists seek that the legal age for marriage be eighteen that is universally applied to all girls regardless of their religion and that marriages be registered with local government to verify the age of marriage. Muslim clerics consider this proposal as unacceptable because under the shariah-derived personal law, a Muslim girl can be married at any age after she reaches puberty.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Hindu nationalism in India, states Katharine Adeney, is a controversial political subject, with no consensus about what it means or implies in terms of the form of government and religious rights of the minorities.",
"title": "History of Hindu identity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "There are 1.2 billion Hindus worldwide (15% of world's population), with about 95% of them being concentrated in India alone. Along with Christians (31.5%), Muslims (23.2%) and Buddhists (7.1%), Hindus are one of the four major religious groups of the world.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Most Hindus are found in Asian countries. The top twenty-five countries with the most Hindu residents and citizens (in decreasing order) are India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, Myanmar, United Kingdom, Mauritius, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, Fiji, Qatar, Kuwait, Guyana, Bhutan, Oman and Yemen.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The top fifteen countries with the highest percentage of Hindus (in decreasing order) are Nepal, India, Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Bhutan, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Réunion, Malaysia, and Singapore.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The fertility rate, that is children per woman, for Hindus is 2.4, which is less than the world average of 2.5. Pew Research projects that there will be 1.4 billion Hindus by 2050.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In more ancient times, Hindu kingdoms arose and spread the religion and traditions across Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Nepal, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, and what is now central Vietnam.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Over 3 million Hindus are found in Bali Indonesia, a culture whose origins trace back to ideas brought by Hindu traders to Indonesian islands in the 1st millennium CE. Their sacred texts are also the Vedas and the Upanishads. The Puranas and the Itihasa (mainly Ramayana and the Mahabharata) are enduring traditions among Indonesian Hindus, expressed in community dances and shadow puppet (wayang) performances. As in India, Indonesian Hindus recognise four paths of spirituality, calling it Catur Marga. Similarly, like Hindus in India, Balinese Hindus believe that there are four proper goals of human life, calling it Catur Purusartha – dharma (pursuit of moral and ethical living), artha (pursuit of wealth and creative activity), kama (pursuit of joy and love) and moksha (pursuit of self-knowledge and liberation).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Hindu culture is a term used to describe the culture and identity of Hindus and Hinduism, including the historic Vedic people. Hindu culture can be intensively seen in the form of art, architecture, history, diet, clothing, astrology and other forms. The culture of India and Hinduism is deeply influenced and assimilated with each other. With the Indianisation of southeast Asia and Greater India, the culture has also influenced a long region and other religions people of that area. All Indian religions, including Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism are deeply influenced and soft-powered by Hinduism.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Quotations related to Hindus at Wikiquote Media related to Hindus at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Hindus are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent. The term "Hindu" traces back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu (सिन्धु), referring to the river Indus. The Greek cognates of the same terms are "Indus" and "India". The term "Hindu" also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Sindhu (Indus) River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims. Hindoo is an archaic spelling variant, whose use today is considered derogatory. The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the Muslim invasions and medieval Hindu–Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and Bengali. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir, Tulsidas and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and contrasted it with Turaka dharma (Islam). The Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in a religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for groups such as Turks, Mughals and Arabs, who were adherents of Islam. By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about mid-20th century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon. At approximately 1.2 billion, Hindus are the world's third-largest religious group after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million, live in India, according to the 2011 Indian census. After India, the next nine countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United States, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. These together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world combined had about 6 million Hindus as of 2010. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-30T02:56:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindus |
13,678 | Hernando de Alarcón | Hernando de Alarcón (born c. 1466) was a Spanish explorer and navigator of the 16th century, noted for having led a 1540 expedition to the Colorado River Delta, during which he became one of the first Europeans to ascend the Colorado River from its mouth and became the first European to see Alta California.
Little is known about Alarcón's life outside of his exploits in New Spain. He was probably born in the town of Trujillo, in present-day Extremadura, Spain, in the first years of the 16th century and traveled to the Spanish colonies in the Americas as a young man.
By 1540, Mexico had been conquered and state-sponsored expeditions were being sent north in search of new wealth and the existence of a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Viceroy of New Spain Antonio de Mendoza commissioned Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to undertake a massive overland expedition to find the Seven Cities of Cibola, which were rumoured to exist in the unexplored northern interior. The expedition was to be resupplied with stores and provisions delivered by ships traveling north up the Sea of Cortés (Gulf of California), the commander of which would be Alarcón.
Alarcón set sail from the Pacific port of Acapulco with two ships, the San Pedro and the Santa Catalina, on May 9, 1540, and was later joined by the San Gabriel at St. Jago de Buena Esperanza (modern-day Manzanillo, Colima). His orders from Mendoza were to await the arrival of Coronado's land expedition at a certain latitude along the coast. The meeting with Coronado was never effected, though Alarcón reached the appointed place and left letters, which were soon afterward discovered by Melchor Díaz, another explorer.
Alarcón eventually sailed to the northern terminus of the Gulf of California and completed the explorations begun by Francisco de Ulloa the preceding year. During this voyage Alarcón proved to his satisfaction that no open-water passage existed between the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean (then called the "South Sea"). Subsequently, on September 26, he entered the mouth of the Colorado River, which he named the Buena Guía ("good guide"). He was the first European to ascend the river for a distance considerable enough to make important observations. On a second voyage, he probably proceeded past the present-day site of Yuma, Arizona. A map drawn by one of Alarcón's pilots is the earliest accurately detailed representation of the Gulf of California and the lower course of the Colorado River.
Alarcón is unusual among 16th-century conquistadores for his reportedly humane treatment of the Indians he met, as opposed to the often reckless and cruel behavior known from accounts of his contemporaries. Bernard de Voto, in his 1953 Westward the Course of Empire, observed: "The Indians had an experience they were never to repeat: they were sorry to see these white men leave." Alarcón wrote of his contact with the Yuma-speaking Indians along Colorado. The information he compiled consisted of their practices in warfare, religion, curing, and even sexual customs.
California Historical Landmark No. 568, on the west bank of the Colorado River near Andrade in Imperial County, California, commemorates Alarcón's expedition had been the first non-Indians to sight land within the present-day state of California.
California Historical Landmark number 568 reads: | [
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"text": "Hernando de Alarcón (born c. 1466) was a Spanish explorer and navigator of the 16th century, noted for having led a 1540 expedition to the Colorado River Delta, during which he became one of the first Europeans to ascend the Colorado River from its mouth and became the first European to see Alta California.",
"title": ""
},
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Little is known about Alarcón's life outside of his exploits in New Spain. He was probably born in the town of Trujillo, in present-day Extremadura, Spain, in the first years of the 16th century and traveled to the Spanish colonies in the Americas as a young man.",
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"text": "By 1540, Mexico had been conquered and state-sponsored expeditions were being sent north in search of new wealth and the existence of a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Viceroy of New Spain Antonio de Mendoza commissioned Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to undertake a massive overland expedition to find the Seven Cities of Cibola, which were rumoured to exist in the unexplored northern interior. The expedition was to be resupplied with stores and provisions delivered by ships traveling north up the Sea of Cortés (Gulf of California), the commander of which would be Alarcón.",
"title": "1540 expedition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Alarcón set sail from the Pacific port of Acapulco with two ships, the San Pedro and the Santa Catalina, on May 9, 1540, and was later joined by the San Gabriel at St. Jago de Buena Esperanza (modern-day Manzanillo, Colima). His orders from Mendoza were to await the arrival of Coronado's land expedition at a certain latitude along the coast. The meeting with Coronado was never effected, though Alarcón reached the appointed place and left letters, which were soon afterward discovered by Melchor Díaz, another explorer.",
"title": "1540 expedition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Alarcón eventually sailed to the northern terminus of the Gulf of California and completed the explorations begun by Francisco de Ulloa the preceding year. During this voyage Alarcón proved to his satisfaction that no open-water passage existed between the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean (then called the \"South Sea\"). Subsequently, on September 26, he entered the mouth of the Colorado River, which he named the Buena Guía (\"good guide\"). He was the first European to ascend the river for a distance considerable enough to make important observations. On a second voyage, he probably proceeded past the present-day site of Yuma, Arizona. A map drawn by one of Alarcón's pilots is the earliest accurately detailed representation of the Gulf of California and the lower course of the Colorado River.",
"title": "1540 expedition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Alarcón is unusual among 16th-century conquistadores for his reportedly humane treatment of the Indians he met, as opposed to the often reckless and cruel behavior known from accounts of his contemporaries. Bernard de Voto, in his 1953 Westward the Course of Empire, observed: \"The Indians had an experience they were never to repeat: they were sorry to see these white men leave.\" Alarcón wrote of his contact with the Yuma-speaking Indians along Colorado. The information he compiled consisted of their practices in warfare, religion, curing, and even sexual customs.",
"title": "1540 expedition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "California Historical Landmark No. 568, on the west bank of the Colorado River near Andrade in Imperial County, California, commemorates Alarcón's expedition had been the first non-Indians to sight land within the present-day state of California.",
"title": "1540 expedition"
},
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"text": "California Historical Landmark number 568 reads:",
"title": "California Historical Landmark"
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]
| Hernando de Alarcón was a Spanish explorer and navigator of the 16th century, noted for having led a 1540 expedition to the Colorado River Delta, during which he became one of the first Europeans to ascend the Colorado River from its mouth and became the first European to see Alta California. Little is known about Alarcón's life outside of his exploits in New Spain. He was probably born in the town of Trujillo, in present-day Extremadura, Spain, in the first years of the 16th century and traveled to the Spanish colonies in the Americas as a young man. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-29T13:39:28Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Alarc%C3%B3n |
13,679 | Hakka cuisine | Hakka cuisine is the cooking style of the Hakka people, and it may also be found in parts of Taiwan and in countries with significant overseas Hakka communities. There are numerous restaurants in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Thailand and the United States serving Hakka cuisine. Hakka cuisine was listed in 2014 on the first Hong Kong Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The Hakka people have a marked cuisine and style of Chinese cooking which is little known outside the Hakka home. It concentrates on the texture of food – the hallmark of Hakka cuisine. Whereas preserved meats feature in Hakka delicacy, stewed, braised, roast meats – 'texturized' contributions to the Hakka palate – have a central place in their repertoire. Preserved vegetables (梅菜) are commonly used for steamed and braised dishes such as steamed minced pork with preserved vegetables and braised pork with salted vegetables. In fact, the raw materials for Hakka food are no different from raw materials for any other type of regional Chinese cuisine where what is cooked depends on what is available in the market. Hakka cuisine may be described as outwardly simple but tasty. The skill in Hakka cuisine lies in the ability to cook meat thoroughly without hardening it, and to naturally bring out the proteinous flavor (umami taste) of meat.
The Hakka who settled in the harbor and port areas of Hong Kong placed great emphasis on seafood cuisine. Hakka cuisine in Hong Kong is less dominated by expensive meats; instead, emphasis is placed on an abundance of vegetables. Pragmatic and simple, Hakka cuisine is garnished lightly with sparse or little flavoring. Modern Hakka cooking in Hong Kong favors offal, an example being deep-fried intestines (炸大腸; zhá dà cháng). Others include tofu with preservatives, along with their signature dish, salt baked chicken (鹽焗雞; yán jú jī). Another specialty is the poon choi (盆菜; pén cài). While it may be difficult to prove these were the actual diets of the old Hakka community, it is at present a commonly accepted view. The above dishes and their variations are in fact found and consumed throughout China, including Guangdong Province, and are not particularly unique or confined to the Hakka population.
Besides meat as source of protein, there is a unique vegan dish called lei cha (擂茶; léi chá). It comprises combinations of vegetables and beans. Although not specifically unique for all Hakka people but are definitely famous among the Hakka-Hopo families. This vegetable-based rice tea dish is gaining momentum in some multicultural countries like Malaysia. Cooking of this dish requires the help from other family members to complete all eight combinations. It helps foster the relationship between family members in return.
Steamed bun (茶果) is a popular snack for Hakka people. It is mainly made from glutinous rice and is available in sweet or salty options. Sweet version consists of sweetened black-eyed pea pastes or peanuts. Salty version consists of preserved radish.
Hakka food also includes other traditional Taiwanese dishes, just as other Taiwanese ethnic groups do. Some of the more notable dishes in Hakka cuisine are listed as follow:
In India, Pakistan and other regions with significant South Asian populations, the locally known "Hakka cuisine" is actually a local adaptation of original Hakka dishes. This variation of Hakka cuisine is in reality, mostly Indian Chinese cuisine and Pakistani Chinese cuisine. It is called "Hakka cuisine" because, in India and areas of Pakistan, many owners of restaurants who serve this cuisine are of Hakka origin. Typical dishes include 'chilli chicken' and 'Dongbei (northeastern) chow mein/hakka noodles' (an Indian version of real Northeastern Chinese cuisine), and these restaurants also serve traditional South Asian dishes such as pakora. Being very popular in these areas, this style of cuisine is often mistakenly credited as being representative of Hakka cuisine in general, whereas the authentic style of Hakka cuisine is rarely known in these regions.
Outside of South Asia, the premier place to enjoy Indian-Pakistani-Chinese cuisine is in Toronto, Canada, due to the large number of Chinese from South Asia who have emigrated to the region and have chosen to open restaurants and most of it being halal. In Toronto, "hakka Chinese food" almost universally refers to Indian-Chinese cuisine, not Hakka cuisine in general.
In Thailand, Bangkok's Chinatown is Yaowarat and including neighboring areas such as Sampheng, Charoen Chai, Charoen Krung, Suan Mali, Phlapphla Chai or Wong Wian Yi Sip Song Karakadakhom (July 22 Circle). In the past, many Hakka restaurants are located in the Suan Mali near Bangkok Metropolitan Administration General Hospital. But now they had moved into many places, such as Talad Phlu, which is also one of the Chinatown as well. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hakka cuisine is the cooking style of the Hakka people, and it may also be found in parts of Taiwan and in countries with significant overseas Hakka communities. There are numerous restaurants in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Thailand and the United States serving Hakka cuisine. Hakka cuisine was listed in 2014 on the first Hong Kong Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Hakka people have a marked cuisine and style of Chinese cooking which is little known outside the Hakka home. It concentrates on the texture of food – the hallmark of Hakka cuisine. Whereas preserved meats feature in Hakka delicacy, stewed, braised, roast meats – 'texturized' contributions to the Hakka palate – have a central place in their repertoire. Preserved vegetables (梅菜) are commonly used for steamed and braised dishes such as steamed minced pork with preserved vegetables and braised pork with salted vegetables. In fact, the raw materials for Hakka food are no different from raw materials for any other type of regional Chinese cuisine where what is cooked depends on what is available in the market. Hakka cuisine may be described as outwardly simple but tasty. The skill in Hakka cuisine lies in the ability to cook meat thoroughly without hardening it, and to naturally bring out the proteinous flavor (umami taste) of meat.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Hakka who settled in the harbor and port areas of Hong Kong placed great emphasis on seafood cuisine. Hakka cuisine in Hong Kong is less dominated by expensive meats; instead, emphasis is placed on an abundance of vegetables. Pragmatic and simple, Hakka cuisine is garnished lightly with sparse or little flavoring. Modern Hakka cooking in Hong Kong favors offal, an example being deep-fried intestines (炸大腸; zhá dà cháng). Others include tofu with preservatives, along with their signature dish, salt baked chicken (鹽焗雞; yán jú jī). Another specialty is the poon choi (盆菜; pén cài). While it may be difficult to prove these were the actual diets of the old Hakka community, it is at present a commonly accepted view. The above dishes and their variations are in fact found and consumed throughout China, including Guangdong Province, and are not particularly unique or confined to the Hakka population.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Besides meat as source of protein, there is a unique vegan dish called lei cha (擂茶; léi chá). It comprises combinations of vegetables and beans. Although not specifically unique for all Hakka people but are definitely famous among the Hakka-Hopo families. This vegetable-based rice tea dish is gaining momentum in some multicultural countries like Malaysia. Cooking of this dish requires the help from other family members to complete all eight combinations. It helps foster the relationship between family members in return.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Steamed bun (茶果) is a popular snack for Hakka people. It is mainly made from glutinous rice and is available in sweet or salty options. Sweet version consists of sweetened black-eyed pea pastes or peanuts. Salty version consists of preserved radish.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hakka food also includes other traditional Taiwanese dishes, just as other Taiwanese ethnic groups do. Some of the more notable dishes in Hakka cuisine are listed as follow:",
"title": "Notable dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In India, Pakistan and other regions with significant South Asian populations, the locally known \"Hakka cuisine\" is actually a local adaptation of original Hakka dishes. This variation of Hakka cuisine is in reality, mostly Indian Chinese cuisine and Pakistani Chinese cuisine. It is called \"Hakka cuisine\" because, in India and areas of Pakistan, many owners of restaurants who serve this cuisine are of Hakka origin. Typical dishes include 'chilli chicken' and 'Dongbei (northeastern) chow mein/hakka noodles' (an Indian version of real Northeastern Chinese cuisine), and these restaurants also serve traditional South Asian dishes such as pakora. Being very popular in these areas, this style of cuisine is often mistakenly credited as being representative of Hakka cuisine in general, whereas the authentic style of Hakka cuisine is rarely known in these regions.",
"title": "Hakka cuisine in South Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Outside of South Asia, the premier place to enjoy Indian-Pakistani-Chinese cuisine is in Toronto, Canada, due to the large number of Chinese from South Asia who have emigrated to the region and have chosen to open restaurants and most of it being halal. In Toronto, \"hakka Chinese food\" almost universally refers to Indian-Chinese cuisine, not Hakka cuisine in general.",
"title": "Hakka cuisine in South Asia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Thailand, Bangkok's Chinatown is Yaowarat and including neighboring areas such as Sampheng, Charoen Chai, Charoen Krung, Suan Mali, Phlapphla Chai or Wong Wian Yi Sip Song Karakadakhom (July 22 Circle). In the past, many Hakka restaurants are located in the Suan Mali near Bangkok Metropolitan Administration General Hospital. But now they had moved into many places, such as Talad Phlu, which is also one of the Chinatown as well.",
"title": "Hakka cuisine in Thailand"
}
]
| Hakka cuisine is the cooking style of the Hakka people, and it may also be found in parts of Taiwan and in countries with significant overseas Hakka communities. There are numerous restaurants in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Thailand and the United States serving Hakka cuisine. Hakka cuisine was listed in 2014 on the first Hong Kong Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Hakka people have a marked cuisine and style of Chinese cooking which is little known outside the Hakka home. It concentrates on the texture of food – the hallmark of Hakka cuisine. Whereas preserved meats feature in Hakka delicacy, stewed, braised, roast meats – 'texturized' contributions to the Hakka palate – have a central place in their repertoire. Preserved vegetables (梅菜) are commonly used for steamed and braised dishes such as steamed minced pork with preserved vegetables and braised pork with salted vegetables. In fact, the raw materials for Hakka food are no different from raw materials for any other type of regional Chinese cuisine where what is cooked depends on what is available in the market. Hakka cuisine may be described as outwardly simple but tasty. The skill in Hakka cuisine lies in the ability to cook meat thoroughly without hardening it, and to naturally bring out the proteinous flavor of meat. The Hakka who settled in the harbor and port areas of Hong Kong placed great emphasis on seafood cuisine. Hakka cuisine in Hong Kong is less dominated by expensive meats; instead, emphasis is placed on an abundance of vegetables. Pragmatic and simple, Hakka cuisine is garnished lightly with sparse or little flavoring. Modern Hakka cooking in Hong Kong favors offal, an example being deep-fried intestines. Others include tofu with preservatives, along with their signature dish, salt baked chicken. Another specialty is the poon choi. While it may be difficult to prove these were the actual diets of the old Hakka community, it is at present a commonly accepted view. The above dishes and their variations are in fact found and consumed throughout China, including Guangdong Province, and are not particularly unique or confined to the Hakka population. Besides meat as source of protein, there is a unique vegan dish called lei cha. It comprises combinations of vegetables and beans. Although not specifically unique for all Hakka people but are definitely famous among the Hakka-Hopo families. This vegetable-based rice tea dish is gaining momentum in some multicultural countries like Malaysia. Cooking of this dish requires the help from other family members to complete all eight combinations. It helps foster the relationship between family members in return. Steamed bun (茶果) is a popular snack for Hakka people. It is mainly made from glutinous rice and is available in sweet or salty options. Sweet version consists of sweetened black-eyed pea pastes or peanuts. Salty version consists of preserved radish. | 2001-09-07T02:29:47Z | 2023-10-21T18:19:08Z | [
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13,680 | Hunan cuisine | Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine, consists of the cuisines of the Xiang River region, Dongting Lake and western Hunan Province in China. It is one of the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese cuisine and is well known for its hot and spicy flavours, fresh aroma and deep colours. Common cooking techniques include stewing, frying, pot-roasting, braising and smoking. Due to the high agricultural output of the region, ingredients for Hunan dishes are many and varied.
The history of the cooking skills employed in Hunan cuisine dates back to the 17th century. The first mention of chili peppers in local gazettes in the province date to 1684, 21st year of the Kangxi Emperor. During the course of its history, Hunan cuisine assimilated a variety of local forms, eventually evolving into its own style. Some well-known dishes include fried chicken with Sichuan spicy sauce (麻辣鸡丁; 麻辣雞丁; málà jīdīng) and smoked pork with dried long green beans (干豆角蒸腊肉; 干豆角蒸臘肉; gāndòujiǎo zhēng làròu).
Hunan cuisine consists of three primary styles:
With its liberal use of chili peppers, shallots and garlic, Hunan cuisine is known for being gan la (干辣; gān là; 'dry and spicy') or purely hot, as opposed to Sichuan cuisine, to which it is often compared. Sichuan cuisine uses its distinctive ma la (麻辣; má là; 'spicy and numbing') seasoning and other complex flavour combinations, frequently employs Sichuan pepper along with chilies which are often dried. It also utilises more dried or preserved ingredients and condiments. Hunan cuisine, on the other hand, is often spicier by pure chili content and contains a larger variety of fresh ingredients. Both Hunan and Sichuan cuisine are perhaps significantly oilier than the other cuisines in China, but Sichuan dishes are generally oilier than Hunan dishes. Another characteristic distinguishing Hunan cuisine from Sichuan cuisine is that Hunan cuisine uses smoked and cured goods in its dishes much more frequently.
Hunan cuisine's menu changes with the seasons. In a hot and humid summer, a meal will usually start with cold dishes or a platter holding a selection of cold meats with chilies for opening the pores and keeping cool in the summer. In winter, a popular choice is the hot pot, thought to heat the blood in the cold months. A special hot pot called yuanyang huoguo (鸳鸯火锅; 鴛鴦火鍋; yuānyāng hǔogūo; 'Mandarin ducks hot pot') is notable for splitting the pot into two sides – a spicy one and a mild one. One of the classic dishes in Hunan cuisine served in restaurants and at home is farmer pepper fried pork. It is made with several common ingredients: pork belly, green pepper, fermented black beans and other spices.
A discussion of Hunan cuisine overall may list a number of piquant dishes, usually but not always very hot and spicy. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine, consists of the cuisines of the Xiang River region, Dongting Lake and western Hunan Province in China. It is one of the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese cuisine and is well known for its hot and spicy flavours, fresh aroma and deep colours. Common cooking techniques include stewing, frying, pot-roasting, braising and smoking. Due to the high agricultural output of the region, ingredients for Hunan dishes are many and varied.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The history of the cooking skills employed in Hunan cuisine dates back to the 17th century. The first mention of chili peppers in local gazettes in the province date to 1684, 21st year of the Kangxi Emperor. During the course of its history, Hunan cuisine assimilated a variety of local forms, eventually evolving into its own style. Some well-known dishes include fried chicken with Sichuan spicy sauce (麻辣鸡丁; 麻辣雞丁; málà jīdīng) and smoked pork with dried long green beans (干豆角蒸腊肉; 干豆角蒸臘肉; gāndòujiǎo zhēng làròu).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hunan cuisine consists of three primary styles:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "With its liberal use of chili peppers, shallots and garlic, Hunan cuisine is known for being gan la (干辣; gān là; 'dry and spicy') or purely hot, as opposed to Sichuan cuisine, to which it is often compared. Sichuan cuisine uses its distinctive ma la (麻辣; má là; 'spicy and numbing') seasoning and other complex flavour combinations, frequently employs Sichuan pepper along with chilies which are often dried. It also utilises more dried or preserved ingredients and condiments. Hunan cuisine, on the other hand, is often spicier by pure chili content and contains a larger variety of fresh ingredients. Both Hunan and Sichuan cuisine are perhaps significantly oilier than the other cuisines in China, but Sichuan dishes are generally oilier than Hunan dishes. Another characteristic distinguishing Hunan cuisine from Sichuan cuisine is that Hunan cuisine uses smoked and cured goods in its dishes much more frequently.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hunan cuisine's menu changes with the seasons. In a hot and humid summer, a meal will usually start with cold dishes or a platter holding a selection of cold meats with chilies for opening the pores and keeping cool in the summer. In winter, a popular choice is the hot pot, thought to heat the blood in the cold months. A special hot pot called yuanyang huoguo (鸳鸯火锅; 鴛鴦火鍋; yuānyāng hǔogūo; 'Mandarin ducks hot pot') is notable for splitting the pot into two sides – a spicy one and a mild one. One of the classic dishes in Hunan cuisine served in restaurants and at home is farmer pepper fried pork. It is made with several common ingredients: pork belly, green pepper, fermented black beans and other spices.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A discussion of Hunan cuisine overall may list a number of piquant dishes, usually but not always very hot and spicy.",
"title": "List of notable dishes"
}
]
| Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine, consists of the cuisines of the Xiang River region, Dongting Lake and western Hunan Province in China. It is one of the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese cuisine and is well known for its hot and spicy flavours, fresh aroma and deep colours. Common cooking techniques include stewing, frying, pot-roasting, braising and smoking. Due to the high agricultural output of the region, ingredients for Hunan dishes are many and varied. | 2023-01-11T15:33:53Z | [
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13,681 | Hyperinflation | In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as they usually switch to more stable foreign currencies. When measured in stable foreign currencies, prices typically remain stable. Effective capital controls and currency substitution (“dollarization”) are the orthodox solutions to ending short-term hyperinflation; however there are significant social and economic costs to these policies. Ineffective implementations of these solutions often exacerbate the situation. Many governments choose to attempt to solve structural issues without resorting to those solutions, with the goal of bringing inflation down slowly while minimizing social costs of further economic shocks.
Unlike low inflation, where the process of rising prices is protracted and not generally noticeable except by studying past market prices, hyperinflation sees a rapid and continuing increase in nominal prices, the nominal cost of goods, and in the supply of currency. Typically, however, the general price level rises even more rapidly than the money supply as people try ridding themselves of the devaluing currency as quickly as possible. As this happens, the real stock of money (i.e., the amount of circulating money divided by the price level) decreases considerably.
Almost all hyperinflations have been caused by government budget deficits financed by currency creation. Hyperinflation is often associated with some stress to the government budget, such as wars or their aftermath, sociopolitical upheavals, a collapse in aggregate supply or one in export prices, or other crises that make it difficult for the government to collect tax revenue. A sharp decrease in real tax revenue coupled with a strong need to maintain government spending, together with an inability or unwillingness to borrow, can lead a country into hyperinflation.
In 1956, Phillip Cagan wrote The Monetary Dynamics of Hyperinflation, the book often regarded as the first serious study of hyperinflation and its effects (though The Economics of Inflation by C. Bresciani-Turroni on the German hyperinflation was published in Italian in 1931). In his book, Cagan defined a hyperinflationary episode as starting in the month that the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50%, and as ending when the monthly inflation rate drops below 50% and stays that way for at least a year. Economists usually follow Cagan's description that hyperinflation occurs when the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50% (this is equivalent to a yearly rate of 12,874.63%).
The International Accounting Standards Board has issued guidance on accounting rules in a hyperinflationary environment. It does not establish an absolute rule on when hyperinflation arises, but instead lists factors that indicate the existence of hyperinflation:
While there can be a number of causes of high inflation, almost all hyperinflations have been caused by government budget deficits financed by currency creation. Peter Bernholz analysed 29 hyperinflations (following Cagan's definition) and concludes that at least 25 of them have been caused in this way. A necessary condition for hyperinflation is the use of paper money instead of gold or silver coins. Most hyperinflations in history, with some exceptions, such as the French hyperinflation of 1789–1796, occurred after the use of fiat currency became widespread in the late 19th century. The French hyperinflation took place after the introduction of a non-convertible paper currency, the assignat.
Monetarist theories hold that hyperinflation occurs when there is a continuing (and often accelerating) rapid increase in the amount of money that is not supported by a corresponding growth in the output of goods and services.
The increases in price that can result from rapid money creation can create a vicious circle, requiring ever growing amounts of new money creation to fund government deficits. Hence both monetary inflation and price inflation proceed at a rapid pace. Such rapidly increasing prices cause widespread unwillingness of the local population to hold the local currency as it rapidly loses its buying power. Instead, they quickly spend any money they receive, which increases the velocity of money flow; this in turn causes further acceleration in prices. This means that the increase in the price level is greater than that of the money supply. The real stock of money, M/P, decreases. Here M refers to the money stock and P to the price level.
This results in an imbalance between the supply and demand for the money (including currency and bank deposits), causing rapid inflation. Very high inflation rates can result in a loss of confidence in the currency, similar to a bank run. Usually, the excessive money supply growth results from the government being either unable or unwilling to fully finance the government budget through taxation or borrowing, and instead it finances the government budget deficit through the printing of money.
Governments have sometimes resorted to excessively loose monetary policy, as it allows a government to devalue its debts and reduce (or avoid) a tax increase. Monetary inflation is effectively a flat tax on creditors that also redistributes proportionally to private debtors. Distributional effects of monetary inflation are complex and vary based on the situation, with some models finding regressive effects but other empirical studies progressive effects. As a form of tax, it is less overt than levied taxes and is therefore harder to understand by ordinary citizens. Inflation can obscure quantitative assessments of the true cost of living, as published price indices only look at data in retrospect, so may increase only months later. Monetary inflation can become hyperinflation if monetary authorities fail to fund increasing government expenses from taxes, government debt, cost cutting, or by other means, because either
Theories of hyperinflation generally look for a relationship between seigniorage and the inflation tax. In both Cagan's model and the neo-classical models, a tipping point occurs when the increase in money supply or the drop in the monetary base makes it impossible for a government to improve its financial position. Thus when fiat money is printed, government obligations that are not denominated in money increase in cost by more than the value of the money created.
From this, it might be wondered why any rational government would engage in actions that cause or continue hyperinflation. One reason for such actions is that often the alternative to hyperinflation is either depression or military defeat. The root cause is a matter of more dispute. In both classical economics and monetarism, it is always the result of the monetary authority irresponsibly borrowing money to pay all its expenses. These models focus on the unrestrained seigniorage of the monetary authority, and the gains from the inflation tax.
In neo-classical economic theory, hyperinflation is rooted in a deterioration of the monetary base, that is the confidence that there is a store of value that the currency will be able to command later. In this model, the perceived risk of holding currency rises dramatically, and sellers demand increasingly high premiums to accept the currency. This in turn leads to a greater fear that the currency will collapse, causing even higher premiums. One example of this is during periods of warfare, civil war, or intense internal conflict of other kinds: governments need to do whatever is necessary to continue fighting, since the alternative is defeat. Expenses cannot be cut significantly since the main outlay is armaments. Further, a civil war may make it difficult to raise taxes or to collect existing taxes. While in peacetime the deficit is financed by selling bonds, during a war it is typically difficult and expensive to borrow, especially if the war is going poorly for the government in question. The banking authorities, whether central or not, "monetize" the deficit, printing money to pay for the government's efforts to survive. The hyperinflation under the Chinese Nationalists from 1939 to 1945 is a classic example of a government printing money to pay civil war costs. By the end, currency was flown in over the Himalayas, and then old currency was flown out to be destroyed.
Hyperinflation is a complex phenomenon and one explanation may not be applicable to all cases. In both of these models, however, whether loss of confidence comes first, or central bank seigniorage, the other phase is ignited. In the case of rapid expansion of the money supply, prices rise rapidly in response to the increased supply of money relative to the supply of goods and services, and in the case of loss of confidence, the monetary authority responds to the risk premiums it has to pay by "running the printing presses".
A number of hyperinflations were caused by some sort of extreme negative supply shock, sometimes but not always associated with wars or natural disasters.
Since hyperinflation is visible as a monetary effect, models of hyperinflation center on the demand for money. Economists see both a rapid increase in the money supply and an increase in the velocity of money if the (monetary) inflating is not stopped. Either one, or both of these together are the root causes of inflation and hyperinflation. A dramatic increase in the velocity of money as the cause of hyperinflation is central to the "crisis of confidence" model of hyperinflation, where the risk premium that sellers demand for the paper currency over the nominal value grows rapidly. The second theory is that there is first a radical increase in the amount of circulating medium, which can be called the "monetary model" of hyperinflation. In either model, the second effect then follows from the first—either too little confidence forcing an increase in the money supply, or too much money destroying confidence.
In the confidence model, some event, or series of events, such as defeats in battle, or a run on stocks of the specie that back a currency, removes the belief that the authority issuing the money will remain solvent—whether a bank or a government. Because people do not want to hold notes that may become valueless, they want to spend them. Sellers, realizing that there is a higher risk for the currency, demand a greater and greater premium over the original value. Under this model, the method of ending hyperinflation is to change the backing of the currency, often by issuing a completely new one. War is one commonly cited cause of crisis of confidence, particularly losing in a war, as occurred during Napoleonic Vienna, and capital flight, sometimes because of "contagion" is another. In this view, the increase in the circulating medium is the result of the government attempting to buy time without coming to terms with the root cause of the lack of confidence itself.
In the monetary model, hyperinflation is a positive feedback cycle of rapid monetary expansion. It has the same cause as all other inflation: money-issuing bodies, central or otherwise, produce currency to pay spiraling costs, often from lax fiscal policy, or the mounting costs of warfare. When business people perceive that the issuer is committed to a policy of rapid currency expansion, they mark up prices to cover the expected decay in the currency's value. The issuer must then accelerate its expansion to cover these prices, which pushes the currency value down even faster than before. According to this model the issuer cannot "win" and the only solution is to abruptly stop expanding the currency. Unfortunately, the end of expansion can cause a severe financial shock to those using the currency as expectations are suddenly adjusted. This policy, combined with reductions of pensions, wages, and government outlays, formed part of the Washington consensus of the 1990s.
Whatever the cause, hyperinflation involves both the supply and velocity of money. Which comes first is a matter of debate, and there may be no universal story that applies to all cases. But once the hyperinflation is established, the pattern of increasing the money stock, by whichever agencies are allowed to do so, is universal. Because this practice increases the supply of currency without any matching increase in demand for it, the price of the currency, that is the exchange rate, naturally falls relative to other currencies. Inflation becomes hyperinflation when the increase in money supply turns specific areas of pricing power into a general frenzy of spending quickly before money becomes worthless. The purchasing power of the currency drops so rapidly that holding cash for even a day is an unacceptable loss of purchasing power. As a result, no one holds currency, which increases the velocity of money, and worsens the crisis.
Because rapidly rising prices undermine the role of money as a store of value, people try to spend it on real goods or services as quickly as possible. Thus, the monetary model predicts that the velocity of money will increase as a result of an excessive increase in the money supply. At the point when money velocity and prices rapidly accelerate in a vicious circle, hyperinflation is out of control, because ordinary policy mechanisms, such as increasing reserve requirements, raising interest rates, or cutting government spending will be ineffective and be responded to by shifting away from the rapidly devalued money and towards other means of exchange.
During a period of hyperinflation, bank runs, loans for 24-hour periods, switching to alternate currencies, the return to use of gold or silver or even barter become common. Many of the people who hoard gold today expect hyperinflation, and are hedging against it by holding specie. There may also be extensive capital flight or flight to a "hard" currency such as the US dollar. This is sometimes met with capital controls, an idea that has swung from standard, to anathema, and back into semi-respectability. All of this constitutes an economy that is operating in an "abnormal" way, which may lead to decreases in real production. If so, that intensifies the hyperinflation, since it means that the amount of goods in "too much money chasing too few goods" formulation is also reduced. This is also part of the vicious circle of hyperinflation.
Once the vicious circle of hyperinflation has been ignited, dramatic policy means are almost always required. Simply raising interest rates is insufficient. Bolivia, for example, underwent a period of hyperinflation in 1985, where prices increased 12,000% in the space of less than a year. The government raised the price of gasoline, which it had been selling at a huge loss to quiet popular discontent, and the hyperinflation came to a halt almost immediately, since it was able to bring in hard currency by selling its oil abroad. The crisis of confidence ended, and people returned deposits to banks. The German hyperinflation (1919 – November 1923) was ended by producing a currency based on assets loaned against by banks, called the Rentenmark. Hyperinflation often ends when a civil conflict ends with one side winning.
Although wage and price controls are sometimes used to control or prevent inflation, no episode of hyperinflation has been ended by the use of price controls alone, because price controls that force merchants to sell at prices far below their restocking costs result in shortages that cause prices to rise still further.
Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman said "We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas."
Hyperinflation increases stock market prices, wipes out the purchasing power of private and public savings, distorts the economy in favor of the hoarding of real assets, causes the monetary base (whether specie or hard currency) to flee the country, and makes the afflicted area anathema to investment.
One of the most important characteristics of hyperinflation is the accelerating substitution of the inflating money by stable money—gold and silver in former times, then relatively stable foreign currencies after the breakdown of the gold or silver standards (Thiers' Law). If inflation is high enough, government regulations like heavy penalties and fines, often combined with exchange controls, cannot prevent this currency substitution. As a consequence, the inflating currency is usually heavily undervalued compared to stable foreign money in terms of purchasing power parity. So foreigners can live cheaply and buy at low prices in the countries hit by high inflation. It follows that governments that do not succeed in engineering a successful currency reform in time must finally legalize the stable foreign currencies (or, formerly, gold and silver) that threaten to fully substitute the inflating money. Otherwise, their tax revenues, including the inflation tax, will approach zero. The last episode of hyperinflation in which this process could be observed was in Zimbabwe in the first decade of the 21st century. In this case, the local money was mainly driven out by the US dollar and the South African rand.
Enactment of price controls to prevent discounting the value of paper money relative to gold, silver, hard currency, or other commodities fail to force acceptance of a paper money that lacks intrinsic value. If the entity responsible for printing a currency promotes excessive money printing, with other factors contributing a reinforcing effect, hyperinflation usually continues. Hyperinflation is generally associated with paper money, which can easily be used to increase the money supply: add more zeros to the plates and print, or even stamp old notes with new numbers. Historically, there have been numerous episodes of hyperinflation in various countries followed by a return to "hard money". Older economies would revert to hard currency and barter when the circulating medium became excessively devalued, generally following a "run" on the store of value.
Much attention on hyperinflation centers on the effect on savers whose investments become worthless. Interest rate changes often cannot keep up with hyperinflation or even high inflation, certainly with contractually fixed interest rates. For example, in the 1970s in the United Kingdom inflation reached 25% per annum, yet interest rates did not rise above 15%—and then only briefly—and many fixed interest rate loans existed. Contractually, there is often no bar to a debtor clearing his long term debt with "hyperinflated cash", nor could a lender simply somehow suspend the loan. Contractual "early redemption penalties" were (and still are) often based on a penalty of n months of interest/payment; again no real bar to paying off what had been a large loan. In interwar Germany, for example, much private and corporate debt was effectively wiped out—certainly for those holding fixed interest rate loans.
Ludwig von Mises used the term "crack-up boom" (German: Katastrophenhausse) to describe the economic consequences of an unmitigated increasing in the base-money supply. As more and more money is provided, interest rates decline towards zero. Realizing that fiat money is losing value, investors will try to place money in assets such as real estate, stocks, even art; as these appear to represent "real" value. Asset prices are thus becoming inflated. This potentially spiraling process will ultimately lead to the collapse of the monetary system. The Cantillon effect says that those institutions that receive the new money first are the beneficiaries of the policy.
Hyperinflation is ended by drastic remedies, such as imposing the shock therapy of slashing government expenditures or altering the currency basis. One form this may take is dollarization, the use of a foreign currency (not necessarily the U.S. dollar) as a national unit of currency. An example was dollarization in Ecuador, initiated in September 2000 in response to a 75% loss of value of the Ecuadorian sucre in early 2000. Usually the "dollarization" takes place in spite of all efforts of the government to prevent it by exchange controls, heavy fines and penalties. The government has thus to try to engineer a successful currency reform stabilizing the value of the money. If it does not succeed with this reform the substitution of the inflating by stable money goes on. Thus it is not surprising that there have been at least seven historical cases in which the good (foreign) money did fully drive out the use of the inflating currency. In the end, the government had to legalize the former, for otherwise its revenues would have fallen to zero.
Hyperinflation has always been a traumatic experience for the people who suffer it, and the next political regime almost always enacts policies to try to prevent its recurrence. Often this means making the central bank very aggressive about maintaining price stability, as was the case with the German Bundesbank, or moving to some hard basis of currency, such as a currency board. Many governments have enacted extremely stiff wage and price controls in the wake of hyperinflation, but this does not prevent further inflation of the money supply by the central bank, and always leads to widespread shortages of consumer goods if the controls are rigidly enforced.
In countries experiencing hyperinflation, the central bank often prints money in larger and larger denominations as the smaller denomination notes become worthless. This can result in the production of unusually large denominations of banknotes, including those denominated in amounts of 1,000,000,000 or more.
One way to avoid the use of large numbers is by declaring a new unit of currency. (As an example, instead of 10,000,000,000 dollars, a central bank might set 1 new dollar = 1,000,000,000 old dollars, so the new note would read "10 new dollars".) One example of this is Turkey's revaluation of the Lira on 1 January 2005, when the old Turkish lira (TRL) was converted to the New Turkish lira (TRY) at a rate of 1,000,000 old to 1 new Turkish Lira. While this does not lessen the actual value of a currency, it is called redenomination or revaluation and also occasionally happens in countries with lower inflation rates. During hyperinflation, currency inflation happens so quickly that bills reach large numbers before revaluation.
Some banknotes were stamped to indicate changes of denomination, as it would have taken too long to print new notes. By the time new notes were printed, they would be obsolete (that is, they would be of too low a denomination to be useful).
Metallic coins were rapid casualties of hyperinflation, as the scrap value of metal enormously exceeded its face value. Massive amounts of coinage were melted down, usually illicitly, and exported for hard currency.
Governments will often try to disguise the true rate of inflation through a variety of techniques. None of these actions addresses the root causes of inflation; and if discovered, they tend to further undermine trust in the currency, causing further increases in inflation. Price controls will generally result in shortages and hoarding and extremely high demand for the controlled goods, causing disruptions of supply chains. Products available to consumers may diminish or disappear as businesses no longer find it economic to continue producing and/or distributing such goods at the legal prices, further exacerbating the shortages.
There are also issues with computerized money-handling systems. In Zimbabwe, during the hyperinflation of the Zimbabwe dollar, many automated teller machines and payment card machines struggled with arithmetic overflow errors as customers required many billions and trillions of dollars at one time.
In 1922, inflation in Austria reached 1,426%, and from 1914 to January 1923, the consumer price index rose by a factor of 11,836, with the highest banknote in denominations of 500,000 Kronen. After World War I, essentially all State enterprises ran at a loss, and the number of state employees in the capital, Vienna, was greater than in the earlier monarchy, even though the new republic was nearly one-eighth of the size.
Observing the Austrian response to developing hyperinflation, which included the hoarding of food and the speculation in foreign currencies, Owen S. Phillpotts, the Commercial Secretary at the British Legation in Vienna wrote: "The Austrians are like men on a ship who cannot manage it, and are continually signalling for help. While waiting, however, most of them begin to cut rafts, each for himself, out of the sides and decks. The ship has not yet sunk despite the leaks so caused, and those who have acquired stores of wood in this way may use them to cook their food, while the more seamanlike look on cold and hungry. The population lack courage and energy as well as patriotism."
Increasing hyperinflation in Bolivia has plagued, and at times crippled, its economy and currency since the 1970s. At one time in 1985, the country experienced an annual inflation rate of more than 20,000%. Fiscal and monetary reform reduced the inflation rate to single digits by the 1990s, and in 2004 Bolivia experienced a manageable 4.9% rate of inflation.
In 1987, the Bolivian peso was replaced by the new boliviano at a rate of one million to one (when 1 US dollar was worth 1.8–1.9 million pesos). At that time, 1 new boliviano was roughly equivalent to 1 U.S. dollar.
Brazilian hyperinflation lasted from 1985 (the year when the military dictatorship ended) to 1994, with prices rising by 184,901,570,954.39% (or 1.849×10 percent; equivalent to a tenfold increase on average a year) in that time due to the uncontrolled printing of money. There were many economic plans that tried to contain hyperinflation including zeroes cuts, price freezes and even confiscation of bank accounts.
The highest value was in March 1990, when the government inflation index reached 82.39%. Hyperinflation ended in July 1994 with the Real Plan during the government of Itamar Franco. During the period of inflation Brazil adopted a total of six different currencies, as the government constantly changed due to rapid devaluation and increase in the number of zeros.
Hyperinflation was a major factor in the collapse of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek.
After a brief decrease following the defeat of Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, hyperinflation resumed in October 1945. From 1948 to 1949, near the end of the Chinese Civil War, the Republic of China went through a period of hyperinflation. In 1947, the highest denomination bill was 50,000 yuan. By mid-1948, the highest denomination was 180,000,000 yuan.
In October 1948, the Nationalist government replaced its fabi currency with the gold yuan. The gold yuan deteriorated even faster than the fabi had.
The Communists gained significant legitimacy by defeating hyperinflation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Their development of state trading agencies reintegrated markets and trading networks, ultimately stabilizing prices.
During the French Revolution and first Republic, the National Assembly issued bonds, some backed by seized church property, called assignats. Napoleon replaced them with the franc in 1803, at which time the assignats were basically worthless. Stephen D. Dillaye pointed out that one of the reasons for the failure was massive counterfeiting of the paper currency, largely through London. According to Dillaye: "Seventeen manufacturing establishments were in full operation in London, with a force of four hundred men devoted to the production of false and forged Assignats."
By November 1922, the value in gold of money in circulation had fallen from £300 million before World War I to £20 million. The Reichsbank responded by the unlimited printing of notes, thereby accelerating the devaluation of the mark. In his report to London, Lord D'Abernon wrote: "In the whole course of history, no dog has ever run after its own tail with the speed of the Reichsbank." Germany went through its worst inflation in 1923. In 1922, the highest denomination was 50,000ℳ. By 1923, the highest denomination was 100,000,000,000,000ℳ (10 marks). In December 1923 the exchange rate was 4,200,000,000,000ℳ (4.2 × 10 marks) to 1 US dollar. In 1923, the rate of inflation hit 3.25 × 10 percent per month (prices double every two days). Beginning on 20 November 1923, 1,000,000,000,000ℳ were exchanged for 1 Rentenmark, so that RM 4.2 was worth 1 US dollar, exactly the same rate the mark had in 1914.
With the German invasion in April 1941, there was an abrupt increase in prices. This was due to psychological factors related to the fear of shortages and to the hoarding of goods. During the German and Italian Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1944), the agricultural, mineral, industrial etc. production of Greece were used to sustain the occupation forces, but also to secure provisions for the Afrika Korps. One part of these "sales" of provisions was settled with bilateral clearing through the German DEGRIGES and the Italian Sagic companies at very low prices. As the value of Greek exports in drachmas fell, the demand for drachmas followed suit and so did its forex rate. While shortages started due to naval blockades and hoarding, the prices of commodities soared. The other part of the "purchases" was settled with drachmas secured from the Bank of Greece and printed for this purpose by private printing presses. As prices soared, the Germans and Italians started requesting more and more drachmas from the Bank of Greece to offset price increases; each time prices increased, the note circulation followed suit soon afterwards. For the year starting November 1943, the inflation rate was 2.5 × 10%, the circulation was 6.28 × 10 drachmae and one gold sovereign cost 43,167 billion drachmas. The hyperinflation started subsiding immediately after the departure of the German occupation forces, but inflation rates took several years to fall below 50%.
The Treaty of Trianon and political instability between 1919 and 1924 led to a major inflation of Hungary's currency. In 1921, in an attempt to stop this inflation, the national assembly of Hungary passed the Hegedüs reforms, including a 20% levy on bank deposits, but this precipitated a mistrust of banks by the public, especially the peasants, and resulted in a reduction in savings, and thus an increase in the amount of currency in circulation. Due to the reduced tax base, the government resorted to printing money, and in 1923 inflation in Hungary reached 98% per month.
Between the end of 1945 and July 1946, Hungary went through the highest inflation ever recorded. In 1944, the highest banknote value was 1,000 P. By the end of 1945, it was 10,000,000 P, and the highest value in mid-1946 was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 P (10 pengő). A special currency, the adópengő (or tax pengő) was created for tax and postal payments. The inflation was such that the value of the adópengő was adjusted each day by radio announcement. On 1 January 1946, one adópengő equaled one pengő, but by late July, one adópengő equaled 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 P or 2×10 P (2 sextillion pengő).
When the pengő was replaced in August 1946 by the forint, the total value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation amounted to 1⁄1,000 of one US cent. Inflation had peaked at 1.3 × 10% per month (i.e. prices doubled every 15.6 hours). On 18 August 1946, 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 P (4×10 pengő, four hundred quadrilliard on the long scale used in Hungary, or four hundred octillion on short scale) became 1 Ft.
Malaya and Singapore were under Japanese occupation from 1942 until 1945. The Japanese issued "banana notes" as the official currency to replace the Straits currency issued by the British. During that time, the cost of basic necessities increased drastically. As the occupation proceeded, the Japanese authorities printed more money to fund their wartime activities, which resulted in hyperinflation and a severe depreciation in value of the banana note.
From February to December 1942, $100 of Straits currency was worth $100 in Japanese scrip, after which the value of Japanese scrip began to erode, reaching $385 in December 1943 and $1,850 one year later. By 1 August 1945, this had inflated to $10,500, and 11 days later it had reached $95,000. After 13 August 1945, Japanese scrip had become valueless.
North Korea has most likely experienced hyperinflation from December 2009 to mid-January 2011. Based on the price of rice, North Korea's hyperinflation peaked in mid-January 2010, but according to black market exchange-rate data, and calculations based on purchasing power parity, North Korea experienced its peak month of inflation in early March 2010. These data points are unofficial, however, and therefore must be treated with a degree of caution.
In modern history, Peru underwent a period of hyperinflation in the 1980s to the early 1990s starting with President Fernando Belaúnde's second administration, heightened during Alan García's first administration, to the beginning of Alberto Fujimori's term. 1 US dollar was worth over S/3,210,000,000. Garcia's term introduced the inti, which worsened inflation into hyperinflation. Peru's currency and economy were stabilized under Fujimori's Nuevo Sol program, which has remained Peru's currency since 1991.
Poland has gone through two episodes of hyperinflation since the country regained independence following the end of World War I, the first in 1923, the second in 1989–1990. Both events resulted in the introduction of new currencies. In 1924, the złoty replaced the original currency of post-war Poland, the mark. This currency was subsequently replaced by another of the same name in 1950. As a result of the second hyperinflation crisis, the current new złoty was introduced in 1995 (ISO code: PLN). See the article on Polish złoty for more information about the currency's history.
The newly independent Poland had been struggling with a large budget deficit since its inception in 1918 but it was in 1923 when inflation reached its peak. The exchange rate of the Polish mark (Mp) to the US dollar dropped from Mp 9.- per dollar in 1918 to Mp 6,375,000.- per dollar at the end of 1923. A new personal 'inflation tax' was introduced. The resolution of the crisis is attributed to Władysław Grabski, who became prime minister of Poland in December 1923. Having nominated an all-new government and being granted extraordinary lawmaking powers by the Sejm for a period of six months, he introduced a new currency, the złoty ("florin" in Polish), established a new national bank and scrapped the inflation tax, which took place throughout 1924.
The economic crisis in Poland in the 1980s was accompanied by rising inflation when new money was printed to cover a budget deficit. Although inflation was not as acute as in 1920s, it is estimated that its annual rate reached around 600% in a period of over a year spanning parts of 1989 and 1990. The economy was stabilised by the adoption of the Balcerowicz Plan in 1989, named after the main author of the reforms, minister of finance Leszek Balcerowicz. The plan was largely inspired by the previous Grabski's reforms.
The Japanese government occupying the Philippines during World War II issued fiat currencies for general circulation. The Japanese-sponsored Second Philippine Republic government led by Jose P. Laurel at the same time outlawed possession of other currencies, most especially "guerrilla money". The fiat money's lack of value earned it the derisive nickname "Mickey Mouse money". Survivors of the war often tell tales of bringing suitcases or bayong (native bags made of woven coconut or buri leaf strips) overflowing with Japanese-issued notes. Early on, 75 JIM pesos could buy one duck egg. In 1944, a box of matches cost more than 100 JIM pesos.
In 1942, the highest denomination available was ₱10. Before the end of the war, because of inflation, the Japanese government was forced to issue ₱100, ₱500, and ₱1,000 notes.
A seven-year period of uncontrollable spiralling inflation occurred in the early Soviet Union, running from the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 to the reestablishment of the gold standard with the introduction of the chervonets as part of the New Economic Policy. The inflationary crisis effectively ended in March 1924 with the introduction of the so-called "gold ruble" as the country's standard currency.
The early Soviet hyperinflationary period was marked by three successive redenominations of its currency, in which "new rubles" replaced old at the rates of 10,000:1 (1 January 1922), 100:1 (1 January 1923), and 50,000:1 (7 March 1924), respectively.
Between 1921 and 1922, inflation in the Soviet Union reached 213%.
Since the end of 2017 Turkey has had high inflation rates. It is speculated that the new elections took place frustrated because of the impending crisis to forestall. In October 2017, inflation was at 11.9%, the highest rate since July 2008. The lira fell from TL 1.503 = US$1 in 2010 to TL 23.1446 = US$1 in June 2023.
In February 2022 inflation rose to 54.4%. In March 2022, inflation was above 60%.
Venezuela's hyperinflation began in November 2016. Inflation of Venezuela's bolivar fuerte (VEF) in 2014 reached 69% and was the highest in the world. In 2015, inflation was 181%, the highest in the world and the highest in the country's history at that time, 800% in 2016, over 4,000% in 2017, and 1,698,488% in 2018, with Venezuela spiraling into hyperinflation. While the Venezuelan government "has essentially stopped" producing official inflation estimates as of early 2018, one estimate of the rate at that time was 5,220%, according to inflation economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University.
Inflation has affected Venezuelans so much that in 2017, some people became video game gold farmers and could be seen playing games such as RuneScape to sell in-game currency or characters for real currency. In many cases, these gamers made more money than salaried workers in Venezuela even though they were earning just a few dollars per day. During the Christmas season of 2017, some shops would no longer use price tags since prices would inflate so quickly, so customers were required to ask staff at stores how much each item was.
The International Monetary Fund estimated in 2018 that Venezuela's inflation rate would reach 1,000,000% by the end of the year. This forecast was criticized by Steve H. Hanke, professor of applied economics at The Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. According to Hanke, the IMF had released a "bogus forecast" because "no one has ever been able to accurately forecast the course or the duration of an episode of hyperinflation. But that has not stopped the IMF from offering inflation forecasts for Venezuela that have proven to be wildly inaccurate".
In July 2018, hyperinflation in Venezuela was sitting at 33,151%, "the 23rd most severe episode of hyperinflation in history".
In April 2019, the International Monetary Fund estimated that inflation would reach 10,000,000% by the end of 2019.
In May 2019, the Central Bank of Venezuela released economic data for the first time since 2015. According to this release, the inflation of Venezuela was 274% in 2016, 863% in 2017 and 130,060% in 2018. The annualised inflation rate as of April 2019 was estimated to be 282,972.8% as of April 2019, and cumulative inflation from 2016 to April 2019 was estimated at 53,798,500%.
The new reports imply a contraction of more than half of the economy in five years, according to the Financial Times "one of the biggest contractions in Latin American history". According to undisclosed sources from Reuters, the release of these numbers was due to pressure from China, a Maduro ally. One of these sources claims that the disclosure of economic numbers may bring Venezuela into compliance with the IMF, making it harder to support Juan Guaidó during the presidential crisis. At the time, the IMF was not able to support the validity of the data as they had not been able to contact the authorities.
Vietnam went through a period of chaos and high inflation in the late 1980s, with inflation peaking at 774% in 1988, after the country's "price-wage-currency" reform package, led by then-Deputy Prime Minister Trần Phương, had failed. High inflation also occurred in the early stages of the socialist-oriented market economic reforms commonly referred to as the Đổi Mới.
Hyperinflation in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia happened before and during the period of breakup of Yugoslavia, from 1989 to 1991. In April 1992, one of its successor states, FR Yugoslavia, entered a period of hyperinflation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that lasted until 1994. One of several regional conflicts accompanying the dissolution of Yugoslavia was the Bosnian War (1992–1995). The Belgrade government of Slobodan Milošević backed ethnic Serbian forces in the conflict, resulting in a United Nations boycott of Yugoslavia. The UN boycott collapsed an economy already weakened by regional war, with the projected monthly inflation rate accelerating to one million percent by December 1993 (prices double every 2.3 days).
The highest denomination in 1988 was 50,000 DIN. By 1989, it was 2,000,000 DIN. In the 1990 currency reform, 1 new dinar was exchanged for 10,000 old dinars. After socialist Yugoslavia broke up, the 1992 currency reform in FR Yugoslavia led to 1 new dinar being exchanged for 10 old dinars. The highest denomination in 1992 was 50,000 DIN. By 1993, it was 10,000,000,000 DIN. In the 1993 currency reform, 1 new dinar was exchanged for 1,000,000 old dinars. Before the year was over, however, the highest denomination was 500,000,000,000 dinars. In the 1994 currency reform, 1 new dinar was exchanged for 1,000,000,000 old dinars. In another currency reform a month later, 1 novi dinar was exchanged for 13 million dinars (1 novi dinar = 1 Deutschmark at the time of exchange). The overall impact of hyperinflation was that 1 novi dinar was equal to 1 × 10 – 1.3 × 10 pre-1990 dinars. Yugoslavia's rate of inflation hit 5 × 10% cumulative inflation over the time period 1 October 1993 and 24 January 1994.
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe was one of the few instances that resulted in the abandonment of the local currency. At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwe dollar (ZWD) was worth about US$1.25. Afterwards, however, rampant inflation and the collapse of the economy severely devalued the currency. Inflation was relatively steady until the early 1990s when economic disruption caused by failed land reform agreements and rampant government corruption resulted in reductions in food production and the decline of foreign investment. Several multinational companies began hoarding retail goods in warehouses in Zimbabwe and just south of the border, preventing commodities from becoming available on the market. The result was that to pay its expenditures Mugabe's government and Gideon Gono's Reserve Bank printed more and more notes with higher face values.
Hyperinflation began early in the 21st century, reaching 624% in 2004. It fell back to low triple digits before surging to a new high of 1,730% in 2006. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe revalued on 1 August 2006 at a ratio of 1,000 ZWD to each second dollar (ZWN), but year-to-year inflation rose by June 2007 to 11,000% (versus an earlier estimate of 9,000%). Larger denominations were progressively issued in 2008:
Inflation by 16 July officially surged to 2,200,000% with some analysts estimating figures surpassing 9,000,000%. As of 22 July 2008 the value of the Zimbabwe dollar fell to approximately Z$688 billion per US$1, or Z$688 trillion in pre-August 2006 Zimbabwean dollars.
On 1 August 2008, the Zimbabwe dollar was redenominated at the ratio of 10 ZWN to each third dollar (ZWR). On 19 August 2008, official figures announced for June estimated the inflation over 11,250,000%. Zimbabwe's annual inflation was 231,000,000% in July (prices doubling every 17.3 days). By October 2008 Zimbabwe was mired in hyperinflation with wages falling far behind inflation. In this dysfunctional economy hospitals and schools had chronic staffing problems, because many nurses and teachers could not afford bus fare to work. Most of the capital of Harare was without water because the authorities had stopped paying the bills to buy and transport the treatment chemicals. Desperate for foreign currency to keep the government functioning, Zimbabwe's central bank governor, Gideon Gono, sent runners into the streets with suitcases of Zimbabwean dollars to buy up American dollars and South African rand.
For periods after July 2008, no official inflation statistics were released. Prof. Steve H. Hanke overcame the problem by estimating inflation rates after July 2008 and publishing the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe. Prof. Hanke's HHIZ measure indicated that the inflation peaked at an annual rate of 89.7 sextillion percent (89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000%, or 8.97×10%) in mid-November 2008. The peak monthly rate was 79.6 billion percent, which is equivalent to a 98% daily rate, or around 7×10^% yearly rate. At that rate, prices were doubling every 24.7 hours. Note that many of these figures should be considered mostly theoretical since hyperinflation did not proceed at this rate over a whole year.
At its November 2008 peak, Zimbabwe's rate of inflation approached, but failed to surpass, Hungary's July 1946 world record. On 2 February 2009, the dollar was redenominated for the third time at the ratio of 10 ZWR to 1 ZWL, only three weeks after the Z$100 trillion banknote was issued on 16 January, but hyperinflation waned by then as official inflation rates in USD were announced and foreign transactions were legalised, and on 12 April the Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned in favour of using only foreign currencies. The overall impact of hyperinflation was US$1 = Z$10.
Ironically, following the abandonment of the ZWR and subsequent use of reserve currencies, banknotes from the hyperinflation period of the old Zimbabwe dollar began attracting international attention as collectors items, having accrued numismatic value, selling for prices many orders of magnitude higher than their old purchasing power.
Countries have experienced periods of very high inflation, that did not reach hyperinflation, as defined as a monthly inflation rate exceeding 50% per month.
As the first user of fiat currency, China was also the first country to experience high inflation. Paper currency was introduced during the Tang dynasty, and was generally welcomed. It maintained its value, as successive Chinese governments put in place strict controls on issuance. The convenience of paper currency for trade purposes led to strong demand for paper currency. It was only when discipline on quantity supplied broke down that inflation emerged. The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) was the first to print large amounts of fiat paper money to fund its wars, resulting in very high inflation.
During the Crisis of the Third Century, Rome underwent high inflation caused by years of coinage devaluation.
Argentina has an economic history of very high inflation since World War II, mostly caused by excessive money supply increases. The Latin American debt crisis was caused by foreign debt held in other currencies, and exploded because the floating exchange rates depreciated the Argentinian currencies because of inflation, capital flight, and not enough foreign reserve currencies ratio.
Between 1620 and 1622 the Kreuzer fell from 1 Reichsthaler to 124 Kreuzer in end of 1619 to 1 Reichstaler to over 600 (regionally over 1000) Kreuzer in end of 1622, during the Thirty Years' War. This is a monthly inflation rate of over 20.6% (regionally over 34.4%).
After the Military dictatorship in Brazil ended in 1985 and its transition to democracy. Tancredo Neves dies shortly after winning the 1985 Brazilian presidential election and his Vice President José Sarney becomes president. In 1986 inflation was already at 400% annually and Sarney tried to remedy inflation with a wage freeze, price controls, and reforming the currency by dropping three zeros from it, all while tripling the money supply to fund government expenditures and public sector that was consuming 50% of GDP at the time. Bank loans had an interest rate of around 25% a month to maintain a positive real yield during inflation. In February 1987 the government defaulted on $110 billion in foreign loans, that was part of the Latin American debt crisis.
Between 1987 and 1995 the Iraqi Dinar went from an official value of 0.306 Dinars/USD (or US$3.26 per dinar, though the black market rate is thought to have been substantially lower) to 3,000 dinars/USD due to government printing of tens of trillions of dinars starting with a base of only tens of billions. That equates to approximately 315% inflation per year averaged over that eight-year period.
In spite of increased oil prices in the late 1970s (Mexico is a producer and exporter), Mexico defaulted on its external debt in 1982. As a result, the country suffered a severe case of capital flight and several years of acute inflation and peso devaluation. On 1 January 1993, Mexico created a new currency, the nuevo peso ("new peso", or MXN), which chopped three zeros off the old peso (One new peso was equal to 1,000 old MXP pesos).
After the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979 where the communist Sandinista National Liberation Front ousted the Somoza dictatorship, the economy contracted by 34 percent during that time. The Sandinistas nationalized many industries and had expansive monetary policy that started to contribute to rising inflation. Fighting with the Contras and the United States embargo against Nicaragua in May 1985 also contributed to the problem. Inflation hit 10,000% in 1988.
Between 1998 and 1999, Ecuador faced a period of economic instability that resulted from a combined banking crisis, currency crisis, and sovereign debt crisis. Severe inflation and devaluation of the Ecuadorean Sucre lead to President Jamil Mahuad announcing on 9 January 2000 that the US dollar would be adopted as the national currency.
Despite the government's efforts to curb inflation, the Sucre depreciated rapidly at the end of 1999, resulting in widespread informal use of U.S. dollars in the financial system. As a last resort to prevent hyperinflation, the government formally adopted the U.S. dollar in January 2000. The stability of the new currency was a necessary first step towards economic recovery, but the exchange rate was fixed at 25,000:1, which resulted in great losses of wealth.
In Roman Egypt, where the best documentation on pricing has survived, the price of a measure of wheat was 200 drachmae in 276 AD, and increased to more than 2,000,000 drachmae in 334 AD, roughly 1,000,000% inflation in a span of 58 years.
Although the price increased by a factor of 10,000 over 58 years, the annual rate of inflation was only 17.2% (1.4% monthly) compounded.
Romania experienced high inflation in the 1990s. The highest denomination in 1990 was 100 lei and in 1998 was 100,000 lei. By 2000 it was 500,000 lei. In early 2005 it was 1,000,000 lei. In July 2005 the lei was replaced by the new leu at 10,000 old lei = 1 new leu. Inflation in 2005 was 9%. In July 2005 the highest denomination became 500 lei (= 5,000,000 old lei).
In the transition from the Soviet Union planned economy and price controls to a free market economy there were substantial imbalances in supply and demand. The Government increased the money supply by eighteen times by the end of 1992. A lot of corruption from Government enterprises taking up debt and getting bailed out from the government. The Federal budget deficit was 20 percent of GDP in 1992, mostly financed by increasing money supply. This resulted in an inflation rate of over 2,000% in 1992.
The Second Transnistrian ruble consisted solely of banknotes and suffered from high inflation, necessitating the issue of notes overstamped with higher denominations. 1 and sometimes 10 rubles become 10,000 rubles, 5 rubles become 50,000 and 10 rubles become 100,000 rubles. In 2000, a new ruble was introduced at a rate of 1 new ruble = 1,000,000 old rubles.
During the Revolutionary War, when the Continental Congress authorized the printing of paper called continental currency, the monthly inflation rate reached a peak of 47% in November 1779 (Bernholz 2003: 48). These notes depreciated rapidly, giving rise to the expression "not worth a continental". One cause of the inflation was counterfeiting by the British, who ran a press on HMS Phoenix, moored in New York Harbor. The counterfeits were advertised and sold almost for the price of the paper they were printed on.
During the U.S. Civil War between January 1861 and April 1865, the Confederate States decided to finance the war by printing money. The Lerner Commodity Price Index of leading cities in the eastern Confederacy states subsequently increased from 100 to 9,200 in that time. In the final months of the Civil War, the Confederate dollar was almost worthless. Similarly, the Union government inflated its greenbacks, with the monthly rate peaking at 40% in March 1864 (Bernholz 2003: 107).
Inflation rate is usually measured in percent per year. It can also be measured in percent per month or in price doubling time.
New price y years later = old price × ( 1 + inflation 100 ) y {\displaystyle {\hbox{New price }}y{\hbox{ years later}}={\hbox{old price}}\times \left(1+{\frac {\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\right)^{y}}
Monthly inflation = 100 × ( ( 1 + inflation 100 ) 1 12 − 1 ) {\displaystyle {\hbox{Monthly inflation}}=100\times \left(\left(1+{\frac {\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\right)^{\frac {1}{12}}-1\right)}
Price doubling time = 1 log 2 ( 1 + inflation 100 ) {\displaystyle {\hbox{Price doubling time}}={\frac {1}{\log _{2}\left(1+{\frac {\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\right)}}}
Years per added zero of the price = 1 log 10 ( 1 + inflation 100 ) {\displaystyle {\hbox{Years per added zero of the price}}={\frac {1}{\log _{10}\left(1+{\frac {\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\right)}}}
Often, at redenominations, three zeroes are cut from the bills. It can be read from the table that if the (annual) inflation is for example 100%, it takes 3.32 years to produce one more zero on the price tags, or 3 × 3.32 = 9.96 years to produce three zeroes. Thus can one expect a redenomination to take place about 9.96 years after the currency was introduced. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as they usually switch to more stable foreign currencies. When measured in stable foreign currencies, prices typically remain stable. Effective capital controls and currency substitution (“dollarization”) are the orthodox solutions to ending short-term hyperinflation; however there are significant social and economic costs to these policies. Ineffective implementations of these solutions often exacerbate the situation. Many governments choose to attempt to solve structural issues without resorting to those solutions, with the goal of bringing inflation down slowly while minimizing social costs of further economic shocks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Unlike low inflation, where the process of rising prices is protracted and not generally noticeable except by studying past market prices, hyperinflation sees a rapid and continuing increase in nominal prices, the nominal cost of goods, and in the supply of currency. Typically, however, the general price level rises even more rapidly than the money supply as people try ridding themselves of the devaluing currency as quickly as possible. As this happens, the real stock of money (i.e., the amount of circulating money divided by the price level) decreases considerably.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Almost all hyperinflations have been caused by government budget deficits financed by currency creation. Hyperinflation is often associated with some stress to the government budget, such as wars or their aftermath, sociopolitical upheavals, a collapse in aggregate supply or one in export prices, or other crises that make it difficult for the government to collect tax revenue. A sharp decrease in real tax revenue coupled with a strong need to maintain government spending, together with an inability or unwillingness to borrow, can lead a country into hyperinflation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1956, Phillip Cagan wrote The Monetary Dynamics of Hyperinflation, the book often regarded as the first serious study of hyperinflation and its effects (though The Economics of Inflation by C. Bresciani-Turroni on the German hyperinflation was published in Italian in 1931). In his book, Cagan defined a hyperinflationary episode as starting in the month that the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50%, and as ending when the monthly inflation rate drops below 50% and stays that way for at least a year. Economists usually follow Cagan's description that hyperinflation occurs when the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50% (this is equivalent to a yearly rate of 12,874.63%).",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The International Accounting Standards Board has issued guidance on accounting rules in a hyperinflationary environment. It does not establish an absolute rule on when hyperinflation arises, but instead lists factors that indicate the existence of hyperinflation:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "While there can be a number of causes of high inflation, almost all hyperinflations have been caused by government budget deficits financed by currency creation. Peter Bernholz analysed 29 hyperinflations (following Cagan's definition) and concludes that at least 25 of them have been caused in this way. A necessary condition for hyperinflation is the use of paper money instead of gold or silver coins. Most hyperinflations in history, with some exceptions, such as the French hyperinflation of 1789–1796, occurred after the use of fiat currency became widespread in the late 19th century. The French hyperinflation took place after the introduction of a non-convertible paper currency, the assignat.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Monetarist theories hold that hyperinflation occurs when there is a continuing (and often accelerating) rapid increase in the amount of money that is not supported by a corresponding growth in the output of goods and services.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The increases in price that can result from rapid money creation can create a vicious circle, requiring ever growing amounts of new money creation to fund government deficits. Hence both monetary inflation and price inflation proceed at a rapid pace. Such rapidly increasing prices cause widespread unwillingness of the local population to hold the local currency as it rapidly loses its buying power. Instead, they quickly spend any money they receive, which increases the velocity of money flow; this in turn causes further acceleration in prices. This means that the increase in the price level is greater than that of the money supply. The real stock of money, M/P, decreases. Here M refers to the money stock and P to the price level.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "This results in an imbalance between the supply and demand for the money (including currency and bank deposits), causing rapid inflation. Very high inflation rates can result in a loss of confidence in the currency, similar to a bank run. Usually, the excessive money supply growth results from the government being either unable or unwilling to fully finance the government budget through taxation or borrowing, and instead it finances the government budget deficit through the printing of money.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Governments have sometimes resorted to excessively loose monetary policy, as it allows a government to devalue its debts and reduce (or avoid) a tax increase. Monetary inflation is effectively a flat tax on creditors that also redistributes proportionally to private debtors. Distributional effects of monetary inflation are complex and vary based on the situation, with some models finding regressive effects but other empirical studies progressive effects. As a form of tax, it is less overt than levied taxes and is therefore harder to understand by ordinary citizens. Inflation can obscure quantitative assessments of the true cost of living, as published price indices only look at data in retrospect, so may increase only months later. Monetary inflation can become hyperinflation if monetary authorities fail to fund increasing government expenses from taxes, government debt, cost cutting, or by other means, because either",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Theories of hyperinflation generally look for a relationship between seigniorage and the inflation tax. In both Cagan's model and the neo-classical models, a tipping point occurs when the increase in money supply or the drop in the monetary base makes it impossible for a government to improve its financial position. Thus when fiat money is printed, government obligations that are not denominated in money increase in cost by more than the value of the money created.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "From this, it might be wondered why any rational government would engage in actions that cause or continue hyperinflation. One reason for such actions is that often the alternative to hyperinflation is either depression or military defeat. The root cause is a matter of more dispute. In both classical economics and monetarism, it is always the result of the monetary authority irresponsibly borrowing money to pay all its expenses. These models focus on the unrestrained seigniorage of the monetary authority, and the gains from the inflation tax.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In neo-classical economic theory, hyperinflation is rooted in a deterioration of the monetary base, that is the confidence that there is a store of value that the currency will be able to command later. In this model, the perceived risk of holding currency rises dramatically, and sellers demand increasingly high premiums to accept the currency. This in turn leads to a greater fear that the currency will collapse, causing even higher premiums. One example of this is during periods of warfare, civil war, or intense internal conflict of other kinds: governments need to do whatever is necessary to continue fighting, since the alternative is defeat. Expenses cannot be cut significantly since the main outlay is armaments. Further, a civil war may make it difficult to raise taxes or to collect existing taxes. While in peacetime the deficit is financed by selling bonds, during a war it is typically difficult and expensive to borrow, especially if the war is going poorly for the government in question. The banking authorities, whether central or not, \"monetize\" the deficit, printing money to pay for the government's efforts to survive. The hyperinflation under the Chinese Nationalists from 1939 to 1945 is a classic example of a government printing money to pay civil war costs. By the end, currency was flown in over the Himalayas, and then old currency was flown out to be destroyed.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Hyperinflation is a complex phenomenon and one explanation may not be applicable to all cases. In both of these models, however, whether loss of confidence comes first, or central bank seigniorage, the other phase is ignited. In the case of rapid expansion of the money supply, prices rise rapidly in response to the increased supply of money relative to the supply of goods and services, and in the case of loss of confidence, the monetary authority responds to the risk premiums it has to pay by \"running the printing presses\".",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A number of hyperinflations were caused by some sort of extreme negative supply shock, sometimes but not always associated with wars or natural disasters.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Since hyperinflation is visible as a monetary effect, models of hyperinflation center on the demand for money. Economists see both a rapid increase in the money supply and an increase in the velocity of money if the (monetary) inflating is not stopped. Either one, or both of these together are the root causes of inflation and hyperinflation. A dramatic increase in the velocity of money as the cause of hyperinflation is central to the \"crisis of confidence\" model of hyperinflation, where the risk premium that sellers demand for the paper currency over the nominal value grows rapidly. The second theory is that there is first a radical increase in the amount of circulating medium, which can be called the \"monetary model\" of hyperinflation. In either model, the second effect then follows from the first—either too little confidence forcing an increase in the money supply, or too much money destroying confidence.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the confidence model, some event, or series of events, such as defeats in battle, or a run on stocks of the specie that back a currency, removes the belief that the authority issuing the money will remain solvent—whether a bank or a government. Because people do not want to hold notes that may become valueless, they want to spend them. Sellers, realizing that there is a higher risk for the currency, demand a greater and greater premium over the original value. Under this model, the method of ending hyperinflation is to change the backing of the currency, often by issuing a completely new one. War is one commonly cited cause of crisis of confidence, particularly losing in a war, as occurred during Napoleonic Vienna, and capital flight, sometimes because of \"contagion\" is another. In this view, the increase in the circulating medium is the result of the government attempting to buy time without coming to terms with the root cause of the lack of confidence itself.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the monetary model, hyperinflation is a positive feedback cycle of rapid monetary expansion. It has the same cause as all other inflation: money-issuing bodies, central or otherwise, produce currency to pay spiraling costs, often from lax fiscal policy, or the mounting costs of warfare. When business people perceive that the issuer is committed to a policy of rapid currency expansion, they mark up prices to cover the expected decay in the currency's value. The issuer must then accelerate its expansion to cover these prices, which pushes the currency value down even faster than before. According to this model the issuer cannot \"win\" and the only solution is to abruptly stop expanding the currency. Unfortunately, the end of expansion can cause a severe financial shock to those using the currency as expectations are suddenly adjusted. This policy, combined with reductions of pensions, wages, and government outlays, formed part of the Washington consensus of the 1990s.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Whatever the cause, hyperinflation involves both the supply and velocity of money. Which comes first is a matter of debate, and there may be no universal story that applies to all cases. But once the hyperinflation is established, the pattern of increasing the money stock, by whichever agencies are allowed to do so, is universal. Because this practice increases the supply of currency without any matching increase in demand for it, the price of the currency, that is the exchange rate, naturally falls relative to other currencies. Inflation becomes hyperinflation when the increase in money supply turns specific areas of pricing power into a general frenzy of spending quickly before money becomes worthless. The purchasing power of the currency drops so rapidly that holding cash for even a day is an unacceptable loss of purchasing power. As a result, no one holds currency, which increases the velocity of money, and worsens the crisis.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Because rapidly rising prices undermine the role of money as a store of value, people try to spend it on real goods or services as quickly as possible. Thus, the monetary model predicts that the velocity of money will increase as a result of an excessive increase in the money supply. At the point when money velocity and prices rapidly accelerate in a vicious circle, hyperinflation is out of control, because ordinary policy mechanisms, such as increasing reserve requirements, raising interest rates, or cutting government spending will be ineffective and be responded to by shifting away from the rapidly devalued money and towards other means of exchange.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During a period of hyperinflation, bank runs, loans for 24-hour periods, switching to alternate currencies, the return to use of gold or silver or even barter become common. Many of the people who hoard gold today expect hyperinflation, and are hedging against it by holding specie. There may also be extensive capital flight or flight to a \"hard\" currency such as the US dollar. This is sometimes met with capital controls, an idea that has swung from standard, to anathema, and back into semi-respectability. All of this constitutes an economy that is operating in an \"abnormal\" way, which may lead to decreases in real production. If so, that intensifies the hyperinflation, since it means that the amount of goods in \"too much money chasing too few goods\" formulation is also reduced. This is also part of the vicious circle of hyperinflation.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Once the vicious circle of hyperinflation has been ignited, dramatic policy means are almost always required. Simply raising interest rates is insufficient. Bolivia, for example, underwent a period of hyperinflation in 1985, where prices increased 12,000% in the space of less than a year. The government raised the price of gasoline, which it had been selling at a huge loss to quiet popular discontent, and the hyperinflation came to a halt almost immediately, since it was able to bring in hard currency by selling its oil abroad. The crisis of confidence ended, and people returned deposits to banks. The German hyperinflation (1919 – November 1923) was ended by producing a currency based on assets loaned against by banks, called the Rentenmark. Hyperinflation often ends when a civil conflict ends with one side winning.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Although wage and price controls are sometimes used to control or prevent inflation, no episode of hyperinflation has been ended by the use of price controls alone, because price controls that force merchants to sell at prices far below their restocking costs result in shortages that cause prices to rise still further.",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman said \"We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas.\"",
"title": "Causes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Hyperinflation increases stock market prices, wipes out the purchasing power of private and public savings, distorts the economy in favor of the hoarding of real assets, causes the monetary base (whether specie or hard currency) to flee the country, and makes the afflicted area anathema to investment.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "One of the most important characteristics of hyperinflation is the accelerating substitution of the inflating money by stable money—gold and silver in former times, then relatively stable foreign currencies after the breakdown of the gold or silver standards (Thiers' Law). If inflation is high enough, government regulations like heavy penalties and fines, often combined with exchange controls, cannot prevent this currency substitution. As a consequence, the inflating currency is usually heavily undervalued compared to stable foreign money in terms of purchasing power parity. So foreigners can live cheaply and buy at low prices in the countries hit by high inflation. It follows that governments that do not succeed in engineering a successful currency reform in time must finally legalize the stable foreign currencies (or, formerly, gold and silver) that threaten to fully substitute the inflating money. Otherwise, their tax revenues, including the inflation tax, will approach zero. The last episode of hyperinflation in which this process could be observed was in Zimbabwe in the first decade of the 21st century. In this case, the local money was mainly driven out by the US dollar and the South African rand.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Enactment of price controls to prevent discounting the value of paper money relative to gold, silver, hard currency, or other commodities fail to force acceptance of a paper money that lacks intrinsic value. If the entity responsible for printing a currency promotes excessive money printing, with other factors contributing a reinforcing effect, hyperinflation usually continues. Hyperinflation is generally associated with paper money, which can easily be used to increase the money supply: add more zeros to the plates and print, or even stamp old notes with new numbers. Historically, there have been numerous episodes of hyperinflation in various countries followed by a return to \"hard money\". Older economies would revert to hard currency and barter when the circulating medium became excessively devalued, generally following a \"run\" on the store of value.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Much attention on hyperinflation centers on the effect on savers whose investments become worthless. Interest rate changes often cannot keep up with hyperinflation or even high inflation, certainly with contractually fixed interest rates. For example, in the 1970s in the United Kingdom inflation reached 25% per annum, yet interest rates did not rise above 15%—and then only briefly—and many fixed interest rate loans existed. Contractually, there is often no bar to a debtor clearing his long term debt with \"hyperinflated cash\", nor could a lender simply somehow suspend the loan. Contractual \"early redemption penalties\" were (and still are) often based on a penalty of n months of interest/payment; again no real bar to paying off what had been a large loan. In interwar Germany, for example, much private and corporate debt was effectively wiped out—certainly for those holding fixed interest rate loans.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ludwig von Mises used the term \"crack-up boom\" (German: Katastrophenhausse) to describe the economic consequences of an unmitigated increasing in the base-money supply. As more and more money is provided, interest rates decline towards zero. Realizing that fiat money is losing value, investors will try to place money in assets such as real estate, stocks, even art; as these appear to represent \"real\" value. Asset prices are thus becoming inflated. This potentially spiraling process will ultimately lead to the collapse of the monetary system. The Cantillon effect says that those institutions that receive the new money first are the beneficiaries of the policy.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hyperinflation is ended by drastic remedies, such as imposing the shock therapy of slashing government expenditures or altering the currency basis. One form this may take is dollarization, the use of a foreign currency (not necessarily the U.S. dollar) as a national unit of currency. An example was dollarization in Ecuador, initiated in September 2000 in response to a 75% loss of value of the Ecuadorian sucre in early 2000. Usually the \"dollarization\" takes place in spite of all efforts of the government to prevent it by exchange controls, heavy fines and penalties. The government has thus to try to engineer a successful currency reform stabilizing the value of the money. If it does not succeed with this reform the substitution of the inflating by stable money goes on. Thus it is not surprising that there have been at least seven historical cases in which the good (foreign) money did fully drive out the use of the inflating currency. In the end, the government had to legalize the former, for otherwise its revenues would have fallen to zero.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hyperinflation has always been a traumatic experience for the people who suffer it, and the next political regime almost always enacts policies to try to prevent its recurrence. Often this means making the central bank very aggressive about maintaining price stability, as was the case with the German Bundesbank, or moving to some hard basis of currency, such as a currency board. Many governments have enacted extremely stiff wage and price controls in the wake of hyperinflation, but this does not prevent further inflation of the money supply by the central bank, and always leads to widespread shortages of consumer goods if the controls are rigidly enforced.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In countries experiencing hyperinflation, the central bank often prints money in larger and larger denominations as the smaller denomination notes become worthless. This can result in the production of unusually large denominations of banknotes, including those denominated in amounts of 1,000,000,000 or more.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "One way to avoid the use of large numbers is by declaring a new unit of currency. (As an example, instead of 10,000,000,000 dollars, a central bank might set 1 new dollar = 1,000,000,000 old dollars, so the new note would read \"10 new dollars\".) One example of this is Turkey's revaluation of the Lira on 1 January 2005, when the old Turkish lira (TRL) was converted to the New Turkish lira (TRY) at a rate of 1,000,000 old to 1 new Turkish Lira. While this does not lessen the actual value of a currency, it is called redenomination or revaluation and also occasionally happens in countries with lower inflation rates. During hyperinflation, currency inflation happens so quickly that bills reach large numbers before revaluation.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Some banknotes were stamped to indicate changes of denomination, as it would have taken too long to print new notes. By the time new notes were printed, they would be obsolete (that is, they would be of too low a denomination to be useful).",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Metallic coins were rapid casualties of hyperinflation, as the scrap value of metal enormously exceeded its face value. Massive amounts of coinage were melted down, usually illicitly, and exported for hard currency.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Governments will often try to disguise the true rate of inflation through a variety of techniques. None of these actions addresses the root causes of inflation; and if discovered, they tend to further undermine trust in the currency, causing further increases in inflation. Price controls will generally result in shortages and hoarding and extremely high demand for the controlled goods, causing disruptions of supply chains. Products available to consumers may diminish or disappear as businesses no longer find it economic to continue producing and/or distributing such goods at the legal prices, further exacerbating the shortages.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There are also issues with computerized money-handling systems. In Zimbabwe, during the hyperinflation of the Zimbabwe dollar, many automated teller machines and payment card machines struggled with arithmetic overflow errors as customers required many billions and trillions of dollars at one time.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1922, inflation in Austria reached 1,426%, and from 1914 to January 1923, the consumer price index rose by a factor of 11,836, with the highest banknote in denominations of 500,000 Kronen. After World War I, essentially all State enterprises ran at a loss, and the number of state employees in the capital, Vienna, was greater than in the earlier monarchy, even though the new republic was nearly one-eighth of the size.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Observing the Austrian response to developing hyperinflation, which included the hoarding of food and the speculation in foreign currencies, Owen S. Phillpotts, the Commercial Secretary at the British Legation in Vienna wrote: \"The Austrians are like men on a ship who cannot manage it, and are continually signalling for help. While waiting, however, most of them begin to cut rafts, each for himself, out of the sides and decks. The ship has not yet sunk despite the leaks so caused, and those who have acquired stores of wood in this way may use them to cook their food, while the more seamanlike look on cold and hungry. The population lack courage and energy as well as patriotism.\"",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Increasing hyperinflation in Bolivia has plagued, and at times crippled, its economy and currency since the 1970s. At one time in 1985, the country experienced an annual inflation rate of more than 20,000%. Fiscal and monetary reform reduced the inflation rate to single digits by the 1990s, and in 2004 Bolivia experienced a manageable 4.9% rate of inflation.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1987, the Bolivian peso was replaced by the new boliviano at a rate of one million to one (when 1 US dollar was worth 1.8–1.9 million pesos). At that time, 1 new boliviano was roughly equivalent to 1 U.S. dollar.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Brazilian hyperinflation lasted from 1985 (the year when the military dictatorship ended) to 1994, with prices rising by 184,901,570,954.39% (or 1.849×10 percent; equivalent to a tenfold increase on average a year) in that time due to the uncontrolled printing of money. There were many economic plans that tried to contain hyperinflation including zeroes cuts, price freezes and even confiscation of bank accounts.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The highest value was in March 1990, when the government inflation index reached 82.39%. Hyperinflation ended in July 1994 with the Real Plan during the government of Itamar Franco. During the period of inflation Brazil adopted a total of six different currencies, as the government constantly changed due to rapid devaluation and increase in the number of zeros.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Hyperinflation was a major factor in the collapse of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "After a brief decrease following the defeat of Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War, hyperinflation resumed in October 1945. From 1948 to 1949, near the end of the Chinese Civil War, the Republic of China went through a period of hyperinflation. In 1947, the highest denomination bill was 50,000 yuan. By mid-1948, the highest denomination was 180,000,000 yuan.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In October 1948, the Nationalist government replaced its fabi currency with the gold yuan. The gold yuan deteriorated even faster than the fabi had.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Communists gained significant legitimacy by defeating hyperinflation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Their development of state trading agencies reintegrated markets and trading networks, ultimately stabilizing prices.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "During the French Revolution and first Republic, the National Assembly issued bonds, some backed by seized church property, called assignats. Napoleon replaced them with the franc in 1803, at which time the assignats were basically worthless. Stephen D. Dillaye pointed out that one of the reasons for the failure was massive counterfeiting of the paper currency, largely through London. According to Dillaye: \"Seventeen manufacturing establishments were in full operation in London, with a force of four hundred men devoted to the production of false and forged Assignats.\"",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "By November 1922, the value in gold of money in circulation had fallen from £300 million before World War I to £20 million. The Reichsbank responded by the unlimited printing of notes, thereby accelerating the devaluation of the mark. In his report to London, Lord D'Abernon wrote: \"In the whole course of history, no dog has ever run after its own tail with the speed of the Reichsbank.\" Germany went through its worst inflation in 1923. In 1922, the highest denomination was 50,000ℳ. By 1923, the highest denomination was 100,000,000,000,000ℳ (10 marks). In December 1923 the exchange rate was 4,200,000,000,000ℳ (4.2 × 10 marks) to 1 US dollar. In 1923, the rate of inflation hit 3.25 × 10 percent per month (prices double every two days). Beginning on 20 November 1923, 1,000,000,000,000ℳ were exchanged for 1 Rentenmark, so that RM 4.2 was worth 1 US dollar, exactly the same rate the mark had in 1914.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "With the German invasion in April 1941, there was an abrupt increase in prices. This was due to psychological factors related to the fear of shortages and to the hoarding of goods. During the German and Italian Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1944), the agricultural, mineral, industrial etc. production of Greece were used to sustain the occupation forces, but also to secure provisions for the Afrika Korps. One part of these \"sales\" of provisions was settled with bilateral clearing through the German DEGRIGES and the Italian Sagic companies at very low prices. As the value of Greek exports in drachmas fell, the demand for drachmas followed suit and so did its forex rate. While shortages started due to naval blockades and hoarding, the prices of commodities soared. The other part of the \"purchases\" was settled with drachmas secured from the Bank of Greece and printed for this purpose by private printing presses. As prices soared, the Germans and Italians started requesting more and more drachmas from the Bank of Greece to offset price increases; each time prices increased, the note circulation followed suit soon afterwards. For the year starting November 1943, the inflation rate was 2.5 × 10%, the circulation was 6.28 × 10 drachmae and one gold sovereign cost 43,167 billion drachmas. The hyperinflation started subsiding immediately after the departure of the German occupation forces, but inflation rates took several years to fall below 50%.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Treaty of Trianon and political instability between 1919 and 1924 led to a major inflation of Hungary's currency. In 1921, in an attempt to stop this inflation, the national assembly of Hungary passed the Hegedüs reforms, including a 20% levy on bank deposits, but this precipitated a mistrust of banks by the public, especially the peasants, and resulted in a reduction in savings, and thus an increase in the amount of currency in circulation. Due to the reduced tax base, the government resorted to printing money, and in 1923 inflation in Hungary reached 98% per month.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Between the end of 1945 and July 1946, Hungary went through the highest inflation ever recorded. In 1944, the highest banknote value was 1,000 P. By the end of 1945, it was 10,000,000 P, and the highest value in mid-1946 was 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 P (10 pengő). A special currency, the adópengő (or tax pengő) was created for tax and postal payments. The inflation was such that the value of the adópengő was adjusted each day by radio announcement. On 1 January 1946, one adópengő equaled one pengő, but by late July, one adópengő equaled 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 P or 2×10 P (2 sextillion pengő).",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "When the pengő was replaced in August 1946 by the forint, the total value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation amounted to 1⁄1,000 of one US cent. Inflation had peaked at 1.3 × 10% per month (i.e. prices doubled every 15.6 hours). On 18 August 1946, 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 P (4×10 pengő, four hundred quadrilliard on the long scale used in Hungary, or four hundred octillion on short scale) became 1 Ft.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Malaya and Singapore were under Japanese occupation from 1942 until 1945. The Japanese issued \"banana notes\" as the official currency to replace the Straits currency issued by the British. During that time, the cost of basic necessities increased drastically. As the occupation proceeded, the Japanese authorities printed more money to fund their wartime activities, which resulted in hyperinflation and a severe depreciation in value of the banana note.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "From February to December 1942, $100 of Straits currency was worth $100 in Japanese scrip, after which the value of Japanese scrip began to erode, reaching $385 in December 1943 and $1,850 one year later. By 1 August 1945, this had inflated to $10,500, and 11 days later it had reached $95,000. After 13 August 1945, Japanese scrip had become valueless.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "North Korea has most likely experienced hyperinflation from December 2009 to mid-January 2011. Based on the price of rice, North Korea's hyperinflation peaked in mid-January 2010, but according to black market exchange-rate data, and calculations based on purchasing power parity, North Korea experienced its peak month of inflation in early March 2010. These data points are unofficial, however, and therefore must be treated with a degree of caution.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In modern history, Peru underwent a period of hyperinflation in the 1980s to the early 1990s starting with President Fernando Belaúnde's second administration, heightened during Alan García's first administration, to the beginning of Alberto Fujimori's term. 1 US dollar was worth over S/3,210,000,000. Garcia's term introduced the inti, which worsened inflation into hyperinflation. Peru's currency and economy were stabilized under Fujimori's Nuevo Sol program, which has remained Peru's currency since 1991.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Poland has gone through two episodes of hyperinflation since the country regained independence following the end of World War I, the first in 1923, the second in 1989–1990. Both events resulted in the introduction of new currencies. In 1924, the złoty replaced the original currency of post-war Poland, the mark. This currency was subsequently replaced by another of the same name in 1950. As a result of the second hyperinflation crisis, the current new złoty was introduced in 1995 (ISO code: PLN). See the article on Polish złoty for more information about the currency's history.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The newly independent Poland had been struggling with a large budget deficit since its inception in 1918 but it was in 1923 when inflation reached its peak. The exchange rate of the Polish mark (Mp) to the US dollar dropped from Mp 9.- per dollar in 1918 to Mp 6,375,000.- per dollar at the end of 1923. A new personal 'inflation tax' was introduced. The resolution of the crisis is attributed to Władysław Grabski, who became prime minister of Poland in December 1923. Having nominated an all-new government and being granted extraordinary lawmaking powers by the Sejm for a period of six months, he introduced a new currency, the złoty (\"florin\" in Polish), established a new national bank and scrapped the inflation tax, which took place throughout 1924.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The economic crisis in Poland in the 1980s was accompanied by rising inflation when new money was printed to cover a budget deficit. Although inflation was not as acute as in 1920s, it is estimated that its annual rate reached around 600% in a period of over a year spanning parts of 1989 and 1990. The economy was stabilised by the adoption of the Balcerowicz Plan in 1989, named after the main author of the reforms, minister of finance Leszek Balcerowicz. The plan was largely inspired by the previous Grabski's reforms.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Japanese government occupying the Philippines during World War II issued fiat currencies for general circulation. The Japanese-sponsored Second Philippine Republic government led by Jose P. Laurel at the same time outlawed possession of other currencies, most especially \"guerrilla money\". The fiat money's lack of value earned it the derisive nickname \"Mickey Mouse money\". Survivors of the war often tell tales of bringing suitcases or bayong (native bags made of woven coconut or buri leaf strips) overflowing with Japanese-issued notes. Early on, 75 JIM pesos could buy one duck egg. In 1944, a box of matches cost more than 100 JIM pesos.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In 1942, the highest denomination available was ₱10. Before the end of the war, because of inflation, the Japanese government was forced to issue ₱100, ₱500, and ₱1,000 notes.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "A seven-year period of uncontrollable spiralling inflation occurred in the early Soviet Union, running from the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 to the reestablishment of the gold standard with the introduction of the chervonets as part of the New Economic Policy. The inflationary crisis effectively ended in March 1924 with the introduction of the so-called \"gold ruble\" as the country's standard currency.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The early Soviet hyperinflationary period was marked by three successive redenominations of its currency, in which \"new rubles\" replaced old at the rates of 10,000:1 (1 January 1922), 100:1 (1 January 1923), and 50,000:1 (7 March 1924), respectively.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Between 1921 and 1922, inflation in the Soviet Union reached 213%.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Since the end of 2017 Turkey has had high inflation rates. It is speculated that the new elections took place frustrated because of the impending crisis to forestall. In October 2017, inflation was at 11.9%, the highest rate since July 2008. The lira fell from TL 1.503 = US$1 in 2010 to TL 23.1446 = US$1 in June 2023.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In February 2022 inflation rose to 54.4%. In March 2022, inflation was above 60%.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Venezuela's hyperinflation began in November 2016. Inflation of Venezuela's bolivar fuerte (VEF) in 2014 reached 69% and was the highest in the world. In 2015, inflation was 181%, the highest in the world and the highest in the country's history at that time, 800% in 2016, over 4,000% in 2017, and 1,698,488% in 2018, with Venezuela spiraling into hyperinflation. While the Venezuelan government \"has essentially stopped\" producing official inflation estimates as of early 2018, one estimate of the rate at that time was 5,220%, according to inflation economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Inflation has affected Venezuelans so much that in 2017, some people became video game gold farmers and could be seen playing games such as RuneScape to sell in-game currency or characters for real currency. In many cases, these gamers made more money than salaried workers in Venezuela even though they were earning just a few dollars per day. During the Christmas season of 2017, some shops would no longer use price tags since prices would inflate so quickly, so customers were required to ask staff at stores how much each item was.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The International Monetary Fund estimated in 2018 that Venezuela's inflation rate would reach 1,000,000% by the end of the year. This forecast was criticized by Steve H. Hanke, professor of applied economics at The Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. According to Hanke, the IMF had released a \"bogus forecast\" because \"no one has ever been able to accurately forecast the course or the duration of an episode of hyperinflation. But that has not stopped the IMF from offering inflation forecasts for Venezuela that have proven to be wildly inaccurate\".",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In July 2018, hyperinflation in Venezuela was sitting at 33,151%, \"the 23rd most severe episode of hyperinflation in history\".",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In April 2019, the International Monetary Fund estimated that inflation would reach 10,000,000% by the end of 2019.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In May 2019, the Central Bank of Venezuela released economic data for the first time since 2015. According to this release, the inflation of Venezuela was 274% in 2016, 863% in 2017 and 130,060% in 2018. The annualised inflation rate as of April 2019 was estimated to be 282,972.8% as of April 2019, and cumulative inflation from 2016 to April 2019 was estimated at 53,798,500%.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The new reports imply a contraction of more than half of the economy in five years, according to the Financial Times \"one of the biggest contractions in Latin American history\". According to undisclosed sources from Reuters, the release of these numbers was due to pressure from China, a Maduro ally. One of these sources claims that the disclosure of economic numbers may bring Venezuela into compliance with the IMF, making it harder to support Juan Guaidó during the presidential crisis. At the time, the IMF was not able to support the validity of the data as they had not been able to contact the authorities.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Vietnam went through a period of chaos and high inflation in the late 1980s, with inflation peaking at 774% in 1988, after the country's \"price-wage-currency\" reform package, led by then-Deputy Prime Minister Trần Phương, had failed. High inflation also occurred in the early stages of the socialist-oriented market economic reforms commonly referred to as the Đổi Mới.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Hyperinflation in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia happened before and during the period of breakup of Yugoslavia, from 1989 to 1991. In April 1992, one of its successor states, FR Yugoslavia, entered a period of hyperinflation in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that lasted until 1994. One of several regional conflicts accompanying the dissolution of Yugoslavia was the Bosnian War (1992–1995). The Belgrade government of Slobodan Milošević backed ethnic Serbian forces in the conflict, resulting in a United Nations boycott of Yugoslavia. The UN boycott collapsed an economy already weakened by regional war, with the projected monthly inflation rate accelerating to one million percent by December 1993 (prices double every 2.3 days).",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The highest denomination in 1988 was 50,000 DIN. By 1989, it was 2,000,000 DIN. In the 1990 currency reform, 1 new dinar was exchanged for 10,000 old dinars. After socialist Yugoslavia broke up, the 1992 currency reform in FR Yugoslavia led to 1 new dinar being exchanged for 10 old dinars. The highest denomination in 1992 was 50,000 DIN. By 1993, it was 10,000,000,000 DIN. In the 1993 currency reform, 1 new dinar was exchanged for 1,000,000 old dinars. Before the year was over, however, the highest denomination was 500,000,000,000 dinars. In the 1994 currency reform, 1 new dinar was exchanged for 1,000,000,000 old dinars. In another currency reform a month later, 1 novi dinar was exchanged for 13 million dinars (1 novi dinar = 1 Deutschmark at the time of exchange). The overall impact of hyperinflation was that 1 novi dinar was equal to 1 × 10 – 1.3 × 10 pre-1990 dinars. Yugoslavia's rate of inflation hit 5 × 10% cumulative inflation over the time period 1 October 1993 and 24 January 1994.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe was one of the few instances that resulted in the abandonment of the local currency. At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwe dollar (ZWD) was worth about US$1.25. Afterwards, however, rampant inflation and the collapse of the economy severely devalued the currency. Inflation was relatively steady until the early 1990s when economic disruption caused by failed land reform agreements and rampant government corruption resulted in reductions in food production and the decline of foreign investment. Several multinational companies began hoarding retail goods in warehouses in Zimbabwe and just south of the border, preventing commodities from becoming available on the market. The result was that to pay its expenditures Mugabe's government and Gideon Gono's Reserve Bank printed more and more notes with higher face values.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Hyperinflation began early in the 21st century, reaching 624% in 2004. It fell back to low triple digits before surging to a new high of 1,730% in 2006. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe revalued on 1 August 2006 at a ratio of 1,000 ZWD to each second dollar (ZWN), but year-to-year inflation rose by June 2007 to 11,000% (versus an earlier estimate of 9,000%). Larger denominations were progressively issued in 2008:",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Inflation by 16 July officially surged to 2,200,000% with some analysts estimating figures surpassing 9,000,000%. As of 22 July 2008 the value of the Zimbabwe dollar fell to approximately Z$688 billion per US$1, or Z$688 trillion in pre-August 2006 Zimbabwean dollars.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "On 1 August 2008, the Zimbabwe dollar was redenominated at the ratio of 10 ZWN to each third dollar (ZWR). On 19 August 2008, official figures announced for June estimated the inflation over 11,250,000%. Zimbabwe's annual inflation was 231,000,000% in July (prices doubling every 17.3 days). By October 2008 Zimbabwe was mired in hyperinflation with wages falling far behind inflation. In this dysfunctional economy hospitals and schools had chronic staffing problems, because many nurses and teachers could not afford bus fare to work. Most of the capital of Harare was without water because the authorities had stopped paying the bills to buy and transport the treatment chemicals. Desperate for foreign currency to keep the government functioning, Zimbabwe's central bank governor, Gideon Gono, sent runners into the streets with suitcases of Zimbabwean dollars to buy up American dollars and South African rand.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "For periods after July 2008, no official inflation statistics were released. Prof. Steve H. Hanke overcame the problem by estimating inflation rates after July 2008 and publishing the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe. Prof. Hanke's HHIZ measure indicated that the inflation peaked at an annual rate of 89.7 sextillion percent (89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000%, or 8.97×10%) in mid-November 2008. The peak monthly rate was 79.6 billion percent, which is equivalent to a 98% daily rate, or around 7×10^% yearly rate. At that rate, prices were doubling every 24.7 hours. Note that many of these figures should be considered mostly theoretical since hyperinflation did not proceed at this rate over a whole year.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "At its November 2008 peak, Zimbabwe's rate of inflation approached, but failed to surpass, Hungary's July 1946 world record. On 2 February 2009, the dollar was redenominated for the third time at the ratio of 10 ZWR to 1 ZWL, only three weeks after the Z$100 trillion banknote was issued on 16 January, but hyperinflation waned by then as official inflation rates in USD were announced and foreign transactions were legalised, and on 12 April the Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned in favour of using only foreign currencies. The overall impact of hyperinflation was US$1 = Z$10.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Ironically, following the abandonment of the ZWR and subsequent use of reserve currencies, banknotes from the hyperinflation period of the old Zimbabwe dollar began attracting international attention as collectors items, having accrued numismatic value, selling for prices many orders of magnitude higher than their old purchasing power.",
"title": "Notable hyperinflationary periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Countries have experienced periods of very high inflation, that did not reach hyperinflation, as defined as a monthly inflation rate exceeding 50% per month.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "As the first user of fiat currency, China was also the first country to experience high inflation. Paper currency was introduced during the Tang dynasty, and was generally welcomed. It maintained its value, as successive Chinese governments put in place strict controls on issuance. The convenience of paper currency for trade purposes led to strong demand for paper currency. It was only when discipline on quantity supplied broke down that inflation emerged. The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) was the first to print large amounts of fiat paper money to fund its wars, resulting in very high inflation.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "During the Crisis of the Third Century, Rome underwent high inflation caused by years of coinage devaluation.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Argentina has an economic history of very high inflation since World War II, mostly caused by excessive money supply increases. The Latin American debt crisis was caused by foreign debt held in other currencies, and exploded because the floating exchange rates depreciated the Argentinian currencies because of inflation, capital flight, and not enough foreign reserve currencies ratio.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Between 1620 and 1622 the Kreuzer fell from 1 Reichsthaler to 124 Kreuzer in end of 1619 to 1 Reichstaler to over 600 (regionally over 1000) Kreuzer in end of 1622, during the Thirty Years' War. This is a monthly inflation rate of over 20.6% (regionally over 34.4%).",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "After the Military dictatorship in Brazil ended in 1985 and its transition to democracy. Tancredo Neves dies shortly after winning the 1985 Brazilian presidential election and his Vice President José Sarney becomes president. In 1986 inflation was already at 400% annually and Sarney tried to remedy inflation with a wage freeze, price controls, and reforming the currency by dropping three zeros from it, all while tripling the money supply to fund government expenditures and public sector that was consuming 50% of GDP at the time. Bank loans had an interest rate of around 25% a month to maintain a positive real yield during inflation. In February 1987 the government defaulted on $110 billion in foreign loans, that was part of the Latin American debt crisis.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Between 1987 and 1995 the Iraqi Dinar went from an official value of 0.306 Dinars/USD (or US$3.26 per dinar, though the black market rate is thought to have been substantially lower) to 3,000 dinars/USD due to government printing of tens of trillions of dinars starting with a base of only tens of billions. That equates to approximately 315% inflation per year averaged over that eight-year period.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In spite of increased oil prices in the late 1970s (Mexico is a producer and exporter), Mexico defaulted on its external debt in 1982. As a result, the country suffered a severe case of capital flight and several years of acute inflation and peso devaluation. On 1 January 1993, Mexico created a new currency, the nuevo peso (\"new peso\", or MXN), which chopped three zeros off the old peso (One new peso was equal to 1,000 old MXP pesos).",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "After the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979 where the communist Sandinista National Liberation Front ousted the Somoza dictatorship, the economy contracted by 34 percent during that time. The Sandinistas nationalized many industries and had expansive monetary policy that started to contribute to rising inflation. Fighting with the Contras and the United States embargo against Nicaragua in May 1985 also contributed to the problem. Inflation hit 10,000% in 1988.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Between 1998 and 1999, Ecuador faced a period of economic instability that resulted from a combined banking crisis, currency crisis, and sovereign debt crisis. Severe inflation and devaluation of the Ecuadorean Sucre lead to President Jamil Mahuad announcing on 9 January 2000 that the US dollar would be adopted as the national currency.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Despite the government's efforts to curb inflation, the Sucre depreciated rapidly at the end of 1999, resulting in widespread informal use of U.S. dollars in the financial system. As a last resort to prevent hyperinflation, the government formally adopted the U.S. dollar in January 2000. The stability of the new currency was a necessary first step towards economic recovery, but the exchange rate was fixed at 25,000:1, which resulted in great losses of wealth.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In Roman Egypt, where the best documentation on pricing has survived, the price of a measure of wheat was 200 drachmae in 276 AD, and increased to more than 2,000,000 drachmae in 334 AD, roughly 1,000,000% inflation in a span of 58 years.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Although the price increased by a factor of 10,000 over 58 years, the annual rate of inflation was only 17.2% (1.4% monthly) compounded.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Romania experienced high inflation in the 1990s. The highest denomination in 1990 was 100 lei and in 1998 was 100,000 lei. By 2000 it was 500,000 lei. In early 2005 it was 1,000,000 lei. In July 2005 the lei was replaced by the new leu at 10,000 old lei = 1 new leu. Inflation in 2005 was 9%. In July 2005 the highest denomination became 500 lei (= 5,000,000 old lei).",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In the transition from the Soviet Union planned economy and price controls to a free market economy there were substantial imbalances in supply and demand. The Government increased the money supply by eighteen times by the end of 1992. A lot of corruption from Government enterprises taking up debt and getting bailed out from the government. The Federal budget deficit was 20 percent of GDP in 1992, mostly financed by increasing money supply. This resulted in an inflation rate of over 2,000% in 1992.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The Second Transnistrian ruble consisted solely of banknotes and suffered from high inflation, necessitating the issue of notes overstamped with higher denominations. 1 and sometimes 10 rubles become 10,000 rubles, 5 rubles become 50,000 and 10 rubles become 100,000 rubles. In 2000, a new ruble was introduced at a rate of 1 new ruble = 1,000,000 old rubles.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "During the Revolutionary War, when the Continental Congress authorized the printing of paper called continental currency, the monthly inflation rate reached a peak of 47% in November 1779 (Bernholz 2003: 48). These notes depreciated rapidly, giving rise to the expression \"not worth a continental\". One cause of the inflation was counterfeiting by the British, who ran a press on HMS Phoenix, moored in New York Harbor. The counterfeits were advertised and sold almost for the price of the paper they were printed on.",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "During the U.S. Civil War between January 1861 and April 1865, the Confederate States decided to finance the war by printing money. The Lerner Commodity Price Index of leading cities in the eastern Confederacy states subsequently increased from 100 to 9,200 in that time. In the final months of the Civil War, the Confederate dollar was almost worthless. Similarly, the Union government inflated its greenbacks, with the monthly rate peaking at 40% in March 1864 (Bernholz 2003: 107).",
"title": "Examples of high inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Inflation rate is usually measured in percent per year. It can also be measured in percent per month or in price doubling time.",
"title": "Units of inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "New price y years later = old price × ( 1 + inflation 100 ) y {\\displaystyle {\\hbox{New price }}y{\\hbox{ years later}}={\\hbox{old price}}\\times \\left(1+{\\frac {\\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\\right)^{y}}",
"title": "Units of inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Monthly inflation = 100 × ( ( 1 + inflation 100 ) 1 12 − 1 ) {\\displaystyle {\\hbox{Monthly inflation}}=100\\times \\left(\\left(1+{\\frac {\\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\\right)^{\\frac {1}{12}}-1\\right)}",
"title": "Units of inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Price doubling time = 1 log 2 ( 1 + inflation 100 ) {\\displaystyle {\\hbox{Price doubling time}}={\\frac {1}{\\log _{2}\\left(1+{\\frac {\\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\\right)}}}",
"title": "Units of inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Years per added zero of the price = 1 log 10 ( 1 + inflation 100 ) {\\displaystyle {\\hbox{Years per added zero of the price}}={\\frac {1}{\\log _{10}\\left(1+{\\frac {\\hbox{inflation}}{100}}\\right)}}}",
"title": "Units of inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Often, at redenominations, three zeroes are cut from the bills. It can be read from the table that if the (annual) inflation is for example 100%, it takes 3.32 years to produce one more zero on the price tags, or 3 × 3.32 = 9.96 years to produce three zeroes. Thus can one expect a redenomination to take place about 9.96 years after the currency was introduced.",
"title": "Units of inflation"
}
]
| In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as they usually switch to more stable foreign currencies. When measured in stable foreign currencies, prices typically remain stable. Effective capital controls and currency substitution (“dollarization”) are the orthodox solutions to ending short-term hyperinflation; however there are significant social and economic costs to these policies. Ineffective implementations of these solutions often exacerbate the situation. Many governments choose to attempt to solve structural issues without resorting to those solutions, with the goal of bringing inflation down slowly while minimizing social costs of further economic shocks. Unlike low inflation, where the process of rising prices is protracted and not generally noticeable except by studying past market prices, hyperinflation sees a rapid and continuing increase in nominal prices, the nominal cost of goods, and in the supply of currency. Typically, however, the general price level rises even more rapidly than the money supply as people try ridding themselves of the devaluing currency as quickly as possible. As this happens, the real stock of money decreases considerably. Almost all hyperinflations have been caused by government budget deficits financed by currency creation. Hyperinflation is often associated with some stress to the government budget, such as wars or their aftermath, sociopolitical upheavals, a collapse in aggregate supply or one in export prices, or other crises that make it difficult for the government to collect tax revenue. A sharp decrease in real tax revenue coupled with a strong need to maintain government spending, together with an inability or unwillingness to borrow, can lead a country into hyperinflation. | 2001-08-22T17:52:18Z | 2023-12-06T23:22:58Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation |
13,682 | Herbert Hoover | Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. A self-made man who became wealthy as a mining engineer, before his presidency, Hoover led the war-time Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. secretary of commerce.
Born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, Hoover grew up in Oregon. He was one of the first graduates of the new Stanford University in 1895. He took a position with a London-based mining company working in Australia and China. He rapidly became a wealthy mining engineer. In 1914, the outbreak of World War I, he organized and headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, president Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration. He became famous as his country's "food czar". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which provided food to the starving millions in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Russia. Hoover's wartime service made him a favorite of many progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 U.S. presidential election.
Hoover served as the secretary of commerce under presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Hoover was an unusually active and visible Cabinet member, becoming known as "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments." He was influential in the development of air travel and radio. He led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Hoover won the Republican nomination in the 1928 presidential election and defeated Democratic candidate Al Smith in a landslide. In 1929, Hoover assumed the presidency during a period of widespread economic stability. However, during his first year in office, the stock market crashed, signaling the onset of the Great Depression, which dominated Hoover's presidency. Hoover's response to the depression was widely seen as lackluster and he scapegoated Mexican Americans for the economic crisis. Approximately 1.5-2 million Mexican Americans were forcibly "repatriated" to Mexico in a forced migration campaign known as the Mexican Repatriation — a majority of them were born in the United States.
In the midst of the Great Depression, Hoover was decisively defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. Hoover's retirement was over 31 years long, one of the longest presidential retirements. He authored numerous works and became increasingly conservative in retirement. He strongly criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and the New Deal. In the 1940s and 1950s, public opinion of Hoover improved largely due to his service in various assignments for presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including chairing the influential Hoover Commission. Critical assessments of his presidency by historians and political scientists generally rank him as a significantly below-average president, although Hoover has received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official.
Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. His father, Jesse Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner of German, Swiss, and English ancestry. Hoover's mother, Hulda Randall Minthorn, was raised in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, before moving to Iowa in 1859. Like most other citizens of West Branch, Jesse and Hulda were Quakers. Around age two "Bertie", as he was called during that time, contracted a serious bout of croup, and was momentarily thought to have died until resuscitated by his uncle, John Minthorn. As a young child he was often referred to by his father as "my little stick in the mud" when he repeatedly got trapped in the mud crossing the unpaved street. Herbert's family figured prominently in the town's public prayer life, due almost entirely to mother Hulda's role in the church. As a child, Hoover consistently attended schools, but he did little reading on his own aside from the Bible. Hoover's father, noted by the local paper for his "pleasant, sunshiny disposition", died in 1880 at the age of 34 of a sudden heart attack. Hoover's mother died in 1884 of typhoid, leaving Hoover, his older brother, Theodore, and his younger sister, May, as orphans. Hoover lived the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover at a nearby farm.
In November 1885, Hoover was sent to Newberg, Oregon, to live with his uncle John Minthorn, a Quaker physician and businessman whose own son had died the year before. The Minthorn household was considered cultured and educational, and imparted a strong work ethic. Much like West Branch, Newberg was a frontier town settled largely by Midwestern Quakers. Minthorn ensured that Hoover received an education, but Hoover disliked the many chores assigned to him and often resented Minthorn. One observer described Hoover as "an orphan [who] seemed to be neglected in many ways". Hoover attended Friends Pacific Academy (now George Fox University), but dropped out at the age of thirteen to become an office assistant for his uncle's real estate office (Oregon Land Company) in Salem, Oregon. Though he did not attend high school, Hoover learned bookkeeping, typing, and mathematics at a night school.
Hoover was a member of the inaugural "Pioneer Class" of Stanford University, entering in 1891 despite failing all the entrance exams except mathematics. During his freshman year, he switched his major from mechanical engineering to geology after working for John Casper Branner, the chairman of Stanford's geology department. During his sophomore year, to reduce his costs, Hoover co-founded the first student housing cooperative at Stanford, "Romero Hall". Hoover was a mediocre student, and he spent much of his time working in various part-time jobs or participating in campus activities. Though he was initially shy among fellow students, Hoover won election as student treasurer and became known for his distaste for fraternities and sororities. He served as student manager of both the baseball and football teams, and helped organize the inaugural Big Game versus the University of California. During the summers before and after his senior year, Hoover interned under economic geologist Waldemar Lindgren of the United States Geological Survey; these experiences convinced Hoover to pursue a career as a mining geologist.
When Hoover graduated from Stanford in 1895, the country was in the midst of the Panic of 1893 and he initially struggled to find a job. He worked in various low-level mining jobs in the Sierra Nevada Mountains until persuading prominent mining engineer Louis Janin to hire him. After working as a mine scout for a year, Hoover was hired by Bewick, Moreing & Co. ("Bewick"), a London-based company that operated gold mines in Western Australia. He first went to Coolgardie, then the center of the Eastern Goldfields, which was actually in Western Australia, receiving a $5,000 salary (equivalent to $175,880 in 2022). Conditions were harsh in the goldfields; Hoover described the Coolgardie and Murchison rangelands on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert as a land of "black flies, red dust and white heat".
Hoover traveled constantly across the Outback to evaluate and manage the company's mines. He convinced Bewick to purchase the Sons of Gwalia gold mine, which proved to be one of the most successful mines in the region. Partly due to Hoover's efforts, the company eventually controlled approximately 50 percent of gold production in Western Australia. Hoover brought in many Italian immigrants to cut costs and counter the labour movement of the Australian miners. During his time with the mining company, Hoover became opposed to measures such as a minimum wage and workers' compensation, feeling that they were unfair to owners. Hoover's work impressed his employers, and in 1898 he was promoted to junior partner. An open feud developed between Hoover and his boss, Ernest Williams, but Bewick's leaders defused the situation by offering Hoover a compelling position in China.
Upon arriving in China, Hoover developed gold mines near Tianjin on behalf of Bewick and the Chinese-owned Chinese Engineering and Mining Company. He became deeply interested in Chinese history, but gave up on learning the language to a fluent level. He publicly warned that Chinese workers were inefficient and racially inferior. He made recommendations to improve the lot of the Chinese worker, seeking to end the practice of imposing long-term servitude contracts and to institute reforms for workers based on merit. The Boxer Rebellion broke out shortly after the Hoovers arrived in China, trapping them and numerous other foreign nationals until a multi-national military force defeated Boxer forces in the Battle of Tientsin. Fearing the imminent collapse of the Chinese government, the director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company agreed to establish a new Sino-British venture with Bewick. After they established effective control over the new Chinese mining company, Hoover became the operating partner in late 1901.
In this role, Hoover continually traveled the world on behalf of Bewick, visiting mines operated by the company on different continents. Beginning in December 1902, the company faced mounting legal and financial issues after one of the partners admitted to having fraudulently sold stock in a mine. More issues arose in 1904 after the British government formed two separate royal commissions to investigate Bewick's labor practices and financial dealings in Western Australia. After the company lost a lawsuit Hoover began looking for a way to get out of the partnership, and he sold his shares in mid-1908.
After leaving Bewick, Moreing, Hoover worked as a London-based independent mining consultant and financier. Though he had risen to prominence as a geologist and mine operator, Hoover focused much of his attention on raising money, restructuring corporate organizations, and financing new ventures. He specialized in rejuvenating troubled mining operations, taking a share of the profits in exchange for his technical and financial expertise. Hoover thought of himself and his associates as "engineering doctors to sick concerns", and he earned a reputation as a "doctor of sick mines". He made investments on every continent and had offices in San Francisco; London; New York City; Paris; Petrograd; and Mandalay, British Burma. By 1914, Hoover was a very wealthy man, with an estimated personal fortune of $4 million (equivalent to $116.86 million in 2022).
Hoover co-founded the Zinc Corporation to extract zinc near the Australian city of Broken Hill, New South Wales. The Zinc Corporation developed the froth flotation process to extract zinc from lead-silver ore and operated the world's first selective ore differential flotation plant. Hoover worked with the Burma Corporation, a British firm that produced silver, lead, and zinc in large quantities at the Namtu Bawdwin Mine. He also helped increase copper production in Kyshtym, Russia, through the use of pyritic smelting. He also agreed to manage a separate mine in the Altai Mountains that, according to Hoover, "developed probably the greatest and richest single body of ore known in the world".
In his spare time, Hoover wrote. His lectures at Columbia and Stanford universities were published in 1909 as Principles of Mining, which became a standard textbook. The book reflects his move towards progressive ideals, as Hoover came to endorse eight-hour workdays and organized labor. Hoover became deeply interested in the history of science, and he was especially drawn to the De re metallica, an influential 16th century work on mining and metallurgy by Georgius Agricola. In 1912, Hoover and his wife published the first English translation of De re metallica. Hoover also joined the board of trustees at Stanford, and led a successful campaign to appoint John Branner as the university's president.
During his senior year at Stanford, Hoover became smitten with a classmate named Lou Henry, though his financial situation precluded marriage at that time. The daughter of a banker from Monterey, California, Lou Henry decided to study geology at Stanford after attending a lecture delivered by John Branner. Immediately after earning a promotion in 1898, Hoover cabled Lou Henry, asking her to marry him. After she cabled back her acceptance of the proposal, Hoover briefly returned to the United States for their wedding. They would remain married until Lou Henry Hoover's death in 1944. Hoover was the first president to be a widower since Woodrow Wilson.
Though his Quaker upbringing strongly influenced his career, Hoover rarely attended Quaker meetings during his adult life. Hoover and his wife had two children: Herbert Hoover Jr. (born in 1903) and Allan Henry Hoover (born in 1907). The Hoover family began living in London in 1902, though they frequently traveled as part of Hoover's career. After 1916, the Hoovers began living in the United States, maintaining homes in Stanford, California, and Washington, D.C.
Hoover's elder brother Theodore also studied mining engineering at Stanford, and returned there to become dean of the engineering school. In retirement, Theodore bought a large property on the remote north coast of Santa Cruz County. The Theodore J. Hoover Natural Preserve is now part of Big Basin State Park.
World War I broke out in August 1914, pitting Germany and its allies against France and its allies. The German plan was a quick victory by marching through neutral Belgium to envelop the French Army east of Paris. That failed but the Germans did control nearly all of Belgium for the entire war. Hoover and other London-based American businessmen established a committee to organize the return of the roughly 100,000 Americans stranded in Europe. Hoover was appointed as the committee's chairman and, with the assent of Congress and the Wilson administration, took charge of the distribution of relief to Americans in Europe. Hoover later stated, "I did not realize it at the moment, but on August 3, 1914, my career was over forever. I was on the slippery road of public life." By early October 1914, Hoover's organization had distributed relief to at least 40,000 Americans.
The German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 set off a food crisis in Belgium, which relied heavily on food imports. The Germans refused to take responsibility for feeding Belgian citizens in captured territory, and the British refused to lift their blockade of German-occupied Belgium unless the U.S. government supervised Belgian food imports as a neutral party in the war. With the cooperation of the Wilson administration and the CNSA, a Belgian relief organization, Hoover established the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB). The CRB obtained and imported millions of tons of foodstuffs for the CNSA to distribute, and helped ensure that the German army did not appropriate the food. Private donations and government grants supplied the majority of its $11-million-a-month budget, and the CRB became a veritable independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads.
Hoover worked 14-hour days from London, administering the distribution of over two million tons of food to nine million war victims. In an early form of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times to meet with German authorities and persuade them to allow food shipments. He also convinced British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George to allow individuals to send money to the people of Belgium, thereby lessening workload of the CRB. At the request of the French government, the CRB began delivering supplies to the people of German-occupied Northern France in 1915. American diplomat Walter Page described Hoover as "probably the only man living who has privately (i.e., without holding office) negotiated understandings with the British, French, German, Dutch, and Belgian governments".
War upon Germany was declared in April 1917, and American food was essential to Allied victory. With the U.S. mobilizing for war, President Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration, which was charged with ensuring the nation's food needs during the war. Hoover had hoped to join the administration in some capacity since at least 1916, and he obtained the position after lobbying several members of Congress and Wilson's confidant, Edward M. House. Earning the appellation of "food czar", Hoover recruited a volunteer force of hundreds of thousands of women and deployed propaganda in movie theaters, schools, and churches. He carefully selected men to assist in the agency leadership—Alonzo Taylor (technical abilities), Robert Taft (political associations), Gifford Pinchot (agricultural influence), and Julius Barnes (business acumen).
World War I had created a global food crisis that dramatically increased food prices and caused food riots and starvation in the countries at war. Hoover's chief goal as food czar was to provide supplies to the Allied Powers, but he also sought to stabilize domestic prices and to prevent domestic shortages. Under the broad powers granted by the Food and Fuel Control Act, the Food Administration supervised food production throughout the United States, and the administration made use of its authority to buy, import, store, and sell food. Determined to avoid rationing, Hoover established set days for people to avoid eating specified foods and save them for soldiers' rations: meatless Mondays, wheatless Wednesdays, and "when in doubt, eat potatoes". These policies were dubbed "Hooverizing" by government publicists, in spite of Hoover's continual orders that publicity should not mention him by name. The Food Administration shipped 23 million metric tons of food to the Allied Powers, preventing their collapse and earning Hoover great acclaim. As head of the Food Administration, Hoover gained a following in the United States, especially among progressives who saw in Hoover an expert administrator and symbol of efficiency. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society during his tenure.
World War I came to an end in November 1918, but Europe continued to face a critical food situation; Hoover estimated that as many as 400 million people faced the possibility of starvation. The United States Food Administration became the American Relief Administration (ARA), and Hoover was charged with providing food to Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to providing relief, the ARA rebuilt infrastructure in an effort to rejuvenate the economy of Europe. Throughout the Paris Peace Conference, Hoover served as a close adviser to President Wilson, and he largely shared Wilson's goals of establishing the League of Nations, settling borders on the basis of self-determination, and refraining from inflicting a harsh punishment on the defeated Central Powers. The following year, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace that if Hoover's realism, "knowledge, magnanimity and disinterestedness" had found wider play in the councils of Paris, the world would have had "the Good Peace". After U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in mid-1919, Hoover transformed the ARA into a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors. He also established the European Children's Fund, which provided relief to fifteen million children across fourteen countries.
Despite the opposition of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republicans, Hoover provided aid to the defeated German nation after the war, as well as relief to famine-stricken Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Hoover condemned the Bolsheviks, but warned President Wilson against an intervention in the Russian Civil War, as he viewed the White Russian forces as little better than the Bolsheviks and feared the possibility of a protracted U.S. involvement. The Russian famine of 1921–22 claimed six million people, but the intervention of the ARA likely saved millions of lives. When asked if he was not helping Bolshevism by providing relief, Hoover stated, "twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!" Reflecting the gratitude of many Europeans, in July 1922, Soviet author Maxim Gorky told Hoover that "your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death".
In 1919, Hoover established the Hoover War Collection at Stanford University. He donated all the files of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the U.S. Food Administration, and the American Relief Administration, and pledged $50,000 as an endowment (equivalent to $843,954 in 2022). Scholars were sent to Europe to collect pamphlets, society publications, government documents, newspapers, posters, proclamations, and other ephemeral materials related to the war and the revolutions that followed it. The collection was renamed the Hoover War Library in 1922 and is now known as the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. During the post-war period, Hoover also served as the president of the Federated American Engineering Societies.
Hoover had been little known among the American public before 1914, but his service in the Wilson administration established him as a contender in the 1920 presidential election. Hoover's wartime push for higher taxes, criticism of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's actions during the First Red Scare, and his advocacy for measures such as the minimum wage, forty-eight-hour workweek, and elimination of child labor made him appealing to progressives of both parties. Despite his service in the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson, Hoover had never been closely affiliated with either the Democrats or the Republicans. He initially sought to avoid committing to any party in the 1920 election, hoping that either of the two major parties would draft him for president at their national conventions. In March 1920, he changed strategy and declared himself a Republican; he was motivated in large part by the belief that the Democrats had little chance of winning. Despite his national renown, Hoover's service in the Wilson administration had alienated farmers and the conservative Old Guard of the GOP, and his presidential candidacy fizzled out after his defeat in the California primary by favorite son Hiram Johnson. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Warren G. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate after the convention became deadlocked between supporters of Johnson, Leonard Wood, and Frank Orren Lowden. Hoover backed Harding's successful campaign in the general election, and he began laying the groundwork for a future presidential run by building a base of strong supporters in the Republican Party.
After his election as president in 1920, Harding rewarded Hoover for his support, offering to appoint him as either Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Commerce. Secretary of Commerce was considered a minor Cabinet post, with limited and vaguely defined responsibilities, but Hoover decided to accept the position. Hoover's progressive stances, continuing support for the League of Nations, and recent conversion to the Republican Party aroused opposition to his appointment from many Senate Republicans. To overcome this opposition, Harding paired Hoover's nomination with that of conservative favorite Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury, and the nominations of both Hoover and Mellon were confirmed by the Senate. Hoover would serve as Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1929, serving under Harding and, after Harding's death in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge. While some of the most prominent members of the Harding administration, including Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, were implicated in major scandals, Hoover emerged largely unscathed from investigations into the Harding administration.
Hoover envisioned the Commerce Department as the hub of the nation's growth and stability. His experience mobilizing the war-time economy convinced him that the federal government could promote efficiency by eliminating waste, increasing production, encouraging the adoption of data-based practices, investing in infrastructure, and conserving natural resources. Contemporaries described Hoover's approach as a "third alternative" between "unrestrained capitalism" and socialism, which was becoming increasingly popular in Europe. Hoover sought to foster a balance among labor, capital, and the government, and for this, he has been variously labeled a corporatist or an associationalist. A high priority was economic diplomacy, including promoting the growth of exports, as well as protection against monopolistic practices of foreign governments, especially regarding rubber and coffee.
Hoover demanded, and received, authority to coordinate economic affairs throughout the government. He created many sub-departments and committees, overseeing and regulating everything from manufacturing statistics to air travel. In some instances he "seized" control of responsibilities from other Cabinet departments when he deemed that they were not carrying out their responsibilities well; some began referring to him as the "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments". In response to the Depression of 1920–21, he convinced Harding to assemble a presidential commission on unemployment, which encouraged local governments to engage in countercyclical infrastructure spending. He endorsed much of Mellon's tax reduction program, but favored a more progressive tax system and opposed the treasury secretary's efforts to eliminate the estate tax.
Between 1923 and 1929, the number of families with radios grew from 300,000 to 10 million, and Hoover's tenure as Secretary of Commerce heavily influenced radio use in the United States. In the early and mid-1920s, Hoover's radio conferences played a key role in the organization, development, and regulation of radio broadcasting. Hoover also helped pass the Radio Act of 1927, which allowed the government to intervene and abolish radio stations that were deemed "non-useful" to the public. Hoover's attempts at regulating radio were not supported by all congressmen, and he received much opposition from the Senate and from radio station owners.
Hoover was also influential in the early development of air travel, and he sought to create a thriving private industry boosted by indirect government subsidies. He encouraged the development of emergency landing fields, required all runways to be equipped with lights and radio beams, and encouraged farmers to make use of planes for crop dusting. He also established the federal government's power to inspect planes and license pilots, setting a precedent for the later Federal Aviation Administration.
As Commerce Secretary, Hoover hosted national conferences on street traffic collectively known as the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety. Hoover's chief objective was to address the growing casualty toll of traffic accidents, but the scope of the conferences grew and soon embraced motor vehicle standards, rules of the road, and urban traffic control. He left the invited interest groups to negotiate agreements among themselves, which were then presented for adoption by states and localities. Because automotive trade associations were the best organized, many of the positions taken by the conferences reflected their interests. The conferences issued a model Uniform Vehicle Code for adoption by the states and a Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance for adoption by cities. Both were widely influential, promoting greater uniformity between jurisdictions and tending to promote the automobile's priority in city streets.
Phillips Payson O'Brien argues that Hoover had a Britain problem. He had spent so many years living in Britain and Australia, as an employee of British companies, there was a risk that he would be labeled a British tool. There were three solutions, all of which he tried in close collaboration with the media, which greatly admired him. First came the image of the dispassionate scientist, emotionally uninvolved but always committed to finding and implementing the best possible solution. The second solution was to gain the reputation of a humanitarian, deeply concerned with the world's troubles, such as famine in Belgium, as well as specific American problems which he had solved as food commissioner during the world war. The third solution to was to fall back on that old tactic of twisting the British tail. He employed that solution in 1925–1926 in the worldwide rubber crisis. The American auto industry consumed 70% of the world's output, but British investors controlled much of the supply. Their plan was to drastically cut back on output from British Malaya, which had the effect of tripling rubber prices. Hoover energetically gave a series of speeches and interviews denouncing the monopolistic practice, and demanding that it be ended. The American State Department wanted no such crisis and compromised the issue in 1926. By then Hoover had solved his image problem, and during his 1928 campaign he successfully squelched attacks that alleged he was too close to British interests.
With the goal of encouraging wise business investments, Hoover made the Commerce Department a clearinghouse of information. He recruited numerous academics from various fields and tasked them with publishing reports on different aspects of the economy, including steel production and films. To eliminate waste, he encouraged standardization of products like automobile tires and baby bottle nipples. Other efforts at eliminating waste included reducing labor losses from trade disputes and seasonal fluctuations, reducing industrial losses from accident and injury, and reducing the amount of crude oil spilled during extraction and shipping. He promoted international trade by opening overseas offices to advise businessmen. Hoover was especially eager to promote Hollywood films overseas. His "Own Your Own Home" campaign was a collaboration to promote ownership of single-family dwellings, with groups such as the Better Houses in America movement, the Architects' Small House Service Bureau, and the Home Modernizing Bureau. He worked with bankers and the savings and loan industry to promote the new long-term home mortgage, which dramatically stimulated home construction. Other accomplishments included winning the agreement of U.S. Steel to adopt an eight-hour workday, and the fostering of the Colorado River Compact, a water rights compact among Southwestern states.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke the banks and levees of the lower Mississippi River in early 1927, resulting in the flooding of millions of acres and leaving 1.5 million people displaced from their homes. Although disaster response did not fall under the duties of the Commerce Department, the governors of six states along the Mississippi River specifically asked President Coolidge to appoint Hoover to coordinate the response to the flood. Believing that disaster response was not the domain of the federal government, Coolidge initially refused to become involved, but he eventually acceded to political pressure and appointed Hoover to chair a special committee to help the region. Hoover established over one hundred tent cities and a fleet of more than six hundred vessels, and raised $17 million (equivalent to $286.39 million in 2022). In large part due to his leadership during the flood crisis, by 1928, Hoover had begun to overshadow President Coolidge himself. Though Hoover received wide acclaim for his role in the crisis, he ordered the suppression of reports of mistreatment of African Americans in refugee camps. He did so with the cooperation of African-American leader Robert Russa Moton, who was promised unprecedented influence once Hoover became president.
Hoover quietly built up support for a future presidential bid throughout the 1920s, but he carefully avoided alienating Coolidge, who possibly could have run for another term in the 1928 presidential election. Along with the rest of the nation, he was surprised when Coolidge announced in August 1927 that he would not seek another term. With the impending retirement of Coolidge, Hoover immediately emerged as the front-runner for the 1928 Republican nomination, and he quickly put together a strong campaign team led by Hubert Work, Will H. Hays, and Reed Smoot. Coolidge was unwilling to anoint Hoover as his successor; on one occasion he remarked that, "for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad". Despite his lukewarm feelings towards Hoover, Coolidge had no desire to split the party by publicly opposing the popular Commerce Secretary's candidacy.
Many wary Republican leaders cast about for an alternative candidate, such as Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon or former secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes. However, Hughes and Mellon declined to run, and other potential contenders like Frank Orren Lowden and Vice President Charles G. Dawes failed to garner widespread support. Hoover won the presidential nomination on the first ballot of the 1928 Republican National Convention. Convention delegates considered re-nominating Vice President Charles Dawes to be Hoover's running mate, but Coolidge, who hated Dawes, remarked that this would be "a personal affront" to him. The convention instead selected Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas. Hoover accepted the nomination at Stanford Stadium, telling a huge crowd that he would continue the policies of the Harding and Coolidge administrations. The Democrats nominated New York governor Al Smith, who became the first Catholic major party nominee for president.
Hoover centered his campaign around the Republican record of peace and prosperity, as well as his own reputation as a successful engineer and public official. Averse to giving political speeches, Hoover largely stayed out of the fray and left the campaigning to Curtis and other Republicans. Smith was more charismatic and gregarious than Hoover, but his campaign was damaged by anti-Catholicism and his overt opposition to Prohibition. Hoover had never been a strong proponent of Prohibition, but he accepted the Republican Party's plank in favor of it and issued an ambivalent statement calling Prohibition "a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose". In the South, Hoover and the national party pursued a "lily-white" strategy, removing black Republicans from leadership positions in an attempt to curry favor with white Southerners.
Hoover maintained polling leads throughout the 1928 campaign, and he decisively defeated Smith on election day, taking 58 percent of the popular vote and 444 of the 531 electoral votes. Historians agree that Hoover's national reputation and the booming economy, combined with deep splits in the Democratic Party over religion and Prohibition, guaranteed his landslide victory. Hoover's appeal to Southern white voters succeeded in cracking the "Solid South", and he won five Southern states. Hoover's victory was positively received by newspapers; one wrote that Hoover would "drive so forcefully at the tasks now before the nation that the end of his eight years as president will find us looking back on an era of prodigious achievement".
Hoover's detractors wondered why he did not do anything to reapportion congress after the 1920 United States Census which saw an increase in urban and immigrant populations. The 1920 Census was the first and only Decennial Census where the results were not used to reapportion Congress, which ultimately influenced the 1928 Electoral College and impacted the Presidential Election.
Hoover saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by encouraging public-private cooperation—what he termed "volunteerism". He tended to oppose governmental coercion or intervention, as he thought they infringed on American ideals of individualism and self-reliance. The first major bill that he signed, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, established the Federal Farm Board in order to stabilize farm prices. Hoover made extensive use of commissions to study issues and propose solutions, and many of those commissions were sponsored by private donors rather than by the government. One of the commissions started by Hoover, the Research Committee on Social Trends, was tasked with surveying the entirety of American society. He appointed a Cabinet consisting largely of wealthy, business-oriented conservatives, including Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. Lou Henry Hoover was an activist First Lady. She typified the new woman of the post–World War I era: intelligent, robust, and aware of multiple female possibilities.
On taking office, Hoover said that "given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation". Having seen the fruits of prosperity brought by technological progress, many shared Hoover's optimism, and the already bullish stock market climbed even higher on Hoover's accession. This optimism concealed several threats to sustained U.S. economic growth, including a persistent farm crisis, a saturation of consumer goods like automobiles, and growing income inequality. Most dangerous of all to the economy was excessive speculation that had raised stock prices far beyond their value. Some regulators and bankers had warned Coolidge and Hoover that a failure to curb speculation would lead to "one of the greatest financial catastrophes that this country has ever seen," but both presidents were reluctant to become involved with the workings of the Federal Reserve System, which regulated banks.
In late October 1929, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred, and the worldwide economy began to spiral downward into the Great Depression. The causes of the Great Depression remain a matter of debate, but Hoover viewed a lack of confidence in the financial system as the fundamental economic problem facing the nation. He sought to avoid direct federal intervention, believing that the best way to bolster the economy was through the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads. He also feared that allowing individuals on the "dole" would permanently weaken the country. Instead, Hoover strongly believed that local governments and private giving should address the needs of individuals.
Though he attempted to put a positive spin on Black Tuesday, Hoover moved quickly to address the stock market collapse. In the days following Black Tuesday, Hoover gathered business and labor leaders, asking them to avoid wage cuts and work stoppages while the country faced what he believed would be a short recession similar to the Depression of 1920–21. Hoover also convinced railroads and public utilities to increase spending on construction and maintenance, and the Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates. In early 1930, Hoover acquired from Congress an additional $100 million to continue the Federal Farm Board lending and purchasing policies. These actions were collectively designed to prevent a cycle of deflation and provide a fiscal stimulus. At the same time, Hoover opposed congressional proposals to provide federal relief to the unemployed, as he believed that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments and philanthropic organizations.
Hoover had taken office hoping to raise agricultural tariffs in order to help farmers reeling from the farm crisis of the 1920s, but his attempt to raise agricultural tariffs became connected with a bill that broadly raised tariffs. Hoover refused to become closely involved in the congressional debate over the tariff, and Congress produced a tariff bill that raised rates for many goods. Despite the widespread unpopularity of the bill, Hoover felt that he could not reject the main legislative accomplishment of the Republican-controlled 71st Congress. Over the objection of many economists, Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law in June 1930. Canada, France, and other nations retaliated by raising tariffs, resulting in a contraction of international trade and a worsening of the economy. Progressive Republicans such as Senator William E. Borah of Idaho were outraged when Hoover signed the tariff act, and Hoover's relations with that wing of the party never recovered.
By the end of 1930, the national unemployment rate had reached 11.9 percent, but it was not yet clear to most Americans that the economic downturn would be worse than the Depression of 1920–21. A series of bank failures in late 1930 heralded a larger collapse of the economy in 1931. While other countries left the gold standard, Hoover refused to abandon it; he derided any other monetary system as "collectivism". Hoover viewed the weak European economy as a major cause of economic troubles in the United States. In response to the collapse of the German economy, Hoover marshaled congressional support behind a one-year moratorium on European war debts. The Hoover Moratorium was warmly received in Europe and the United States, but Germany remained on the brink of defaulting on its loans. As the worldwide economy worsened, democratic governments fell; in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler assumed power and dismantled the Weimar Republic.
By mid-1931, the unemployment rate had reached 15 percent, giving rise to growing fears that the country was experiencing a depression far worse than recent economic downturns. A reserved man with a fear of public speaking, Hoover allowed his opponents in the Democratic Party to define him as cold, incompetent, reactionary, and out-of-touch. Hoover's opponents developed defamatory epithets to discredit him, such as "Hooverville" (the shanty towns and homeless encampments), "Hoover leather" (cardboard used to cover holes in the soles of shoes), and "Hoover blanket" (old newspaper used to cover oneself from the cold). While Hoover continued to resist direct federal relief efforts, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York launched the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to provide aid to the unemployed. Democrats positioned the program as a kinder alternative to Hoover's alleged apathy towards the unemployed, despite Hoover's belief that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments.
The economy continued to worsen, with unemployment rates nearing 23 percent in early 1932, and Hoover finally heeded calls for more direct federal intervention. In January 1932, he convinced Congress to authorize the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which would provide government-secured loans to financial institutions, railroads, and local governments. The RFC saved numerous businesses from failure, but it failed to stimulate commercial lending as much as Hoover had hoped, partly because it was run by conservative bankers unwilling to make riskier loans. The same month the RFC was established, Hoover signed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, establishing 12 district banks overseen by a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in a manner similar to the Federal Reserve System. He also helped arrange passage of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1932, emergency banking legislation designed to expand banking credit by expanding the collateral on which Federal Reserve banks were authorized to lend. As these measures failed to stem the economic crisis, Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, a $2 billion public works bill, in July 1932.
After a decade of budget surpluses, the federal government experienced a budget deficit in 1931. Though some economists, like William Trufant Foster, favored deficit spending to address the Great Depression, most politicians and economists believed in the necessity of keeping a balanced budget. In late 1931, Hoover proposed a tax plan to increase tax revenue by 30 percent, resulting in the passage of the Revenue Act of 1932. The act increased taxes across the board, rolling back much of the tax cut reduction program Mellon had presided over during the 1920s. Top earners were taxed at 63 percent on their net income, the highest rate since the early 1920s. The act also doubled the top estate tax rate, cut personal income tax exemptions, eliminated the corporate income tax exemption, and raised corporate tax rates. Despite the passage of the Revenue Act, the federal government continued to run a budget deficit.
Hoover seldom mentioned civil rights while he was president. He believed that African Americans and other races could improve themselves with education and individual initiative. Hoover appointed more African Americans to federal positions than Harding and Coolidge combined, but many African-American leaders condemned various aspects of the Hoover administration, including Hoover's unwillingness to push for a federal anti-lynching law. Hoover also continued to pursue the lily-white strategy, removing African Americans from positions of leadership in the Republican Party in an attempt to end the Democratic Party's dominance in the South. Though Robert Moton and some other black leaders accepted the lily-white strategy as a temporary measure, most African-American leaders were outraged. Hoover further alienated black leaders by nominating conservative Southern judge John J. Parker to the Supreme Court; Parker's nomination ultimately failed in the Senate due to opposition from the NAACP and organized labor. Many black voters switched to the Democratic Party in the 1932 election, and African Americans would later become an important part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition.
As part of his efforts to limit unemployment, Hoover sought to cut immigration to the United States, and in 1930 he promulgated an executive order requiring individuals to have employment before migrating to the United States. The Hoover Administration began a campaign to prosecute illegal immigrants in the United States, which most strongly affected Mexican Americans, especially those living in Southern California. Many of the deportations were overseen by state and local authorities who acted on the encouragement of the Hoover Administration. During the 1930s, approximately one million Mexican Americans were forcibly "repatriated" to Mexico; approximately sixty percent of those deported were birthright citizens. According to legal professor Kevin R. Johnson, the repatriation campaign meets the modern legal standards of ethnic cleansing, as it involved the forced removal of a racial minority by government actors.
Hoover reorganized the Bureau of Indian Affairs to limit exploitation of Native Americans.
On taking office, Hoover urged Americans to obey the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, which had established Prohibition across the United States. To make public policy recommendations regarding Prohibition, he created the Wickersham Commission. Hoover had hoped that the commission's public report would buttress his stance in favor of Prohibition, but the report criticized the enforcement of the Volstead Act and noted the growing public opposition to Prohibition. After the Wickersham Report was published in 1931, Hoover rejected the advice of some of his closest allies and refused to endorse any revision of the Volstead Act or the Eighteenth Amendment, as he feared doing so would undermine his support among Prohibition advocates. As public opinion increasingly turned against Prohibition, more and more people flouted the law, and a grassroots movement began working in earnest for Prohibition's repeal. In January 1933, a constitutional amendment repealing the Eighteenth Amendment was approved by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification. By December 1933, it had been ratified by the requisite number of states to become the Twenty-first Amendment.
According to Leuchtenburg, Hoover was "the last American president to take office with no conspicuous need to pay attention to the rest of the world". Nevertheless, during Hoover's term, the world order established in the immediate aftermath of World War I began to crumble. As president, Hoover largely made good on his pledge made prior to assuming office not to interfere in Latin America's internal affairs. In 1930, he released the Clark Memorandum, a rejection of the Roosevelt Corollary and a move towards non-interventionism in Latin America. Hoover did not completely refrain from the use of the military in Latin American affairs; he thrice threatened intervention in the Dominican Republic, and he sent warships to El Salvador to support the government against a left-wing revolution. Notwithstanding those actions, he wound down the Banana Wars, ending the occupation of Nicaragua and nearly bringing an end to the occupation of Haiti.
Hoover placed a priority on disarmament, which he hoped would allow the United States to shift money from the military to domestic needs. Hoover and Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson focused on extending the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which sought to prevent a naval arms race. As a result of Hoover's efforts, the United States and other major naval powers signed the 1930 London Naval Treaty. The treaty represented the first time that the naval powers had agreed to cap their tonnage of auxiliary vessels, as previous agreements had only affected capital ships.
At the 1932 World Disarmament Conference, Hoover urged further cutbacks in armaments and the outlawing of tanks and bombers, but his proposals were not adopted.
In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, defeating the Republic of China's National Revolutionary Army and establishing Manchukuo, a puppet state. The Hoover administration deplored the invasion, but also sought to avoid antagonizing the Japanese, fearing that taking too strong a stand would weaken the moderate forces in the Japanese government and alienate a potential ally against the Soviet Union, which he saw as a much greater threat. In response to the Japanese invasion, Hoover and Secretary of State Stimson outlined the Stimson Doctrine, which held that the United States would not recognize territories gained by force.
Thousands of World War I veterans and their families demonstrated and camped out in Washington, DC, during June 1932, calling for immediate payment of bonuses that had been promised by the World War Adjusted Compensation Act in 1924; the terms of the act called for payment of the bonuses in 1945. Although offered money by Congress to return home, some members of the "Bonus Army" remained. Washington police attempted to disperse the demonstrators, but they were outnumbered and unsuccessful. Shots were fired by the police in a futile attempt to attain order, and two protesters were killed while many officers were injured. Hoover sent U.S. Army forces led by General Douglas MacArthur to the protests. MacArthur, believing he was fighting a Communist revolution, chose to clear out the camp with military force. Though Hoover had not ordered MacArthur's clearing out of the protesters, he endorsed it after the fact. The incident proved embarrassing for the Hoover administration and hurt his bid for re-election.
By mid-1931 few observers thought that Hoover had much hope of winning a second term in the midst of the ongoing economic crisis. The Republican expectations were so bleak that Hoover faced no serious opposition for re-nomination at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Coolidge and other prominent Republicans all passed on the opportunity to challenge Hoover. Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, defeating the 1928 Democratic nominee, Al Smith. The Democrats attacked Hoover as the cause of the Great Depression, and for being indifferent to the suffering of millions. As Governor of New York, Roosevelt had called on the New York legislature to provide aid for the needy, establishing Roosevelt's reputation for being more favorable toward government interventionism during the economic crisis. The Democratic Party, including Al Smith and other national leaders, coalesced behind Roosevelt, while progressive Republicans like George Norris and Robert La Follette Jr. deserted Hoover. Prohibition was increasingly unpopular and wets offered the argument that states and localities needed the tax money. Hoover proposed a new constitutional amendment that was vague on particulars. Roosevelt's platform promised repeal of the 18th Amendment.
Hoover originally planned to make only one or two major speeches and to leave the rest of the campaigning to proxies, as sitting presidents had traditionally done. However, encouraged by Republican pleas and outraged by Democratic claims, Hoover entered the public fray. In his nine major radio addresses Hoover primarily defended his administration and his philosophy of government, urging voters to hold to the "foundations of experience" and reject the notion that government interventionism could save the country from the Depression. In his campaign trips around the country, Hoover was faced with perhaps the most hostile crowds ever seen by a sitting president. Besides having his train and motorcades pelted with eggs and rotten fruit, he was often heckled while speaking, and on several occasions, the Secret Service halted attempts to hurt Hoover, including capturing one man nearing Hoover carrying sticks of dynamite, and another already having removed several spikes from the rails in front of the president's train. Hoover's attempts to vindicate his administration fell on deaf ears, as much of the public blamed his administration for the depression. In the electoral vote, Hoover lost 59–472, carrying six states. Hoover won 39.6 percent of the popular vote, a plunge of 18.6 percentage points from his result in the 1928 election.
Hoover departed from Washington in March 1933, bitter at his election loss and continuing unpopularity. As Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, and Taft had all died during the 1920s or early 1930s and Roosevelt died in office, Hoover was the sole living former president from 1933 to 1953. He and his wife lived in Palo Alto until her death in 1944, at which point Hoover began to live permanently at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly self-identified as a conservative. He closely followed national events after leaving public office, becoming a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. In response to continued attacks on his character and presidency, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including The Challenge to Liberty (1934), which harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover described the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Administration as "fascistic", and he called the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".
Only 58 when he left office, Hoover held out hope for another term as president throughout the 1930s. At the 1936 Republican National Convention, Hoover's speech attacking the New Deal was well received, but the nomination went to Kansas governor Alf Landon. In the general election, Hoover delivered numerous well-publicized speeches on behalf of Landon, but Landon was defeated by Roosevelt. Though Hoover was eager to oppose Roosevelt at every turn, Senator Arthur Vandenberg and other Republicans urged the still-unpopular Hoover to remain out of the fray during the debate over Roosevelt's proposed Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. At the 1940 Republican National Convention, he again hoped for the presidential nomination, but it went to the internationalist Wendell Willkie, who lost to Roosevelt in the general election. Hoover remained the latest president to run for re-election after leaving office until 2022 when Donald Trump, following his win in 2016 and loss in 2020, announced his bit for 2024 presidential election.
During a 1938 trip to Europe, Hoover met with Adolf Hitler and stayed at Hermann Göring's hunting lodge. He expressed dismay at the persecution of Jews in Germany and believed that Hitler was mad, but did not present a threat to the U.S. Instead, Hoover believed that Roosevelt posed the biggest threat to peace, holding that Roosevelt's policies provoked Japan and discouraged France and the United Kingdom from reaching an "accommodation" with Germany. After the September 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany, Hoover opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, including the Lend-Lease policy. He was active in the isolationist America First Committee. He rejected Roosevelt's offers to help coordinate relief in Europe, but, with the help of old friends from the CRB, helped establish the Commission for Polish Relief. After the beginning of the occupation of Belgium in 1940, Hoover provided aid for Belgian civilians, though this aid was described as unnecessary by German broadcasts.
In December 1939, sympathetic Americans led by Hoover formed the Finnish Relief Fund to donate money to aid Finnish civilians and refugees after the Soviet Union had started the Winter War by attacking Finland, which had outraged Americans. By the end of January, it had already sent more than two million dollars to the Finns.
During a radio broadcast on June 29, 1941, one week after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Hoover disparaged any "tacit alliance" between the U.S. and the USSR, stating, "if we join the war and Stalin wins, we have aided him to impose more communism on Europe and the world... War alongside Stalin to impose freedom is more than a travesty. It is a tragedy." Much to his frustration, Hoover was not called upon to serve after the United States entered World War II due to his differences with Roosevelt and his continuing unpopularity. He did not pursue the presidential nomination at the 1944 Republican National Convention, and, at the request of Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, refrained from campaigning during the general election. In 1945, Hoover advised President Harry S. Truman to drop the United States' demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan because of the high projected casualties of the planned invasion of Japan, although Hoover was unaware of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.
Following World War II, Hoover befriended President Truman despite their ideological differences. Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman selected the former president to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Rome, Italy to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover produced a number of reports critical of U.S. occupation policy. He stated in one report that "there is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.' It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it." On Hoover's initiative, a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones of Germany was begun on April 14, 1947; the program served 3,500,000 children.
Even more important, in 1947 Truman appointed Hoover to lead the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government a new high level study. Truman accepted some of the recommendations of the "Hoover Commission" for eliminating waste, fraud, and inefficiency, consolidating agencies, and strengthening White House control of policy. Though Hoover had opposed Roosevelt's concentration of power in the 1930s, he believed that a stronger presidency was required with the advent of the Atomic Age. During the 1948 presidential election, Hoover supported Republican nominee Thomas Dewey's unsuccessful campaign against Truman, but he remained on good terms with Truman. Hoover favored the United Nations in principle, but he opposed granting membership to the Soviet Union and other Communist states. He viewed the Soviet Union to be as morally repugnant as Nazi Germany and supported the efforts of Richard Nixon and others to expose Communists in the United States.
In 1949, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey offered Hoover the Senate seat vacated by Robert F. Wagner. It was a matter of being senator for only two months and he declined.
Hoover backed conservative leader Robert A. Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention, but the party's presidential nomination instead went to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went on to win the 1952 election. Though Eisenhower appointed Hoover to another presidential commission, Hoover disliked Eisenhower, faulting the latter's failure to roll back the New Deal. Hoover's public work helped to rehabilitate his reputation, as did his use of self-deprecating humor; he occasionally remarked that "I am the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him." In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension (equivalent to $253,576 in 2022) to each former president. Hoover took the pension even though he did not need the money, possibly to avoid embarrassing Truman, whose allegedly precarious financial status played a role in the law's enactment. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy offered Hoover various positions; Hoover declined the offers but defended Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs invasion and was personally distraught by Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Hoover wrote several books during his retirement, including The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, in which he strongly defended Wilson's actions at the Paris Peace Conference. In 1944, he began working on Freedom Betrayed, which he often referred to as his "magnum opus". In Freedom Betrayed, Hoover strongly critiques Roosevelt's foreign policy, especially Roosevelt's decision to recognize the Soviet Union in order to provide aid to that country during World War II. The book was published in 2012 after being edited by historian George H. Nash.
Hoover faced three major illnesses during the last two years of his life, including an August 1962 operation in which a growth on his large intestine was removed. He died in New York City on October 20, 1964, following massive internal bleeding. Though Hoover's last spoken words are unknown, his last-known written words were a get-well message to his friend Harry Truman, six days before his death, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom: "Bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents for as you may recall a bathtub rose up and fractured my vertebrae when I was in Venezuela on your world famine mission in 1946. My warmest sympathy and best wishes for your recovery." Two months earlier, on August 10, Hoover reached the age of 90, only the second U.S. president (after John Adams) to do so. When asked how he felt on reaching the milestone, Hoover replied, "Too old." At the time of his death, Hoover had been out of office for over 31 years (11,553 days all together). This was the longest retirement in presidential history until Jimmy Carter broke that record in September 2012.
Hoover was honored with a state funeral in which he lay in state in the United States Capitol rotunda. President Lyndon Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson attended, along with former presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Then, on October 25, he was buried in West Branch, Iowa, near his presidential library and birthplace on the grounds of the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. Afterwards, Hoover's wife, Lou Henry Hoover, who had been buried in Palo Alto, California, following her death in 1944, was re-interred beside him. Hoover was the last surviving member of the Harding and Coolidge cabinets. John Nance Garner (the speaker of the House during the second half of Hoover's term) was the only person in Hoover's United States presidential line of succession he did not outlive.
Hoover was extremely unpopular when he left office after the 1932 election, and his historical reputation would not begin to recover until the 1970s. According to Professor David E. Hamilton, historians have credited Hoover for his genuine belief in voluntarism and cooperation, as well as the innovation of some of his programs. However, Hamilton also notes that Hoover was politically inept and failed to recognize the severity of the Great Depression. Nicholas Lemann writes that Hoover has been remembered "as the man who was too rigidly conservative to react adeptly to the Depression, as the hapless foil to the great Franklin Roosevelt, and as the politician who managed to turn a Republican country into a Democratic one". Polls of historians and political scientists have generally ranked Hoover in the bottom third of presidents. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Hoover as the 36th best president. A 2017 C-SPAN poll of historians also ranked Hoover as the 36th best president.
Although Hoover is generally regarded as having had a failed presidency, he has also received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official. Biographer Glen Jeansonne writes that Hoover was "one of the most extraordinary Americans of modern times," adding that Hoover "led a life that was a prototypical Horatio Alger story, except that Horatio Alger stories stop at the pinnacle of success". Biographer Kenneth Whyte writes that, "the question of where Hoover belongs in the American political tradition remains a loaded one to this day. While he clearly played important roles in the development of both the progressive and conservative traditions, neither side will embrace him for fear of contamination with the other."
Historian Richard Pipes, on his actions leading the American Relief Administration, said of him "Many statesmen occupy a prominent place in history for having sent millions to their death; Herbert Hoover, maligned for his performance as President, and soon forgotten in Russia, has the rare distinction of having saved millions."
Racist remarks and racial humor was common at the time, but Hoover never indulged in them while president and deliberate discrimination was anathema to him; he thought of himself as a friend to Black people and an advocate for their progress. However many of his Black contemporaries had a different view; W. E. B. Du Bois described him as an "undemocratic racist who saw blacks as a species of 'sub-men'". Some historians trace the disaffection of African Americans with the Republican party to his time in office especially due to his attempt to remove African Americans from leadership in the Republican party in the South. Like many of his peers Hoover considered white people to be inherently superior to Black people in most spheres and that interracial marriages were bad; however, he did think education and work would improve Black people's standing, hence his support for the Tuskegee Institute. His White House did break the color bar by inviting Jessie De Priest, wife of the first Black congressman elected in several decades, to a traditional tea for the wives of congressmen as well as later inviting the Tuskegee Institute choir (then under the direction of William Dawson).
The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is located in West Branch, Iowa next to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. The library is one of thirteen presidential libraries run by the National Archives and Records Administration. The Hoover–Minthorn House, where Hoover lived from 1885 to 1891, is located in Newberg, Oregon. His Rapidan fishing camp in Virginia, which he donated to the government in 1933, is now a National Historic Landmark within the Shenandoah National Park. The Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House, built in 1919 in Stanford, California, is now the official residence of the president of Stanford University, and a National Historic Landmark. Also located at Stanford is the Hoover Institution, a think tank and research institution started by Hoover.
Hoover has been memorialized in the names of several things, including the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and numerous elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States. Two minor planets, 932 Hooveria and 1363 Herberta, are named in his honor. The Polish capital of Warsaw has a square named after Hoover, and the historic townsite of Gwalia, Western Australia contains the Hoover House Bed and Breakfast, where Hoover resided while managing and visiting the mine during the first decade of the twentieth century. A medicine ball game known as Hooverball is named for Hoover; it was invented by White House physician Admiral Joel T. Boone to help Hoover keep fit while serving as president.
Hoover was inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame in 1988 (inaugural class). His wife was inducted into the hall in 1990.
Hoover was inducted into the Australian Prospectors and Miners' Hall of Fame in the category Directors and Management.
Hoover was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Charles University in Prague and University of Helsinki in March 1938. The ceremonial sword is today on display in the lobby of the Hoover tower. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. A self-made man who became wealthy as a mining engineer, before his presidency, Hoover led the war-time Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. secretary of commerce.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, Hoover grew up in Oregon. He was one of the first graduates of the new Stanford University in 1895. He took a position with a London-based mining company working in Australia and China. He rapidly became a wealthy mining engineer. In 1914, the outbreak of World War I, he organized and headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, president Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration. He became famous as his country's \"food czar\". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which provided food to the starving millions in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Russia. Hoover's wartime service made him a favorite of many progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 U.S. presidential election.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hoover served as the secretary of commerce under presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Hoover was an unusually active and visible Cabinet member, becoming known as \"Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments.\" He was influential in the development of air travel and radio. He led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Hoover won the Republican nomination in the 1928 presidential election and defeated Democratic candidate Al Smith in a landslide. In 1929, Hoover assumed the presidency during a period of widespread economic stability. However, during his first year in office, the stock market crashed, signaling the onset of the Great Depression, which dominated Hoover's presidency. Hoover's response to the depression was widely seen as lackluster and he scapegoated Mexican Americans for the economic crisis. Approximately 1.5-2 million Mexican Americans were forcibly \"repatriated\" to Mexico in a forced migration campaign known as the Mexican Repatriation — a majority of them were born in the United States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the midst of the Great Depression, Hoover was decisively defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. Hoover's retirement was over 31 years long, one of the longest presidential retirements. He authored numerous works and became increasingly conservative in retirement. He strongly criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and the New Deal. In the 1940s and 1950s, public opinion of Hoover improved largely due to his service in various assignments for presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including chairing the influential Hoover Commission. Critical assessments of his presidency by historians and political scientists generally rank him as a significantly below-average president, although Hoover has received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. His father, Jesse Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner of German, Swiss, and English ancestry. Hoover's mother, Hulda Randall Minthorn, was raised in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, before moving to Iowa in 1859. Like most other citizens of West Branch, Jesse and Hulda were Quakers. Around age two \"Bertie\", as he was called during that time, contracted a serious bout of croup, and was momentarily thought to have died until resuscitated by his uncle, John Minthorn. As a young child he was often referred to by his father as \"my little stick in the mud\" when he repeatedly got trapped in the mud crossing the unpaved street. Herbert's family figured prominently in the town's public prayer life, due almost entirely to mother Hulda's role in the church. As a child, Hoover consistently attended schools, but he did little reading on his own aside from the Bible. Hoover's father, noted by the local paper for his \"pleasant, sunshiny disposition\", died in 1880 at the age of 34 of a sudden heart attack. Hoover's mother died in 1884 of typhoid, leaving Hoover, his older brother, Theodore, and his younger sister, May, as orphans. Hoover lived the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover at a nearby farm.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In November 1885, Hoover was sent to Newberg, Oregon, to live with his uncle John Minthorn, a Quaker physician and businessman whose own son had died the year before. The Minthorn household was considered cultured and educational, and imparted a strong work ethic. Much like West Branch, Newberg was a frontier town settled largely by Midwestern Quakers. Minthorn ensured that Hoover received an education, but Hoover disliked the many chores assigned to him and often resented Minthorn. One observer described Hoover as \"an orphan [who] seemed to be neglected in many ways\". Hoover attended Friends Pacific Academy (now George Fox University), but dropped out at the age of thirteen to become an office assistant for his uncle's real estate office (Oregon Land Company) in Salem, Oregon. Though he did not attend high school, Hoover learned bookkeeping, typing, and mathematics at a night school.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Hoover was a member of the inaugural \"Pioneer Class\" of Stanford University, entering in 1891 despite failing all the entrance exams except mathematics. During his freshman year, he switched his major from mechanical engineering to geology after working for John Casper Branner, the chairman of Stanford's geology department. During his sophomore year, to reduce his costs, Hoover co-founded the first student housing cooperative at Stanford, \"Romero Hall\". Hoover was a mediocre student, and he spent much of his time working in various part-time jobs or participating in campus activities. Though he was initially shy among fellow students, Hoover won election as student treasurer and became known for his distaste for fraternities and sororities. He served as student manager of both the baseball and football teams, and helped organize the inaugural Big Game versus the University of California. During the summers before and after his senior year, Hoover interned under economic geologist Waldemar Lindgren of the United States Geological Survey; these experiences convinced Hoover to pursue a career as a mining geologist.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "When Hoover graduated from Stanford in 1895, the country was in the midst of the Panic of 1893 and he initially struggled to find a job. He worked in various low-level mining jobs in the Sierra Nevada Mountains until persuading prominent mining engineer Louis Janin to hire him. After working as a mine scout for a year, Hoover was hired by Bewick, Moreing & Co. (\"Bewick\"), a London-based company that operated gold mines in Western Australia. He first went to Coolgardie, then the center of the Eastern Goldfields, which was actually in Western Australia, receiving a $5,000 salary (equivalent to $175,880 in 2022). Conditions were harsh in the goldfields; Hoover described the Coolgardie and Murchison rangelands on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert as a land of \"black flies, red dust and white heat\".",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hoover traveled constantly across the Outback to evaluate and manage the company's mines. He convinced Bewick to purchase the Sons of Gwalia gold mine, which proved to be one of the most successful mines in the region. Partly due to Hoover's efforts, the company eventually controlled approximately 50 percent of gold production in Western Australia. Hoover brought in many Italian immigrants to cut costs and counter the labour movement of the Australian miners. During his time with the mining company, Hoover became opposed to measures such as a minimum wage and workers' compensation, feeling that they were unfair to owners. Hoover's work impressed his employers, and in 1898 he was promoted to junior partner. An open feud developed between Hoover and his boss, Ernest Williams, but Bewick's leaders defused the situation by offering Hoover a compelling position in China.",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Upon arriving in China, Hoover developed gold mines near Tianjin on behalf of Bewick and the Chinese-owned Chinese Engineering and Mining Company. He became deeply interested in Chinese history, but gave up on learning the language to a fluent level. He publicly warned that Chinese workers were inefficient and racially inferior. He made recommendations to improve the lot of the Chinese worker, seeking to end the practice of imposing long-term servitude contracts and to institute reforms for workers based on merit. The Boxer Rebellion broke out shortly after the Hoovers arrived in China, trapping them and numerous other foreign nationals until a multi-national military force defeated Boxer forces in the Battle of Tientsin. Fearing the imminent collapse of the Chinese government, the director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company agreed to establish a new Sino-British venture with Bewick. After they established effective control over the new Chinese mining company, Hoover became the operating partner in late 1901.",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In this role, Hoover continually traveled the world on behalf of Bewick, visiting mines operated by the company on different continents. Beginning in December 1902, the company faced mounting legal and financial issues after one of the partners admitted to having fraudulently sold stock in a mine. More issues arose in 1904 after the British government formed two separate royal commissions to investigate Bewick's labor practices and financial dealings in Western Australia. After the company lost a lawsuit Hoover began looking for a way to get out of the partnership, and he sold his shares in mid-1908.",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After leaving Bewick, Moreing, Hoover worked as a London-based independent mining consultant and financier. Though he had risen to prominence as a geologist and mine operator, Hoover focused much of his attention on raising money, restructuring corporate organizations, and financing new ventures. He specialized in rejuvenating troubled mining operations, taking a share of the profits in exchange for his technical and financial expertise. Hoover thought of himself and his associates as \"engineering doctors to sick concerns\", and he earned a reputation as a \"doctor of sick mines\". He made investments on every continent and had offices in San Francisco; London; New York City; Paris; Petrograd; and Mandalay, British Burma. By 1914, Hoover was a very wealthy man, with an estimated personal fortune of $4 million (equivalent to $116.86 million in 2022).",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Hoover co-founded the Zinc Corporation to extract zinc near the Australian city of Broken Hill, New South Wales. The Zinc Corporation developed the froth flotation process to extract zinc from lead-silver ore and operated the world's first selective ore differential flotation plant. Hoover worked with the Burma Corporation, a British firm that produced silver, lead, and zinc in large quantities at the Namtu Bawdwin Mine. He also helped increase copper production in Kyshtym, Russia, through the use of pyritic smelting. He also agreed to manage a separate mine in the Altai Mountains that, according to Hoover, \"developed probably the greatest and richest single body of ore known in the world\".",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In his spare time, Hoover wrote. His lectures at Columbia and Stanford universities were published in 1909 as Principles of Mining, which became a standard textbook. The book reflects his move towards progressive ideals, as Hoover came to endorse eight-hour workdays and organized labor. Hoover became deeply interested in the history of science, and he was especially drawn to the De re metallica, an influential 16th century work on mining and metallurgy by Georgius Agricola. In 1912, Hoover and his wife published the first English translation of De re metallica. Hoover also joined the board of trustees at Stanford, and led a successful campaign to appoint John Branner as the university's president.",
"title": "Mining engineer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During his senior year at Stanford, Hoover became smitten with a classmate named Lou Henry, though his financial situation precluded marriage at that time. The daughter of a banker from Monterey, California, Lou Henry decided to study geology at Stanford after attending a lecture delivered by John Branner. Immediately after earning a promotion in 1898, Hoover cabled Lou Henry, asking her to marry him. After she cabled back her acceptance of the proposal, Hoover briefly returned to the United States for their wedding. They would remain married until Lou Henry Hoover's death in 1944. Hoover was the first president to be a widower since Woodrow Wilson.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Though his Quaker upbringing strongly influenced his career, Hoover rarely attended Quaker meetings during his adult life. Hoover and his wife had two children: Herbert Hoover Jr. (born in 1903) and Allan Henry Hoover (born in 1907). The Hoover family began living in London in 1902, though they frequently traveled as part of Hoover's career. After 1916, the Hoovers began living in the United States, maintaining homes in Stanford, California, and Washington, D.C.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Hoover's elder brother Theodore also studied mining engineering at Stanford, and returned there to become dean of the engineering school. In retirement, Theodore bought a large property on the remote north coast of Santa Cruz County. The Theodore J. Hoover Natural Preserve is now part of Big Basin State Park.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "World War I broke out in August 1914, pitting Germany and its allies against France and its allies. The German plan was a quick victory by marching through neutral Belgium to envelop the French Army east of Paris. That failed but the Germans did control nearly all of Belgium for the entire war. Hoover and other London-based American businessmen established a committee to organize the return of the roughly 100,000 Americans stranded in Europe. Hoover was appointed as the committee's chairman and, with the assent of Congress and the Wilson administration, took charge of the distribution of relief to Americans in Europe. Hoover later stated, \"I did not realize it at the moment, but on August 3, 1914, my career was over forever. I was on the slippery road of public life.\" By early October 1914, Hoover's organization had distributed relief to at least 40,000 Americans.",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 set off a food crisis in Belgium, which relied heavily on food imports. The Germans refused to take responsibility for feeding Belgian citizens in captured territory, and the British refused to lift their blockade of German-occupied Belgium unless the U.S. government supervised Belgian food imports as a neutral party in the war. With the cooperation of the Wilson administration and the CNSA, a Belgian relief organization, Hoover established the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB). The CRB obtained and imported millions of tons of foodstuffs for the CNSA to distribute, and helped ensure that the German army did not appropriate the food. Private donations and government grants supplied the majority of its $11-million-a-month budget, and the CRB became a veritable independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads.",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Hoover worked 14-hour days from London, administering the distribution of over two million tons of food to nine million war victims. In an early form of shuttle diplomacy, he crossed the North Sea forty times to meet with German authorities and persuade them to allow food shipments. He also convinced British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George to allow individuals to send money to the people of Belgium, thereby lessening workload of the CRB. At the request of the French government, the CRB began delivering supplies to the people of German-occupied Northern France in 1915. American diplomat Walter Page described Hoover as \"probably the only man living who has privately (i.e., without holding office) negotiated understandings with the British, French, German, Dutch, and Belgian governments\".",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "War upon Germany was declared in April 1917, and American food was essential to Allied victory. With the U.S. mobilizing for war, President Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration, which was charged with ensuring the nation's food needs during the war. Hoover had hoped to join the administration in some capacity since at least 1916, and he obtained the position after lobbying several members of Congress and Wilson's confidant, Edward M. House. Earning the appellation of \"food czar\", Hoover recruited a volunteer force of hundreds of thousands of women and deployed propaganda in movie theaters, schools, and churches. He carefully selected men to assist in the agency leadership—Alonzo Taylor (technical abilities), Robert Taft (political associations), Gifford Pinchot (agricultural influence), and Julius Barnes (business acumen).",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "World War I had created a global food crisis that dramatically increased food prices and caused food riots and starvation in the countries at war. Hoover's chief goal as food czar was to provide supplies to the Allied Powers, but he also sought to stabilize domestic prices and to prevent domestic shortages. Under the broad powers granted by the Food and Fuel Control Act, the Food Administration supervised food production throughout the United States, and the administration made use of its authority to buy, import, store, and sell food. Determined to avoid rationing, Hoover established set days for people to avoid eating specified foods and save them for soldiers' rations: meatless Mondays, wheatless Wednesdays, and \"when in doubt, eat potatoes\". These policies were dubbed \"Hooverizing\" by government publicists, in spite of Hoover's continual orders that publicity should not mention him by name. The Food Administration shipped 23 million metric tons of food to the Allied Powers, preventing their collapse and earning Hoover great acclaim. As head of the Food Administration, Hoover gained a following in the United States, especially among progressives who saw in Hoover an expert administrator and symbol of efficiency. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society during his tenure.",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "World War I came to an end in November 1918, but Europe continued to face a critical food situation; Hoover estimated that as many as 400 million people faced the possibility of starvation. The United States Food Administration became the American Relief Administration (ARA), and Hoover was charged with providing food to Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to providing relief, the ARA rebuilt infrastructure in an effort to rejuvenate the economy of Europe. Throughout the Paris Peace Conference, Hoover served as a close adviser to President Wilson, and he largely shared Wilson's goals of establishing the League of Nations, settling borders on the basis of self-determination, and refraining from inflicting a harsh punishment on the defeated Central Powers. The following year, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace that if Hoover's realism, \"knowledge, magnanimity and disinterestedness\" had found wider play in the councils of Paris, the world would have had \"the Good Peace\". After U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in mid-1919, Hoover transformed the ARA into a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors. He also established the European Children's Fund, which provided relief to fifteen million children across fourteen countries.",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Despite the opposition of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republicans, Hoover provided aid to the defeated German nation after the war, as well as relief to famine-stricken Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Hoover condemned the Bolsheviks, but warned President Wilson against an intervention in the Russian Civil War, as he viewed the White Russian forces as little better than the Bolsheviks and feared the possibility of a protracted U.S. involvement. The Russian famine of 1921–22 claimed six million people, but the intervention of the ARA likely saved millions of lives. When asked if he was not helping Bolshevism by providing relief, Hoover stated, \"twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!\" Reflecting the gratitude of many Europeans, in July 1922, Soviet author Maxim Gorky told Hoover that \"your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death\".",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1919, Hoover established the Hoover War Collection at Stanford University. He donated all the files of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, the U.S. Food Administration, and the American Relief Administration, and pledged $50,000 as an endowment (equivalent to $843,954 in 2022). Scholars were sent to Europe to collect pamphlets, society publications, government documents, newspapers, posters, proclamations, and other ephemeral materials related to the war and the revolutions that followed it. The collection was renamed the Hoover War Library in 1922 and is now known as the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. During the post-war period, Hoover also served as the president of the Federated American Engineering Societies.",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Hoover had been little known among the American public before 1914, but his service in the Wilson administration established him as a contender in the 1920 presidential election. Hoover's wartime push for higher taxes, criticism of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's actions during the First Red Scare, and his advocacy for measures such as the minimum wage, forty-eight-hour workweek, and elimination of child labor made him appealing to progressives of both parties. Despite his service in the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson, Hoover had never been closely affiliated with either the Democrats or the Republicans. He initially sought to avoid committing to any party in the 1920 election, hoping that either of the two major parties would draft him for president at their national conventions. In March 1920, he changed strategy and declared himself a Republican; he was motivated in large part by the belief that the Democrats had little chance of winning. Despite his national renown, Hoover's service in the Wilson administration had alienated farmers and the conservative Old Guard of the GOP, and his presidential candidacy fizzled out after his defeat in the California primary by favorite son Hiram Johnson. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Warren G. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate after the convention became deadlocked between supporters of Johnson, Leonard Wood, and Frank Orren Lowden. Hoover backed Harding's successful campaign in the general election, and he began laying the groundwork for a future presidential run by building a base of strong supporters in the Republican Party.",
"title": "World War I and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "After his election as president in 1920, Harding rewarded Hoover for his support, offering to appoint him as either Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Commerce. Secretary of Commerce was considered a minor Cabinet post, with limited and vaguely defined responsibilities, but Hoover decided to accept the position. Hoover's progressive stances, continuing support for the League of Nations, and recent conversion to the Republican Party aroused opposition to his appointment from many Senate Republicans. To overcome this opposition, Harding paired Hoover's nomination with that of conservative favorite Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury, and the nominations of both Hoover and Mellon were confirmed by the Senate. Hoover would serve as Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1929, serving under Harding and, after Harding's death in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge. While some of the most prominent members of the Harding administration, including Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, were implicated in major scandals, Hoover emerged largely unscathed from investigations into the Harding administration.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hoover envisioned the Commerce Department as the hub of the nation's growth and stability. His experience mobilizing the war-time economy convinced him that the federal government could promote efficiency by eliminating waste, increasing production, encouraging the adoption of data-based practices, investing in infrastructure, and conserving natural resources. Contemporaries described Hoover's approach as a \"third alternative\" between \"unrestrained capitalism\" and socialism, which was becoming increasingly popular in Europe. Hoover sought to foster a balance among labor, capital, and the government, and for this, he has been variously labeled a corporatist or an associationalist. A high priority was economic diplomacy, including promoting the growth of exports, as well as protection against monopolistic practices of foreign governments, especially regarding rubber and coffee.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Hoover demanded, and received, authority to coordinate economic affairs throughout the government. He created many sub-departments and committees, overseeing and regulating everything from manufacturing statistics to air travel. In some instances he \"seized\" control of responsibilities from other Cabinet departments when he deemed that they were not carrying out their responsibilities well; some began referring to him as the \"Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments\". In response to the Depression of 1920–21, he convinced Harding to assemble a presidential commission on unemployment, which encouraged local governments to engage in countercyclical infrastructure spending. He endorsed much of Mellon's tax reduction program, but favored a more progressive tax system and opposed the treasury secretary's efforts to eliminate the estate tax.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Between 1923 and 1929, the number of families with radios grew from 300,000 to 10 million, and Hoover's tenure as Secretary of Commerce heavily influenced radio use in the United States. In the early and mid-1920s, Hoover's radio conferences played a key role in the organization, development, and regulation of radio broadcasting. Hoover also helped pass the Radio Act of 1927, which allowed the government to intervene and abolish radio stations that were deemed \"non-useful\" to the public. Hoover's attempts at regulating radio were not supported by all congressmen, and he received much opposition from the Senate and from radio station owners.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hoover was also influential in the early development of air travel, and he sought to create a thriving private industry boosted by indirect government subsidies. He encouraged the development of emergency landing fields, required all runways to be equipped with lights and radio beams, and encouraged farmers to make use of planes for crop dusting. He also established the federal government's power to inspect planes and license pilots, setting a precedent for the later Federal Aviation Administration.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "As Commerce Secretary, Hoover hosted national conferences on street traffic collectively known as the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety. Hoover's chief objective was to address the growing casualty toll of traffic accidents, but the scope of the conferences grew and soon embraced motor vehicle standards, rules of the road, and urban traffic control. He left the invited interest groups to negotiate agreements among themselves, which were then presented for adoption by states and localities. Because automotive trade associations were the best organized, many of the positions taken by the conferences reflected their interests. The conferences issued a model Uniform Vehicle Code for adoption by the states and a Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance for adoption by cities. Both were widely influential, promoting greater uniformity between jurisdictions and tending to promote the automobile's priority in city streets.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Phillips Payson O'Brien argues that Hoover had a Britain problem. He had spent so many years living in Britain and Australia, as an employee of British companies, there was a risk that he would be labeled a British tool. There were three solutions, all of which he tried in close collaboration with the media, which greatly admired him. First came the image of the dispassionate scientist, emotionally uninvolved but always committed to finding and implementing the best possible solution. The second solution was to gain the reputation of a humanitarian, deeply concerned with the world's troubles, such as famine in Belgium, as well as specific American problems which he had solved as food commissioner during the world war. The third solution to was to fall back on that old tactic of twisting the British tail. He employed that solution in 1925–1926 in the worldwide rubber crisis. The American auto industry consumed 70% of the world's output, but British investors controlled much of the supply. Their plan was to drastically cut back on output from British Malaya, which had the effect of tripling rubber prices. Hoover energetically gave a series of speeches and interviews denouncing the monopolistic practice, and demanding that it be ended. The American State Department wanted no such crisis and compromised the issue in 1926. By then Hoover had solved his image problem, and during his 1928 campaign he successfully squelched attacks that alleged he was too close to British interests.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "With the goal of encouraging wise business investments, Hoover made the Commerce Department a clearinghouse of information. He recruited numerous academics from various fields and tasked them with publishing reports on different aspects of the economy, including steel production and films. To eliminate waste, he encouraged standardization of products like automobile tires and baby bottle nipples. Other efforts at eliminating waste included reducing labor losses from trade disputes and seasonal fluctuations, reducing industrial losses from accident and injury, and reducing the amount of crude oil spilled during extraction and shipping. He promoted international trade by opening overseas offices to advise businessmen. Hoover was especially eager to promote Hollywood films overseas. His \"Own Your Own Home\" campaign was a collaboration to promote ownership of single-family dwellings, with groups such as the Better Houses in America movement, the Architects' Small House Service Bureau, and the Home Modernizing Bureau. He worked with bankers and the savings and loan industry to promote the new long-term home mortgage, which dramatically stimulated home construction. Other accomplishments included winning the agreement of U.S. Steel to adopt an eight-hour workday, and the fostering of the Colorado River Compact, a water rights compact among Southwestern states.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke the banks and levees of the lower Mississippi River in early 1927, resulting in the flooding of millions of acres and leaving 1.5 million people displaced from their homes. Although disaster response did not fall under the duties of the Commerce Department, the governors of six states along the Mississippi River specifically asked President Coolidge to appoint Hoover to coordinate the response to the flood. Believing that disaster response was not the domain of the federal government, Coolidge initially refused to become involved, but he eventually acceded to political pressure and appointed Hoover to chair a special committee to help the region. Hoover established over one hundred tent cities and a fleet of more than six hundred vessels, and raised $17 million (equivalent to $286.39 million in 2022). In large part due to his leadership during the flood crisis, by 1928, Hoover had begun to overshadow President Coolidge himself. Though Hoover received wide acclaim for his role in the crisis, he ordered the suppression of reports of mistreatment of African Americans in refugee camps. He did so with the cooperation of African-American leader Robert Russa Moton, who was promised unprecedented influence once Hoover became president.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Hoover quietly built up support for a future presidential bid throughout the 1920s, but he carefully avoided alienating Coolidge, who possibly could have run for another term in the 1928 presidential election. Along with the rest of the nation, he was surprised when Coolidge announced in August 1927 that he would not seek another term. With the impending retirement of Coolidge, Hoover immediately emerged as the front-runner for the 1928 Republican nomination, and he quickly put together a strong campaign team led by Hubert Work, Will H. Hays, and Reed Smoot. Coolidge was unwilling to anoint Hoover as his successor; on one occasion he remarked that, \"for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad\". Despite his lukewarm feelings towards Hoover, Coolidge had no desire to split the party by publicly opposing the popular Commerce Secretary's candidacy.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Many wary Republican leaders cast about for an alternative candidate, such as Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon or former secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes. However, Hughes and Mellon declined to run, and other potential contenders like Frank Orren Lowden and Vice President Charles G. Dawes failed to garner widespread support. Hoover won the presidential nomination on the first ballot of the 1928 Republican National Convention. Convention delegates considered re-nominating Vice President Charles Dawes to be Hoover's running mate, but Coolidge, who hated Dawes, remarked that this would be \"a personal affront\" to him. The convention instead selected Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas. Hoover accepted the nomination at Stanford Stadium, telling a huge crowd that he would continue the policies of the Harding and Coolidge administrations. The Democrats nominated New York governor Al Smith, who became the first Catholic major party nominee for president.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Hoover centered his campaign around the Republican record of peace and prosperity, as well as his own reputation as a successful engineer and public official. Averse to giving political speeches, Hoover largely stayed out of the fray and left the campaigning to Curtis and other Republicans. Smith was more charismatic and gregarious than Hoover, but his campaign was damaged by anti-Catholicism and his overt opposition to Prohibition. Hoover had never been a strong proponent of Prohibition, but he accepted the Republican Party's plank in favor of it and issued an ambivalent statement calling Prohibition \"a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose\". In the South, Hoover and the national party pursued a \"lily-white\" strategy, removing black Republicans from leadership positions in an attempt to curry favor with white Southerners.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Hoover maintained polling leads throughout the 1928 campaign, and he decisively defeated Smith on election day, taking 58 percent of the popular vote and 444 of the 531 electoral votes. Historians agree that Hoover's national reputation and the booming economy, combined with deep splits in the Democratic Party over religion and Prohibition, guaranteed his landslide victory. Hoover's appeal to Southern white voters succeeded in cracking the \"Solid South\", and he won five Southern states. Hoover's victory was positively received by newspapers; one wrote that Hoover would \"drive so forcefully at the tasks now before the nation that the end of his eight years as president will find us looking back on an era of prodigious achievement\".",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Hoover's detractors wondered why he did not do anything to reapportion congress after the 1920 United States Census which saw an increase in urban and immigrant populations. The 1920 Census was the first and only Decennial Census where the results were not used to reapportion Congress, which ultimately influenced the 1928 Electoral College and impacted the Presidential Election.",
"title": "Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Hoover saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by encouraging public-private cooperation—what he termed \"volunteerism\". He tended to oppose governmental coercion or intervention, as he thought they infringed on American ideals of individualism and self-reliance. The first major bill that he signed, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, established the Federal Farm Board in order to stabilize farm prices. Hoover made extensive use of commissions to study issues and propose solutions, and many of those commissions were sponsored by private donors rather than by the government. One of the commissions started by Hoover, the Research Committee on Social Trends, was tasked with surveying the entirety of American society. He appointed a Cabinet consisting largely of wealthy, business-oriented conservatives, including Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. Lou Henry Hoover was an activist First Lady. She typified the new woman of the post–World War I era: intelligent, robust, and aware of multiple female possibilities.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "On taking office, Hoover said that \"given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation\". Having seen the fruits of prosperity brought by technological progress, many shared Hoover's optimism, and the already bullish stock market climbed even higher on Hoover's accession. This optimism concealed several threats to sustained U.S. economic growth, including a persistent farm crisis, a saturation of consumer goods like automobiles, and growing income inequality. Most dangerous of all to the economy was excessive speculation that had raised stock prices far beyond their value. Some regulators and bankers had warned Coolidge and Hoover that a failure to curb speculation would lead to \"one of the greatest financial catastrophes that this country has ever seen,\" but both presidents were reluctant to become involved with the workings of the Federal Reserve System, which regulated banks.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In late October 1929, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred, and the worldwide economy began to spiral downward into the Great Depression. The causes of the Great Depression remain a matter of debate, but Hoover viewed a lack of confidence in the financial system as the fundamental economic problem facing the nation. He sought to avoid direct federal intervention, believing that the best way to bolster the economy was through the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads. He also feared that allowing individuals on the \"dole\" would permanently weaken the country. Instead, Hoover strongly believed that local governments and private giving should address the needs of individuals.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Though he attempted to put a positive spin on Black Tuesday, Hoover moved quickly to address the stock market collapse. In the days following Black Tuesday, Hoover gathered business and labor leaders, asking them to avoid wage cuts and work stoppages while the country faced what he believed would be a short recession similar to the Depression of 1920–21. Hoover also convinced railroads and public utilities to increase spending on construction and maintenance, and the Federal Reserve announced that it would cut interest rates. In early 1930, Hoover acquired from Congress an additional $100 million to continue the Federal Farm Board lending and purchasing policies. These actions were collectively designed to prevent a cycle of deflation and provide a fiscal stimulus. At the same time, Hoover opposed congressional proposals to provide federal relief to the unemployed, as he believed that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments and philanthropic organizations.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Hoover had taken office hoping to raise agricultural tariffs in order to help farmers reeling from the farm crisis of the 1920s, but his attempt to raise agricultural tariffs became connected with a bill that broadly raised tariffs. Hoover refused to become closely involved in the congressional debate over the tariff, and Congress produced a tariff bill that raised rates for many goods. Despite the widespread unpopularity of the bill, Hoover felt that he could not reject the main legislative accomplishment of the Republican-controlled 71st Congress. Over the objection of many economists, Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law in June 1930. Canada, France, and other nations retaliated by raising tariffs, resulting in a contraction of international trade and a worsening of the economy. Progressive Republicans such as Senator William E. Borah of Idaho were outraged when Hoover signed the tariff act, and Hoover's relations with that wing of the party never recovered.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "By the end of 1930, the national unemployment rate had reached 11.9 percent, but it was not yet clear to most Americans that the economic downturn would be worse than the Depression of 1920–21. A series of bank failures in late 1930 heralded a larger collapse of the economy in 1931. While other countries left the gold standard, Hoover refused to abandon it; he derided any other monetary system as \"collectivism\". Hoover viewed the weak European economy as a major cause of economic troubles in the United States. In response to the collapse of the German economy, Hoover marshaled congressional support behind a one-year moratorium on European war debts. The Hoover Moratorium was warmly received in Europe and the United States, but Germany remained on the brink of defaulting on its loans. As the worldwide economy worsened, democratic governments fell; in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler assumed power and dismantled the Weimar Republic.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "By mid-1931, the unemployment rate had reached 15 percent, giving rise to growing fears that the country was experiencing a depression far worse than recent economic downturns. A reserved man with a fear of public speaking, Hoover allowed his opponents in the Democratic Party to define him as cold, incompetent, reactionary, and out-of-touch. Hoover's opponents developed defamatory epithets to discredit him, such as \"Hooverville\" (the shanty towns and homeless encampments), \"Hoover leather\" (cardboard used to cover holes in the soles of shoes), and \"Hoover blanket\" (old newspaper used to cover oneself from the cold). While Hoover continued to resist direct federal relief efforts, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York launched the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to provide aid to the unemployed. Democrats positioned the program as a kinder alternative to Hoover's alleged apathy towards the unemployed, despite Hoover's belief that such programs were the responsibility of state and local governments.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The economy continued to worsen, with unemployment rates nearing 23 percent in early 1932, and Hoover finally heeded calls for more direct federal intervention. In January 1932, he convinced Congress to authorize the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which would provide government-secured loans to financial institutions, railroads, and local governments. The RFC saved numerous businesses from failure, but it failed to stimulate commercial lending as much as Hoover had hoped, partly because it was run by conservative bankers unwilling to make riskier loans. The same month the RFC was established, Hoover signed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, establishing 12 district banks overseen by a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in a manner similar to the Federal Reserve System. He also helped arrange passage of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1932, emergency banking legislation designed to expand banking credit by expanding the collateral on which Federal Reserve banks were authorized to lend. As these measures failed to stem the economic crisis, Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, a $2 billion public works bill, in July 1932.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "After a decade of budget surpluses, the federal government experienced a budget deficit in 1931. Though some economists, like William Trufant Foster, favored deficit spending to address the Great Depression, most politicians and economists believed in the necessity of keeping a balanced budget. In late 1931, Hoover proposed a tax plan to increase tax revenue by 30 percent, resulting in the passage of the Revenue Act of 1932. The act increased taxes across the board, rolling back much of the tax cut reduction program Mellon had presided over during the 1920s. Top earners were taxed at 63 percent on their net income, the highest rate since the early 1920s. The act also doubled the top estate tax rate, cut personal income tax exemptions, eliminated the corporate income tax exemption, and raised corporate tax rates. Despite the passage of the Revenue Act, the federal government continued to run a budget deficit.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Hoover seldom mentioned civil rights while he was president. He believed that African Americans and other races could improve themselves with education and individual initiative. Hoover appointed more African Americans to federal positions than Harding and Coolidge combined, but many African-American leaders condemned various aspects of the Hoover administration, including Hoover's unwillingness to push for a federal anti-lynching law. Hoover also continued to pursue the lily-white strategy, removing African Americans from positions of leadership in the Republican Party in an attempt to end the Democratic Party's dominance in the South. Though Robert Moton and some other black leaders accepted the lily-white strategy as a temporary measure, most African-American leaders were outraged. Hoover further alienated black leaders by nominating conservative Southern judge John J. Parker to the Supreme Court; Parker's nomination ultimately failed in the Senate due to opposition from the NAACP and organized labor. Many black voters switched to the Democratic Party in the 1932 election, and African Americans would later become an important part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "As part of his efforts to limit unemployment, Hoover sought to cut immigration to the United States, and in 1930 he promulgated an executive order requiring individuals to have employment before migrating to the United States. The Hoover Administration began a campaign to prosecute illegal immigrants in the United States, which most strongly affected Mexican Americans, especially those living in Southern California. Many of the deportations were overseen by state and local authorities who acted on the encouragement of the Hoover Administration. During the 1930s, approximately one million Mexican Americans were forcibly \"repatriated\" to Mexico; approximately sixty percent of those deported were birthright citizens. According to legal professor Kevin R. Johnson, the repatriation campaign meets the modern legal standards of ethnic cleansing, as it involved the forced removal of a racial minority by government actors.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Hoover reorganized the Bureau of Indian Affairs to limit exploitation of Native Americans.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On taking office, Hoover urged Americans to obey the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, which had established Prohibition across the United States. To make public policy recommendations regarding Prohibition, he created the Wickersham Commission. Hoover had hoped that the commission's public report would buttress his stance in favor of Prohibition, but the report criticized the enforcement of the Volstead Act and noted the growing public opposition to Prohibition. After the Wickersham Report was published in 1931, Hoover rejected the advice of some of his closest allies and refused to endorse any revision of the Volstead Act or the Eighteenth Amendment, as he feared doing so would undermine his support among Prohibition advocates. As public opinion increasingly turned against Prohibition, more and more people flouted the law, and a grassroots movement began working in earnest for Prohibition's repeal. In January 1933, a constitutional amendment repealing the Eighteenth Amendment was approved by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification. By December 1933, it had been ratified by the requisite number of states to become the Twenty-first Amendment.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "According to Leuchtenburg, Hoover was \"the last American president to take office with no conspicuous need to pay attention to the rest of the world\". Nevertheless, during Hoover's term, the world order established in the immediate aftermath of World War I began to crumble. As president, Hoover largely made good on his pledge made prior to assuming office not to interfere in Latin America's internal affairs. In 1930, he released the Clark Memorandum, a rejection of the Roosevelt Corollary and a move towards non-interventionism in Latin America. Hoover did not completely refrain from the use of the military in Latin American affairs; he thrice threatened intervention in the Dominican Republic, and he sent warships to El Salvador to support the government against a left-wing revolution. Notwithstanding those actions, he wound down the Banana Wars, ending the occupation of Nicaragua and nearly bringing an end to the occupation of Haiti.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Hoover placed a priority on disarmament, which he hoped would allow the United States to shift money from the military to domestic needs. Hoover and Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson focused on extending the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which sought to prevent a naval arms race. As a result of Hoover's efforts, the United States and other major naval powers signed the 1930 London Naval Treaty. The treaty represented the first time that the naval powers had agreed to cap their tonnage of auxiliary vessels, as previous agreements had only affected capital ships.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "At the 1932 World Disarmament Conference, Hoover urged further cutbacks in armaments and the outlawing of tanks and bombers, but his proposals were not adopted.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, defeating the Republic of China's National Revolutionary Army and establishing Manchukuo, a puppet state. The Hoover administration deplored the invasion, but also sought to avoid antagonizing the Japanese, fearing that taking too strong a stand would weaken the moderate forces in the Japanese government and alienate a potential ally against the Soviet Union, which he saw as a much greater threat. In response to the Japanese invasion, Hoover and Secretary of State Stimson outlined the Stimson Doctrine, which held that the United States would not recognize territories gained by force.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Thousands of World War I veterans and their families demonstrated and camped out in Washington, DC, during June 1932, calling for immediate payment of bonuses that had been promised by the World War Adjusted Compensation Act in 1924; the terms of the act called for payment of the bonuses in 1945. Although offered money by Congress to return home, some members of the \"Bonus Army\" remained. Washington police attempted to disperse the demonstrators, but they were outnumbered and unsuccessful. Shots were fired by the police in a futile attempt to attain order, and two protesters were killed while many officers were injured. Hoover sent U.S. Army forces led by General Douglas MacArthur to the protests. MacArthur, believing he was fighting a Communist revolution, chose to clear out the camp with military force. Though Hoover had not ordered MacArthur's clearing out of the protesters, he endorsed it after the fact. The incident proved embarrassing for the Hoover administration and hurt his bid for re-election.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "By mid-1931 few observers thought that Hoover had much hope of winning a second term in the midst of the ongoing economic crisis. The Republican expectations were so bleak that Hoover faced no serious opposition for re-nomination at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Coolidge and other prominent Republicans all passed on the opportunity to challenge Hoover. Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, defeating the 1928 Democratic nominee, Al Smith. The Democrats attacked Hoover as the cause of the Great Depression, and for being indifferent to the suffering of millions. As Governor of New York, Roosevelt had called on the New York legislature to provide aid for the needy, establishing Roosevelt's reputation for being more favorable toward government interventionism during the economic crisis. The Democratic Party, including Al Smith and other national leaders, coalesced behind Roosevelt, while progressive Republicans like George Norris and Robert La Follette Jr. deserted Hoover. Prohibition was increasingly unpopular and wets offered the argument that states and localities needed the tax money. Hoover proposed a new constitutional amendment that was vague on particulars. Roosevelt's platform promised repeal of the 18th Amendment.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Hoover originally planned to make only one or two major speeches and to leave the rest of the campaigning to proxies, as sitting presidents had traditionally done. However, encouraged by Republican pleas and outraged by Democratic claims, Hoover entered the public fray. In his nine major radio addresses Hoover primarily defended his administration and his philosophy of government, urging voters to hold to the \"foundations of experience\" and reject the notion that government interventionism could save the country from the Depression. In his campaign trips around the country, Hoover was faced with perhaps the most hostile crowds ever seen by a sitting president. Besides having his train and motorcades pelted with eggs and rotten fruit, he was often heckled while speaking, and on several occasions, the Secret Service halted attempts to hurt Hoover, including capturing one man nearing Hoover carrying sticks of dynamite, and another already having removed several spikes from the rails in front of the president's train. Hoover's attempts to vindicate his administration fell on deaf ears, as much of the public blamed his administration for the depression. In the electoral vote, Hoover lost 59–472, carrying six states. Hoover won 39.6 percent of the popular vote, a plunge of 18.6 percentage points from his result in the 1928 election.",
"title": "Presidency (1929–1933)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Hoover departed from Washington in March 1933, bitter at his election loss and continuing unpopularity. As Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, and Taft had all died during the 1920s or early 1930s and Roosevelt died in office, Hoover was the sole living former president from 1933 to 1953. He and his wife lived in Palo Alto until her death in 1944, at which point Hoover began to live permanently at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly self-identified as a conservative. He closely followed national events after leaving public office, becoming a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. In response to continued attacks on his character and presidency, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including The Challenge to Liberty (1934), which harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover described the New Deal's National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Administration as \"fascistic\", and he called the 1933 Banking Act a \"move to gigantic socialism\".",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Only 58 when he left office, Hoover held out hope for another term as president throughout the 1930s. At the 1936 Republican National Convention, Hoover's speech attacking the New Deal was well received, but the nomination went to Kansas governor Alf Landon. In the general election, Hoover delivered numerous well-publicized speeches on behalf of Landon, but Landon was defeated by Roosevelt. Though Hoover was eager to oppose Roosevelt at every turn, Senator Arthur Vandenberg and other Republicans urged the still-unpopular Hoover to remain out of the fray during the debate over Roosevelt's proposed Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. At the 1940 Republican National Convention, he again hoped for the presidential nomination, but it went to the internationalist Wendell Willkie, who lost to Roosevelt in the general election. Hoover remained the latest president to run for re-election after leaving office until 2022 when Donald Trump, following his win in 2016 and loss in 2020, announced his bit for 2024 presidential election.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "During a 1938 trip to Europe, Hoover met with Adolf Hitler and stayed at Hermann Göring's hunting lodge. He expressed dismay at the persecution of Jews in Germany and believed that Hitler was mad, but did not present a threat to the U.S. Instead, Hoover believed that Roosevelt posed the biggest threat to peace, holding that Roosevelt's policies provoked Japan and discouraged France and the United Kingdom from reaching an \"accommodation\" with Germany. After the September 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany, Hoover opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, including the Lend-Lease policy. He was active in the isolationist America First Committee. He rejected Roosevelt's offers to help coordinate relief in Europe, but, with the help of old friends from the CRB, helped establish the Commission for Polish Relief. After the beginning of the occupation of Belgium in 1940, Hoover provided aid for Belgian civilians, though this aid was described as unnecessary by German broadcasts.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In December 1939, sympathetic Americans led by Hoover formed the Finnish Relief Fund to donate money to aid Finnish civilians and refugees after the Soviet Union had started the Winter War by attacking Finland, which had outraged Americans. By the end of January, it had already sent more than two million dollars to the Finns.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "During a radio broadcast on June 29, 1941, one week after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Hoover disparaged any \"tacit alliance\" between the U.S. and the USSR, stating, \"if we join the war and Stalin wins, we have aided him to impose more communism on Europe and the world... War alongside Stalin to impose freedom is more than a travesty. It is a tragedy.\" Much to his frustration, Hoover was not called upon to serve after the United States entered World War II due to his differences with Roosevelt and his continuing unpopularity. He did not pursue the presidential nomination at the 1944 Republican National Convention, and, at the request of Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, refrained from campaigning during the general election. In 1945, Hoover advised President Harry S. Truman to drop the United States' demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan because of the high projected casualties of the planned invasion of Japan, although Hoover was unaware of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Following World War II, Hoover befriended President Truman despite their ideological differences. Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman selected the former president to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Rome, Italy to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover produced a number of reports critical of U.S. occupation policy. He stated in one report that \"there is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.' It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it.\" On Hoover's initiative, a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones of Germany was begun on April 14, 1947; the program served 3,500,000 children.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Even more important, in 1947 Truman appointed Hoover to lead the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government a new high level study. Truman accepted some of the recommendations of the \"Hoover Commission\" for eliminating waste, fraud, and inefficiency, consolidating agencies, and strengthening White House control of policy. Though Hoover had opposed Roosevelt's concentration of power in the 1930s, he believed that a stronger presidency was required with the advent of the Atomic Age. During the 1948 presidential election, Hoover supported Republican nominee Thomas Dewey's unsuccessful campaign against Truman, but he remained on good terms with Truman. Hoover favored the United Nations in principle, but he opposed granting membership to the Soviet Union and other Communist states. He viewed the Soviet Union to be as morally repugnant as Nazi Germany and supported the efforts of Richard Nixon and others to expose Communists in the United States.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In 1949, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey offered Hoover the Senate seat vacated by Robert F. Wagner. It was a matter of being senator for only two months and he declined.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Hoover backed conservative leader Robert A. Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention, but the party's presidential nomination instead went to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went on to win the 1952 election. Though Eisenhower appointed Hoover to another presidential commission, Hoover disliked Eisenhower, faulting the latter's failure to roll back the New Deal. Hoover's public work helped to rehabilitate his reputation, as did his use of self-deprecating humor; he occasionally remarked that \"I am the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him.\" In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension (equivalent to $253,576 in 2022) to each former president. Hoover took the pension even though he did not need the money, possibly to avoid embarrassing Truman, whose allegedly precarious financial status played a role in the law's enactment. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy offered Hoover various positions; Hoover declined the offers but defended Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs invasion and was personally distraught by Kennedy's assassination in 1963.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Hoover wrote several books during his retirement, including The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, in which he strongly defended Wilson's actions at the Paris Peace Conference. In 1944, he began working on Freedom Betrayed, which he often referred to as his \"magnum opus\". In Freedom Betrayed, Hoover strongly critiques Roosevelt's foreign policy, especially Roosevelt's decision to recognize the Soviet Union in order to provide aid to that country during World War II. The book was published in 2012 after being edited by historian George H. Nash.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Hoover faced three major illnesses during the last two years of his life, including an August 1962 operation in which a growth on his large intestine was removed. He died in New York City on October 20, 1964, following massive internal bleeding. Though Hoover's last spoken words are unknown, his last-known written words were a get-well message to his friend Harry Truman, six days before his death, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom: \"Bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents for as you may recall a bathtub rose up and fractured my vertebrae when I was in Venezuela on your world famine mission in 1946. My warmest sympathy and best wishes for your recovery.\" Two months earlier, on August 10, Hoover reached the age of 90, only the second U.S. president (after John Adams) to do so. When asked how he felt on reaching the milestone, Hoover replied, \"Too old.\" At the time of his death, Hoover had been out of office for over 31 years (11,553 days all together). This was the longest retirement in presidential history until Jimmy Carter broke that record in September 2012.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Hoover was honored with a state funeral in which he lay in state in the United States Capitol rotunda. President Lyndon Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson attended, along with former presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Then, on October 25, he was buried in West Branch, Iowa, near his presidential library and birthplace on the grounds of the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. Afterwards, Hoover's wife, Lou Henry Hoover, who had been buried in Palo Alto, California, following her death in 1944, was re-interred beside him. Hoover was the last surviving member of the Harding and Coolidge cabinets. John Nance Garner (the speaker of the House during the second half of Hoover's term) was the only person in Hoover's United States presidential line of succession he did not outlive.",
"title": "Post-presidency (1933–1964)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Hoover was extremely unpopular when he left office after the 1932 election, and his historical reputation would not begin to recover until the 1970s. According to Professor David E. Hamilton, historians have credited Hoover for his genuine belief in voluntarism and cooperation, as well as the innovation of some of his programs. However, Hamilton also notes that Hoover was politically inept and failed to recognize the severity of the Great Depression. Nicholas Lemann writes that Hoover has been remembered \"as the man who was too rigidly conservative to react adeptly to the Depression, as the hapless foil to the great Franklin Roosevelt, and as the politician who managed to turn a Republican country into a Democratic one\". Polls of historians and political scientists have generally ranked Hoover in the bottom third of presidents. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Hoover as the 36th best president. A 2017 C-SPAN poll of historians also ranked Hoover as the 36th best president.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Although Hoover is generally regarded as having had a failed presidency, he has also received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official. Biographer Glen Jeansonne writes that Hoover was \"one of the most extraordinary Americans of modern times,\" adding that Hoover \"led a life that was a prototypical Horatio Alger story, except that Horatio Alger stories stop at the pinnacle of success\". Biographer Kenneth Whyte writes that, \"the question of where Hoover belongs in the American political tradition remains a loaded one to this day. While he clearly played important roles in the development of both the progressive and conservative traditions, neither side will embrace him for fear of contamination with the other.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Historian Richard Pipes, on his actions leading the American Relief Administration, said of him \"Many statesmen occupy a prominent place in history for having sent millions to their death; Herbert Hoover, maligned for his performance as President, and soon forgotten in Russia, has the rare distinction of having saved millions.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Racist remarks and racial humor was common at the time, but Hoover never indulged in them while president and deliberate discrimination was anathema to him; he thought of himself as a friend to Black people and an advocate for their progress. However many of his Black contemporaries had a different view; W. E. B. Du Bois described him as an \"undemocratic racist who saw blacks as a species of 'sub-men'\". Some historians trace the disaffection of African Americans with the Republican party to his time in office especially due to his attempt to remove African Americans from leadership in the Republican party in the South. Like many of his peers Hoover considered white people to be inherently superior to Black people in most spheres and that interracial marriages were bad; however, he did think education and work would improve Black people's standing, hence his support for the Tuskegee Institute. His White House did break the color bar by inviting Jessie De Priest, wife of the first Black congressman elected in several decades, to a traditional tea for the wives of congressmen as well as later inviting the Tuskegee Institute choir (then under the direction of William Dawson).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is located in West Branch, Iowa next to the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. The library is one of thirteen presidential libraries run by the National Archives and Records Administration. The Hoover–Minthorn House, where Hoover lived from 1885 to 1891, is located in Newberg, Oregon. His Rapidan fishing camp in Virginia, which he donated to the government in 1933, is now a National Historic Landmark within the Shenandoah National Park. The Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House, built in 1919 in Stanford, California, is now the official residence of the president of Stanford University, and a National Historic Landmark. Also located at Stanford is the Hoover Institution, a think tank and research institution started by Hoover.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Hoover has been memorialized in the names of several things, including the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and numerous elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States. Two minor planets, 932 Hooveria and 1363 Herberta, are named in his honor. The Polish capital of Warsaw has a square named after Hoover, and the historic townsite of Gwalia, Western Australia contains the Hoover House Bed and Breakfast, where Hoover resided while managing and visiting the mine during the first decade of the twentieth century. A medicine ball game known as Hooverball is named for Hoover; it was invented by White House physician Admiral Joel T. Boone to help Hoover keep fit while serving as president.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Hoover was inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame in 1988 (inaugural class). His wife was inducted into the hall in 1990.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Hoover was inducted into the Australian Prospectors and Miners' Hall of Fame in the category Directors and Management.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Hoover was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Charles University in Prague and University of Helsinki in March 1938. The ceremonial sword is today on display in the lobby of the Hoover tower.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Herbert Clark Hoover was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. A self-made man who became wealthy as a mining engineer, before his presidency, Hoover led the war-time Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. secretary of commerce. Born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, Hoover grew up in Oregon. He was one of the first graduates of the new Stanford University in 1895. He took a position with a London-based mining company working in Australia and China. He rapidly became a wealthy mining engineer. In 1914, the outbreak of World War I, he organized and headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, president Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration. He became famous as his country's "food czar". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which provided food to the starving millions in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Russia. Hoover's wartime service made him a favorite of many progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 U.S. presidential election. Hoover served as the secretary of commerce under presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Hoover was an unusually active and visible Cabinet member, becoming known as "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments." He was influential in the development of air travel and radio. He led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Hoover won the Republican nomination in the 1928 presidential election and defeated Democratic candidate Al Smith in a landslide. In 1929, Hoover assumed the presidency during a period of widespread economic stability. However, during his first year in office, the stock market crashed, signaling the onset of the Great Depression, which dominated Hoover's presidency. Hoover's response to the depression was widely seen as lackluster and he scapegoated Mexican Americans for the economic crisis. Approximately 1.5-2 million Mexican Americans were forcibly "repatriated" to Mexico in a forced migration campaign known as the Mexican Repatriation — a majority of them were born in the United States. In the midst of the Great Depression, Hoover was decisively defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. Hoover's retirement was over 31 years long, one of the longest presidential retirements. He authored numerous works and became increasingly conservative in retirement. He strongly criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy and the New Deal. In the 1940s and 1950s, public opinion of Hoover improved largely due to his service in various assignments for presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including chairing the influential Hoover Commission. Critical assessments of his presidency by historians and political scientists generally rank him as a significantly below-average president, although Hoover has received praise for his actions as a humanitarian and public official. | 2001-08-23T21:02:26Z | 2023-12-15T11:30:57Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover |
13,684 | Hildegard of Bingen | Hildegard of Bingen (German: Hildegard von Bingen, pronounced [ˈhɪldəɡaʁt fɔn ˈbɪŋən]; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis; c. 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
Hildegard's convent elected her as magistra (mother superior) in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy. She wrote poems, and supervised miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.
Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, regional calendars of the Roman Catholic Church have listed her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of "her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching."
Hildegard was born around 1098. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim. Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child, although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she experienced visions.
From early childhood, long before she undertook her public mission or even her monastic vows, Hildegard's spiritual awareness was grounded in what she called the umbra viventis lucis, the reflection of the living Light. Her letter to Guibert of Gembloux, which she wrote at the age of 77, describes her experience of this light:
From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night. And I am constantly fettered by sickness, and often in the grip of pain so intense that it threatens to kill me, but God has sustained me until now. The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it "the reflection of the living Light." And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.
Perhaps because of Hildegard's visions, as a method of political positioning, or both, Hildegard's parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, which had been recently reformed in the Palatinate Forest. The date of Hildegard's enclosure at the monastery is the subject of debate. Her Vita says she was eight years old when she was professed with Jutta, who was the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim and about six years older than Hildegard. However, Jutta's date of enclosure is known to have been in 1112, when Hildegard would have been 14. Their vows were received by Bishop Otto of Bamberg on All Saints Day 1112. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta at the age of eight, and that the two of them were then enclosed together six years later.
In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed together at Disibodenberg and formed the core of a growing community of women attached to the monastery of monks. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the monastery. Hildegard states that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned, and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard sound Biblical interpretation. The written record of the Life of Jutta indicates that Hildegard probably assisted her in reciting the psalms, working in the garden, other handiwork, and tending to the sick. This might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.
Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as magistra of the community by her fellow nuns. Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg asked Hildegard to be Prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg. This was to be a move toward poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that rendered her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery. Hildegard and approximately 20 nuns thus moved to the St. Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165, Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.
Before Hildegard's death in 1179, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz: a man buried in Rupertsberg had died after excommunication from the Catholic Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard did not accept this idea, replying that it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the church at the time of his death.
Hildegard said that she first saw "The Shade of the Living Light" at the age of three, and by the age of five, she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. She used the term visio (Latin for 'vision') to describe this feature of her experience and she recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear." Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations. In her first theological text, Scivias ("Know the Ways"), Hildegard describes her struggle within:
But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. [...] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out, therefore, and write thus!'
It was between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod in Trier that Pope Eugenius heard about Hildegard's writings. It was from this that she received Papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit, giving her instant credence.
On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.
Hildegard's hagiography, Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, was compiled by the monk Theoderic of Echternach after Hildegard's death. He included the hagiographical work Libellus, or "Little Book", begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg. Godfrey had died before he was able to complete his work. Guibert of Gembloux was invited to finish the work; however, he had to return to his monastery with the project unfinished. Theoderic utilized sources Guibert had left behind to complete the Vita.
Hildegard's works include three great volumes of visionary theology; a variety of musical compositions for use in the liturgy, as well as the musical morality play Ordo Virtutum; one of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from popes to emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and 1170s; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the Lingua Ignota ('unknown language'); and various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography.
Several manuscripts of her works were produced during her lifetime, including the illustrated Rupertsberg manuscript of her first major work, Scivias; the Dendermonde Codex, which contains one version of her musical works; and the Ghent manuscript, which was the first fair-copy made for editing of her final theological work, the Liber Divinorum Operum. At the end of her life, and probably under her initial guidance, all of her works were edited and gathered into the single Riesenkodex manuscript.
Hildegard's most significant works were her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias ("Know the Ways", composed 1142–1151), Liber Vitae Meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life", composed 1158–1163); and Liber Divinorum Operum ("Book of Divine Works", also known as De operatione Dei, "On God's Activity", begun around 1163 or 1164 and completed around 1172 or 1174). In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was well into her seventies, Hildegard first describes each vision, whose details are often strange and enigmatic, and then interprets their theological contents in the words of the "voice of the Living Light."
With permission from Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg, she began journaling visions she had (which is the basis for Scivias). Scivias is a contraction of Sci vias Domini ('Know the Ways of the Lord'), and it was Hildegard's first major visionary work, and one of the biggest milestones in her life. Perceiving a divine command to "write down what you see and hear," Hildegard began to record and interpret her visionary experiences. In total, 26 visionary experiences were captured in this compilation.
Scivias is structured into three parts of unequal length. The first part (six visions) chronicles the order of God's creation: the Creation and Fall of Adam and Eve, the structure of the universe (described as the shape of an "egg"), the relationship between body and soul, God's relationship to his people through the Synagogue, and the choirs of angels. The second part (seven visions) describes the order of redemption: the coming of Christ the Redeemer, the Trinity, the church as the Bride of Christ and the Mother of the Faithful in baptism and confirmation, the orders of the church, Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the Eucharist, and the fight against the devil. Finally, the third part (thirteen visions) recapitulates the history of salvation told in the first two parts, symbolized as a building adorned with various allegorical figures and virtues. It concludes with the Symphony of Heaven, an early version of Hildegard's musical compositions.
In early 1148, a commission was sent by the Pope to Disibodenberg to find out more about Hildegard and her writings. The commission found that the visions were authentic and returned to the Pope, with a portion of the Scivias. Portions of the uncompleted work were read aloud to Pope Eugenius III at the Synod of Trier in 1148, after which he sent Hildegard a letter with his blessing. This blessing was later construed as papal approval for all of Hildegard's wide-ranging theological activities. Towards the end of her life, Hildegard commissioned a richly decorated manuscript of Scivias (the Rupertsberg Codex); although the original has been lost since its evacuation to Dresden for safekeeping in 1945, its images are preserved in a hand-painted facsimile from the 1920s.
In her second volume of visionary theology, Liber Vitae Meritorum, composed between 1158 and 1163, after she had moved her community of nuns into independence at the Rupertsberg in Bingen, Hildegard tackled the moral life in the form of dramatic confrontations between the virtues and the vices. She had already explored this area in her musical morality play, Ordo Virtutum, and the "Book of the Rewards of Life" takes up the play's characteristic themes. Each vice, although ultimately depicted as ugly and grotesque, nevertheless offers alluring, seductive speeches that attempt to entice the unwary soul into their clutches. Standing in humankind's defence, however, are the sober voices of the Virtues, powerfully confronting every vicious deception.
Amongst the work's innovations is one of the earliest descriptions of purgatory as the place where each soul would have to work off its debts after death before entering heaven. Hildegard's descriptions of the possible punishments there are often gruesome and grotesque, which emphasize the work's moral and pastoral purpose as a practical guide to the life of true penance and proper virtue.
Hildegard's last and grandest visionary work, Liber divinorum operum, had its genesis in one of the few times she experienced something like an ecstatic loss of consciousness. As she described it in an autobiographical passage included in her Vita, sometime in about 1163, she received "an extraordinary mystical vision" in which was revealed the "sprinkling drops of sweet rain" that she stated John the Evangelist experienced when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). Hildegard perceived that this Word was the key to the "Work of God", of which humankind is the pinnacle. The Book of Divine Works, therefore, became in many ways an extended explication of the prologue to the Gospel of John.
The ten visions of this work's three parts are cosmic in scale, to illustrate various ways of understanding the relationship between God and his creation. Often, that relationship is established by grand allegorical female figures representing Divine Love (Caritas) or Wisdom (Sapientia). The first vision opens the work with a salvo of poetic and visionary images, swirling about to characterize God's dynamic activity within the scope of his work within the history of salvation. The remaining three visions of the first part introduce the image of a human being standing astride the spheres that make up the universe and detail the intricate relationships between the human as microcosm and the universe as macrocosm. This culminates in the final chapter of Part One, Vision Four with Hildegard's commentary on the prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1–14), a direct rumination on the meaning of "In the beginning was the Word". The single vision that constitutes the whole of Part Two stretches that rumination back to the opening of Genesis, and forms an extended commentary on the seven days of the creation of the world told in Genesis 1–2:3. This commentary interprets each day of creation in three ways: literal or cosmological; allegorical or ecclesiological (i.e. related to the church's history); and moral or tropological (i.e. related to the soul's growth in virtue). Finally, the five visions of the third part take up again the building imagery of Scivias to describe the course of salvation history. The final vision (3.5) contains Hildegard's longest and most detailed prophetic program of the life of the church from her own days of "womanish weakness" through to the coming and ultimate downfall of the Antichrist.
Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Catholic Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard's music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, 69 musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost. This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.
One of her better-known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is uncertain when some of Hildegard's compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. It is an independent Latin morality play with music (82 songs); it does not supplement or pay homage to the Mass or the Office of a certain feast. It is, in fact, the earliest known surviving musical drama that is not attached to a liturgy.
The Ordo virtutum would have been performed within Hildegard's monastery by and for her select community of noblewomen and nuns. It was probably performed as a manifestation of the theology Hildegard delineated in the Scivias. The play serves as an allegory of the Christian story of sin, confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Notably, it is the female Virtues who restore the fallen to the community of the faithful, not the male Patriarchs or Prophets. This would have been a significant message to the nuns in Hildegard's convent. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima (the human souls) and the Virtues. The devil's part is entirely spoken or shouted, with no musical setting. All other characters sing in monophonic plainchant. This includes patriarchs, prophets, a happy soul, an unhappy soul, and a penitent soul along with 16 virtues (including mercy, innocence, chastity, obedience, hope, and faith).
In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum. The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard's own text and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories. Her music is monophonic, consisting of exactly one melodic line. Its style has been said to be characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of traditional Gregorian chant and to stand outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. Researchers are also exploring ways in which it may be viewed in comparison with her contemporaries, such as Hermannus Contractus. Another feature of Hildegard's music that both reflects the 12th-century evolution of chant, and pushes that evolution further, is that it is highly melismatic, often with recurrent melodic units. Scholars such as Margot Fassler, Marianne Richert Pfau, and Beverly Lomer also note the intimate relationship between music and text in Hildegard's compositions, whose rhetorical features are often more distinct than is common in 12th-century chant. As with most medieval chant notation, Hildegard's music lacks any indication of tempo or rhythm; the surviving manuscripts employ late German style notation, which uses very ornamental neumes. The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard of Bingen and her community were by the Virgin Mary and the saints.
Hildegard's medicinal and scientific writings, although thematically complementary to her ideas about nature expressed in her visionary works, are different in focus and scope. Neither claim to be rooted in her visionary experience and its divine authority. Rather, they spring from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary, as well as the theoretical information she likely gained through her wide-ranging reading in the monastery's library. As she gained practical skills in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, she combined physical treatment of physical diseases with holistic methods centered on "spiritual healing". She became well known for her healing powers involving the practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones. She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans. In addition to her hands-on experience, she also gained medical knowledge, including elements of her humoral theory, from traditional Latin texts.
Hildegard catalogued both her theory and practice in two works. The first, Physica, contains nine books that describe the scientific and medicinal properties of various plants, stones, fish, reptiles, and animals. This document is also thought to contain the first recorded reference of the use of hops in beer as a preservative. The second, Causae et Curae, is an exploration of the human body, its connections to the rest of the natural world, and the causes and cures of various diseases. Hildegard documented various medical practices in these books, including the use of bleeding and home remedies for many common ailments. She also explains remedies for common agricultural injuries such as burns, fractures, dislocations, and cuts. Hildegard may have used the books to teach assistants at the monastery. These books are historically significant because they show areas of medieval medicine that were not well documented because their practitioners, mainly women, rarely wrote in Latin. Her writings were commentated on by Mélanie Lipinska, a Polish scientist.
In addition to its wealth of practical evidence, Causae et Curae is also noteworthy for its organizational scheme. Its first part sets the work within the context of the creation of the cosmos and then humanity as its summit, and the constant interplay of the human person as microcosm both physically and spiritually with the macrocosm of the universe informs all of Hildegard's approach. Her hallmark is to emphasize the vital connection between the "green" health of the natural world and the holistic health of the human person. Viriditas, or greening power, was thought to sustain human beings and could be manipulated by adjusting the balance of elements within a person. Thus, when she approached medicine as a type of gardening, it was not just as an analogy. Rather, Hildegard understood the plants and elements of the garden as direct counterparts to the humors and elements within the human body, whose imbalance led to illness and disease.
The nearly three hundred chapters of the second book of Causae et Curae "explore the etiology, or causes, of disease as well as human sexuality, psychology, and physiology." In this section, she gives specific instructions for bleeding based on various factors, including gender, the phase of the moon (bleeding is best done when the moon is waning), the place of disease (use veins near diseased organ or body part) or prevention (big veins in arms), and how much blood to take (described in imprecise measurements, like "the amount that a thirsty person can swallow in one gulp"). She even includes bleeding instructions for animals to keep them healthy. In the third and fourth sections, Hildegard describes treatments for malignant and minor problems and diseases according to the humoral theory, again including information on animal health. The fifth section is about diagnosis and prognosis, which includes instructions to check the patient's blood, pulse, urine, and stool. Finally, the sixth section documents a lunar horoscope to provide an additional means of prognosis for both disease and other medical conditions, such as conception and the outcome of pregnancy. For example, she indicates that a waxing moon is good for human conception and is also good for sowing seeds for plants (sowing seeds is the plant equivalent of conception). Elsewhere, Hildegard is even said to have stressed the value of boiling drinking water in an attempt to prevent infection.
As Hildegard elaborates the medical and scientific relationship between the human microcosm and the macrocosm of the universe, she often focuses on interrelated patterns of four: "the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), the four seasons, the four humors, the four zones of the earth, and the four major winds." Although she inherited the basic framework of humoral theory from ancient medicine, Hildegard's conception of the hierarchical inter-balance of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) was unique, based on their correspondence to "superior" and "inferior" elements – blood and phlegm corresponding to the "celestial" elements of fire and air, and the two biles corresponding to the "terrestrial" elements of water and earth. Hildegard understood the disease-causing imbalance of these humors to result from the improper dominance of the subordinate humors. This disharmony reflects that introduced by Adam and Eve in the Fall, which for Hildegard marked the indelible entrance of disease and humoral imbalance into humankind. As she writes in Causae et Curae c. 42:
It happens that certain men suffer diverse illnesses. This comes from the phlegm which is superabundant within them. For if man had remained in paradise, he would not have had the flegmata within his body, from which many evils proceed, but his flesh would have been whole and without dark humor [livor]. However, because he consented to evil and relinquished good, he was made into a likeness of the earth, which produces good and useful herbs, as well as bad and useless ones, and which has in itself both good and evil moistures. From tasting evil, the blood of the sons of Adam was turned into the poison of semen, out of which the sons of man are begotten. And therefore their flesh is ulcerated and permeable [to disease]. These sores and openings create a certain storm and smoky moisture in men, from which the flegmata arise and coagulate, which then introduce diverse infirmities to the human body. All this arose from the first evil, which man began at the start, because if Adam had remained in paradise, he would have had the sweetest health, and the best dwelling-place, just as the strongest balsam emits the best odor; but on the contrary, man now has within himself poison and phlegm and diverse illnesses.
Hildegard also invented an alternative alphabet. Litterae ignotae ('Alternate Alphabet') was another work and was more or less a secret code, or even an intellectual code – much like a modern crossword puzzle today.
Hildegard's Lingua ignota ('unknown language') consisted of a series of invented words that corresponded to an eclectic list of nouns. The list is approximately 1,000 nouns; there are no other parts of speech. The two most important sources for the Lingua ignota are the Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek 2 (nicknamed the Riesenkodex) and the Berlin manuscript. In both manuscripts, medieval German and Latin glosses are written above Hildegard's invented words. The Berlin manuscript contains additional Latin and German glosses not found in the Riesenkodex. The first two words of the Lingua as copied in the Berlin manuscript are aigonz (German, goth; Latin, deus; English, god) and aleganz (German, engel; Latin, angelus; English, angel).
Barbara Newman believes that Hildegard used her Lingua Ignota to increase solidarity among her nuns. Sarah Higley disagrees and notes that there is no evidence of Hildegard teaching the language to her nuns. She suggests that the language was not intended to remain a secret; rather, the presence of words for mundane things may indicate that the language was for the whole abbey and perhaps the larger monastic world. Higley believes that "the Lingua is a linguistic distillation of the philosophy expressed in her three prophetic books: it represents the cosmos of divine and human creation and the sins that flesh is heir to."
The text of her writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated, and abridged words. Because of her inventions of words for her lyrics and use of a constructed script, many conlangers look upon her as a medieval precursor.
Maddocks claims that it is likely Hildegard learned simple Latin and the tenets of the Christian faith, but was not instructed in the Seven Liberal Arts, which formed the basis of all education for the learned classes in the Middle Ages: the Trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric plus the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The correspondence she kept with the outside world, both spiritual and social, transcended the cloister as a space of spiritual confinement and served to document Hildegard's grand style and strict formatting of medieval letter writing.
Contributing to Christian European rhetorical traditions, Hildegard "authorized herself as a theologian" through alternative rhetorical arts. Hildegard was creative in her interpretation of theology. She believed that her monastery should exclude novices who were not from the nobility because she did not want her community to be divided on the basis of social status. She also stated that "woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman."
Because of church limitation on public, discursive rhetoric, the medieval rhetorical arts included preaching, letter writing, poetry, and the encyclopedic tradition. Hildegard's participation in these arts speaks to her significance as a female rhetorician, transcending bans on women's social participation and interpretation of scripture. The acceptance of public preaching by a woman, even a well-connected abbess and acknowledged prophet, does not fit the stereotype of this time. Her preaching was not limited to the monasteries; she preached publicly in 1160 in Germany. She conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in chapter houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.
Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. She traveled widely during her four preaching tours. She had several devoted followers, including Guibert of Gembloux, who wrote to her frequently and became her secretary after Volmar's death in 1173. Hildegard also influenced several monastic women, exchanging letters with Elisabeth of Schönau, a nearby visionary.
Hildegard corresponded with popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148. Hildegard of Bingen's correspondence is an important component of her literary output.
Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the Roman canonization process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonization were not completed and she remained at the level of her beatification. Her name was nonetheless included in the Roman Martyrology at the end of the 16th century up to the current 2004 edition, listing her as "Saint Hildegard" with her feast on 17 September, which would eventually be added to the General Roman Calendar as an optional memorial. Numerous popes have referred to Hildegard as a saint, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Hildegard's parish and pilgrimage church in Eibingen near Rüdesheim houses her relics.
On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the veneration of Saint Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization," thus laying the groundwork for naming her a Doctor of the Church. On 7 October 2012, the feast of the Holy Rosary, the pope named her a Doctor of the Church. He called Hildegard "perennially relevant" and "an authentic teacher of theology and a profound scholar of natural science and music."
Hildegard of Bingen also appears in the calendar of saints of various Anglican churches, such as that of the Church of England, in which she is commemorated on 17 September.
In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars. They note her reference to herself as a member of the weaker sex and her rather constant belittling of women. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis. Such a statement on her part, however, worked slyly to her advantage because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice. Hildegard used her voice to amplify the church's condemnation of institutional corruption, in particular simony.
Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly because of her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. Although her medical writings were long neglected and then, studied without reference to their context, she was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's "Hildegard-Medicine", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing center that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing. Her reputation as a medicinal writer and healer was also used by early feminists to argue for women's rights to attend medical schools.
Reincarnation of Hildegard has been debated since 1924 when Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner lectured that a nun of her description was the past life of Russian poet-philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, whose visions of Holy Wisdom are often compared to Hildegard's. Sophiologist Robert Powell writes that hermetic astrology proves the match, while mystical communities in Hildegard's lineage include that of artist Carl Schroeder as studied by Columbia sociologist Courtney Bender and supported by reincarnation researchers Walter Semkiw and Kevin Ryerson.
Recordings and performances of Hildegard's music have gained critical praise and popularity since 1979. There is an extensive discography of her musical works.
The following modern musical works are directly linked to Hildegard and her music or texts:
The artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Hildegard.
In space, the minor planet 898 Hildegard is named for her.
Hildegard was the subject of a 2012 fictionalized biographic novel Illuminations by Mary Sharatt.
The plant genus Hildegardia is named after her because of her contributions to herbal medicine.
The off-Broadway musical In the Green, written by Grace McLean, followed Hildegard's story.
In his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, neurologist Oliver Sacks devotes a chapter to Hildegard and concludes that in his opinion her visions were migrainous.
In film, Hildegard has been portrayed by Patricia Routledge in a BBC documentary called Hildegard of Bingen (1994), by Ángela Molina in Barbarossa (2009) and by Barbara Sukowa in the film Vision, directed by Margarethe von Trotta.
A feature documentary film, The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard, was released by American director Michael M. Conti in 2014.
Hildegard makes an appearance in The Baby-Sitters Club #101: Claudia Kishi, Middle School Drop-Out by Ann M. Martin, when Anna Stevenson dresses as Hildegard for Halloween.
Kristin Hayter, known professionally as Lingua Ignota, was inspired by Hildegard of Bingen
General commentary
On Hildegard's illuminations
Background reading | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hildegard of Bingen (German: Hildegard von Bingen, pronounced [ˈhɪldəɡaʁt fɔn ˈbɪŋən]; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis; c. 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hildegard's convent elected her as magistra (mother superior) in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy. She wrote poems, and supervised miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, regional calendars of the Roman Catholic Church have listed her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as \"equivalent canonization\". On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of \"her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hildegard was born around 1098. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim. Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child, although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she experienced visions.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "From early childhood, long before she undertook her public mission or even her monastic vows, Hildegard's spiritual awareness was grounded in what she called the umbra viventis lucis, the reflection of the living Light. Her letter to Guibert of Gembloux, which she wrote at the age of 77, describes her experience of this light:",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old. In this vision my soul, as God would have it, rises up high into the vault of heaven and into the changing sky and spreads itself out among different peoples, although they are far away from me in distant lands and places. And because I see them this way in my soul, I observe them in accord with the shifting of clouds and other created things. I do not hear them with my outward ears, nor do I perceive them by the thoughts of my own heart or by any combination of my five senses, but in my soul alone, while my outward eyes are open. So I have never fallen prey to ecstasy in the visions, but I see them wide awake, day and night. And I am constantly fettered by sickness, and often in the grip of pain so intense that it threatens to kill me, but God has sustained me until now. The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it \"the reflection of the living Light.\" And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Perhaps because of Hildegard's visions, as a method of political positioning, or both, Hildegard's parents offered her as an oblate to the Benedictine monastery at Disibodenberg, which had been recently reformed in the Palatinate Forest. The date of Hildegard's enclosure at the monastery is the subject of debate. Her Vita says she was eight years old when she was professed with Jutta, who was the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim and about six years older than Hildegard. However, Jutta's date of enclosure is known to have been in 1112, when Hildegard would have been 14. Their vows were received by Bishop Otto of Bamberg on All Saints Day 1112. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta at the age of eight, and that the two of them were then enclosed together six years later.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed together at Disibodenberg and formed the core of a growing community of women attached to the monastery of monks. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the monastery. Hildegard states that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned, and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard sound Biblical interpretation. The written record of the Life of Jutta indicates that Hildegard probably assisted her in reciting the psalms, working in the garden, other handiwork, and tending to the sick. This might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as magistra of the community by her fellow nuns. Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg asked Hildegard to be Prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg. This was to be a move toward poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that rendered her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery. Hildegard and approximately 20 nuns thus moved to the St. Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165, Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Before Hildegard's death in 1179, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz: a man buried in Rupertsberg had died after excommunication from the Catholic Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard did not accept this idea, replying that it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the church at the time of his death.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Hildegard said that she first saw \"The Shade of the Living Light\" at the age of three, and by the age of five, she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. She used the term visio (Latin for 'vision') to describe this feature of her experience and she recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Hildegard was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who in turn told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to \"write down that which you see and hear.\" Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations. In her first theological text, Scivias (\"Know the Ways\"), Hildegard describes her struggle within:",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. [...] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out, therefore, and write thus!'",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It was between November 1147 and February 1148 at the synod in Trier that Pope Eugenius heard about Hildegard's writings. It was from this that she received Papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit, giving her instant credence.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hildegard's hagiography, Vita Sanctae Hildegardis, was compiled by the monk Theoderic of Echternach after Hildegard's death. He included the hagiographical work Libellus, or \"Little Book\", begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg. Godfrey had died before he was able to complete his work. Guibert of Gembloux was invited to finish the work; however, he had to return to his monastery with the project unfinished. Theoderic utilized sources Guibert had left behind to complete the Vita.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Hildegard's works include three great volumes of visionary theology; a variety of musical compositions for use in the liturgy, as well as the musical morality play Ordo Virtutum; one of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from popes to emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and 1170s; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the Lingua Ignota ('unknown language'); and various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Several manuscripts of her works were produced during her lifetime, including the illustrated Rupertsberg manuscript of her first major work, Scivias; the Dendermonde Codex, which contains one version of her musical works; and the Ghent manuscript, which was the first fair-copy made for editing of her final theological work, the Liber Divinorum Operum. At the end of her life, and probably under her initial guidance, all of her works were edited and gathered into the single Riesenkodex manuscript.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Hildegard's most significant works were her three volumes of visionary theology: Scivias (\"Know the Ways\", composed 1142–1151), Liber Vitae Meritorum (\"Book of Life's Merits\" or \"Book of the Rewards of Life\", composed 1158–1163); and Liber Divinorum Operum (\"Book of Divine Works\", also known as De operatione Dei, \"On God's Activity\", begun around 1163 or 1164 and completed around 1172 or 1174). In these volumes, the last of which was completed when she was well into her seventies, Hildegard first describes each vision, whose details are often strange and enigmatic, and then interprets their theological contents in the words of the \"voice of the Living Light.\"",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "With permission from Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg, she began journaling visions she had (which is the basis for Scivias). Scivias is a contraction of Sci vias Domini ('Know the Ways of the Lord'), and it was Hildegard's first major visionary work, and one of the biggest milestones in her life. Perceiving a divine command to \"write down what you see and hear,\" Hildegard began to record and interpret her visionary experiences. In total, 26 visionary experiences were captured in this compilation.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Scivias is structured into three parts of unequal length. The first part (six visions) chronicles the order of God's creation: the Creation and Fall of Adam and Eve, the structure of the universe (described as the shape of an \"egg\"), the relationship between body and soul, God's relationship to his people through the Synagogue, and the choirs of angels. The second part (seven visions) describes the order of redemption: the coming of Christ the Redeemer, the Trinity, the church as the Bride of Christ and the Mother of the Faithful in baptism and confirmation, the orders of the church, Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the Eucharist, and the fight against the devil. Finally, the third part (thirteen visions) recapitulates the history of salvation told in the first two parts, symbolized as a building adorned with various allegorical figures and virtues. It concludes with the Symphony of Heaven, an early version of Hildegard's musical compositions.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In early 1148, a commission was sent by the Pope to Disibodenberg to find out more about Hildegard and her writings. The commission found that the visions were authentic and returned to the Pope, with a portion of the Scivias. Portions of the uncompleted work were read aloud to Pope Eugenius III at the Synod of Trier in 1148, after which he sent Hildegard a letter with his blessing. This blessing was later construed as papal approval for all of Hildegard's wide-ranging theological activities. Towards the end of her life, Hildegard commissioned a richly decorated manuscript of Scivias (the Rupertsberg Codex); although the original has been lost since its evacuation to Dresden for safekeeping in 1945, its images are preserved in a hand-painted facsimile from the 1920s.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In her second volume of visionary theology, Liber Vitae Meritorum, composed between 1158 and 1163, after she had moved her community of nuns into independence at the Rupertsberg in Bingen, Hildegard tackled the moral life in the form of dramatic confrontations between the virtues and the vices. She had already explored this area in her musical morality play, Ordo Virtutum, and the \"Book of the Rewards of Life\" takes up the play's characteristic themes. Each vice, although ultimately depicted as ugly and grotesque, nevertheless offers alluring, seductive speeches that attempt to entice the unwary soul into their clutches. Standing in humankind's defence, however, are the sober voices of the Virtues, powerfully confronting every vicious deception.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Amongst the work's innovations is one of the earliest descriptions of purgatory as the place where each soul would have to work off its debts after death before entering heaven. Hildegard's descriptions of the possible punishments there are often gruesome and grotesque, which emphasize the work's moral and pastoral purpose as a practical guide to the life of true penance and proper virtue.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Hildegard's last and grandest visionary work, Liber divinorum operum, had its genesis in one of the few times she experienced something like an ecstatic loss of consciousness. As she described it in an autobiographical passage included in her Vita, sometime in about 1163, she received \"an extraordinary mystical vision\" in which was revealed the \"sprinkling drops of sweet rain\" that she stated John the Evangelist experienced when he wrote, \"In the beginning was the Word\" (John 1:1). Hildegard perceived that this Word was the key to the \"Work of God\", of which humankind is the pinnacle. The Book of Divine Works, therefore, became in many ways an extended explication of the prologue to the Gospel of John.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The ten visions of this work's three parts are cosmic in scale, to illustrate various ways of understanding the relationship between God and his creation. Often, that relationship is established by grand allegorical female figures representing Divine Love (Caritas) or Wisdom (Sapientia). The first vision opens the work with a salvo of poetic and visionary images, swirling about to characterize God's dynamic activity within the scope of his work within the history of salvation. The remaining three visions of the first part introduce the image of a human being standing astride the spheres that make up the universe and detail the intricate relationships between the human as microcosm and the universe as macrocosm. This culminates in the final chapter of Part One, Vision Four with Hildegard's commentary on the prologue to the Gospel of John (John 1:1–14), a direct rumination on the meaning of \"In the beginning was the Word\". The single vision that constitutes the whole of Part Two stretches that rumination back to the opening of Genesis, and forms an extended commentary on the seven days of the creation of the world told in Genesis 1–2:3. This commentary interprets each day of creation in three ways: literal or cosmological; allegorical or ecclesiological (i.e. related to the church's history); and moral or tropological (i.e. related to the soul's growth in virtue). Finally, the five visions of the third part take up again the building imagery of Scivias to describe the course of salvation history. The final vision (3.5) contains Hildegard's longest and most detailed prophetic program of the life of the church from her own days of \"womanish weakness\" through to the coming and ultimate downfall of the Antichrist.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Catholic Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard's music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, 69 musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost. This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "One of her better-known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is uncertain when some of Hildegard's compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. It is an independent Latin morality play with music (82 songs); it does not supplement or pay homage to the Mass or the Office of a certain feast. It is, in fact, the earliest known surviving musical drama that is not attached to a liturgy.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Ordo virtutum would have been performed within Hildegard's monastery by and for her select community of noblewomen and nuns. It was probably performed as a manifestation of the theology Hildegard delineated in the Scivias. The play serves as an allegory of the Christian story of sin, confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Notably, it is the female Virtues who restore the fallen to the community of the faithful, not the male Patriarchs or Prophets. This would have been a significant message to the nuns in Hildegard's convent. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima (the human souls) and the Virtues. The devil's part is entirely spoken or shouted, with no musical setting. All other characters sing in monophonic plainchant. This includes patriarchs, prophets, a happy soul, an unhappy soul, and a penitent soul along with 16 virtues (including mercy, innocence, chastity, obedience, hope, and faith).",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum. The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard's own text and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories. Her music is monophonic, consisting of exactly one melodic line. Its style has been said to be characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of traditional Gregorian chant and to stand outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. Researchers are also exploring ways in which it may be viewed in comparison with her contemporaries, such as Hermannus Contractus. Another feature of Hildegard's music that both reflects the 12th-century evolution of chant, and pushes that evolution further, is that it is highly melismatic, often with recurrent melodic units. Scholars such as Margot Fassler, Marianne Richert Pfau, and Beverly Lomer also note the intimate relationship between music and text in Hildegard's compositions, whose rhetorical features are often more distinct than is common in 12th-century chant. As with most medieval chant notation, Hildegard's music lacks any indication of tempo or rhythm; the surviving manuscripts employ late German style notation, which uses very ornamental neumes. The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard of Bingen and her community were by the Virgin Mary and the saints.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hildegard's medicinal and scientific writings, although thematically complementary to her ideas about nature expressed in her visionary works, are different in focus and scope. Neither claim to be rooted in her visionary experience and its divine authority. Rather, they spring from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary, as well as the theoretical information she likely gained through her wide-ranging reading in the monastery's library. As she gained practical skills in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, she combined physical treatment of physical diseases with holistic methods centered on \"spiritual healing\". She became well known for her healing powers involving the practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones. She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans. In addition to her hands-on experience, she also gained medical knowledge, including elements of her humoral theory, from traditional Latin texts.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hildegard catalogued both her theory and practice in two works. The first, Physica, contains nine books that describe the scientific and medicinal properties of various plants, stones, fish, reptiles, and animals. This document is also thought to contain the first recorded reference of the use of hops in beer as a preservative. The second, Causae et Curae, is an exploration of the human body, its connections to the rest of the natural world, and the causes and cures of various diseases. Hildegard documented various medical practices in these books, including the use of bleeding and home remedies for many common ailments. She also explains remedies for common agricultural injuries such as burns, fractures, dislocations, and cuts. Hildegard may have used the books to teach assistants at the monastery. These books are historically significant because they show areas of medieval medicine that were not well documented because their practitioners, mainly women, rarely wrote in Latin. Her writings were commentated on by Mélanie Lipinska, a Polish scientist.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In addition to its wealth of practical evidence, Causae et Curae is also noteworthy for its organizational scheme. Its first part sets the work within the context of the creation of the cosmos and then humanity as its summit, and the constant interplay of the human person as microcosm both physically and spiritually with the macrocosm of the universe informs all of Hildegard's approach. Her hallmark is to emphasize the vital connection between the \"green\" health of the natural world and the holistic health of the human person. Viriditas, or greening power, was thought to sustain human beings and could be manipulated by adjusting the balance of elements within a person. Thus, when she approached medicine as a type of gardening, it was not just as an analogy. Rather, Hildegard understood the plants and elements of the garden as direct counterparts to the humors and elements within the human body, whose imbalance led to illness and disease.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The nearly three hundred chapters of the second book of Causae et Curae \"explore the etiology, or causes, of disease as well as human sexuality, psychology, and physiology.\" In this section, she gives specific instructions for bleeding based on various factors, including gender, the phase of the moon (bleeding is best done when the moon is waning), the place of disease (use veins near diseased organ or body part) or prevention (big veins in arms), and how much blood to take (described in imprecise measurements, like \"the amount that a thirsty person can swallow in one gulp\"). She even includes bleeding instructions for animals to keep them healthy. In the third and fourth sections, Hildegard describes treatments for malignant and minor problems and diseases according to the humoral theory, again including information on animal health. The fifth section is about diagnosis and prognosis, which includes instructions to check the patient's blood, pulse, urine, and stool. Finally, the sixth section documents a lunar horoscope to provide an additional means of prognosis for both disease and other medical conditions, such as conception and the outcome of pregnancy. For example, she indicates that a waxing moon is good for human conception and is also good for sowing seeds for plants (sowing seeds is the plant equivalent of conception). Elsewhere, Hildegard is even said to have stressed the value of boiling drinking water in an attempt to prevent infection.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "As Hildegard elaborates the medical and scientific relationship between the human microcosm and the macrocosm of the universe, she often focuses on interrelated patterns of four: \"the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), the four seasons, the four humors, the four zones of the earth, and the four major winds.\" Although she inherited the basic framework of humoral theory from ancient medicine, Hildegard's conception of the hierarchical inter-balance of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) was unique, based on their correspondence to \"superior\" and \"inferior\" elements – blood and phlegm corresponding to the \"celestial\" elements of fire and air, and the two biles corresponding to the \"terrestrial\" elements of water and earth. Hildegard understood the disease-causing imbalance of these humors to result from the improper dominance of the subordinate humors. This disharmony reflects that introduced by Adam and Eve in the Fall, which for Hildegard marked the indelible entrance of disease and humoral imbalance into humankind. As she writes in Causae et Curae c. 42:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "It happens that certain men suffer diverse illnesses. This comes from the phlegm which is superabundant within them. For if man had remained in paradise, he would not have had the flegmata within his body, from which many evils proceed, but his flesh would have been whole and without dark humor [livor]. However, because he consented to evil and relinquished good, he was made into a likeness of the earth, which produces good and useful herbs, as well as bad and useless ones, and which has in itself both good and evil moistures. From tasting evil, the blood of the sons of Adam was turned into the poison of semen, out of which the sons of man are begotten. And therefore their flesh is ulcerated and permeable [to disease]. These sores and openings create a certain storm and smoky moisture in men, from which the flegmata arise and coagulate, which then introduce diverse infirmities to the human body. All this arose from the first evil, which man began at the start, because if Adam had remained in paradise, he would have had the sweetest health, and the best dwelling-place, just as the strongest balsam emits the best odor; but on the contrary, man now has within himself poison and phlegm and diverse illnesses.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Hildegard also invented an alternative alphabet. Litterae ignotae ('Alternate Alphabet') was another work and was more or less a secret code, or even an intellectual code – much like a modern crossword puzzle today.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Hildegard's Lingua ignota ('unknown language') consisted of a series of invented words that corresponded to an eclectic list of nouns. The list is approximately 1,000 nouns; there are no other parts of speech. The two most important sources for the Lingua ignota are the Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek 2 (nicknamed the Riesenkodex) and the Berlin manuscript. In both manuscripts, medieval German and Latin glosses are written above Hildegard's invented words. The Berlin manuscript contains additional Latin and German glosses not found in the Riesenkodex. The first two words of the Lingua as copied in the Berlin manuscript are aigonz (German, goth; Latin, deus; English, god) and aleganz (German, engel; Latin, angelus; English, angel).",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Barbara Newman believes that Hildegard used her Lingua Ignota to increase solidarity among her nuns. Sarah Higley disagrees and notes that there is no evidence of Hildegard teaching the language to her nuns. She suggests that the language was not intended to remain a secret; rather, the presence of words for mundane things may indicate that the language was for the whole abbey and perhaps the larger monastic world. Higley believes that \"the Lingua is a linguistic distillation of the philosophy expressed in her three prophetic books: it represents the cosmos of divine and human creation and the sins that flesh is heir to.\"",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The text of her writing and compositions reveals Hildegard's use of this form of modified medieval Latin, encompassing many invented, conflated, and abridged words. Because of her inventions of words for her lyrics and use of a constructed script, many conlangers look upon her as a medieval precursor.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Maddocks claims that it is likely Hildegard learned simple Latin and the tenets of the Christian faith, but was not instructed in the Seven Liberal Arts, which formed the basis of all education for the learned classes in the Middle Ages: the Trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric plus the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The correspondence she kept with the outside world, both spiritual and social, transcended the cloister as a space of spiritual confinement and served to document Hildegard's grand style and strict formatting of medieval letter writing.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Contributing to Christian European rhetorical traditions, Hildegard \"authorized herself as a theologian\" through alternative rhetorical arts. Hildegard was creative in her interpretation of theology. She believed that her monastery should exclude novices who were not from the nobility because she did not want her community to be divided on the basis of social status. She also stated that \"woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman.\"",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Because of church limitation on public, discursive rhetoric, the medieval rhetorical arts included preaching, letter writing, poetry, and the encyclopedic tradition. Hildegard's participation in these arts speaks to her significance as a female rhetorician, transcending bans on women's social participation and interpretation of scripture. The acceptance of public preaching by a woman, even a well-connected abbess and acknowledged prophet, does not fit the stereotype of this time. Her preaching was not limited to the monasteries; she preached publicly in 1160 in Germany. She conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in chapter houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Many abbots and abbesses asked her for prayers and opinions on various matters. She traveled widely during her four preaching tours. She had several devoted followers, including Guibert of Gembloux, who wrote to her frequently and became her secretary after Volmar's death in 1173. Hildegard also influenced several monastic women, exchanging letters with Elisabeth of Schönau, a nearby visionary.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Hildegard corresponded with popes such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen such as Abbot Suger, German emperors such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148. Hildegard of Bingen's correspondence is an important component of her literary output.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the Roman canonization process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonization were not completed and she remained at the level of her beatification. Her name was nonetheless included in the Roman Martyrology at the end of the 16th century up to the current 2004 edition, listing her as \"Saint Hildegard\" with her feast on 17 September, which would eventually be added to the General Roman Calendar as an optional memorial. Numerous popes have referred to Hildegard as a saint, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Hildegard's parish and pilgrimage church in Eibingen near Rüdesheim houses her relics.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the veneration of Saint Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as \"equivalent canonization,\" thus laying the groundwork for naming her a Doctor of the Church. On 7 October 2012, the feast of the Holy Rosary, the pope named her a Doctor of the Church. He called Hildegard \"perennially relevant\" and \"an authentic teacher of theology and a profound scholar of natural science and music.\"",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Hildegard of Bingen also appears in the calendar of saints of various Anglican churches, such as that of the Church of England, in which she is commemorated on 17 September.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars. They note her reference to herself as a member of the weaker sex and her rather constant belittling of women. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis. Such a statement on her part, however, worked slyly to her advantage because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice. Hildegard used her voice to amplify the church's condemnation of institutional corruption, in particular simony.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly because of her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. Although her medical writings were long neglected and then, studied without reference to their context, she was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's \"Hildegard-Medicine\", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing center that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing. Her reputation as a medicinal writer and healer was also used by early feminists to argue for women's rights to attend medical schools.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Reincarnation of Hildegard has been debated since 1924 when Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner lectured that a nun of her description was the past life of Russian poet-philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, whose visions of Holy Wisdom are often compared to Hildegard's. Sophiologist Robert Powell writes that hermetic astrology proves the match, while mystical communities in Hildegard's lineage include that of artist Carl Schroeder as studied by Columbia sociologist Courtney Bender and supported by reincarnation researchers Walter Semkiw and Kevin Ryerson.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Recordings and performances of Hildegard's music have gained critical praise and popularity since 1979. There is an extensive discography of her musical works.",
"title": "Significance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The following modern musical works are directly linked to Hildegard and her music or texts:",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Hildegard.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In space, the minor planet 898 Hildegard is named for her.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Hildegard was the subject of a 2012 fictionalized biographic novel Illuminations by Mary Sharatt.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The plant genus Hildegardia is named after her because of her contributions to herbal medicine.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The off-Broadway musical In the Green, written by Grace McLean, followed Hildegard's story.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, neurologist Oliver Sacks devotes a chapter to Hildegard and concludes that in his opinion her visions were migrainous.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In film, Hildegard has been portrayed by Patricia Routledge in a BBC documentary called Hildegard of Bingen (1994), by Ángela Molina in Barbarossa (2009) and by Barbara Sukowa in the film Vision, directed by Margarethe von Trotta.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "A feature documentary film, The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard, was released by American director Michael M. Conti in 2014.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Hildegard makes an appearance in The Baby-Sitters Club #101: Claudia Kishi, Middle School Drop-Out by Ann M. Martin, when Anna Stevenson dresses as Hildegard for Halloween.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Kristin Hayter, known professionally as Lingua Ignota, was inspired by Hildegard of Bingen",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "General commentary",
"title": "Further reading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "On Hildegard's illuminations",
"title": "Further reading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Background reading",
"title": "Further reading"
}
]
| Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. Hildegard's convent elected her as magistra in 1136. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, and antiphons for the liturgy. She wrote poems, and supervised miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. There are more surviving chants by Hildegard than by any other composer from the entire Middle Ages, and she is one of the few known composers to have written both the music and the words. One of her works, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She is noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota. Although the history of her formal canonization is complicated, regional calendars of the Roman Catholic Church have listed her as a saint for centuries. On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Hildegard to the entire Catholic Church in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 7 October 2012, he named her a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of "her holiness of life and the originality of her teaching." | 2001-10-12T00:31:15Z | 2023-12-31T02:01:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen |
13,686 | Hilversum | Hilversum (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɦɪlvərsʏm] ) is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes and smaller towns. Hilversum is part of the Randstad, one of the largest conurbations in Europe, and the Amsterdam metropolitan area; it is about 22 km southeast of Amsterdam's city centre and about 15 km north of Utrecht.
The city is home to the headquarters, studios and broadcast stations of several major radio, television and newspaper companies such as Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. Hilversum is thus known for being the mediastad (media city) of the Netherlands.
Hilversum lies 24 km (15 mi) south-east of Amsterdam and 15 km (9.3 mi) north of Utrecht. The town is known for its architecturally important Town Hall (Raadhuis Hilversum), designed by Willem Marinus Dudok and built in 1931.
Hilversum has one public library, two swimming pools (Van Hellemond Sport and De Lieberg), a number of sporting halls, and several shopping centers (such as Hilvertshof, Winkelcentrum Kerkelanden, De Riebeeckgalerij, and Winkelcentrum Seinhorst). Locally, the town center is known as het dorp, which means "the village".
Hilversum is located on the sandy, hilly parts of the Gooi, and has four hills: the closest to the centre of town in the Boomberg. Then the Trompenberg (now a luxury residential area where including the Brenninkmeijer family lives, of C&A-fame), and to the south the Hoorneboeg (25 m) and two kilometres easterly of that the Zwaluwenberg, where since 1950 the headquarters of the inspector-general of the armies is located. These hills date from the period of the Ice-age, when gletschers pushed walls of earth before them. Hilversum was the farthest southern edge the glaciers reached.
Surrounding towns are Nieuw-Loosdrecht, Bussum, Kortenhoef, Blaricum, Hollandsche Rading, Lage Vuursche, Maartensdijk, 's-Graveland, Laren, Nederhorst den Berg and Ankeveen.
Hilversum consists of the following districts and neighborhoods: Center (Langgewenstbuurt, Sint Vitusbuurt, Havenstraatbuurt and Centrum), Northwest (Nimrodpark, Trompenberg North, Trompenberg South, Media Park, Raadhuiskwartier and Boomberg), Northeast (North, Johannes Geradtswegbuurt, Erfgooiersbuurt and AZC Crailo), East (Geuzenbuurt, Electrobuurt, Astronomiebuurt, Science neighborhood, Kamrad, Kleine Driftbuurt and Liebergen), Southeast (Bloemkwartier Noord, Bloemenkwartier Zuid, Painterskwartier, 't Hoogt van' t Kruis, Arenaparkkwartier and West Indiëkwartier), Zuid (Writerskwartier, Staatsliedenkwartier and Zeeheldenkwartier), Southwest ( Kerkelanden, Havenkwartier, Zeverijn and Het Rode Dorp) and Hilversumse Meent. In 1767 Hilversum was still divided into 4 districts (quarters): the Neuquartier, Groestquartier, Kerkquartier and the Sandtbergerquartier.
The Oude Haven in the southwest is at the end of the Gooische Vaart. The construction of the canal between 's-Graveland and Hilversum was done in stages, so that it took 240 years. The canal was completed in 1876. Later, a modern harbor was dug, surrounded by an industrial estate. There is also a sports harbor.
Hilversum has a variety of international schools, such as the Violenschool and International School Hilversum "Alberdingk Thijm". Also, Nike's, Hunkemöller's and Converse's European headquarters are located in Hilversum.
Earthenware found in Hilversum gives its name to the Hilversum culture, which is an early- to mid-Bronze Age, or 1800–1200 BC material culture. Artifacts from this prehistoric civilization bear similarities to the Wessex Culture of southern Britain and may indicate that the first Hilversum residents emigrated from that area.
The first brick settlements formed around 900, but it was not until 1305 that the first official mention of Hilversum ("Hilfersheem" from "Hilvertshem" meaning "houses between the hills") is found. At that point it was a part of Naarden, the oldest town in the Gooi area.
Farming, raising sheep and some wool manufacturing were the means of life for the Gooi in the Middle Ages. In 1424 Hilversum received its first official independent status. This made possible further growth in the village because permission from Naarden was no longer needed for new industrial development.
The town grew further in the 17th century when the Dutch economy as a whole entered its age of prosperity, and several canals were built connecting it indirectly to Amsterdam.
In 1725 and 1766 large fires destroyed most of the town, leveling parts of the old townhouse and the church next to it. The town overcame these setbacks and the textile industry continued to develop, among other ways by devising a way to weave cows' hair.
In the 19th century a substantial textile and tapestry industry emerged, aided by a railway link to Amsterdam in 1874. From that time the town grew quickly with rich commuters from Amsterdam moving in, building themselves large villas in the wooded surroundings, and gradually starting to live in Hilversum permanently. Despite this growth, Hilversum was never granted city rights so it is still referred to by many locals as "het dorp", or "the village."
For the 1928 Summer Olympics in neighboring Amsterdam, it hosted all of the non-jumping equestrian and the running part of the modern pentathlon event.
The Nederlandse Seintoestellen Fabriek (NSF) company established a professional transmitter and radio factory in Hilversum in the early 1920s, growing into the largest of its kind in the Netherlands.
Following the defeat of Allied forces in the Netherlands in 1940, and its occupation by Nazi Germany, Hilversum became the headquarters of the German Army (Heer) in the Netherlands. On February 25 and 26, 1941, most of Hilversum's factories went on strike against the start of the Holocaust in the so-called February strike (Amsterdam Docker's Strike). Some 10,000 people took part. There is a yearly remembrance service since 2015. The Holocaust was the reason for 2,000 Hilversum Jews to lose their lives. The community has never recovered fully. Some 50 Hilversummers were awarded the title of Righteous among the nations from Yad Vashem. Viktor Kugeler, one of Anne Frank's helper, was one of them.
In 1948, NSF was taken over by Philips. However, Dutch radio broadcasting organizations (followed by television broadcasters during the 1950s) centralised their operations in Hilversum, providing a source of continuing economic growth. The concentration of broadcasters in Hilversum has given it its enduring status as the media city for the Netherlands.
In 1964, the population reached a record high – over 103,000 people called Hilversum home. However, the textile industry had started its decline; only one factory, Veneta, managed to continue into the 1960s, when it also had to close its doors. Another major industry, the chemical factory IFF, also closed by the end of the 1960s.
After the 1960s, the population gradually declined, until stabilising at around 85,000. Several factors other than the slump in manufacturing have featured in this decline: one is the fact that the average family nowadays consists of fewer people, so fewer people live in each house; second, the town is virtually unable to expand because all the surrounding lands were sold by city architect W.M. Dudok to the Goois Natuurreservaat (nl). The third reason for this decline of the population was because the property values were increasing rapidly in that moment of time, and many people were forced to move to less expensive areas in the Netherlands.
Some sources blame connections in the television world for attracting crime to Hilversum; the town has had to cope with mounting drug-related issues in a community with higher than average unemployment and ongoing housing shortage.
Hilversum was one of the first towns to have a local party of the populist movement called Leefbaar ("liveable"). Founded by former social-democrat party strongman Jan Nagel, it was initially held at bay for alderman positions. In 2001, Nagel from Leefbaar Hilversum teamed up with Leefbaar Utrecht leaders to found a national Leefbaar Nederland party. By strange coincidence, in 2002 the most vocal Leefbaar Rotterdam politician Pim Fortuyn was shot and killed by an animal rights activist at Hilversum Media Park just after finishing a radio interview. This happened, however, after a break between Fortuyn and Nagel during a Leefbaar Nederland board meeting in Hilversum on Fortuyn's anti-Islamic viewpoints.
The town of Hilversum has put a great deal of effort into improvements, including a recent renovation to its central train station, thorough renovation of the main shopping centre (Hilvertshof), and development of new dining and retail districts downtown including the "vintage" district in the Leeuwenstraat. Several notable architectural accomplishments include the Institute for Sound and Vision, and Zanderij Crailoo (nl), the largest man-made wildlife crossing in the world.
The nearby Media Park was the scene of the 2002 assassination of politician Pim Fortuyn; in 2015, a gunman carrying a false pistol stormed into Nederlandse Omroep Stichting's headquarters, demanding airtime on the evening news.
The population declined from 103,000 in 1964 to 84,000 in 2006, but rose again to 90.000 in 2018. The decline is mostly due to the fact that families are smaller these days.
There is the large Catholic neo-gothic St. Vitus church (P.J.H. Cuypers, 1892, bell tower 96 metres; 315'). The city played host to many landscape artists during the 19th century, including Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.
In the 1950s and 1960s the city played host to a major European Tennis tournament.
The 1958 Eurovision Song Contest took place in Hilversum. In 2020 the international television event Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light was broadcast from Studio 21 in Hilversum's Media Park. This event was held in place of the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hilversum is often called "media city", since it is the principal centre for radio and television broadcasting in the Netherlands, and is home to an extensive complex of radio and television studios and to the administrative headquarters of the multiple broadcasting organizations which make up the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system. Hilversum is also home to many newer commercial TV production companies. Radio Netherlands, which had been broadcasting worldwide via shortwave radio since the 1920s, was also based in Hilversum until it was dissolved in 2013.
The following is a list of organizations that have, or are continuing to, broadcast from studios in Hilversum:
One result of the town's history as an important radio transmission centre is that many older radio sets throughout Europe featured Hilversum as a pre-marked dial position on their tuning scales.
Dutch national voting in the Eurovision Song Contest is normally co-ordinated from Hilversum.
Hilversum Airport is located in the southwest of the municipality. Next to it is the former Marine Training Camp (MOK), now Corporal Van Oudheusden Barracks for the medical troops. In wartime the airfield was expanded significantly by the German military. They also set up an assembly line for training aircraft, produced by Fokker in Weesp.
Hilversum is well connected to the Dutch railway network, and has three stations.
Most local and regional buses are operated by Connexxion, but two of the bus routes are operated by Syntus Utrecht and two others by U-OV and Pouw Vervoer. Regional bus route 320 is operated by both Connexxion and Pouw Vervoer. In 2018, major road works started to make room for a new BRT bus lane from Hilversum to Huizen, set to open in early 2021.
The municipal council of Hilversum consists of 37 seats, which are divided as follows since the last local election of 2018:
Government
After the 2018 elections, the municipal government was made up of aldermen from the political parties Hart voor Hilversum, D66 and VVD.
The mayor of Hilversum is Gerhard van den Top.
It was the first city with a "Leefbaar" party (which was intended as just a local party). Today, Leefbaar Hilversum has been reduced to only 1 seat, but some other parties have their origins in Leefbaar Hilversum:
Notable people born in Hilversum: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hilversum (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɦɪlvərsʏm] ) is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes and smaller towns. Hilversum is part of the Randstad, one of the largest conurbations in Europe, and the Amsterdam metropolitan area; it is about 22 km southeast of Amsterdam's city centre and about 15 km north of Utrecht.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The city is home to the headquarters, studios and broadcast stations of several major radio, television and newspaper companies such as Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. Hilversum is thus known for being the mediastad (media city) of the Netherlands.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hilversum lies 24 km (15 mi) south-east of Amsterdam and 15 km (9.3 mi) north of Utrecht. The town is known for its architecturally important Town Hall (Raadhuis Hilversum), designed by Willem Marinus Dudok and built in 1931.",
"title": "Town"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hilversum has one public library, two swimming pools (Van Hellemond Sport and De Lieberg), a number of sporting halls, and several shopping centers (such as Hilvertshof, Winkelcentrum Kerkelanden, De Riebeeckgalerij, and Winkelcentrum Seinhorst). Locally, the town center is known as het dorp, which means \"the village\".",
"title": "Town"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hilversum is located on the sandy, hilly parts of the Gooi, and has four hills: the closest to the centre of town in the Boomberg. Then the Trompenberg (now a luxury residential area where including the Brenninkmeijer family lives, of C&A-fame), and to the south the Hoorneboeg (25 m) and two kilometres easterly of that the Zwaluwenberg, where since 1950 the headquarters of the inspector-general of the armies is located. These hills date from the period of the Ice-age, when gletschers pushed walls of earth before them. Hilversum was the farthest southern edge the glaciers reached.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Surrounding towns are Nieuw-Loosdrecht, Bussum, Kortenhoef, Blaricum, Hollandsche Rading, Lage Vuursche, Maartensdijk, 's-Graveland, Laren, Nederhorst den Berg and Ankeveen.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Hilversum consists of the following districts and neighborhoods: Center (Langgewenstbuurt, Sint Vitusbuurt, Havenstraatbuurt and Centrum), Northwest (Nimrodpark, Trompenberg North, Trompenberg South, Media Park, Raadhuiskwartier and Boomberg), Northeast (North, Johannes Geradtswegbuurt, Erfgooiersbuurt and AZC Crailo), East (Geuzenbuurt, Electrobuurt, Astronomiebuurt, Science neighborhood, Kamrad, Kleine Driftbuurt and Liebergen), Southeast (Bloemkwartier Noord, Bloemenkwartier Zuid, Painterskwartier, 't Hoogt van' t Kruis, Arenaparkkwartier and West Indiëkwartier), Zuid (Writerskwartier, Staatsliedenkwartier and Zeeheldenkwartier), Southwest ( Kerkelanden, Havenkwartier, Zeverijn and Het Rode Dorp) and Hilversumse Meent. In 1767 Hilversum was still divided into 4 districts (quarters): the Neuquartier, Groestquartier, Kerkquartier and the Sandtbergerquartier.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Oude Haven in the southwest is at the end of the Gooische Vaart. The construction of the canal between 's-Graveland and Hilversum was done in stages, so that it took 240 years. The canal was completed in 1876. Later, a modern harbor was dug, surrounded by an industrial estate. There is also a sports harbor.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hilversum has a variety of international schools, such as the Violenschool and International School Hilversum \"Alberdingk Thijm\". Also, Nike's, Hunkemöller's and Converse's European headquarters are located in Hilversum.",
"title": "International"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Earthenware found in Hilversum gives its name to the Hilversum culture, which is an early- to mid-Bronze Age, or 1800–1200 BC material culture. Artifacts from this prehistoric civilization bear similarities to the Wessex Culture of southern Britain and may indicate that the first Hilversum residents emigrated from that area.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The first brick settlements formed around 900, but it was not until 1305 that the first official mention of Hilversum (\"Hilfersheem\" from \"Hilvertshem\" meaning \"houses between the hills\") is found. At that point it was a part of Naarden, the oldest town in the Gooi area.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Farming, raising sheep and some wool manufacturing were the means of life for the Gooi in the Middle Ages. In 1424 Hilversum received its first official independent status. This made possible further growth in the village because permission from Naarden was no longer needed for new industrial development.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The town grew further in the 17th century when the Dutch economy as a whole entered its age of prosperity, and several canals were built connecting it indirectly to Amsterdam.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1725 and 1766 large fires destroyed most of the town, leveling parts of the old townhouse and the church next to it. The town overcame these setbacks and the textile industry continued to develop, among other ways by devising a way to weave cows' hair.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the 19th century a substantial textile and tapestry industry emerged, aided by a railway link to Amsterdam in 1874. From that time the town grew quickly with rich commuters from Amsterdam moving in, building themselves large villas in the wooded surroundings, and gradually starting to live in Hilversum permanently. Despite this growth, Hilversum was never granted city rights so it is still referred to by many locals as \"het dorp\", or \"the village.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "For the 1928 Summer Olympics in neighboring Amsterdam, it hosted all of the non-jumping equestrian and the running part of the modern pentathlon event.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Nederlandse Seintoestellen Fabriek (NSF) company established a professional transmitter and radio factory in Hilversum in the early 1920s, growing into the largest of its kind in the Netherlands.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Following the defeat of Allied forces in the Netherlands in 1940, and its occupation by Nazi Germany, Hilversum became the headquarters of the German Army (Heer) in the Netherlands. On February 25 and 26, 1941, most of Hilversum's factories went on strike against the start of the Holocaust in the so-called February strike (Amsterdam Docker's Strike). Some 10,000 people took part. There is a yearly remembrance service since 2015. The Holocaust was the reason for 2,000 Hilversum Jews to lose their lives. The community has never recovered fully. Some 50 Hilversummers were awarded the title of Righteous among the nations from Yad Vashem. Viktor Kugeler, one of Anne Frank's helper, was one of them.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1948, NSF was taken over by Philips. However, Dutch radio broadcasting organizations (followed by television broadcasters during the 1950s) centralised their operations in Hilversum, providing a source of continuing economic growth. The concentration of broadcasters in Hilversum has given it its enduring status as the media city for the Netherlands.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1964, the population reached a record high – over 103,000 people called Hilversum home. However, the textile industry had started its decline; only one factory, Veneta, managed to continue into the 1960s, when it also had to close its doors. Another major industry, the chemical factory IFF, also closed by the end of the 1960s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "After the 1960s, the population gradually declined, until stabilising at around 85,000. Several factors other than the slump in manufacturing have featured in this decline: one is the fact that the average family nowadays consists of fewer people, so fewer people live in each house; second, the town is virtually unable to expand because all the surrounding lands were sold by city architect W.M. Dudok to the Goois Natuurreservaat (nl). The third reason for this decline of the population was because the property values were increasing rapidly in that moment of time, and many people were forced to move to less expensive areas in the Netherlands.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Some sources blame connections in the television world for attracting crime to Hilversum; the town has had to cope with mounting drug-related issues in a community with higher than average unemployment and ongoing housing shortage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hilversum was one of the first towns to have a local party of the populist movement called Leefbaar (\"liveable\"). Founded by former social-democrat party strongman Jan Nagel, it was initially held at bay for alderman positions. In 2001, Nagel from Leefbaar Hilversum teamed up with Leefbaar Utrecht leaders to found a national Leefbaar Nederland party. By strange coincidence, in 2002 the most vocal Leefbaar Rotterdam politician Pim Fortuyn was shot and killed by an animal rights activist at Hilversum Media Park just after finishing a radio interview. This happened, however, after a break between Fortuyn and Nagel during a Leefbaar Nederland board meeting in Hilversum on Fortuyn's anti-Islamic viewpoints.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The town of Hilversum has put a great deal of effort into improvements, including a recent renovation to its central train station, thorough renovation of the main shopping centre (Hilvertshof), and development of new dining and retail districts downtown including the \"vintage\" district in the Leeuwenstraat. Several notable architectural accomplishments include the Institute for Sound and Vision, and Zanderij Crailoo (nl), the largest man-made wildlife crossing in the world.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The nearby Media Park was the scene of the 2002 assassination of politician Pim Fortuyn; in 2015, a gunman carrying a false pistol stormed into Nederlandse Omroep Stichting's headquarters, demanding airtime on the evening news.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The population declined from 103,000 in 1964 to 84,000 in 2006, but rose again to 90.000 in 2018. The decline is mostly due to the fact that families are smaller these days.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "There is the large Catholic neo-gothic St. Vitus church (P.J.H. Cuypers, 1892, bell tower 96 metres; 315'). The city played host to many landscape artists during the 19th century, including Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 1950s and 1960s the city played host to a major European Tennis tournament.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The 1958 Eurovision Song Contest took place in Hilversum. In 2020 the international television event Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light was broadcast from Studio 21 in Hilversum's Media Park. This event was held in place of the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hilversum is often called \"media city\", since it is the principal centre for radio and television broadcasting in the Netherlands, and is home to an extensive complex of radio and television studios and to the administrative headquarters of the multiple broadcasting organizations which make up the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system. Hilversum is also home to many newer commercial TV production companies. Radio Netherlands, which had been broadcasting worldwide via shortwave radio since the 1920s, was also based in Hilversum until it was dissolved in 2013.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The following is a list of organizations that have, or are continuing to, broadcast from studios in Hilversum:",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "One result of the town's history as an important radio transmission centre is that many older radio sets throughout Europe featured Hilversum as a pre-marked dial position on their tuning scales.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Dutch national voting in the Eurovision Song Contest is normally co-ordinated from Hilversum.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hilversum Airport is located in the southwest of the municipality. Next to it is the former Marine Training Camp (MOK), now Corporal Van Oudheusden Barracks for the medical troops. In wartime the airfield was expanded significantly by the German military. They also set up an assembly line for training aircraft, produced by Fokker in Weesp.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Hilversum is well connected to the Dutch railway network, and has three stations.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Most local and regional buses are operated by Connexxion, but two of the bus routes are operated by Syntus Utrecht and two others by U-OV and Pouw Vervoer. Regional bus route 320 is operated by both Connexxion and Pouw Vervoer. In 2018, major road works started to make room for a new BRT bus lane from Hilversum to Huizen, set to open in early 2021.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The municipal council of Hilversum consists of 37 seats, which are divided as follows since the last local election of 2018:",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Government",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "After the 2018 elections, the municipal government was made up of aldermen from the political parties Hart voor Hilversum, D66 and VVD.",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The mayor of Hilversum is Gerhard van den Top.",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "It was the first city with a \"Leefbaar\" party (which was intended as just a local party). Today, Leefbaar Hilversum has been reduced to only 1 seat, but some other parties have their origins in Leefbaar Hilversum:",
"title": "Local government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Notable people born in Hilversum:",
"title": "Notable residents"
}
]
| Hilversum is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes and smaller towns. Hilversum is part of the Randstad, one of the largest conurbations in Europe, and the Amsterdam metropolitan area; it is about 22 km southeast of Amsterdam's city centre and about 15 km north of Utrecht. The city is home to the headquarters, studios and broadcast stations of several major radio, television and newspaper companies such as Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. Hilversum is thus known for being the mediastad of the Netherlands. | 2001-10-05T01:21:24Z | 2023-12-18T17:25:19Z | [
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13,688 | The Hound of Heaven | "The Hound of Heaven" is a 182-line poem written by English poet Francis Thompson (1859–1907). The poem became famous and was the source of much of Thompson's posthumous reputation. It was first printed in 1890 in the periodical Merry England, later to appear in Thompson's first volume of poems in 1893. It was included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917).
The poem is an ode, and its subject is the pursuit of the human soul by God's love - a theme also found in the devotional poetry of George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. Moody and Lovett point out that Thompson's use of free and varied line lengths and irregular rhythms reflect the panicked retreat of the soul, while the structured, often recurring refrain suggests the inexorable pursuit as it comes ever closer.
The Jesuit J.F.X. O'Conor remarks of the Christian themes of the poem that,
"The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and unperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit." | [
{
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"text": "\"The Hound of Heaven\" is a 182-line poem written by English poet Francis Thompson (1859–1907). The poem became famous and was the source of much of Thompson's posthumous reputation. It was first printed in 1890 in the periodical Merry England, later to appear in Thompson's first volume of poems in 1893. It was included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The poem is an ode, and its subject is the pursuit of the human soul by God's love - a theme also found in the devotional poetry of George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. Moody and Lovett point out that Thompson's use of free and varied line lengths and irregular rhythms reflect the panicked retreat of the soul, while the structured, often recurring refrain suggests the inexorable pursuit as it comes ever closer.",
"title": "Form and theme"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Jesuit J.F.X. O'Conor remarks of the Christian themes of the poem that,",
"title": "Form and theme"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "\"The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and unperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.\"",
"title": "Form and theme"
}
]
| "The Hound of Heaven" is a 182-line poem written by English poet Francis Thompson (1859–1907). The poem became famous and was the source of much of Thompson's posthumous reputation. It was first printed in 1890 in the periodical Merry England, later to appear in Thompson's first volume of poems in 1893. It was included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917). | 2001-08-26T09:01:02Z | 2023-10-18T14:03:29Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hound_of_Heaven |
13,692 | History of the Internet | The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.
Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom.
ARPA awarded contracts in 1969 for the development of the ARPANET project, directed by Robert Taylor and managed by Lawrence Roberts. ARPANET adopted the packet switching technology proposed by Davies and Baran, underpinned by mathematical work in the early 1970s by Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA. The network was built by a team at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, which included Bob Kahn.
Several early packet-switched networks emerged in the 1970s which researched and provided data networking. Peter Kirstein at University College London put internetworking into practice in 1973. Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann pioneered a simplified end-to-end approach to internetworking at the IRIA. ARPA projects, the International Network Working Group and commercial initiatives led to the development of various standards and protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. Bob Metcalfe developed the theory behind Ethernet. Vint Cerf, at Stanford University, and Bob Kahn, now at DARPA, published research in 1974 that evolved into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), two protocols of the Internet protocol suite. The design included concepts from the French CYCLADES project directed by Louis Pouzin.
In the late 1970s, national and international public data networks emerged based on the X.25 protocol, the design of which included the work of Rémi Després. In the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded national supercomputing centers at several universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic organizations in the United States. International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP on existing networks in the United States and around the world marked the beginnings of the Internet. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990. The optical backbone of the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic, as traffic transitioned to optical networks managed by Sprint, MCI and AT&T in the United States.
Research at CERN in Switzerland by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the network. The dramatic expansion of the capacity of the Internet, enabled by the advent of wave division multiplexing (WDM) and the rollout of fiber optic cables in the mid-1990s, had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology. This made possible the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, video chat, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber-optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, and 800 Gbit/s by 2019. The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was rapid in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking services. However, the future of the global network may be shaped by regional differences.
J. C. R. Licklider, while working at BBN, proposed a computer network in his March 1960 paper Man-Computer Symbiosis:
A network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [...] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and symbiotic functions suggested earlier in this paper
In August 1962, Licklider and Welden Clark published the paper "On-Line Man-Computer Communication" which was one of the first descriptions of a networked future.
In October 1962, Licklider was hired by Jack Ruina as director of the newly established Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within ARPA, with a mandate to interconnect the United States Department of Defense's main computers at Cheyenne Mountain, the Pentagon, and SAC HQ. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. He began by writing memos in 1963 describing a distributed network to the IPTO staff, whom he called "Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network".
Although he left the IPTO in 1964, five years before the ARPANET went live, it was his vision of universal networking that provided the impetus for one of his successors, Robert Taylor, to initiate the ARPANET development. Licklider later returned to lead the IPTO in 1973 for two years.
The infrastructure for telephone systems at the time was based on circuit switching, which requires pre-allocation of a dedicated communication line for the duration of the call. Telegram services had developed store and forward telecommunication techniques. Western Union's Automatic Telegraph Switching System Plan 55-A was based on message switching. The U.S. military's AUTODIN network became operational in 1962. These systems, like SAGE and SBRE, still required rigid routing structures that were prone to single point of failure.
The technology was considered vulnerable for strategic and military use because there were no alternative paths for the communication in case of a broken link. In the early 1960s, Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation produced a study of survivable networks for the U.S. military in the event of nuclear war. Information would be transmitted across a "distributed" network, divided into what he called "message blocks".
In addition to being prone to a single point of failure, existing telegraphic techniques were inefficient and inflexible. Beginning in 1965 Donald Davies, at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom, developed a more detailed proposal of the concept, designed for computer networking, which he called packet switching, the term that would ultimately be adopted.
Packet switching is a technique for transmitting computer data by splitting it into very short, standardized chunks, attaching routing information to each of these chunks, and transmitting them independently through a computer network. It provides better bandwidth utilization than traditional circuit-switching used for telephony, and enables the connection of computers with different transmission and receive rates. It is a distinct concept to message switching.
Roberts presented the idea of packet switching to the communication professionals, and faced anger and hostility. Before ARPANET was operating, they argued that the router buffers would quickly run out. After the ARPANET was operating, they argued packet switching would never be economic without the government subsidy. Baran faced the same rejection and thus failed to convince the military into constructing a packet switching network.
Following discussions with J. C. R. Licklider in 1965, Donald Davies became interested in data communications for computer networks. Later that year, at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the United Kingdom, Davies designed and proposed a national commercial data network based on packet switching. The following year, he described the use of an "interface computer" to act as a router. The proposal was not taken up nationally but he produced a design for a local network to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of packet switching using high-speed data transmission. To deal with packet permutations (due to dynamically updated route preferences) and to datagram losses (unavoidable when fast sources send to a slow destinations), he assumed that "all users of the network will provide themselves with some kind of error control", thus inventing what came to be known the end-to-end principle. He and his team were one of the first to use the term 'protocol' in a data-commutation context in 1967. The network's development was described at a 1968 conference.
By 1968, Davies had begun building the Mark I packet-switched network to meet the needs of the multidisciplinary laboratory and prove the technology under operational conditions. Elements of the network became operational in 1969, the first implementation of packet switching, and the NPL network became the first to use high-speed "T1" links. Many other packet switching networks built in the 1970s were similar "in nearly all respects" to Davies' original 1965 design. The NPL team carried out simulation work on packet networks, including datagram networks, and research into internetworking and computer network security. The Mark II version which operated from 1973 used a layered protocol architecture. In 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached, and more were added until the network was replaced in 1986.
Robert Taylor was promoted to the head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1966. He intended to realize Licklider's ideas of an interconnected networking system. As part of the IPTO's role, three network terminals had been installed: one for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, one for Project Genie at University of California, Berkeley, and one for the Compatible Time-Sharing System project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Taylor's identified need for networking became obvious from the waste of resources apparent to him.
For each of these three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C. and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley or M.I.T. about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in touch with them.... I said, oh man, it's obvious what to do: If you have these three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go where you have interactive computing. That idea is the ARPAnet.
Bringing in Larry Roberts from MIT in January 1967, he initiated a project to build such a network. Roberts and Thomas Merrill had been researching computer time-sharing over wide area networks (WANs). Wide area networks emerged during the late 1950s and became established during the 1960s. At the first ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in October 1967, Roberts presented a proposal for the "ARPA net", based on Wesley Clark's proposal to use Interface Message Processors (IMP) to create a message switching network. At the conference, Roger Scantlebury presented Donald Davies' work on packet switching for data communications and mentioned the work of Paul Baran at RAND. Roberts incorporated the packet switching concepts into the ARPANET design and upgraded the proposed communications speed from 2.4 kbit/s to 50 kbit/s. Leonard Kleinrock subsequently developed the mathematical theory to model and measure the performance of this technology, building on his earlier work on the application of queueing theory to message switching systems.
ARPA awarded the contract to build the network to Bolt Beranek & Newman. The "IMP guys", led by Frank Heart and Bob Kahn, developed the routing, flow control, software design and network control. The first ARPANET link was established between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) directed by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California at 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969.
"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI ...", Kleinrock ... said in an interview: "We typed the L and we asked on the phone,
Yet a revolution had begun" ....
By December 1969, a four-node network was connected by adding the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In the same year, Taylor helped fund ALOHAnet, a system designed by professor Norman Abramson and others at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa that transmitted data by radio between seven computers on four islands on Hawaii.
Steve Crocker formed the "Networking Working Group" in 1969 at UCLA. He initiated and managed the Request for Comments (RFC) process, which is still used today for proposing and distributing contributions. RFC 1, entitled "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker and published on April 7, 1969. The protocol for establishing links between network sites in the ARPANET, the Network Control Protocol (NCP), was completed in 1970. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.
Early international collaborations via the ARPANET were sparse. Connections were made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR), via a satellite link at the Tanum Earth Station in Sweden, and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London, which provided a gateway to British academic networks, forming the first international heterogenous resource sharing network. By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213. The ARPANET became the technical core of what would become the Internet, and a primary tool in developing the technologies used.
The Merit Network was formed in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad to explore computer networking between three of Michigan's public universities as a means to help the state's educational and economic development. With initial support from the State of Michigan and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the packet-switched network was first demonstrated in December 1971 when an interactive host to host connection was made between the IBM mainframe computer systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne State University in Detroit. In October 1972 connections to the CDC mainframe at Michigan State University in East Lansing completed the triad. Over the next several years in addition to host to host interactive connections the network was enhanced to support terminal to host connections, host to host batch connections (remote job submission, remote printing, batch file transfer), interactive file transfer, gateways to the Tymnet and Telenet public data networks, X.25 host attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks, Ethernet attached hosts, and eventually TCP/IP and additional public universities in Michigan join the network. All of this set the stage for Merit's role in the NSFNET project starting in the mid-1980s.
The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French research network designed and directed by Louis Pouzin. In 1971, he began planning the network to explore alternatives to the early ARPANET design and to support internetworking research. First demonstrated in 1973, it was the first network to implement the end-to-end principle conceived by Donald Davies and make the hosts responsible for reliable delivery of data, rather than the network itself, using unreliable datagrams. Concepts implemented in this network influenced TCP/IP architecture.
Based on international research initiatives, particularly the contributions of Rémi Després, packet switching network standards were developed by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T) in the form of X.25 and related standards. X.25 is built on the concept of virtual circuits emulating traditional telephone connections. In 1974, X.25 formed the basis for the SERCnet network between British academic and research sites, which later became JANET, the United Kingdom's high-speed national research and education network (NREN). The initial ITU Standard on X.25 was approved in March 1976. Existing networks, such as Telenet in the United States adopted X.25 as well as new public data networks, such as DATAPAC in Canada and TRANSPAC in France. X.25 was supplemented by the X.75 protocol which enabled internetworking between national PTT networks in Europe and commercial networks in North America.
The British Post Office, Western Union International, and Tymnet collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network, referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. This network grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia by 1981. By the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking infrastructure.
Unlike ARPANET, X.25 was commonly available for business use. Telenet offered its Telemail electronic mail service, which was also targeted to enterprise use rather than the general email system of the ARPANET.
The first public dial-in networks used asynchronous teleprinter (TTY) terminal protocols to reach a concentrator operated in the public network. Some networks, such as Telenet and CompuServe, used X.25 to multiplex the terminal sessions into their packet-switched backbones, while others, such as Tymnet, used proprietary protocols. In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. The company broke new ground again in 1980 as the first to offer real-time chat with its CB Simulator. Other major dial-in networks were America Online (AOL) and Prodigy that also provided communications, content, and entertainment features. Many bulletin board system (BBS) networks also provided on-line access, such as FidoNet which was popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers and amateur radio operators.
In 1979, two students at Duke University, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, originated the idea of using Bourne shell scripts to transfer news and messages on a serial line UUCP connection with nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following public release of the software in 1980, the mesh of UUCP hosts forwarding on the Usenet news rapidly expanded. UUCPnet, as it would later be named, also created gateways and links between FidoNet and dial-up BBS hosts. UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, ability to use existing leased lines, X.25 links or even ARPANET connections, and the lack of strict use policies compared to later networks like CSNET and Bitnet. All connects were local. By 1981 the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984.
Sublink Network, operating since 1987 and officially founded in Italy in 1989, based its interconnectivity upon UUCP to redistribute mail and news groups messages throughout its Italian nodes (about 100 at the time) owned both by private individuals and small companies. Sublink Network evolved into one of the first examples of Internet technology coming into use through popular diffusion.
With so many different networking methods seeking interconnection, a method was needed to unify them. Louis Pouzin initiated the CYCLADES project in 1971, building on the work of Donald Davies. In his work, Pouzin coined the term catenet for concatenated network. An International Networking Working Group formed in 1972; active members included Vint Cerf from Stanford University, Alex McKenzie from BBN, Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury from NPL, and Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann from IRIA. Later that year, Bob Kahn, now at DARPA, recruited Vint Cerf to work with him on the problem. Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC outlined the idea of Ethernet. By 1973, these groups had worked out a fundamental reformulation, in which the differences between network protocols were hidden by using a common internetworking protocol. instead of the network being responsible for reliability, as in the ARPANET, the hosts became responsible.
Cerf and Kahn published their ideas in May 1974, which incorporated concepts implemented by Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann in the CYCLADES network. The specification of the resulting protocol, the Transmission Control Program, was published as RFC 675 by the Network Working Group in December 1974. It contains the first attested use of the term internet, as a shorthand for internetwork. This software was monolithic in design using two simplex communication channels for each user session.
With the role of the network reduced to a core of functionality, it became possible to exchange traffic with other networks independently from their detailed characteristics, thereby solving the fundamental problems of internetworking. DARPA agreed to fund development of prototype software. Testing began in 1975 through concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN and University College London (UCL). After several years of work, the first demonstration of a gateway between the Packet Radio network (PRNET) in the SF Bay area and the ARPANET was conducted by the Stanford Research Institute. On November 22, 1977, a three network demonstration was conducted including the ARPANET, the SRI's Packet Radio Van on the Packet Radio Network and the Atlantic Packet Satellite Network (SATNET) including a node at UCL.
The software was redesigned as a modular protocol stack, using full-duplex channels; between 1976 and 1977, Yogen Dalal and Robert Metcalfe among others, proposed separating TCP's routing and transmission control functions into two discrete layers, which led to the splitting of the Transmission Control Program into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) in version 3 in 1978. Originally referred to as IP/TCP, version 4 was described in IETF publication RFC 791 (September 1981), 792 and 793. It was installed on SATNET in 1982 and the ARPANET in January 1983 after the DoD made it standard for all military computer networking. This resulted in a networking model that became known informally as TCP/IP. It was also referred to as the Department of Defense (DoD) model, DARPA model, or ARPANET model. Cerf credits his graduate students Yogen Dalal, Carl Sunshine, Judy Estrin, Richard Karp, and Gérard Le Lann with important work on the design and testing. DARPA sponsored or encouraged the development of TCP/IP implementations for many operating systems.
After the ARPANET had been up and running for several years, ARPA looked for another agency to hand off the network to; ARPA's primary mission was funding cutting-edge research and development, not running a communications utility. In July 1975, the network was turned over to the Defense Communications Agency, also part of the Department of Defense. In 1983, the U.S. military portion of the ARPANET was broken off as a separate network, the MILNET. MILNET subsequently became the unclassified but military-only NIPRNET, in parallel with the SECRET-level SIPRNET and JWICS for TOP SECRET and above. NIPRNET does have controlled security gateways to the public Internet.
The networks based on the ARPANET were government funded and therefore restricted to noncommercial uses such as research; unrelated commercial use was strictly forbidden. This initially restricted connections to military sites and universities. During the 1980s, the connections expanded to more educational institutions, which began to form networks of fiber optic lines. A growing number of companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Hewlett-Packard, which were participating in research projects or providing services to those who were. Data transmission speeds depended upon the type of connection, the slowest being analog telephone lines and the fastest using optical networking technology.
Several other branches of the U.S. government, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE) became heavily involved in Internet research and started development of a successor to ARPANET. In the mid-1980s, all three of these branches developed the first Wide Area Networks based on TCP/IP. NASA developed the NASA Science Network, NSF developed CSNET and DOE evolved the Energy Sciences Network or ESNet.
NASA developed the TCP/IP based NASA Science Network (NSN) in the mid-1980s, connecting space scientists to data and information stored anywhere in the world. In 1989, the DECnet-based Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) and the TCP/IP-based NASA Science Network (NSN) were brought together at NASA Ames Research Center creating the first multiprotocol wide area network called the NASA Science Internet, or NSI. NSI was established to provide a totally integrated communications infrastructure to the NASA scientific community for the advancement of earth, space and life sciences. As a high-speed, multiprotocol, international network, NSI provided connectivity to over 20,000 scientists across all seven continents.
In 1981, NSF supported the development of the Computer Science Network (CSNET). CSNET connected with ARPANET using TCP/IP, and ran TCP/IP over X.25, but it also supported departments without sophisticated network connections, using automated dial-up mail exchange. CSNET played a central role in popularizing the Internet outside the ARPANET.
In 1986, the NSF created NSFNET, a 56 kbit/s backbone to support the NSF-sponsored supercomputing centers. The NSFNET also provided support for the creation of regional research and education networks in the United States, and for the connection of university and college campus networks to the regional networks. The use of NSFNET and the regional networks was not limited to supercomputer users and the 56 kbit/s network quickly became overloaded. NSFNET was upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s in 1988 under a cooperative agreement with the Merit Network in partnership with IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan. The existence of NSFNET and the creation of Federal Internet Exchanges (FIXes) allowed the ARPANET to be decommissioned in 1990.
NSFNET was expanded and upgraded to dedicated fiber, optical lasers and optical amplifier systems capable of delivering T3 start up speeds or 45 Mbit/s in 1991. However, the T3 transition by MCI took longer than expected, allowing Sprint to establish a coast-to-coast long-distance commercial Internet service. When NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, its optical networking backbones were handed off to several commercial Internet service providers, including MCI, PSI Net and Sprint. As a result, when the handoff was complete, Sprint and its Washington DC Network Access Points began to carry Internet traffic, and by 1996, Sprint was the world's largest carrier of Internet traffic.
The research and academic community continues to develop and use advanced networks such as Internet2 in the United States and JANET in the United Kingdom.
The term "internet" was reflected in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol (RFC 675: Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974) as a short form of internetworking, when the two terms were used interchangeably. In general, an internet was a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the ARPANET was connected to the newly formed NSFNET project in the late 1980s, the term was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network.
Opening the Internet and the fiber optic backbone to corporate and consumers increased demand for network capacity. The expense and delay of laying new fiber led providers to test a fiber bandwidth expansion alternative that had been pioneered in the late 1970s by Optelecom using "interactions between light and matter, such as lasers and optical devices used for optical amplification and wave mixing". This technology became known as wave division multiplexing (WDM). Bell Labs deployed a 4-channel WDM system in 1995. To develop a mass capacity (dense) WDM system, Optelecom and its former head of Light Systems Research, David R. Huber formed a new venture, Ciena Corp., that deployed the world's first dense WDM system on the Sprint fiber network in June 1996. This was referred to as the real start of optical networking.
As interest in networking grew by needs of collaboration, exchange of data, and access of remote computing resources, the Internet technologies spread throughout the rest of the world. The hardware-agnostic approach in TCP/IP supported the use of existing network infrastructure, such as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS) X.25 network, to carry Internet traffic.
Many sites unable to link directly to the Internet created simple gateways for the transfer of electronic mail, the most important application of the time. Sites with only intermittent connections used UUCP or FidoNet and relied on the gateways between these networks and the Internet. Some gateway services went beyond simple mail peering, such as allowing access to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites via UUCP or mail.
Finally, routing technologies were developed for the Internet to remove the remaining centralized routing aspects. The Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) was replaced by a new protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This provided a meshed topology for the Internet and reduced the centric architecture which ARPANET had emphasized. In 1994, Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) was introduced to support better conservation of address space which allowed use of route aggregation to decrease the size of routing tables.
The MOS transistor underpinned the rapid growth of telecommunication bandwidth over the second half of the 20th century. To address the need for transmission capacity beyond that provided by radio, satellite and analog copper telephone lines, engineers developed optical communications systems based on fiber optic cables powered by lasers and optical amplifier techniques.
The concept of lasing arose from a 1917 paper by Albert Einstein, "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation." Einstein expanded upon a dialog with Max Planck on how atoms absorb and emit light, part of a thought process that, with input from Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others, gave rise to Quantum Mechanics. Specifically, in his quantum theory, Einstein mathematically determined that light could be generated not only by spontaneous emission, such as the light emitted by an incandescent light or the Sun, but also by stimulated emission.
Forty years later, on November 13, 1957, Columbia University physics student Gordon Gould first realized how to make light by stimulated emission through a process of optical amplification. He coined the term LASER for this technology—Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Using Gould's light amplification method (patented as "Optically Pumped Laser Amplifier"), Theodore Maiman made the first working laser on May 16, 1960.
Gould co-founded Optelecom, Inc. in 1973 to commercialize his inventions in optical fiber telecommunications. just as Corning Glass was producing the first commercial fiber optic cable in small quantities. Optelecom configured its own fiber lasers and optical amplifiers into the first commercial optical communication systems which it delivered to Chevron and the US Army Missile Defense. Three years later, GTE deployed the first optical telephone system in 1977 in Long Beach, California. By the early 1980s, optical networks powered by lasers, LED and optical amplifier equipment supplied by Bell Labs, NTT and Perelli were used by select universities and long-distance telephone providers.
In early 1982, NORSAR and Peter Kirstein's group at University College London (UCL) left the ARPANET and began to use TCP/IP over SATNET. UCL continued to provide access between the ARPANET and academic networks in the UK, a role it had performed since 1973.
Between 1984 and 1988, CERN began installation and operation of TCP/IP to interconnect its major internal computer systems, workstations, PCs, and an accelerator control system. CERN continued to operate a limited self-developed system (CERNET) internally and several incompatible (typically proprietary) network protocols externally. There was considerable resistance in Europe towards more widespread use of TCP/IP, and the CERN TCP/IP intranets remained isolated from the Internet until 1989, when a transatlantic connection to Cornell University was established.
The Computer Science Network (CSNET) began operation in 1981 to provide networking connections to institutions that could not connect directly to ARPANET. Its first international connection was to Israel in 1984. Soon after, connections were established to computer science departments in Canada, France, and Germany.
In 1988, the first international connections to NSFNET was established by France's INRIA, and Piet Beertema at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands. Daniel Karrenberg, from CWI, visited Ben Segal, CERN's TCP/IP coordinator, looking for advice about the transition of EUnet, the European side of the UUCP Usenet network (much of which ran over X.25 links), over to TCP/IP. The previous year, Segal had met with Len Bosack from the then still small company Cisco about purchasing some TCP/IP routers for CERN, and Segal was able to give Karrenberg advice and forward him on to Cisco for the appropriate hardware. This expanded the European portion of the Internet across the existing UUCP networks. The NORDUnet connection to NSFNET was in place soon after, providing open access for university students in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. In January 1989, CERN opened its first external TCP/IP connections. This coincided with the creation of Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), initially a group of IP network administrators who met regularly to carry out coordination work together. Later, in 1992, RIPE was formally registered as a cooperative in Amsterdam.
The United Kingdom's national research and education network (NREN), JANET, began operation in 1984 using the UK's Coloured Book protocols and connected to NSFNET in 1989. In 1991, JANET adopted Internet Protocol on the existing network. The same year, Dai Davies introduced Internet technology into the pan-European NREN, EuropaNet, which was built on the X.25 protocol. The European Academic and Research Network (EARN) and RARE adopted IP around the same time, and the European Internet backbone EBONE became operational in 1992.
Nonetheless, for a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engineers, organizations and nations were polarized over the issue of which standard, the OSI model or the Internet protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.
South Korea set up a two-node domestic TCP/IP network in 1982, the System Development Network (SDN), adding a third node the following year. SDN was connected to the rest of the world in August 1983 using UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-Copy); connected to CSNET in December 1984; and formally connected to the NSFNET in 1990.
Japan, which had built the UUCP-based network JUNET in 1984, connected to CSNET, and later to NSFNET in 1989, marking the spread of the Internet to Asia.
In Australia, ad hoc networking to ARPA and in-between Australian universities formed in the late 1980s, based on various technologies such as X.25, UUCPNet, and via a CSNET. These were limited in their connection to the global networks, due to the cost of making individual international UUCP dial-up or X.25 connections. In 1989, Australian universities joined the push towards using IP protocols to unify their networking infrastructures. AARNet was formed in 1989 by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee and provided a dedicated IP based network for Australia.
New Zealand adopted the UK's Coloured Book protocols as an interim standard and established its first international IP connection to the U.S. in 1989.
While developed countries with technological infrastructures were joining the Internet, developing countries began to experience a digital divide separating them from the Internet. On an essentially continental basis, they built organizations for Internet resource administration and to share operational experience, which enabled more transmission facilities to be put into place.
At the beginning of the 1990s, African countries relied upon X.25 IPSS and 2400 baud modem UUCP links for international and internetwork computer communications.
In August 1995, InfoMail Uganda, Ltd., a privately held firm in Kampala now known as InfoCom, and NSN Network Services of Avon, Colorado, sold in 1997 and now known as Clear Channel Satellite, established Africa's first native TCP/IP high-speed satellite Internet services. The data connection was originally carried by a C-Band RSCC Russian satellite which connected InfoMail's Kampala offices directly to NSN's MAE-West point of presence using a private network from NSN's leased ground station in New Jersey. InfoCom's first satellite connection was just 64 kbit/s, serving a Sun host computer and twelve US Robotics dial-up modems.
In 1996, a USAID funded project, the Leland Initiative, started work on developing full Internet connectivity for the continent. Guinea, Mozambique, Madagascar and Rwanda gained satellite earth stations in 1997, followed by Ivory Coast and Benin in 1998.
Africa is building an Internet infrastructure. AFRINIC, headquartered in Mauritius, manages IP address allocation for the continent. As do the other Internet regions, there is an operational forum, the Internet Community of Operational Networking Specialists.
There are many programs to provide high-performance transmission plant, and the western and southern coasts have undersea optical cable. High-speed cables join North Africa and the Horn of Africa to intercontinental cable systems. Undersea cable development is slower for East Africa; the original joint effort between New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) has broken off and may become two efforts.
The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), headquartered in Australia, manages IP address allocation for the continent. APNIC sponsors an operational forum, the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT).
In South Korea, VDSL, a last mile technology developed in the 1990s by NextLevel Communications, connected corporate and consumer copper-based telephone lines to the Internet.
The People's Republic of China established its first TCP/IP college network, Tsinghua University's TUNET in 1991. The PRC went on to make its first global Internet connection in 1994, between the Beijing Electro-Spectrometer Collaboration and Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center. However, China went on to implement its own digital divide by implementing a country-wide content filter.
Japan hosted the annual meeting of the Internet Society, INET'92, in Kobe. Singapore developed TECHNET in 1990, and Thailand gained a global Internet connection between Chulalongkorn University and UUNET in 1992.
As with the other regions, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) manages the IP address space and other resources for its area. LACNIC, headquartered in Uruguay, operates DNS root, reverse DNS, and other key services.
Initially, as with its predecessor networks, the system that would evolve into the Internet was primarily for government and government body use. Although commercial use was forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use was unclear and subjective. UUCPNet and the X.25 IPSS had no such restrictions, which would eventually see the official barring of UUCPNet use of ARPANET and NSFNET connections. (Some UUCP links still remained connecting to these networks however, as administrators cast a blind eye to their operation.)
As a result, during the late 1980s, the first Internet service provider (ISP) companies were formed. Companies like PSINet, UUNET, Netcom, and Portal Software were formed to provide service to the regional research networks and provide alternate network access, UUCP-based email and Usenet News to the public. In 1989, MCI Mail became the first commercial email provider to get an experimental gateway to the Internet. The first commercial dialup ISP in the United States was The World, which opened in 1989.
In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1862(g), which allowed NSF to support access by the research and education communities to computer networks which were not used exclusively for research and education purposes, thus permitting NSFNET to interconnect with commercial networks. This caused controversy within the research and education community, who were concerned commercial use of the network might lead to an Internet that was less responsive to their needs, and within the community of commercial network providers, who felt that government subsidies were giving an unfair advantage to some organizations.
By 1990, ARPANET's goals had been fulfilled and new networking technologies exceeded the original scope and the project came to a close. New network service providers including PSINet, Alternet, CERFNet, ANS CO+RE, and many others were offering network access to commercial customers. NSFNET was no longer the de facto backbone and exchange point of the Internet. The Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX), Metropolitan Area Exchanges (MAEs), and later Network Access Points (NAPs) were becoming the primary interconnections between many networks. The final restrictions on carrying commercial traffic ended on April 30, 1995, when the National Science Foundation ended its sponsorship of the NSFNET Backbone Service. NSF provided initial support for the NAPs and interim support to help the regional research and education networks transition to commercial ISPs. NSF also sponsored the very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) which continued to provide support for the supercomputing centers and research and education in the United States.
An event held on 11 January 1994, The Superhighway Summit at UCLA's Royce Hall, was the "first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information Superhighway and its implications".
The invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, as an application on the Internet, brought many social and commercial uses to what was, at the time, a network of networks for academic and research institutions. The Web opened to the public in 1991 and began to enter general use in 1993–4, when websites for everyday use started to become available.
During the first decade or so of the public Internet, the immense changes it would eventually enable in the 2000s were still nascent. In terms of providing context for this period, mobile cellular devices ("smartphones" and other cellular devices) which today provide near-universal access, were used for business and not a routine household item owned by parents and children worldwide. Social media in the modern sense had yet to come into existence, laptops were bulky and most households did not have computers. Data rates were slow and most people lacked means to video or digitize video; media storage was transitioning slowly from analog tape to digital optical discs (DVD and to an extent still, floppy disc to CD). Enabling technologies used from the early 2000s such as PHP, modern JavaScript and Java, technologies such as AJAX, HTML 4 (and its emphasis on CSS), and various software frameworks, which enabled and simplified speed of web development, largely awaited invention and their eventual widespread adoption.
The Internet was widely used for mailing lists, emails, creating and distributing maps with tools like MapQuest, e-commerce and early popular online shopping (Amazon and eBay for example), online forums and bulletin boards, and personal websites and blogs, and use was growing rapidly, but by more modern standards the systems used were static and lacked widespread social engagement. It awaited a number of events in the early 2000s to change from a communications technology to gradually develop into a key part of global society's infrastructure.
Typical design elements of these "Web 1.0" era websites included: Static pages instead of dynamic HTML; content served from filesystems instead of relational databases; pages built using Server Side Includes or CGI instead of a web application written in a dynamic programming language; HTML 3.2-era structures such as frames and tables to create page layouts; online guestbooks; overuse of GIF buttons and similar small graphics promoting particular items; and HTML forms sent via email. (Support for server side scripting was rare on shared servers so the usual feedback mechanism was via email, using mailto forms and their email program.
During the period 1997 to 2001, the first speculative investment bubble related to the Internet took place, in which "dot-com" companies (referring to the ".com" top level domain used by businesses) were propelled to exceedingly high valuations as investors rapidly stoked stock values, followed by a market crash; the first dot-com bubble. However this only temporarily slowed enthusiasm and growth, which quickly recovered and continued to grow.
The history of the World Wide Web up to around 2004 was retrospectively named and described by some as "Web 1.0".
In the final stage of IPv4 address exhaustion, the last IPv4 address block was assigned in January 2011 at the level of the regional Internet registries. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses which limits the address space to 2 addresses, i.e. 4294967296 addresses. IPv4 is in the process of replacement by IPv6, its successor, which uses 128-bit addresses, providing 2 addresses, i.e. 340282366920938463463374607431768211456, a vastly increased address space. The shift to IPv6 is expected to take a long time to complete.
The rapid technical advances that would propel the Internet into its place as a social system, which has completely transformed the way humans interact with each other, took place during a relatively short period from around 2005 to 2010, coinciding with the point in time in which IoT devices surpassed the number of humans alive at some point in the late 2000s. They included:
The term "Web 2.0" describes websites that emphasize user-generated content (including user-to-user interaction), usability, and interoperability. It first appeared in a January 1999 article called "Fragmented Future" written by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design, where she wrote:
The term resurfaced during 2002–2004, and gained prominence in late 2004 following presentations by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first Web 2.0 Conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the "Web as Platform", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that "customers are building your business for you". They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be "harnessed" to create value.
Web 2.0 does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the way Web pages are made and used. Web 2.0 describes an approach, in which sites focus substantially upon allowing users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to Web sites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking services, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites, hosted services, Web applications, and mashups. Terry Flew, in his 3rd Edition of New Media described what he believed to characterize the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:
This era saw several household names gain prominence through their community-oriented operation – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia being some examples.
The process of change that generally coincided with "Web 2.0" was itself greatly accelerated and transformed only a short time later by the increasing growth in mobile devices. This mobile revolution meant that computers in the form of smartphones became something many people used, took with them everywhere, communicated with, used for photographs and videos they instantly shared or to shop or seek information "on the move" – and used socially, as opposed to items on a desk at home or just used for work.
Location-based services, services using location and other sensor information, and crowdsourcing (frequently but not always location based), became common, with posts tagged by location, or websites and services becoming location aware. Mobile-targeted websites (such as "m.website.com") became common, designed especially for the new devices used. Netbooks, ultrabooks, widespread 4G and Wi-Fi, and mobile chips capable or running at nearly the power of desktops from not many years before on far lower power usage, became enablers of this stage of Internet development, and the term "App" emerged (short for "Application program" or "Program") as did the "App store".
This "mobile revolution" has allowed for people to have a nearly unlimited amount of information at their fingertips. With the ability to access the internet from cell phones came a change in the way we consume media. In fact, looking at media consumption statistics, over half of media consumption between those aged 18 and 34 were using a smartphone.
The first Internet link into low Earth orbit was established on January 22, 2010, when astronaut T. J. Creamer posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account from the International Space Station, marking the extension of the Internet into space. (Astronauts at the ISS had used email and Twitter before, but these messages had been relayed to the ground through a NASA data link before being posted by a human proxy.) This personal Web access, which NASA calls the Crew Support LAN, uses the space station's high-speed Ku band microwave link. To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop computer to control a desktop computer on Earth, and they can talk to their families and friends on Earth using Voice over IP equipment.
Communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-point links through the Deep Space Network. Each such data link must be manually scheduled and configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new network protocol, Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) which automates this process, allows networking of spaceborne transmission nodes, and takes the fact into account that spacecraft can temporarily lose contact because they move behind the Moon or planets, or because space weather disrupts the connection. Under such conditions, DTN retransmits data packages instead of dropping them, as the standard TCP/IP Internet Protocol does. NASA conducted the first field test of what it calls the "deep space internet" in November 2008. Testing of DTN-based communications between the International Space Station and Earth (now termed Disruption-Tolerant Networking) has been ongoing since March 2009, and is scheduled to continue until March 2014.
This network technology is supposed to ultimately enable missions that involve multiple spacecraft where reliable inter-vessel communication might take precedence over vessel-to-Earth downlinks. According to a February 2011 statement by Google's Vint Cerf, the so-called "Bundle protocols" have been uploaded to NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft (which is in orbit around the Sun) and communication with Earth has been tested at a distance of approximately 80 light seconds.
As a globally distributed network of voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks, the Internet operates without a central governing body. Each constituent network chooses the technologies and protocols it deploys from the technical standards that are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). However, successful interoperation of many networks requires certain parameters that must be common throughout the network. For managing such parameters, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) oversees the allocation and assignment of various technical identifiers. In addition, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) provides oversight and coordination for the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System.
The IANA function was originally performed by USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), and it delegated portions of this responsibility with respect to numeric network and autonomous system identifiers to the Network Information Center (NIC) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) in Menlo Park, California. ISI's Jonathan Postel managed the IANA, served as RFC Editor and performed other key roles until his premature death in 1998.
As the early ARPANET grew, hosts were referred to by names, and a HOSTS.TXT file would be distributed from SRI International to each host on the network. As the network grew, this became cumbersome. A technical solution came in the form of the Domain Name System, created by ISI's Paul Mockapetris in 1983. The Defense Data Network—Network Information Center (DDN-NIC) at SRI handled all registration services, including the top-level domains (TLDs) of .mil, .gov, .edu, .org, .net, .com and .us, root nameserver administration and Internet number assignments under a United States Department of Defense contract. In 1991, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded the administration and maintenance of DDN-NIC (managed by SRI up until this point) to Government Systems, Inc., who subcontracted it to the small private-sector Network Solutions, Inc.
The increasing cultural diversity of the Internet also posed administrative challenges for centralized management of the IP addresses. In October 1992, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published RFC 1366, which described the "growth of the Internet and its increasing globalization" and set out the basis for an evolution of the IP registry process, based on a regionally distributed registry model. This document stressed the need for a single Internet number registry to exist in each geographical region of the world (which would be of "continental dimensions"). Registries would be "unbiased and widely recognized by network providers and subscribers" within their region. The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) was established as the first RIR in May 1992. The second RIR, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), was established in Tokyo in 1993, as a pilot project of the Asia Pacific Networking Group.
Since at this point in history most of the growth on the Internet was coming from non-military sources, it was decided that the Department of Defense would no longer fund registration services outside of the .mil TLD. In 1993 the U.S. National Science Foundation, after a competitive bidding process in 1992, created the InterNIC to manage the allocations of addresses and management of the address databases, and awarded the contract to three organizations. Registration Services would be provided by Network Solutions; Directory and Database Services would be provided by AT&T; and Information Services would be provided by General Atomics.
Over time, after consultation with the IANA, the IETF, RIPE NCC, APNIC, and the Federal Networking Council (FNC), the decision was made to separate the management of domain names from the management of IP numbers. Following the examples of RIPE NCC and APNIC, it was recommended that management of IP address space then administered by the InterNIC should be under the control of those that use it, specifically the ISPs, end-user organizations, corporate entities, universities, and individuals. As a result, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) was established as in December 1997, as an independent, not-for-profit corporation by direction of the National Science Foundation and became the third Regional Internet Registry.
In 1998, both the IANA and remaining DNS-related InterNIC functions were reorganized under the control of ICANN, a California non-profit corporation contracted by the United States Department of Commerce to manage a number of Internet-related tasks. As these tasks involved technical coordination for two principal Internet name spaces (DNS names and IP addresses) created by the IETF, ICANN also signed a memorandum of understanding with the IAB to define the technical work to be carried out by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The management of Internet address space remained with the regional Internet registries, which collectively were defined as a supporting organization within the ICANN structure. ICANN provides central coordination for the DNS system, including policy coordination for the split registry / registrar system, with competition among registry service providers to serve each top-level-domain and multiple competing registrars offering DNS services to end-users.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the largest and most visible of several loosely related ad-hoc groups that provide technical direction for the Internet, including the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
The IETF is a loosely self-organized group of international volunteers who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the development of new Internet standard specifications. Much of the work of the IETF is organized into Working Groups. Standardization efforts of the Working Groups are often adopted by the Internet community, but the IETF does not control or patrol the Internet.
The IETF grew out of quarterly meetings with U.S. government-funded researchers, starting in January 1986. Non-government representatives were invited by the fourth IETF meeting in October 1986. The concept of Working Groups was introduced at the fifth meeting in February 1987. The seventh meeting in July 1987 was the first meeting with more than one hundred attendees. In 1992, the Internet Society, a professional membership society, was formed and IETF began to operate under it as an independent international standards body. The first IETF meeting outside of the United States was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in July 1993. Today, the IETF meets three times per year and attendance has been as high as ca. 2,000 participants. Typically one in three IETF meetings are held in Europe or Asia. The number of non-US attendees is typically ca. 50%, even at meetings held in the United States.
The IETF is not a legal entity, has no governing board, no members, and no dues. The closest status resembling membership is being on an IETF or Working Group mailing list. IETF volunteers come from all over the world and from many different parts of the Internet community. The IETF works closely with and under the supervision of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG), peer activities to the IETF and IESG under the general supervision of the IAB, focus on longer-term research issues.
RFCs are the main documentation for the work of the IAB, IESG, IETF, and IRTF. Originally intended as requests for comments, RFC 1, "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker at UCLA in April 1969. These technical memos documented aspects of ARPANET development. They were edited by Jon Postel, the first RFC Editor.
RFCs cover a wide range of information from proposed standards, draft standards, full standards, best practices, experimental protocols, history, and other informational topics. RFCs can be written by individuals or informal groups of individuals, but many are the product of a more formal Working Group. Drafts are submitted to the IESG either by individuals or by the Working Group Chair. An RFC Editor, appointed by the IAB, separate from IANA, and working in conjunction with the IESG, receives drafts from the IESG and edits, formats, and publishes them. Once an RFC is published, it is never revised. If the standard it describes changes or its information becomes obsolete, the revised standard or updated information will be re-published as a new RFC that "obsoletes" the original.
The Internet Society (ISOC) is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 "to assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world". With offices near Washington, DC, US, and in Geneva, Switzerland, ISOC has a membership base comprising more than 80 organizational and more than 50,000 individual members. Members also form "chapters" based on either common geographical location or special interests. There are currently more than 90 chapters around the world.
ISOC provides financial and organizational support to and promotes the work of the standards settings bodies for which it is the organizational home: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). ISOC also promotes understanding and appreciation of the Internet model of open, transparent processes and consensus-based decision-making.
Since the 1990s, the Internet's governance and organization has been of global importance to governments, commerce, civil society, and individuals. The organizations which held control of certain technical aspects of the Internet were the successors of the old ARPANET oversight and the current decision-makers in the day-to-day technical aspects of the network. While recognized as the administrators of certain aspects of the Internet, their roles and their decision-making authority are limited and subject to increasing international scrutiny and increasing objections. These objections have led to the ICANN removing themselves from relationships with first the University of Southern California in 2000, and in September 2009, gaining autonomy from the US government by the ending of its longstanding agreements, although some contractual obligations with the U.S. Department of Commerce continued. Finally, on October 1, 2016, ICANN ended its contract with the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), allowing oversight to pass to the global Internet community.
The IETF, with financial and organizational support from the Internet Society, continues to serve as the Internet's ad-hoc standards body and issues Request for Comments.
In November 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, called for an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be convened by United Nations Secretary General. The IGF opened an ongoing, non-binding conversation among stakeholders representing governments, the private sector, civil society, and the technical and academic communities about the future of Internet governance. The first IGF meeting was held in October/November 2006 with follow up meetings annually thereafter. Since WSIS, the term "Internet governance" has been broadened beyond narrow technical concerns to include a wider range of Internet-related policy issues.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was becoming concerned about threats to the web's future and in November 2009 at the IGF in Washington DC launched the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF) to campaign to make the web a safe and empowering tool for the good of humanity with access to all. In November 2019 at the IGF in Berlin, Berners-Lee and the WWWF went on to launch the Contract for the Web, a campaign initiative to persuade governments, companies and citizens to commit to nine principles to stop "misuse" with the warning "If we don't act now - and act together - to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering" (its potential for good).
Due to its prominence and immediacy as an effective means of mass communication, the Internet has also become more politicized as it has grown. This has led in turn, to discourses and activities that would once have taken place in other ways, migrating to being mediated by internet.
Examples include political activities such as public protest and canvassing of support and votes, but also:
On April 23, 2014, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was reported to be considering a new rule that would permit Internet service providers to offer content providers a faster track to send content, thus reversing their earlier net neutrality position. A possible solution to net neutrality concerns may be municipal broadband, according to Professor Susan Crawford, a legal and technology expert at Harvard Law School. On May 15, 2014, the FCC decided to consider two options regarding Internet services: first, permit fast and slow broadband lanes, thereby compromising net neutrality; and second, reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service, thereby preserving net neutrality. On November 10, 2014, President Obama recommended the FCC reclassify broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service in order to preserve net neutrality. On January 16, 2015, Republicans presented legislation, in the form of a U.S. Congress HR discussion draft bill, that makes concessions to net neutrality but prohibits the FCC from accomplishing the goal or enacting any further regulation affecting Internet service providers (ISPs). On January 31, 2015, AP News reported that the FCC will present the notion of applying ("with some caveats") Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 to the internet in a vote expected on February 26, 2015. Adoption of this notion would reclassify internet service from one of information to one of telecommunications and, according to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, ensure net neutrality. The FCC is expected to enforce net neutrality in its vote, according to The New York Times.
On February 26, 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of net neutrality by applying Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996 to the Internet. The FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, commented, "This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept."
On March 12, 2015, the FCC released the specific details of the net neutrality rules. On April 13, 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new "Net Neutrality" regulations.
On December 14, 2017, the FCC repealed their March 12, 2015 decision by a 3–2 vote regarding net neutrality rules.
Email has often been called the killer application of the Internet. It predates the Internet, and was a crucial tool in creating it. Email started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the history is undocumented, among the first systems to have such a facility were the System Development Corporation (SDC) Q32 and the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) at MIT.
The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of electronic mail. An experimental inter-system transferred mail on the ARPANET shortly after its creation. In 1971 Ray Tomlinson created what was to become the standard Internet electronic mail addressing format, using the @ sign to separate mailbox names from host names.
A number of protocols were developed to deliver messages among groups of time-sharing computers over alternative transmission systems, such as UUCP and IBM's VNET email system. Email could be passed this way between a number of networks, including ARPANET, BITNET and NSFNET, as well as to hosts connected directly to other sites via UUCP. See the history of SMTP protocol.
In addition, UUCP allowed the publication of text files that could be read by many others. The News software developed by Steve Daniel and Tom Truscott in 1979 was used to distribute news and bulletin board-like messages. This quickly grew into discussion groups, known as newsgroups, on a wide range of topics. On ARPANET and NSFNET similar discussion groups would form via mailing lists, discussing both technical issues and more culturally focused topics (such as science fiction, discussed on the sflovers mailing list).
During the early years of the Internet, email and similar mechanisms were also fundamental to allow people to access resources that were not available due to the absence of online connectivity. UUCP was often used to distribute files using the 'alt.binary' groups. Also, FTP e-mail gateways allowed people that lived outside the US and Europe to download files using ftp commands written inside email messages. The file was encoded, broken in pieces and sent by email; the receiver had to reassemble and decode it later, and it was the only way for people living overseas to download items such as the earlier Linux versions using the slow dial-up connections available at the time. After the popularization of the Web and the HTTP protocol such tools were slowly abandoned.
Resource or file sharing has been an important activity on computer networks from well before the Internet was established and was supported in a variety of ways including bulletin board systems (1978), Usenet (1980), Kermit (1981), and many others. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for use on the Internet was standardized in 1985 and is still in use today. A variety of tools were developed to aid the use of FTP by helping users discover files they might want to transfer, including the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) in 1991, Gopher in 1991, Archie in 1991, Veronica in 1992, Jughead in 1993, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988, and eventually the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1991 with Web directories and Web search engines.
In 1999, Napster became the first peer-to-peer file sharing system. Napster used a central server for indexing and peer discovery, but the storage and transfer of files was decentralized. A variety of peer-to-peer file sharing programs and services with different levels of decentralization and anonymity followed, including: Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Freenet in 2000, FastTrack, Kazaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent in 2001, and Poisoned in 2003.
All of these tools are general purpose and can be used to share a wide variety of content, but sharing of music files, software, and later movies and videos are major uses. And while some of this sharing is legal, large portions are not. Lawsuits and other legal actions caused Napster in 2001, eDonkey2000 in 2005, Kazaa in 2006, and Limewire in 2010 to shut down or refocus their efforts. The Pirate Bay, founded in Sweden in 2003, continues despite a trial and appeal in 2009 and 2010 that resulted in jail terms and large fines for several of its founders. File sharing remains contentious and controversial with charges of theft of intellectual property on the one hand and charges of censorship on the other.
File hosting allowed for people to expand their computer's hard drives and "host" their files on a server. Most file hosting services offer free storage, as well as larger storage amount for a fee. These services have greatly expanded the internet for business and personal use.
Google Drive, launched on April 24, 2012, has become the most popular file hosting service. Google Drive allows users to store, edit, and share files with themselves and other users. Not only does this application allow for file editing, hosting, and sharing. It also acts as Google's own free-to-access office programs, such as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets. This application served as a useful tool for University professors and students, as well as those who are in need of Cloud storage.
Dropbox, released in June 2007 is a similar file hosting service that allows users to keep all of their files in a folder on their computer, which is synced with Dropbox's servers. This differs from Google Drive as it is not web-browser based. Now, Dropbox works to keep workers and files in sync and efficient.
Mega, having over 200 million users, is an encrypted storage and communication system that offers users free and paid storage, with an emphasis on privacy. Being three of the largest file hosting services, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Mega all represent the core ideas and values of these services.
The earliest form of online piracy began with a P2P (peer to peer) music sharing service named Napster, launched in 1999. Sites like LimeWire, The Pirate Bay, and BitTorrent allowed for anyone to engage in online piracy, sending ripples through the media industry. With online piracy came a change in the media industry as a whole.
Total global mobile data traffic reached 588 exabytes during 2020, a 150-fold increase from 3.86 exabytes/year in 2010. Most recently, smartphones accounted for 95% of this mobile data traffic with video accounting for 66% by type of data. Mobile traffic travels by radio frequency to the closest cell phone tower and its base station where the radio signal is converted into an optical signal that is transmitted over high-capacity optical networking systems that convey the information to data centers. The optical backbones enable much of this traffic as well as a host of emerging mobile services including the Internet of things, 3-D virtual reality, gaming and autonomous vehicles. The most popular mobile phone application is texting, of which 2.1 trillion messages were logged in 2020. The texting phenomenon began on December 3, 1992, when Neil Papworth sent the first text message of "Merry Christmas" over a commercial cell phone network to the CEO of Vodafone.
The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator, launched in Finland in 1996. The viability of Internet services access on mobile phones was limited until prices came down from that model, and network providers started to develop systems and services conveniently accessible on phones. NTT DoCoMo in Japan launched the first mobile Internet service, i-mode, in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile phone Internet services. In 2001, the mobile phone email system by Research in Motion (now BlackBerry Limited) for their BlackBerry product was launched in America. To make efficient use of the small screen and tiny keypad and one-handed operation typical of mobile phones, a specific document and networking model was created for mobile devices, the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Most mobile device Internet services operate using WAP. The growth of mobile phone services was initially a primarily Asian phenomenon with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all soon finding the majority of their Internet users accessing resources by phone rather than by PC. Developing countries followed, with India, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, and Pakistan all reporting that the majority of their domestic users accessed the Internet from a mobile phone rather than a PC. The European and North American use of the Internet was influenced by a large installed base of personal computers, and the growth of mobile phone Internet access was more gradual, but had reached national penetration levels of 20–30% in most Western countries. The cross-over occurred in 2008, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC user.
Global Internet traffic continues to grow at a rapid rate, rising 23% from 2020 to 2021 when the number of active Internet users reached 4.66 billion people, representing half of the global population. Further demand for data, and the capacity to satisfy this demand, are forecast to increase to 717 terabits per second in 2021. This capacity stems from the optical amplification and WDM systems that are the common basis of virtually every metro, regional, national, international and submarine telecommunications networks. These optical networking systems have been installed throughout the 5 billion kilometers of fiber optic lines deployed around the world. Continued growth in traffic is expected for the foreseeable future from a combination of new users, increased mobile phone adoption, machine-to-machine connections, connected homes, 5G devices and the burgeoning requirement for cloud and Internet services such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple Music and YouTube.
There are nearly insurmountable problems in supplying a historiography of the Internet's development. The process of digitization represents a twofold challenge both for historiography in general and, in particular, for historical communication research. A sense of the difficulty in documenting early developments that led to the internet can be gathered from the quote:
"The Arpanet period is somewhat well documented because the corporation in charge – BBN – left a physical record. Moving into the NSFNET era, it became an extraordinarily decentralized process. The record exists in people's basements, in closets. ... So much of what happened was done verbally and on the basis of individual trust."
Notable works on the subject were published by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet (1996), Roy Rosenzweig, Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet (1998), and Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (2000).
Most scholarship and literature on the Internet lists ARPANET as the prior network that was iterated on and studied to create it, although other early computer networks and experiments existed alongside or before ARPANET.
These histories of the Internet have since been characterized as teleologies or Whig history; that is, they take the present to be the end point toward which history has been unfolding based on a single cause:
In the case of Internet history, the epoch-making event is usually said to be the demonstration of the 4-node ARPANET network in 1969. From that single happening the global Internet developed.
In addition to these characteristics, historians have cited methodological problems arising in their work:
"Internet history" ... tends to be too close to its sources. Many Internet pioneers are alive, active, and eager to shape the histories that describe their accomplishments. Many museums and historians are equally eager to interview the pioneers and to publicize their stories. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "ARPA awarded contracts in 1969 for the development of the ARPANET project, directed by Robert Taylor and managed by Lawrence Roberts. ARPANET adopted the packet switching technology proposed by Davies and Baran, underpinned by mathematical work in the early 1970s by Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA. The network was built by a team at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, which included Bob Kahn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Several early packet-switched networks emerged in the 1970s which researched and provided data networking. Peter Kirstein at University College London put internetworking into practice in 1973. Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann pioneered a simplified end-to-end approach to internetworking at the IRIA. ARPA projects, the International Network Working Group and commercial initiatives led to the development of various standards and protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. Bob Metcalfe developed the theory behind Ethernet. Vint Cerf, at Stanford University, and Bob Kahn, now at DARPA, published research in 1974 that evolved into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), two protocols of the Internet protocol suite. The design included concepts from the French CYCLADES project directed by Louis Pouzin.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the late 1970s, national and international public data networks emerged based on the X.25 protocol, the design of which included the work of Rémi Després. In the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded national supercomputing centers at several universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic organizations in the United States. International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP on existing networks in the United States and around the world marked the beginnings of the Internet. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990. The optical backbone of the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic, as traffic transitioned to optical networks managed by Sprint, MCI and AT&T in the United States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Research at CERN in Switzerland by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the network. The dramatic expansion of the capacity of the Internet, enabled by the advent of wave division multiplexing (WDM) and the rollout of fiber optic cables in the mid-1990s, had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology. This made possible the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, video chat, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber-optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, and 800 Gbit/s by 2019. The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was rapid in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking services. However, the future of the global network may be shaped by regional differences.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "J. C. R. Licklider, while working at BBN, proposed a computer network in his March 1960 paper Man-Computer Symbiosis:",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [...] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and symbiotic functions suggested earlier in this paper",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In August 1962, Licklider and Welden Clark published the paper \"On-Line Man-Computer Communication\" which was one of the first descriptions of a networked future.",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In October 1962, Licklider was hired by Jack Ruina as director of the newly established Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within ARPA, with a mandate to interconnect the United States Department of Defense's main computers at Cheyenne Mountain, the Pentagon, and SAC HQ. There he formed an informal group within DARPA to further computer research. He began by writing memos in 1963 describing a distributed network to the IPTO staff, whom he called \"Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network\".",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Although he left the IPTO in 1964, five years before the ARPANET went live, it was his vision of universal networking that provided the impetus for one of his successors, Robert Taylor, to initiate the ARPANET development. Licklider later returned to lead the IPTO in 1973 for two years.",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The infrastructure for telephone systems at the time was based on circuit switching, which requires pre-allocation of a dedicated communication line for the duration of the call. Telegram services had developed store and forward telecommunication techniques. Western Union's Automatic Telegraph Switching System Plan 55-A was based on message switching. The U.S. military's AUTODIN network became operational in 1962. These systems, like SAGE and SBRE, still required rigid routing structures that were prone to single point of failure.",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The technology was considered vulnerable for strategic and military use because there were no alternative paths for the communication in case of a broken link. In the early 1960s, Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation produced a study of survivable networks for the U.S. military in the event of nuclear war. Information would be transmitted across a \"distributed\" network, divided into what he called \"message blocks\".",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In addition to being prone to a single point of failure, existing telegraphic techniques were inefficient and inflexible. Beginning in 1965 Donald Davies, at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom, developed a more detailed proposal of the concept, designed for computer networking, which he called packet switching, the term that would ultimately be adopted.",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Packet switching is a technique for transmitting computer data by splitting it into very short, standardized chunks, attaching routing information to each of these chunks, and transmitting them independently through a computer network. It provides better bandwidth utilization than traditional circuit-switching used for telephony, and enables the connection of computers with different transmission and receive rates. It is a distinct concept to message switching.",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Roberts presented the idea of packet switching to the communication professionals, and faced anger and hostility. Before ARPANET was operating, they argued that the router buffers would quickly run out. After the ARPANET was operating, they argued packet switching would never be economic without the government subsidy. Baran faced the same rejection and thus failed to convince the military into constructing a packet switching network.",
"title": "Foundations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Following discussions with J. C. R. Licklider in 1965, Donald Davies became interested in data communications for computer networks. Later that year, at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the United Kingdom, Davies designed and proposed a national commercial data network based on packet switching. The following year, he described the use of an \"interface computer\" to act as a router. The proposal was not taken up nationally but he produced a design for a local network to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of packet switching using high-speed data transmission. To deal with packet permutations (due to dynamically updated route preferences) and to datagram losses (unavoidable when fast sources send to a slow destinations), he assumed that \"all users of the network will provide themselves with some kind of error control\", thus inventing what came to be known the end-to-end principle. He and his team were one of the first to use the term 'protocol' in a data-commutation context in 1967. The network's development was described at a 1968 conference.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "By 1968, Davies had begun building the Mark I packet-switched network to meet the needs of the multidisciplinary laboratory and prove the technology under operational conditions. Elements of the network became operational in 1969, the first implementation of packet switching, and the NPL network became the first to use high-speed \"T1\" links. Many other packet switching networks built in the 1970s were similar \"in nearly all respects\" to Davies' original 1965 design. The NPL team carried out simulation work on packet networks, including datagram networks, and research into internetworking and computer network security. The Mark II version which operated from 1973 used a layered protocol architecture. In 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached, and more were added until the network was replaced in 1986.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Robert Taylor was promoted to the head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1966. He intended to realize Licklider's ideas of an interconnected networking system. As part of the IPTO's role, three network terminals had been installed: one for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, one for Project Genie at University of California, Berkeley, and one for the Compatible Time-Sharing System project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Taylor's identified need for networking became obvious from the waste of resources apparent to him.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For each of these three terminals, I had three different sets of user commands. So if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C. and I wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley or M.I.T. about this, I had to get up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in touch with them.... I said, oh man, it's obvious what to do: If you have these three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to go where you have interactive computing. That idea is the ARPAnet.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Bringing in Larry Roberts from MIT in January 1967, he initiated a project to build such a network. Roberts and Thomas Merrill had been researching computer time-sharing over wide area networks (WANs). Wide area networks emerged during the late 1950s and became established during the 1960s. At the first ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in October 1967, Roberts presented a proposal for the \"ARPA net\", based on Wesley Clark's proposal to use Interface Message Processors (IMP) to create a message switching network. At the conference, Roger Scantlebury presented Donald Davies' work on packet switching for data communications and mentioned the work of Paul Baran at RAND. Roberts incorporated the packet switching concepts into the ARPANET design and upgraded the proposed communications speed from 2.4 kbit/s to 50 kbit/s. Leonard Kleinrock subsequently developed the mathematical theory to model and measure the performance of this technology, building on his earlier work on the application of queueing theory to message switching systems.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "ARPA awarded the contract to build the network to Bolt Beranek & Newman. The \"IMP guys\", led by Frank Heart and Bob Kahn, developed the routing, flow control, software design and network control. The first ARPANET link was established between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) directed by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California at 22:30 hours on October 29, 1969.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "\"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI ...\", Kleinrock ... said in an interview: \"We typed the L and we asked on the phone,",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Yet a revolution had begun\" ....",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "By December 1969, a four-node network was connected by adding the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In the same year, Taylor helped fund ALOHAnet, a system designed by professor Norman Abramson and others at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa that transmitted data by radio between seven computers on four islands on Hawaii.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Steve Crocker formed the \"Networking Working Group\" in 1969 at UCLA. He initiated and managed the Request for Comments (RFC) process, which is still used today for proposing and distributing contributions. RFC 1, entitled \"Host Software\", was written by Steve Crocker and published on April 7, 1969. The protocol for establishing links between network sites in the ARPANET, the Network Control Protocol (NCP), was completed in 1970. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Early international collaborations via the ARPANET were sparse. Connections were made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR), via a satellite link at the Tanum Earth Station in Sweden, and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London, which provided a gateway to British academic networks, forming the first international heterogenous resource sharing network. By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213. The ARPANET became the technical core of what would become the Internet, and a primary tool in developing the technologies used.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Merit Network was formed in 1966 as the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad to explore computer networking between three of Michigan's public universities as a means to help the state's educational and economic development. With initial support from the State of Michigan and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the packet-switched network was first demonstrated in December 1971 when an interactive host to host connection was made between the IBM mainframe computer systems at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne State University in Detroit. In October 1972 connections to the CDC mainframe at Michigan State University in East Lansing completed the triad. Over the next several years in addition to host to host interactive connections the network was enhanced to support terminal to host connections, host to host batch connections (remote job submission, remote printing, batch file transfer), interactive file transfer, gateways to the Tymnet and Telenet public data networks, X.25 host attachments, gateways to X.25 data networks, Ethernet attached hosts, and eventually TCP/IP and additional public universities in Michigan join the network. All of this set the stage for Merit's role in the NSFNET project starting in the mid-1980s.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French research network designed and directed by Louis Pouzin. In 1971, he began planning the network to explore alternatives to the early ARPANET design and to support internetworking research. First demonstrated in 1973, it was the first network to implement the end-to-end principle conceived by Donald Davies and make the hosts responsible for reliable delivery of data, rather than the network itself, using unreliable datagrams. Concepts implemented in this network influenced TCP/IP architecture.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Based on international research initiatives, particularly the contributions of Rémi Després, packet switching network standards were developed by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T) in the form of X.25 and related standards. X.25 is built on the concept of virtual circuits emulating traditional telephone connections. In 1974, X.25 formed the basis for the SERCnet network between British academic and research sites, which later became JANET, the United Kingdom's high-speed national research and education network (NREN). The initial ITU Standard on X.25 was approved in March 1976. Existing networks, such as Telenet in the United States adopted X.25 as well as new public data networks, such as DATAPAC in Canada and TRANSPAC in France. X.25 was supplemented by the X.75 protocol which enabled internetworking between national PTT networks in Europe and commercial networks in North America.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The British Post Office, Western Union International, and Tymnet collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network, referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. This network grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia by 1981. By the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking infrastructure.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Unlike ARPANET, X.25 was commonly available for business use. Telenet offered its Telemail electronic mail service, which was also targeted to enterprise use rather than the general email system of the ARPANET.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The first public dial-in networks used asynchronous teleprinter (TTY) terminal protocols to reach a concentrator operated in the public network. Some networks, such as Telenet and CompuServe, used X.25 to multiplex the terminal sessions into their packet-switched backbones, while others, such as Tymnet, used proprietary protocols. In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. The company broke new ground again in 1980 as the first to offer real-time chat with its CB Simulator. Other major dial-in networks were America Online (AOL) and Prodigy that also provided communications, content, and entertainment features. Many bulletin board system (BBS) networks also provided on-line access, such as FidoNet which was popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers and amateur radio operators.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 1979, two students at Duke University, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, originated the idea of using Bourne shell scripts to transfer news and messages on a serial line UUCP connection with nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following public release of the software in 1980, the mesh of UUCP hosts forwarding on the Usenet news rapidly expanded. UUCPnet, as it would later be named, also created gateways and links between FidoNet and dial-up BBS hosts. UUCP networks spread quickly due to the lower costs involved, ability to use existing leased lines, X.25 links or even ARPANET connections, and the lack of strict use policies compared to later networks like CSNET and Bitnet. All connects were local. By 1981 the number of UUCP hosts had grown to 550, nearly doubling to 940 in 1984.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Sublink Network, operating since 1987 and officially founded in Italy in 1989, based its interconnectivity upon UUCP to redistribute mail and news groups messages throughout its Italian nodes (about 100 at the time) owned both by private individuals and small companies. Sublink Network evolved into one of the first examples of Internet technology coming into use through popular diffusion.",
"title": "Networks that led to the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "With so many different networking methods seeking interconnection, a method was needed to unify them. Louis Pouzin initiated the CYCLADES project in 1971, building on the work of Donald Davies. In his work, Pouzin coined the term catenet for concatenated network. An International Networking Working Group formed in 1972; active members included Vint Cerf from Stanford University, Alex McKenzie from BBN, Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury from NPL, and Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann from IRIA. Later that year, Bob Kahn, now at DARPA, recruited Vint Cerf to work with him on the problem. Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC outlined the idea of Ethernet. By 1973, these groups had worked out a fundamental reformulation, in which the differences between network protocols were hidden by using a common internetworking protocol. instead of the network being responsible for reliability, as in the ARPANET, the hosts became responsible.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Cerf and Kahn published their ideas in May 1974, which incorporated concepts implemented by Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann in the CYCLADES network. The specification of the resulting protocol, the Transmission Control Program, was published as RFC 675 by the Network Working Group in December 1974. It contains the first attested use of the term internet, as a shorthand for internetwork. This software was monolithic in design using two simplex communication channels for each user session.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "With the role of the network reduced to a core of functionality, it became possible to exchange traffic with other networks independently from their detailed characteristics, thereby solving the fundamental problems of internetworking. DARPA agreed to fund development of prototype software. Testing began in 1975 through concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN and University College London (UCL). After several years of work, the first demonstration of a gateway between the Packet Radio network (PRNET) in the SF Bay area and the ARPANET was conducted by the Stanford Research Institute. On November 22, 1977, a three network demonstration was conducted including the ARPANET, the SRI's Packet Radio Van on the Packet Radio Network and the Atlantic Packet Satellite Network (SATNET) including a node at UCL.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The software was redesigned as a modular protocol stack, using full-duplex channels; between 1976 and 1977, Yogen Dalal and Robert Metcalfe among others, proposed separating TCP's routing and transmission control functions into two discrete layers, which led to the splitting of the Transmission Control Program into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) in version 3 in 1978. Originally referred to as IP/TCP, version 4 was described in IETF publication RFC 791 (September 1981), 792 and 793. It was installed on SATNET in 1982 and the ARPANET in January 1983 after the DoD made it standard for all military computer networking. This resulted in a networking model that became known informally as TCP/IP. It was also referred to as the Department of Defense (DoD) model, DARPA model, or ARPANET model. Cerf credits his graduate students Yogen Dalal, Carl Sunshine, Judy Estrin, Richard Karp, and Gérard Le Lann with important work on the design and testing. DARPA sponsored or encouraged the development of TCP/IP implementations for many operating systems.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "After the ARPANET had been up and running for several years, ARPA looked for another agency to hand off the network to; ARPA's primary mission was funding cutting-edge research and development, not running a communications utility. In July 1975, the network was turned over to the Defense Communications Agency, also part of the Department of Defense. In 1983, the U.S. military portion of the ARPANET was broken off as a separate network, the MILNET. MILNET subsequently became the unclassified but military-only NIPRNET, in parallel with the SECRET-level SIPRNET and JWICS for TOP SECRET and above. NIPRNET does have controlled security gateways to the public Internet.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The networks based on the ARPANET were government funded and therefore restricted to noncommercial uses such as research; unrelated commercial use was strictly forbidden. This initially restricted connections to military sites and universities. During the 1980s, the connections expanded to more educational institutions, which began to form networks of fiber optic lines. A growing number of companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation and Hewlett-Packard, which were participating in research projects or providing services to those who were. Data transmission speeds depended upon the type of connection, the slowest being analog telephone lines and the fastest using optical networking technology.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Several other branches of the U.S. government, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE) became heavily involved in Internet research and started development of a successor to ARPANET. In the mid-1980s, all three of these branches developed the first Wide Area Networks based on TCP/IP. NASA developed the NASA Science Network, NSF developed CSNET and DOE evolved the Energy Sciences Network or ESNet.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "NASA developed the TCP/IP based NASA Science Network (NSN) in the mid-1980s, connecting space scientists to data and information stored anywhere in the world. In 1989, the DECnet-based Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) and the TCP/IP-based NASA Science Network (NSN) were brought together at NASA Ames Research Center creating the first multiprotocol wide area network called the NASA Science Internet, or NSI. NSI was established to provide a totally integrated communications infrastructure to the NASA scientific community for the advancement of earth, space and life sciences. As a high-speed, multiprotocol, international network, NSI provided connectivity to over 20,000 scientists across all seven continents.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 1981, NSF supported the development of the Computer Science Network (CSNET). CSNET connected with ARPANET using TCP/IP, and ran TCP/IP over X.25, but it also supported departments without sophisticated network connections, using automated dial-up mail exchange. CSNET played a central role in popularizing the Internet outside the ARPANET.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 1986, the NSF created NSFNET, a 56 kbit/s backbone to support the NSF-sponsored supercomputing centers. The NSFNET also provided support for the creation of regional research and education networks in the United States, and for the connection of university and college campus networks to the regional networks. The use of NSFNET and the regional networks was not limited to supercomputer users and the 56 kbit/s network quickly became overloaded. NSFNET was upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s in 1988 under a cooperative agreement with the Merit Network in partnership with IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan. The existence of NSFNET and the creation of Federal Internet Exchanges (FIXes) allowed the ARPANET to be decommissioned in 1990.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "NSFNET was expanded and upgraded to dedicated fiber, optical lasers and optical amplifier systems capable of delivering T3 start up speeds or 45 Mbit/s in 1991. However, the T3 transition by MCI took longer than expected, allowing Sprint to establish a coast-to-coast long-distance commercial Internet service. When NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, its optical networking backbones were handed off to several commercial Internet service providers, including MCI, PSI Net and Sprint. As a result, when the handoff was complete, Sprint and its Washington DC Network Access Points began to carry Internet traffic, and by 1996, Sprint was the world's largest carrier of Internet traffic.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The research and academic community continues to develop and use advanced networks such as Internet2 in the United States and JANET in the United Kingdom.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The term \"internet\" was reflected in the first RFC published on the TCP protocol (RFC 675: Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974) as a short form of internetworking, when the two terms were used interchangeably. In general, an internet was a collection of networks linked by a common protocol. In the time period when the ARPANET was connected to the newly formed NSFNET project in the late 1980s, the term was used as the name of the network, Internet, being the large and global TCP/IP network.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Opening the Internet and the fiber optic backbone to corporate and consumers increased demand for network capacity. The expense and delay of laying new fiber led providers to test a fiber bandwidth expansion alternative that had been pioneered in the late 1970s by Optelecom using \"interactions between light and matter, such as lasers and optical devices used for optical amplification and wave mixing\". This technology became known as wave division multiplexing (WDM). Bell Labs deployed a 4-channel WDM system in 1995. To develop a mass capacity (dense) WDM system, Optelecom and its former head of Light Systems Research, David R. Huber formed a new venture, Ciena Corp., that deployed the world's first dense WDM system on the Sprint fiber network in June 1996. This was referred to as the real start of optical networking.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "As interest in networking grew by needs of collaboration, exchange of data, and access of remote computing resources, the Internet technologies spread throughout the rest of the world. The hardware-agnostic approach in TCP/IP supported the use of existing network infrastructure, such as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS) X.25 network, to carry Internet traffic.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Many sites unable to link directly to the Internet created simple gateways for the transfer of electronic mail, the most important application of the time. Sites with only intermittent connections used UUCP or FidoNet and relied on the gateways between these networks and the Internet. Some gateway services went beyond simple mail peering, such as allowing access to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites via UUCP or mail.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Finally, routing technologies were developed for the Internet to remove the remaining centralized routing aspects. The Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) was replaced by a new protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This provided a meshed topology for the Internet and reduced the centric architecture which ARPANET had emphasized. In 1994, Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) was introduced to support better conservation of address space which allowed use of route aggregation to decrease the size of routing tables.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The MOS transistor underpinned the rapid growth of telecommunication bandwidth over the second half of the 20th century. To address the need for transmission capacity beyond that provided by radio, satellite and analog copper telephone lines, engineers developed optical communications systems based on fiber optic cables powered by lasers and optical amplifier techniques.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The concept of lasing arose from a 1917 paper by Albert Einstein, \"On the Quantum Theory of Radiation.\" Einstein expanded upon a dialog with Max Planck on how atoms absorb and emit light, part of a thought process that, with input from Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others, gave rise to Quantum Mechanics. Specifically, in his quantum theory, Einstein mathematically determined that light could be generated not only by spontaneous emission, such as the light emitted by an incandescent light or the Sun, but also by stimulated emission.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Forty years later, on November 13, 1957, Columbia University physics student Gordon Gould first realized how to make light by stimulated emission through a process of optical amplification. He coined the term LASER for this technology—Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Using Gould's light amplification method (patented as \"Optically Pumped Laser Amplifier\"), Theodore Maiman made the first working laser on May 16, 1960.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Gould co-founded Optelecom, Inc. in 1973 to commercialize his inventions in optical fiber telecommunications. just as Corning Glass was producing the first commercial fiber optic cable in small quantities. Optelecom configured its own fiber lasers and optical amplifiers into the first commercial optical communication systems which it delivered to Chevron and the US Army Missile Defense. Three years later, GTE deployed the first optical telephone system in 1977 in Long Beach, California. By the early 1980s, optical networks powered by lasers, LED and optical amplifier equipment supplied by Bell Labs, NTT and Perelli were used by select universities and long-distance telephone providers.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In early 1982, NORSAR and Peter Kirstein's group at University College London (UCL) left the ARPANET and began to use TCP/IP over SATNET. UCL continued to provide access between the ARPANET and academic networks in the UK, a role it had performed since 1973.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Between 1984 and 1988, CERN began installation and operation of TCP/IP to interconnect its major internal computer systems, workstations, PCs, and an accelerator control system. CERN continued to operate a limited self-developed system (CERNET) internally and several incompatible (typically proprietary) network protocols externally. There was considerable resistance in Europe towards more widespread use of TCP/IP, and the CERN TCP/IP intranets remained isolated from the Internet until 1989, when a transatlantic connection to Cornell University was established.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Computer Science Network (CSNET) began operation in 1981 to provide networking connections to institutions that could not connect directly to ARPANET. Its first international connection was to Israel in 1984. Soon after, connections were established to computer science departments in Canada, France, and Germany.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In 1988, the first international connections to NSFNET was established by France's INRIA, and Piet Beertema at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands. Daniel Karrenberg, from CWI, visited Ben Segal, CERN's TCP/IP coordinator, looking for advice about the transition of EUnet, the European side of the UUCP Usenet network (much of which ran over X.25 links), over to TCP/IP. The previous year, Segal had met with Len Bosack from the then still small company Cisco about purchasing some TCP/IP routers for CERN, and Segal was able to give Karrenberg advice and forward him on to Cisco for the appropriate hardware. This expanded the European portion of the Internet across the existing UUCP networks. The NORDUnet connection to NSFNET was in place soon after, providing open access for university students in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. In January 1989, CERN opened its first external TCP/IP connections. This coincided with the creation of Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE), initially a group of IP network administrators who met regularly to carry out coordination work together. Later, in 1992, RIPE was formally registered as a cooperative in Amsterdam.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The United Kingdom's national research and education network (NREN), JANET, began operation in 1984 using the UK's Coloured Book protocols and connected to NSFNET in 1989. In 1991, JANET adopted Internet Protocol on the existing network. The same year, Dai Davies introduced Internet technology into the pan-European NREN, EuropaNet, which was built on the X.25 protocol. The European Academic and Research Network (EARN) and RARE adopted IP around the same time, and the European Internet backbone EBONE became operational in 1992.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Nonetheless, for a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engineers, organizations and nations were polarized over the issue of which standard, the OSI model or the Internet protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "South Korea set up a two-node domestic TCP/IP network in 1982, the System Development Network (SDN), adding a third node the following year. SDN was connected to the rest of the world in August 1983 using UUCP (Unix-to-Unix-Copy); connected to CSNET in December 1984; and formally connected to the NSFNET in 1990.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Japan, which had built the UUCP-based network JUNET in 1984, connected to CSNET, and later to NSFNET in 1989, marking the spread of the Internet to Asia.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In Australia, ad hoc networking to ARPA and in-between Australian universities formed in the late 1980s, based on various technologies such as X.25, UUCPNet, and via a CSNET. These were limited in their connection to the global networks, due to the cost of making individual international UUCP dial-up or X.25 connections. In 1989, Australian universities joined the push towards using IP protocols to unify their networking infrastructures. AARNet was formed in 1989 by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee and provided a dedicated IP based network for Australia.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "New Zealand adopted the UK's Coloured Book protocols as an interim standard and established its first international IP connection to the U.S. in 1989.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "While developed countries with technological infrastructures were joining the Internet, developing countries began to experience a digital divide separating them from the Internet. On an essentially continental basis, they built organizations for Internet resource administration and to share operational experience, which enabled more transmission facilities to be put into place.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "At the beginning of the 1990s, African countries relied upon X.25 IPSS and 2400 baud modem UUCP links for international and internetwork computer communications.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In August 1995, InfoMail Uganda, Ltd., a privately held firm in Kampala now known as InfoCom, and NSN Network Services of Avon, Colorado, sold in 1997 and now known as Clear Channel Satellite, established Africa's first native TCP/IP high-speed satellite Internet services. The data connection was originally carried by a C-Band RSCC Russian satellite which connected InfoMail's Kampala offices directly to NSN's MAE-West point of presence using a private network from NSN's leased ground station in New Jersey. InfoCom's first satellite connection was just 64 kbit/s, serving a Sun host computer and twelve US Robotics dial-up modems.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 1996, a USAID funded project, the Leland Initiative, started work on developing full Internet connectivity for the continent. Guinea, Mozambique, Madagascar and Rwanda gained satellite earth stations in 1997, followed by Ivory Coast and Benin in 1998.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Africa is building an Internet infrastructure. AFRINIC, headquartered in Mauritius, manages IP address allocation for the continent. As do the other Internet regions, there is an operational forum, the Internet Community of Operational Networking Specialists.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "There are many programs to provide high-performance transmission plant, and the western and southern coasts have undersea optical cable. High-speed cables join North Africa and the Horn of Africa to intercontinental cable systems. Undersea cable development is slower for East Africa; the original joint effort between New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) has broken off and may become two efforts.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), headquartered in Australia, manages IP address allocation for the continent. APNIC sponsors an operational forum, the Asia-Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT).",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In South Korea, VDSL, a last mile technology developed in the 1990s by NextLevel Communications, connected corporate and consumer copper-based telephone lines to the Internet.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The People's Republic of China established its first TCP/IP college network, Tsinghua University's TUNET in 1991. The PRC went on to make its first global Internet connection in 1994, between the Beijing Electro-Spectrometer Collaboration and Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center. However, China went on to implement its own digital divide by implementing a country-wide content filter.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Japan hosted the annual meeting of the Internet Society, INET'92, in Kobe. Singapore developed TECHNET in 1990, and Thailand gained a global Internet connection between Chulalongkorn University and UUNET in 1992.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "As with the other regions, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) manages the IP address space and other resources for its area. LACNIC, headquartered in Uruguay, operates DNS root, reverse DNS, and other key services.",
"title": "1973–1989: Merging the networks and creating the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Initially, as with its predecessor networks, the system that would evolve into the Internet was primarily for government and government body use. Although commercial use was forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use was unclear and subjective. UUCPNet and the X.25 IPSS had no such restrictions, which would eventually see the official barring of UUCPNet use of ARPANET and NSFNET connections. (Some UUCP links still remained connecting to these networks however, as administrators cast a blind eye to their operation.)",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "As a result, during the late 1980s, the first Internet service provider (ISP) companies were formed. Companies like PSINet, UUNET, Netcom, and Portal Software were formed to provide service to the regional research networks and provide alternate network access, UUCP-based email and Usenet News to the public. In 1989, MCI Mail became the first commercial email provider to get an experimental gateway to the Internet. The first commercial dialup ISP in the United States was The World, which opened in 1989.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1862(g), which allowed NSF to support access by the research and education communities to computer networks which were not used exclusively for research and education purposes, thus permitting NSFNET to interconnect with commercial networks. This caused controversy within the research and education community, who were concerned commercial use of the network might lead to an Internet that was less responsive to their needs, and within the community of commercial network providers, who felt that government subsidies were giving an unfair advantage to some organizations.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "By 1990, ARPANET's goals had been fulfilled and new networking technologies exceeded the original scope and the project came to a close. New network service providers including PSINet, Alternet, CERFNet, ANS CO+RE, and many others were offering network access to commercial customers. NSFNET was no longer the de facto backbone and exchange point of the Internet. The Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX), Metropolitan Area Exchanges (MAEs), and later Network Access Points (NAPs) were becoming the primary interconnections between many networks. The final restrictions on carrying commercial traffic ended on April 30, 1995, when the National Science Foundation ended its sponsorship of the NSFNET Backbone Service. NSF provided initial support for the NAPs and interim support to help the regional research and education networks transition to commercial ISPs. NSF also sponsored the very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) which continued to provide support for the supercomputing centers and research and education in the United States.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "An event held on 11 January 1994, The Superhighway Summit at UCLA's Royce Hall, was the \"first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information Superhighway and its implications\".",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, as an application on the Internet, brought many social and commercial uses to what was, at the time, a network of networks for academic and research institutions. The Web opened to the public in 1991 and began to enter general use in 1993–4, when websites for everyday use started to become available.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "During the first decade or so of the public Internet, the immense changes it would eventually enable in the 2000s were still nascent. In terms of providing context for this period, mobile cellular devices (\"smartphones\" and other cellular devices) which today provide near-universal access, were used for business and not a routine household item owned by parents and children worldwide. Social media in the modern sense had yet to come into existence, laptops were bulky and most households did not have computers. Data rates were slow and most people lacked means to video or digitize video; media storage was transitioning slowly from analog tape to digital optical discs (DVD and to an extent still, floppy disc to CD). Enabling technologies used from the early 2000s such as PHP, modern JavaScript and Java, technologies such as AJAX, HTML 4 (and its emphasis on CSS), and various software frameworks, which enabled and simplified speed of web development, largely awaited invention and their eventual widespread adoption.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Internet was widely used for mailing lists, emails, creating and distributing maps with tools like MapQuest, e-commerce and early popular online shopping (Amazon and eBay for example), online forums and bulletin boards, and personal websites and blogs, and use was growing rapidly, but by more modern standards the systems used were static and lacked widespread social engagement. It awaited a number of events in the early 2000s to change from a communications technology to gradually develop into a key part of global society's infrastructure.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Typical design elements of these \"Web 1.0\" era websites included: Static pages instead of dynamic HTML; content served from filesystems instead of relational databases; pages built using Server Side Includes or CGI instead of a web application written in a dynamic programming language; HTML 3.2-era structures such as frames and tables to create page layouts; online guestbooks; overuse of GIF buttons and similar small graphics promoting particular items; and HTML forms sent via email. (Support for server side scripting was rare on shared servers so the usual feedback mechanism was via email, using mailto forms and their email program.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "During the period 1997 to 2001, the first speculative investment bubble related to the Internet took place, in which \"dot-com\" companies (referring to the \".com\" top level domain used by businesses) were propelled to exceedingly high valuations as investors rapidly stoked stock values, followed by a market crash; the first dot-com bubble. However this only temporarily slowed enthusiasm and growth, which quickly recovered and continued to grow.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The history of the World Wide Web up to around 2004 was retrospectively named and described by some as \"Web 1.0\".",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In the final stage of IPv4 address exhaustion, the last IPv4 address block was assigned in January 2011 at the level of the regional Internet registries. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses which limits the address space to 2 addresses, i.e. 4294967296 addresses. IPv4 is in the process of replacement by IPv6, its successor, which uses 128-bit addresses, providing 2 addresses, i.e. 340282366920938463463374607431768211456, a vastly increased address space. The shift to IPv6 is expected to take a long time to complete.",
"title": "1990–2003: Rise of the global Internet, Web 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The rapid technical advances that would propel the Internet into its place as a social system, which has completely transformed the way humans interact with each other, took place during a relatively short period from around 2005 to 2010, coinciding with the point in time in which IoT devices surpassed the number of humans alive at some point in the late 2000s. They included:",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The term \"Web 2.0\" describes websites that emphasize user-generated content (including user-to-user interaction), usability, and interoperability. It first appeared in a January 1999 article called \"Fragmented Future\" written by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design, where she wrote:",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The term resurfaced during 2002–2004, and gained prominence in late 2004 following presentations by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first Web 2.0 Conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly outlined their definition of the \"Web as Platform\", where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that \"customers are building your business for you\". They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be \"harnessed\" to create value.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Web 2.0 does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the way Web pages are made and used. Web 2.0 describes an approach, in which sites focus substantially upon allowing users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to Web sites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking services, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites, hosted services, Web applications, and mashups. Terry Flew, in his 3rd Edition of New Media described what he believed to characterize the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "This era saw several household names gain prominence through their community-oriented operation – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia being some examples.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The process of change that generally coincided with \"Web 2.0\" was itself greatly accelerated and transformed only a short time later by the increasing growth in mobile devices. This mobile revolution meant that computers in the form of smartphones became something many people used, took with them everywhere, communicated with, used for photographs and videos they instantly shared or to shop or seek information \"on the move\" – and used socially, as opposed to items on a desk at home or just used for work.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Location-based services, services using location and other sensor information, and crowdsourcing (frequently but not always location based), became common, with posts tagged by location, or websites and services becoming location aware. Mobile-targeted websites (such as \"m.website.com\") became common, designed especially for the new devices used. Netbooks, ultrabooks, widespread 4G and Wi-Fi, and mobile chips capable or running at nearly the power of desktops from not many years before on far lower power usage, became enablers of this stage of Internet development, and the term \"App\" emerged (short for \"Application program\" or \"Program\") as did the \"App store\".",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "This \"mobile revolution\" has allowed for people to have a nearly unlimited amount of information at their fingertips. With the ability to access the internet from cell phones came a change in the way we consume media. In fact, looking at media consumption statistics, over half of media consumption between those aged 18 and 34 were using a smartphone.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The first Internet link into low Earth orbit was established on January 22, 2010, when astronaut T. J. Creamer posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account from the International Space Station, marking the extension of the Internet into space. (Astronauts at the ISS had used email and Twitter before, but these messages had been relayed to the ground through a NASA data link before being posted by a human proxy.) This personal Web access, which NASA calls the Crew Support LAN, uses the space station's high-speed Ku band microwave link. To surf the Web, astronauts can use a station laptop computer to control a desktop computer on Earth, and they can talk to their families and friends on Earth using Voice over IP equipment.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit has traditionally been over point-to-point links through the Deep Space Network. Each such data link must be manually scheduled and configured. In the late 1990s NASA and Google began working on a new network protocol, Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) which automates this process, allows networking of spaceborne transmission nodes, and takes the fact into account that spacecraft can temporarily lose contact because they move behind the Moon or planets, or because space weather disrupts the connection. Under such conditions, DTN retransmits data packages instead of dropping them, as the standard TCP/IP Internet Protocol does. NASA conducted the first field test of what it calls the \"deep space internet\" in November 2008. Testing of DTN-based communications between the International Space Station and Earth (now termed Disruption-Tolerant Networking) has been ongoing since March 2009, and is scheduled to continue until March 2014.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "This network technology is supposed to ultimately enable missions that involve multiple spacecraft where reliable inter-vessel communication might take precedence over vessel-to-Earth downlinks. According to a February 2011 statement by Google's Vint Cerf, the so-called \"Bundle protocols\" have been uploaded to NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft (which is in orbit around the Sun) and communication with Earth has been tested at a distance of approximately 80 light seconds.",
"title": "2004–present: Web 2.0, global ubiquity, social media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "As a globally distributed network of voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks, the Internet operates without a central governing body. Each constituent network chooses the technologies and protocols it deploys from the technical standards that are developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). However, successful interoperation of many networks requires certain parameters that must be common throughout the network. For managing such parameters, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) oversees the allocation and assignment of various technical identifiers. In addition, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) provides oversight and coordination for the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The IANA function was originally performed by USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), and it delegated portions of this responsibility with respect to numeric network and autonomous system identifiers to the Network Information Center (NIC) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) in Menlo Park, California. ISI's Jonathan Postel managed the IANA, served as RFC Editor and performed other key roles until his premature death in 1998.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "As the early ARPANET grew, hosts were referred to by names, and a HOSTS.TXT file would be distributed from SRI International to each host on the network. As the network grew, this became cumbersome. A technical solution came in the form of the Domain Name System, created by ISI's Paul Mockapetris in 1983. The Defense Data Network—Network Information Center (DDN-NIC) at SRI handled all registration services, including the top-level domains (TLDs) of .mil, .gov, .edu, .org, .net, .com and .us, root nameserver administration and Internet number assignments under a United States Department of Defense contract. In 1991, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded the administration and maintenance of DDN-NIC (managed by SRI up until this point) to Government Systems, Inc., who subcontracted it to the small private-sector Network Solutions, Inc.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "The increasing cultural diversity of the Internet also posed administrative challenges for centralized management of the IP addresses. In October 1992, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published RFC 1366, which described the \"growth of the Internet and its increasing globalization\" and set out the basis for an evolution of the IP registry process, based on a regionally distributed registry model. This document stressed the need for a single Internet number registry to exist in each geographical region of the world (which would be of \"continental dimensions\"). Registries would be \"unbiased and widely recognized by network providers and subscribers\" within their region. The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) was established as the first RIR in May 1992. The second RIR, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), was established in Tokyo in 1993, as a pilot project of the Asia Pacific Networking Group.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Since at this point in history most of the growth on the Internet was coming from non-military sources, it was decided that the Department of Defense would no longer fund registration services outside of the .mil TLD. In 1993 the U.S. National Science Foundation, after a competitive bidding process in 1992, created the InterNIC to manage the allocations of addresses and management of the address databases, and awarded the contract to three organizations. Registration Services would be provided by Network Solutions; Directory and Database Services would be provided by AT&T; and Information Services would be provided by General Atomics.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Over time, after consultation with the IANA, the IETF, RIPE NCC, APNIC, and the Federal Networking Council (FNC), the decision was made to separate the management of domain names from the management of IP numbers. Following the examples of RIPE NCC and APNIC, it was recommended that management of IP address space then administered by the InterNIC should be under the control of those that use it, specifically the ISPs, end-user organizations, corporate entities, universities, and individuals. As a result, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) was established as in December 1997, as an independent, not-for-profit corporation by direction of the National Science Foundation and became the third Regional Internet Registry.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "In 1998, both the IANA and remaining DNS-related InterNIC functions were reorganized under the control of ICANN, a California non-profit corporation contracted by the United States Department of Commerce to manage a number of Internet-related tasks. As these tasks involved technical coordination for two principal Internet name spaces (DNS names and IP addresses) created by the IETF, ICANN also signed a memorandum of understanding with the IAB to define the technical work to be carried out by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The management of Internet address space remained with the regional Internet registries, which collectively were defined as a supporting organization within the ICANN structure. ICANN provides central coordination for the DNS system, including policy coordination for the split registry / registrar system, with competition among registry service providers to serve each top-level-domain and multiple competing registrars offering DNS services to end-users.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the largest and most visible of several loosely related ad-hoc groups that provide technical direction for the Internet, including the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The IETF is a loosely self-organized group of international volunteers who contribute to the engineering and evolution of Internet technologies. It is the principal body engaged in the development of new Internet standard specifications. Much of the work of the IETF is organized into Working Groups. Standardization efforts of the Working Groups are often adopted by the Internet community, but the IETF does not control or patrol the Internet.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The IETF grew out of quarterly meetings with U.S. government-funded researchers, starting in January 1986. Non-government representatives were invited by the fourth IETF meeting in October 1986. The concept of Working Groups was introduced at the fifth meeting in February 1987. The seventh meeting in July 1987 was the first meeting with more than one hundred attendees. In 1992, the Internet Society, a professional membership society, was formed and IETF began to operate under it as an independent international standards body. The first IETF meeting outside of the United States was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in July 1993. Today, the IETF meets three times per year and attendance has been as high as ca. 2,000 participants. Typically one in three IETF meetings are held in Europe or Asia. The number of non-US attendees is typically ca. 50%, even at meetings held in the United States.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The IETF is not a legal entity, has no governing board, no members, and no dues. The closest status resembling membership is being on an IETF or Working Group mailing list. IETF volunteers come from all over the world and from many different parts of the Internet community. The IETF works closely with and under the supervision of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG), peer activities to the IETF and IESG under the general supervision of the IAB, focus on longer-term research issues.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "RFCs are the main documentation for the work of the IAB, IESG, IETF, and IRTF. Originally intended as requests for comments, RFC 1, \"Host Software\", was written by Steve Crocker at UCLA in April 1969. These technical memos documented aspects of ARPANET development. They were edited by Jon Postel, the first RFC Editor.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "RFCs cover a wide range of information from proposed standards, draft standards, full standards, best practices, experimental protocols, history, and other informational topics. RFCs can be written by individuals or informal groups of individuals, but many are the product of a more formal Working Group. Drafts are submitted to the IESG either by individuals or by the Working Group Chair. An RFC Editor, appointed by the IAB, separate from IANA, and working in conjunction with the IESG, receives drafts from the IESG and edits, formats, and publishes them. Once an RFC is published, it is never revised. If the standard it describes changes or its information becomes obsolete, the revised standard or updated information will be re-published as a new RFC that \"obsoletes\" the original.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "The Internet Society (ISOC) is an international, nonprofit organization founded during 1992 \"to assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world\". With offices near Washington, DC, US, and in Geneva, Switzerland, ISOC has a membership base comprising more than 80 organizational and more than 50,000 individual members. Members also form \"chapters\" based on either common geographical location or special interests. There are currently more than 90 chapters around the world.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "ISOC provides financial and organizational support to and promotes the work of the standards settings bodies for which it is the organizational home: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). ISOC also promotes understanding and appreciation of the Internet model of open, transparent processes and consensus-based decision-making.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Since the 1990s, the Internet's governance and organization has been of global importance to governments, commerce, civil society, and individuals. The organizations which held control of certain technical aspects of the Internet were the successors of the old ARPANET oversight and the current decision-makers in the day-to-day technical aspects of the network. While recognized as the administrators of certain aspects of the Internet, their roles and their decision-making authority are limited and subject to increasing international scrutiny and increasing objections. These objections have led to the ICANN removing themselves from relationships with first the University of Southern California in 2000, and in September 2009, gaining autonomy from the US government by the ending of its longstanding agreements, although some contractual obligations with the U.S. Department of Commerce continued. Finally, on October 1, 2016, ICANN ended its contract with the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), allowing oversight to pass to the global Internet community.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The IETF, with financial and organizational support from the Internet Society, continues to serve as the Internet's ad-hoc standards body and issues Request for Comments.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "In November 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, called for an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be convened by United Nations Secretary General. The IGF opened an ongoing, non-binding conversation among stakeholders representing governments, the private sector, civil society, and the technical and academic communities about the future of Internet governance. The first IGF meeting was held in October/November 2006 with follow up meetings annually thereafter. Since WSIS, the term \"Internet governance\" has been broadened beyond narrow technical concerns to include a wider range of Internet-related policy issues.",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was becoming concerned about threats to the web's future and in November 2009 at the IGF in Washington DC launched the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF) to campaign to make the web a safe and empowering tool for the good of humanity with access to all. In November 2019 at the IGF in Berlin, Berners-Lee and the WWWF went on to launch the Contract for the Web, a campaign initiative to persuade governments, companies and citizens to commit to nine principles to stop \"misuse\" with the warning \"If we don't act now - and act together - to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering\" (its potential for good).",
"title": "Internet governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Due to its prominence and immediacy as an effective means of mass communication, the Internet has also become more politicized as it has grown. This has led in turn, to discourses and activities that would once have taken place in other ways, migrating to being mediated by internet.",
"title": "Politicization of the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Examples include political activities such as public protest and canvassing of support and votes, but also:",
"title": "Politicization of the Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "On April 23, 2014, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was reported to be considering a new rule that would permit Internet service providers to offer content providers a faster track to send content, thus reversing their earlier net neutrality position. A possible solution to net neutrality concerns may be municipal broadband, according to Professor Susan Crawford, a legal and technology expert at Harvard Law School. On May 15, 2014, the FCC decided to consider two options regarding Internet services: first, permit fast and slow broadband lanes, thereby compromising net neutrality; and second, reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service, thereby preserving net neutrality. On November 10, 2014, President Obama recommended the FCC reclassify broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service in order to preserve net neutrality. On January 16, 2015, Republicans presented legislation, in the form of a U.S. Congress HR discussion draft bill, that makes concessions to net neutrality but prohibits the FCC from accomplishing the goal or enacting any further regulation affecting Internet service providers (ISPs). On January 31, 2015, AP News reported that the FCC will present the notion of applying (\"with some caveats\") Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 to the internet in a vote expected on February 26, 2015. Adoption of this notion would reclassify internet service from one of information to one of telecommunications and, according to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, ensure net neutrality. The FCC is expected to enforce net neutrality in its vote, according to The New York Times.",
"title": "Net neutrality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "On February 26, 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of net neutrality by applying Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996 to the Internet. The FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, commented, \"This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept.\"",
"title": "Net neutrality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "On March 12, 2015, the FCC released the specific details of the net neutrality rules. On April 13, 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new \"Net Neutrality\" regulations.",
"title": "Net neutrality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "On December 14, 2017, the FCC repealed their March 12, 2015 decision by a 3–2 vote regarding net neutrality rules.",
"title": "Net neutrality"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Email has often been called the killer application of the Internet. It predates the Internet, and was a crucial tool in creating it. Email started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the history is undocumented, among the first systems to have such a facility were the System Development Corporation (SDC) Q32 and the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) at MIT.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of electronic mail. An experimental inter-system transferred mail on the ARPANET shortly after its creation. In 1971 Ray Tomlinson created what was to become the standard Internet electronic mail addressing format, using the @ sign to separate mailbox names from host names.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "A number of protocols were developed to deliver messages among groups of time-sharing computers over alternative transmission systems, such as UUCP and IBM's VNET email system. Email could be passed this way between a number of networks, including ARPANET, BITNET and NSFNET, as well as to hosts connected directly to other sites via UUCP. See the history of SMTP protocol.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "In addition, UUCP allowed the publication of text files that could be read by many others. The News software developed by Steve Daniel and Tom Truscott in 1979 was used to distribute news and bulletin board-like messages. This quickly grew into discussion groups, known as newsgroups, on a wide range of topics. On ARPANET and NSFNET similar discussion groups would form via mailing lists, discussing both technical issues and more culturally focused topics (such as science fiction, discussed on the sflovers mailing list).",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "During the early years of the Internet, email and similar mechanisms were also fundamental to allow people to access resources that were not available due to the absence of online connectivity. UUCP was often used to distribute files using the 'alt.binary' groups. Also, FTP e-mail gateways allowed people that lived outside the US and Europe to download files using ftp commands written inside email messages. The file was encoded, broken in pieces and sent by email; the receiver had to reassemble and decode it later, and it was the only way for people living overseas to download items such as the earlier Linux versions using the slow dial-up connections available at the time. After the popularization of the Web and the HTTP protocol such tools were slowly abandoned.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Resource or file sharing has been an important activity on computer networks from well before the Internet was established and was supported in a variety of ways including bulletin board systems (1978), Usenet (1980), Kermit (1981), and many others. The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for use on the Internet was standardized in 1985 and is still in use today. A variety of tools were developed to aid the use of FTP by helping users discover files they might want to transfer, including the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) in 1991, Gopher in 1991, Archie in 1991, Veronica in 1992, Jughead in 1993, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988, and eventually the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1991 with Web directories and Web search engines.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In 1999, Napster became the first peer-to-peer file sharing system. Napster used a central server for indexing and peer discovery, but the storage and transfer of files was decentralized. A variety of peer-to-peer file sharing programs and services with different levels of decentralization and anonymity followed, including: Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Freenet in 2000, FastTrack, Kazaa, Limewire, and BitTorrent in 2001, and Poisoned in 2003.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "All of these tools are general purpose and can be used to share a wide variety of content, but sharing of music files, software, and later movies and videos are major uses. And while some of this sharing is legal, large portions are not. Lawsuits and other legal actions caused Napster in 2001, eDonkey2000 in 2005, Kazaa in 2006, and Limewire in 2010 to shut down or refocus their efforts. The Pirate Bay, founded in Sweden in 2003, continues despite a trial and appeal in 2009 and 2010 that resulted in jail terms and large fines for several of its founders. File sharing remains contentious and controversial with charges of theft of intellectual property on the one hand and charges of censorship on the other.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "File hosting allowed for people to expand their computer's hard drives and \"host\" their files on a server. Most file hosting services offer free storage, as well as larger storage amount for a fee. These services have greatly expanded the internet for business and personal use.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Google Drive, launched on April 24, 2012, has become the most popular file hosting service. Google Drive allows users to store, edit, and share files with themselves and other users. Not only does this application allow for file editing, hosting, and sharing. It also acts as Google's own free-to-access office programs, such as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets. This application served as a useful tool for University professors and students, as well as those who are in need of Cloud storage.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Dropbox, released in June 2007 is a similar file hosting service that allows users to keep all of their files in a folder on their computer, which is synced with Dropbox's servers. This differs from Google Drive as it is not web-browser based. Now, Dropbox works to keep workers and files in sync and efficient.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Mega, having over 200 million users, is an encrypted storage and communication system that offers users free and paid storage, with an emphasis on privacy. Being three of the largest file hosting services, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Mega all represent the core ideas and values of these services.",
"title": "Use and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "The earliest form of online piracy began with a P2P (peer to peer) music sharing service named Napster, launched in 1999. Sites like LimeWire, The Pirate Bay, and BitTorrent allowed for anyone to engage in online piracy, sending ripples through the media industry. With online piracy came a change in the media industry as a whole.",
"title": "Online piracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Total global mobile data traffic reached 588 exabytes during 2020, a 150-fold increase from 3.86 exabytes/year in 2010. Most recently, smartphones accounted for 95% of this mobile data traffic with video accounting for 66% by type of data. Mobile traffic travels by radio frequency to the closest cell phone tower and its base station where the radio signal is converted into an optical signal that is transmitted over high-capacity optical networking systems that convey the information to data centers. The optical backbones enable much of this traffic as well as a host of emerging mobile services including the Internet of things, 3-D virtual reality, gaming and autonomous vehicles. The most popular mobile phone application is texting, of which 2.1 trillion messages were logged in 2020. The texting phenomenon began on December 3, 1992, when Neil Papworth sent the first text message of \"Merry Christmas\" over a commercial cell phone network to the CEO of Vodafone.",
"title": "Mobile telephone data traffic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the Nokia 9000 Communicator, launched in Finland in 1996. The viability of Internet services access on mobile phones was limited until prices came down from that model, and network providers started to develop systems and services conveniently accessible on phones. NTT DoCoMo in Japan launched the first mobile Internet service, i-mode, in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile phone Internet services. In 2001, the mobile phone email system by Research in Motion (now BlackBerry Limited) for their BlackBerry product was launched in America. To make efficient use of the small screen and tiny keypad and one-handed operation typical of mobile phones, a specific document and networking model was created for mobile devices, the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Most mobile device Internet services operate using WAP. The growth of mobile phone services was initially a primarily Asian phenomenon with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all soon finding the majority of their Internet users accessing resources by phone rather than by PC. Developing countries followed, with India, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, and Pakistan all reporting that the majority of their domestic users accessed the Internet from a mobile phone rather than a PC. The European and North American use of the Internet was influenced by a large installed base of personal computers, and the growth of mobile phone Internet access was more gradual, but had reached national penetration levels of 20–30% in most Western countries. The cross-over occurred in 2008, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC user.",
"title": "Mobile telephone data traffic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Global Internet traffic continues to grow at a rapid rate, rising 23% from 2020 to 2021 when the number of active Internet users reached 4.66 billion people, representing half of the global population. Further demand for data, and the capacity to satisfy this demand, are forecast to increase to 717 terabits per second in 2021. This capacity stems from the optical amplification and WDM systems that are the common basis of virtually every metro, regional, national, international and submarine telecommunications networks. These optical networking systems have been installed throughout the 5 billion kilometers of fiber optic lines deployed around the world. Continued growth in traffic is expected for the foreseeable future from a combination of new users, increased mobile phone adoption, machine-to-machine connections, connected homes, 5G devices and the burgeoning requirement for cloud and Internet services such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple Music and YouTube.",
"title": "Growth in demand"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "There are nearly insurmountable problems in supplying a historiography of the Internet's development. The process of digitization represents a twofold challenge both for historiography in general and, in particular, for historical communication research. A sense of the difficulty in documenting early developments that led to the internet can be gathered from the quote:",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "\"The Arpanet period is somewhat well documented because the corporation in charge – BBN – left a physical record. Moving into the NSFNET era, it became an extraordinarily decentralized process. The record exists in people's basements, in closets. ... So much of what happened was done verbally and on the basis of individual trust.\"",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Notable works on the subject were published by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet (1996), Roy Rosenzweig, Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet (1998), and Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (2000).",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Most scholarship and literature on the Internet lists ARPANET as the prior network that was iterated on and studied to create it, although other early computer networks and experiments existed alongside or before ARPANET.",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "These histories of the Internet have since been characterized as teleologies or Whig history; that is, they take the present to be the end point toward which history has been unfolding based on a single cause:",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "In the case of Internet history, the epoch-making event is usually said to be the demonstration of the 4-node ARPANET network in 1969. From that single happening the global Internet developed.",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "In addition to these characteristics, historians have cited methodological problems arising in their work:",
"title": "Historiography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "\"Internet history\" ... tends to be too close to its sources. Many Internet pioneers are alive, active, and eager to shape the histories that describe their accomplishments. Many museums and historians are equally eager to interview the pioneers and to publicize their stories.",
"title": "Historiography"
}
]
| The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France. Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom. ARPA awarded contracts in 1969 for the development of the ARPANET project, directed by Robert Taylor and managed by Lawrence Roberts. ARPANET adopted the packet switching technology proposed by Davies and Baran, underpinned by mathematical work in the early 1970s by Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA. The network was built by a team at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, which included Bob Kahn. Several early packet-switched networks emerged in the 1970s which researched and provided data networking. Peter Kirstein at University College London put internetworking into practice in 1973. Louis Pouzin and Hubert Zimmermann pioneered a simplified end-to-end approach to internetworking at the IRIA. ARPA projects, the International Network Working Group and commercial initiatives led to the development of various standards and protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. Bob Metcalfe developed the theory behind Ethernet. Vint Cerf, at Stanford University, and Bob Kahn, now at DARPA, published research in 1974 that evolved into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), two protocols of the Internet protocol suite. The design included concepts from the French CYCLADES project directed by Louis Pouzin. In the late 1970s, national and international public data networks emerged based on the X.25 protocol, the design of which included the work of Rémi Després. In the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded national supercomputing centers at several universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic organizations in the United States. International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP on existing networks in the United States and around the world marked the beginnings of the Internet. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990. The optical backbone of the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic, as traffic transitioned to optical networks managed by Sprint, MCI and AT&T in the United States. Research at CERN in Switzerland by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the network. The dramatic expansion of the capacity of the Internet, enabled by the advent of wave division multiplexing (WDM) and the rollout of fiber optic cables in the mid-1990s, had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology. This made possible the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, video chat, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber-optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, and 800 Gbit/s by 2019. The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was rapid in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking services. However, the future of the global network may be shaped by regional differences. | 2001-11-11T12:37:13Z | 2023-12-12T08:08:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet |
13,693 | Horace | Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Classical Latin: [ˈkʷiːntʊs (h)ɔˈraːtiʊs ˈfɫakːʊs]; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (/ˈhɒrɪs/), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."
Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Satires and Epistles) and caustic iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are amusing yet serious works, friendly in tone, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings".
His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from a republic to an empire. An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep") but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, "a well-mannered court slave".
Horace can be regarded as the world's first autobiographer. In his writings, he tells us far more about himself, his character, his development, and his way of life, than any other great poet of antiquity. Some of the biographical material contained in his work can be supplemented from the short but valuable "Life of Horace" by Suetonius (in his Lives of the Poets).
He was born on 8 December 65 BC in the Samnite south of Italy. His home town, Venusia, lay on a trade route in the border region between Apulia and Lucania (Basilicata). Various Italic dialects were spoken in the area and this perhaps enriched his feeling for language. He could have been familiar with Greek words even as a young boy and later he poked fun at the jargon of mixed Greek and Oscan spoken in neighbouring Canusium. One of the works he probably studied in school was the Odyssia of Livius Andronicus, taught by teachers like the 'Orbilius' mentioned in one of his poems. Army veterans could have been settled there at the expense of local families uprooted by Rome as punishment for their part in the Social War (91–88 BC). Such state-sponsored migration must have added still more linguistic variety to the area. According to a local tradition reported by Horace, a colony of Romans or Latins had been installed in Venusia after the Samnites had been driven out early in the third century. In that case, young Horace could have felt himself to be a Roman though there are also indications that he regarded himself as a Samnite or Sabellus by birth. Italians in modern and ancient times have always been devoted to their home towns, even after success in the wider world, and Horace was no different. Images of his childhood setting and references to it are found throughout his poems.
Horace's father was probably a Venutian taken captive by Romans in the Social War, or possibly he was descended from a Sabine captured in the Samnite Wars. Either way, he was a slave for at least part of his life. He was evidently a man of strong abilities however and managed to gain his freedom and improve his social position. Thus Horace claimed to be the free-born son of a prosperous 'coactor'. The term 'coactor' could denote various roles, such as tax collector, but its use by Horace was explained by scholia as a reference to 'coactor argentareus' i.e. an auctioneer with some of the functions of a banker, paying the seller out of his own funds and later recovering the sum with interest from the buyer.
The father spent a small fortune on his son's education, eventually accompanying him to Rome to oversee his schooling and moral development. The poet later paid tribute to him in a poem that one modern scholar considers the best memorial by any son to his father. The poem includes this passage:
If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son. Satires 1.6.65–92
He never mentioned his mother in his verses and he might not have known much about her. Perhaps she also had been a slave.
Horace left Rome, possibly after his father's death, and continued his formal education in Athens, a great centre of learning in the ancient world, where he arrived at nineteen years of age, enrolling in The Academy. Founded by Plato, The Academy was now dominated by Epicureans and Stoics, whose theories and practises made a deep impression on the young man from Venusia. Meanwhile, he mixed and lounged about with the elite of Roman youth, such as Marcus, the idle son of Cicero, and the Pompeius to whom he later addressed a poem. It was in Athens too that he probably acquired deep familiarity with the ancient tradition of Greek lyric poetry, at that time largely the preserve of grammarians and academic specialists (access to such material was easier in Athens than in Rome, where the public libraries had yet to be built by Asinius Pollio and Augustus).
Rome's troubles following the assassination of Julius Caesar were soon to catch up with him. Marcus Junius Brutus came to Athens seeking support for the republican cause. Brutus was fêted around town in grand receptions and he made a point of attending academic lectures, all the while recruiting supporters among the young men studying there, including Horace. An educated young Roman could begin military service high in the ranks and Horace was made tribunus militum (one of six senior officers of a typical legion), a post usually reserved for men of senatorial or equestrian rank and which seems to have inspired jealousy among his well-born confederates. He learned the basics of military life while on the march, particularly in the wilds of northern Greece, whose rugged scenery became a backdrop to some of his later poems. It was there in 42 BC that Octavian (later Augustus) and his associate Mark Antony crushed the republican forces at the Battle of Philippi. Horace later recorded it as a day of embarrassment for himself, when he fled without his shield, but allowance should be made for his self-deprecating humour. Moreover, the incident allowed him to identify himself with some famous poets who had long ago abandoned their shields in battle, notably his heroes Alcaeus and Archilochus. The comparison with the latter poet is uncanny: Archilochus lost his shield in a part of Thrace near Philippi, and he was deeply involved in the Greek colonization of Thasos, where Horace's die-hard comrades finally surrendered.
Octavian offered an early amnesty to his opponents and Horace quickly accepted it. On returning to Italy, he was confronted with yet another loss: his father's estate in Venusia was one of many throughout Italy to be confiscated for the settlement of veterans (Virgil lost his estate in the north about the same time). Horace later claimed that he was reduced to poverty and this led him to try his hand at poetry. In reality, there was no money to be had from versifying. At best, it offered future prospects through contacts with other poets and their patrons among the rich. Meanwhile, he obtained the sinecure of scriba quaestorius, a civil service position at the aerarium or Treasury, profitable enough to be purchased even by members of the ordo equester and not very demanding in its work-load, since tasks could be delegated to scribae or permanent clerks. It was about this time that he began writing his Satires and Epodes.
He describes in glowing terms the country villa which his patron, Maecenas, had given him in a letter to his friend Quintius:
"It lies on a range of hills, broken by a shady valley which is so placed that the sun when rising strikes the right side, and when descending in his flying chariot, warms the left. You would like the climate; and if you were to see my fruit trees, bearing ruddy cornils and plums, my oaks and ilex supplying food to my herds, and abundant shade to the master, you would say, Tarentum in its beauty has been brought near to Rome! There is a fountain too, large enough to give a name to the river which it feeds; and the Ebro itself does not flow through Thrace with cooler or purer stream. Its waters also are good for the head and useful for digestion. This sweet, and, if you will believe me, charming retreat keeps me in good health during the autumnal days."
The remains of Horace's Villa are situated on a wooded hillside above the river at Licenza, which joins the Aniene as it flows on to Tivoli.
The Epodes belong to iambic poetry. Iambic poetry features insulting and obscene language; sometimes, it is referred to as blame poetry. Blame poetry, or shame poetry, is poetry written to blame and shame fellow citizens into a sense of their social obligations. Each poem normally has a archetype person Horace decides to shame, or teach a lesson to. Horace modelled these poems on the poetry of Archilochus. Social bonds in Rome had been decaying since the destruction of Carthage a little more than a hundred years earlier, due to the vast wealth that could be gained by plunder and corruption. These social ills were magnified by rivalry between Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and confederates like Sextus Pompey, all jockeying for a bigger share of the spoils. One modern scholar has counted a dozen civil wars in the hundred years leading up to 31 BC, including the Spartacus rebellion, eight years before Horace's birth. As the heirs to Hellenistic culture, Horace and his fellow Romans were not well prepared to deal with these problems:
At bottom, all the problems that the times were stirring up were of a social nature, which the Hellenistic thinkers were ill qualified to grapple with. Some of them censured oppression of the poor by the rich, but they gave no practical lead, though they may have hoped to see well-meaning rulers doing so. Philosophy was drifting into absorption in self, a quest for private contentedness, to be achieved by self-control and restraint, without much regard for the fate of a disintegrating community.
Horace's Hellenistic background is clear in his Satires, even though the genre was unique to Latin literature. He brought to it a style and outlook suited to the social and ethical issues confronting Rome but he changed its role from public, social engagement to private meditation. Meanwhile, he was beginning to interest Octavian's supporters, a gradual process described by him in one of his satires. The way was opened for him by his friend, the poet Virgil, who had gained admission into the privileged circle around Maecenas, Octavian's lieutenant, following the success of his Eclogues. An introduction soon followed and, after a discreet interval, Horace too was accepted. He depicted the process as an honourable one, based on merit and mutual respect, eventually leading to true friendship, and there is reason to believe that his relationship was genuinely friendly, not just with Maecenas but afterwards with Augustus as well. On the other hand, the poet has been unsympathetically described by one scholar as "a sharp and rising young man, with an eye to the main chance." There were advantages on both sides: Horace gained encouragement and material support, the politicians gained a hold on a potential dissident. His republican sympathies, and his role at Philippi, may have caused him some pangs of remorse over his new status. However, most Romans considered the civil wars to be the result of contentio dignitatis, or rivalry between the foremost families of the city, and he too seems to have accepted the principate as Rome's last hope for much needed peace.
In 37 BC, Horace accompanied Maecenas on a journey to Brundisium, described in one of his poems as a series of amusing incidents and charming encounters with other friends along the way, such as Virgil. In fact the journey was political in its motivation, with Maecenas en route to negotiate the Treaty of Tarentum with Antony, a fact Horace artfully keeps from the reader (political issues are largely avoided in the first book of satires). Horace was probably also with Maecenas on one of Octavian's naval expeditions against the piratical Sextus Pompeius, which ended in a disastrous storm off Palinurus in 36 BC, briefly alluded to by Horace in terms of near-drowning. There are also some indications in his verses that he was with Maecenas at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, where Octavian defeated his great rival, Antony. By then Horace had already received from Maecenas the famous gift of his Sabine farm, probably not long after the publication of the first book of Satires. The gift, which included income from five tenants, may have ended his career at the Treasury, or at least allowed him to give it less time and energy. It signalled his identification with the Octavian regime yet, in the second book of Satires that soon followed, he continued the apolitical stance of the first book. By this time, he had attained the status of eques Romanus (Roman 'cavalryman', 'knight'), perhaps as a result of his work at the Treasury.
Odes 1–3 were the next focus for his artistic creativity. He adapted their forms and themes from Greek lyric poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries BC. The fragmented nature of the Greek world had enabled his literary heroes to express themselves freely and his semi-retirement from the Treasury in Rome to his own estate in the Sabine hills perhaps empowered him to some extent also yet even when his lyrics touched on public affairs they reinforced the importance of private life. Nevertheless, his work in the period 30–27 BC began to show his closeness to the regime and his sensitivity to its developing ideology. In Odes 1.2, for example, he eulogized Octavian in hyperboles that echo Hellenistic court poetry. The name Augustus, which Octavian assumed in 27 January BC, is first attested in Odes 3.3 and 3.5. In the period 27–24 BC, political allusions in the Odes concentrated on foreign wars in Britain (1.35), Arabia (1.29) Hispania (3.8) and Parthia (2.2). He greeted Augustus on his return to Rome in 24 BC as a beloved ruler upon whose good health he depended for his own happiness (3.14).
The public reception of Odes 1–3 disappointed him, however. He attributed the lack of success to jealousy among imperial courtiers and to his isolation from literary cliques. Perhaps it was disappointment that led him to put aside the genre in favour of verse letters. He addressed his first book of Epistles to a variety of friends and acquaintances in an urbane style reflecting his new social status as a knight. In the opening poem, he professed a deeper interest in moral philosophy than poetry but, though the collection demonstrates a leaning towards stoic theory, it reveals no sustained thinking about ethics. Maecenas was still the dominant confidante but Horace had now begun to assert his own independence, suavely declining constant invitations to attend his patron. In the final poem of the first book of Epistles, he revealed himself to be forty-four years old in the consulship of Lollius and Lepidus i.e. 21 BC, and "of small stature, fond of the sun, prematurely grey, quick-tempered but easily placated".
According to Suetonius, the second book of Epistles was prompted by Augustus, who desired a verse epistle to be addressed to himself. Augustus was in fact a prolific letter-writer and he once asked Horace to be his personal secretary. Horace refused the secretarial role but complied with the emperor's request for a verse letter. The letter to Augustus may have been slow in coming, being published possibly as late as 11 BC. It celebrated, among other things, the 15 BC military victories of his stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, yet it and the following letter were largely devoted to literary theory and criticism. The literary theme was explored still further in Ars Poetica, published separately but written in the form of an epistle and sometimes referred to as Epistles 2.3 (possibly the last poem he ever wrote). He was also commissioned to write odes commemorating the victories of Drusus and Tiberius and one to be sung in a temple of Apollo for the Secular Games, a long-abandoned festival that Augustus revived in accordance with his policy of recreating ancient customs (Carmen Saeculare).
Suetonius recorded some gossip about Horace's sexual activities late in life, claiming that the walls of his bedchamber were covered with obscene pictures and mirrors, so that he saw erotica wherever he looked. The poet died at 56 years of age, not long after his friend Maecenas, near whose tomb he was laid to rest. Both men bequeathed their property to Augustus, an honour that the emperor expected of his friends.
The dating of Horace's works isn't known precisely and scholars often debate the exact order in which they were first 'published'. There are persuasive arguments for the following chronology:
Horace composed in traditional metres borrowed from Archaic Greece, employing hexameters in his Satires and Epistles, and iambs in his Epodes, all of which were relatively easy to adapt into Latin forms. His Odes featured more complex measures, including alcaics and sapphics, which were sometimes a difficult fit for Latin structure and syntax. Despite these traditional metres, he presented himself as a partisan in the development of a new and sophisticated style. He was influenced in particular by Hellenistic aesthetics of brevity, elegance and polish, as modelled in the work of Callimachus.
As soon as Horace, stirred by his own genius and encouraged by the example of Virgil, Varius, and perhaps some other poets of the same generation, had determined to make his fame as a poet, being by temperament a fighter, he wanted to fight against all kinds of prejudice, amateurish slovenliness, philistinism, reactionary tendencies, in short to fight for the new and noble type of poetry which he and his friends were endeavouring to bring about.
In modern literary theory, a distinction is often made between immediate personal experience (Urerlebnis) and experience mediated by cultural vectors such as literature, philosophy and the visual arts (Bildungserlebnis). The distinction has little relevance for Horace however since his personal and literary experiences are implicated in each other. Satires 1.5, for example, recounts in detail a real trip Horace made with Virgil and some of his other literary friends, and which parallels a Satire by Lucilius, his predecessor. Unlike much Hellenistic-inspired literature, however, his poetry was not composed for a small coterie of admirers and fellow poets, nor does it rely on abstruse allusions for many of its effects. Though elitist in its literary standards, it was written for a wide audience, as a public form of art. Ambivalence also characterizes his literary persona, since his presentation of himself as part of a small community of philosophically aware people, seeking true peace of mind while shunning vices like greed, was well adapted to Augustus's plans to reform public morality, corrupted by greed—his personal plea for moderation was part of the emperor's grand message to the nation.
Horace generally followed the examples of poets established as classics in different genres, such as Archilochus in the Epodes, Lucilius in the Satires and Alcaeus in the Odes, later broadening his scope for the sake of variation and because his models weren't actually suited to the realities confronting him. Archilochus and Alcaeus were aristocratic Greeks whose poetry had a social and religious function that was immediately intelligible to their audiences but which became a mere artifice or literary motif when transposed to Rome. However, the artifice of the Odes is also integral to their success, since they could now accommodate a wide range of emotional effects, and the blend of Greek and Roman elements adds a sense of detachment and universality. Horace proudly claimed to introduce into Latin the spirit and iambic poetry of Archilochus but (unlike Archilochus) without persecuting anyone (Epistles 1.19.23–25). It was no idle boast. His Epodes were modelled on the verses of the Greek poet, as 'blame poetry', yet he avoided targeting real scapegoats. Whereas Archilochus presented himself as a serious and vigorous opponent of wrong-doers, Horace aimed for comic effects and adopted the persona of a weak and ineffectual critic of his times (as symbolized for example in his surrender to the witch Canidia in the final epode). He also claimed to be the first to introduce into Latin the lyrical methods of Alcaeus (Epistles 1.19.32–33) and he actually was the first Latin poet to make consistent use of Alcaic meters and themes: love, politics and the symposium. He imitated other Greek lyric poets as well, employing a 'motto' technique, beginning each ode with some reference to a Greek original and then diverging from it.
The satirical poet Lucilius was a senator's son who could castigate his peers with impunity. Horace was a mere freedman's son who had to tread carefully. Lucilius was a rugged patriot and a significant voice in Roman self-awareness, endearing himself to his countrymen by his blunt frankness and explicit politics. His work expressed genuine freedom or libertas. His style included 'metrical vandalism' and looseness of structure. Horace instead adopted an oblique and ironic style of satire, ridiculing stock characters and anonymous targets. His libertas was the private freedom of a philosophical outlook, not a political or social privilege. His Satires are relatively easy-going in their use of meter (relative to the tight lyric meters of the Odes) but formal and highly controlled relative to the poems of Lucilius, whom Horace mocked for his sloppy standards (Satires 1.10.56–61)
The Epistles may be considered among Horace's most innovative works. There was nothing like it in Greek or Roman literature. Occasionally poems had had some resemblance to letters, including an elegiac poem from Solon to Mimnermus and some lyrical poems from Pindar to Hieron of Syracuse. Lucilius had composed a satire in the form of a letter, and some epistolary poems were composed by Catullus and Propertius. But nobody before Horace had ever composed an entire collection of verse letters, let alone letters with a focus on philosophical problems. The sophisticated and flexible style that he had developed in his Satires was adapted to the more serious needs of this new genre. Such refinement of style was not unusual for Horace. His craftsmanship as a wordsmith is apparent even in his earliest attempts at this or that kind of poetry, but his handling of each genre tended to improve over time as he adapted it to his own needs. Thus for example it is generally agreed that his second book of Satires, where human folly is revealed through dialogue between characters, is superior to the first, where he propounds his ethics in monologues. Nevertheless, the first book includes some of his most popular poems.
Horace developed a number of inter-related themes throughout his poetic career, including politics, love, philosophy and ethics, his own social role, as well as poetry itself. His Epodes and Satires are forms of 'blame poetry' and both have a natural affinity with the moralising and diatribes of Cynicism. This often takes the form of allusions to the work and philosophy of Bion of Borysthenes but it is as much a literary game as a philosophical alignment.
By the time he composed his Epistles, he was a critic of Cynicism along with all impractical and "high-falutin" philosophy in general.
The Satires also include a strong element of Epicureanism, with frequent allusions to the Epicurean poet Lucretius. So for example the Epicurean sentiment carpe diem is the inspiration behind Horace's repeated punning on his own name (Horatius ~ hora) in Satires 2.6. The Satires also feature some Stoic, Peripatetic and Platonic (Dialogues) elements. In short, the Satires present a medley of philosophical programmes, dished up in no particular order—a style of argument typical of the genre.
The Odes display a wide range of topics. Over time, he becomes more confident about his political voice. Although he is often thought of as an overly intellectual lover, he is ingenious in representing passion. The "Odes" weave various philosophical strands together, with allusions and statements of doctrine present in about a third of the Odes Books 1–3, ranging from the flippant (1.22, 3.28) to the solemn (2.10, 3.2, 3.3). Epicureanism is the dominant influence, characterising about twice as many of these odes as Stoicism.
A group of odes combines these two influences in tense relationships, such as Odes 1.7, praising Stoic virility and devotion to public duty while also advocating private pleasures among friends. While generally favouring the Epicurean lifestyle, the lyric poet is as eclectic as the satiric poet, and in Odes 2.10 even proposes Aristotle's golden mean as a remedy for Rome's political troubles.
Many of Horace's poems also contain much reflection on genre, the lyric tradition, and the function of poetry. Odes 4, thought to be composed at the emperor's request, takes the themes of the first three books of "Odes" to a new level. This book shows greater poetic confidence after the public performance of his "Carmen saeculare" or "Century hymn" at a public festival orchestrated by Augustus. In it, Horace addresses the emperor Augustus directly with more confidence and proclaims his power to grant poetic immortality to those he praises. It is the least philosophical collection of his verses, excepting the twelfth ode, addressed to the dead Virgil as if he were living. In that ode, the epic poet and the lyric poet are aligned with Stoicism and Epicureanism respectively, in a mood of bitter-sweet pathos.
The first poem of the Epistles sets the philosophical tone for the rest of the collection: "So now I put aside both verses and all those other games: What is true and what befits is my care, this my question, this my whole concern." His poetic renunciation of poetry in favour of philosophy is intended to be ambiguous. Ambiguity is the hallmark of the Epistles. It is uncertain if those being addressed by the self-mocking poet-philosopher are being honoured or criticised. Though he emerges as an Epicurean, it is on the understanding that philosophical preferences, like political and social choices, are a matter of personal taste. Thus he depicts the ups and downs of the philosophical life more realistically than do most philosophers.
The reception of Horace's work has varied from one epoch to another and varied markedly even in his own lifetime. Odes 1–3 were not well received when first 'published' in Rome, yet Augustus later commissioned a ceremonial ode for the Centennial Games in 17 BC and also encouraged the publication of Odes 4, after which Horace's reputation as Rome's premier lyricist was assured. His Odes were to become the best received of all his poems in ancient times, acquiring a classic status that discouraged imitation: no other poet produced a comparable body of lyrics in the four centuries that followed (though that might also be attributed to social causes, particularly the parasitism that Italy was sinking into). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ode-writing became highly fashionable in England and a large number of aspiring poets imitated Horace both in English and in Latin.
In a verse epistle to Augustus (Epistle 2.1), in 12 BC, Horace argued for classic status to be awarded to contemporary poets, including Virgil and apparently himself. In the final poem of his third book of Odes he claimed to have created for himself a monument more durable than bronze ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius", Carmina 3.30.1). For one modern scholar, however, Horace's personal qualities are more notable than the monumental quality of his achievement:
... when we hear his name we don't really think of a monument. We think rather of a voice which varies in tone and resonance but is always recognizable, and which by its unsentimental humanity evokes a very special blend of liking and respect.
Yet for men like Wilfred Owen, scarred by experiences of World War I, his poetry stood for discredited values:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The Old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
The same motto, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, had been adapted to the ethos of martyrdom in the lyrics of early Christian poets like Prudentius.
These preliminary comments touch on a small sample of developments in the reception of Horace's work. More developments are covered epoch by epoch in the following sections.
Horace's influence can be observed in the work of his near contemporaries, Ovid and Propertius. Ovid followed his example in creating a completely natural style of expression in hexameter verse, and Propertius cheekily mimicked him in his third book of elegies. His Epistles provided them both with a model for their own verse letters and it also shaped Ovid's exile poetry.
His influence had a perverse aspect. As mentioned before, the brilliance of his Odes may have discouraged imitation. Conversely, they may have created a vogue for the lyrics of the archaic Greek poet Pindar, due to the fact that Horace had neglected that style of lyric (see Influence and Legacy of Pindar). The iambic genre seems almost to have disappeared after publication of Horace's Epodes. Ovid's Ibis was a rare attempt at the form but it was inspired mainly by Callimachus, and there are some iambic elements in Martial but the main influence there was Catullus. A revival of popular interest in the satires of Lucilius may have been inspired by Horace's criticism of his unpolished style. Both Horace and Lucilius were considered good role-models by Persius, who critiqued his own satires as lacking both the acerbity of Lucillius and the gentler touch of Horace. Juvenal's caustic satire was influenced mainly by Lucilius but Horace by then was a school classic and Juvenal could refer to him respectfully and in a round-about way as "the Venusine lamp".
Statius paid homage to Horace by composing one poem in Sapphic and one in Alcaic meter (the verse forms most often associated with Odes), which he included in his collection of occasional poems, Silvae. Ancient scholars wrote commentaries on the lyric meters of the Odes, including the scholarly poet Caesius Bassus. By a process called derivatio, he varied established meters through the addition or omission of syllables, a technique borrowed by Seneca the Younger when adapting Horatian meters to the stage.
Horace's poems continued to be school texts into late antiquity. Works attributed to Helenius Acro and Pomponius Porphyrio are the remnants of a much larger body of Horatian scholarship. Porphyrio arranged the poems in non-chronological order, beginning with the Odes, because of their general popularity and their appeal to scholars (the Odes were to retain this privileged position in the medieval manuscript tradition and thus in modern editions also). Horace was often evoked by poets of the fourth century, such as Ausonius and Claudian. Prudentius presented himself as a Christian Horace, adapting Horatian meters to his own poetry and giving Horatian motifs a Christian tone. On the other hand, St Jerome, modelled an uncompromising response to the pagan Horace, observing: "What harmony can there be between Christ and the Devil? What has Horace to do with the Psalter?" By the early sixth century, Horace and Prudentius were both part of a classical heritage that was struggling to survive the disorder of the times. Boethius, the last major author of classical Latin literature, could still take inspiration from Horace, sometimes mediated by Senecan tragedy. It can be argued that Horace's influence extended beyond poetry to dignify core themes and values of the early Christian era, such as self-sufficiency, inner contentment and courage.
Classical texts almost ceased being copied in the period between the mid sixth century and the Carolingian revival. Horace's work probably survived in just two or three books imported into northern Europe from Italy. These became the ancestors of six extant manuscripts dated to the ninth century. Two of those six manuscripts are French in origin, one was produced in Alsace, and the other three show Irish influence but were probably written in continental monasteries (Lombardy for example). By the last half of the ninth century, it was not uncommon for literate people to have direct experience of Horace's poetry. His influence on the Carolingian Renaissance can be found in the poems of Heiric of Auxerre and in some manuscripts marked with neumes, mysterious notations that may have been an aid to the memorization and discussion of his lyric meters. Ode 4.11 is neumed with the melody of a hymn to John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis, composed in Sapphic stanzas. This hymn later became the basis of the solfege system (Do, re, mi...)—an association with western music quite appropriate for a lyric poet like Horace, though the language of the hymn is mainly Prudentian. Lyons argues that the melody in question was linked with Horace's Ode well before Guido d'Arezzo fitted Ut queant laxis to it. However, the melody is unlikely to be a survivor from classical times, although Ovid testifies to Horace's use of the lyre while performing his Odes.
The German scholar, Ludwig Traube, once dubbed the tenth and eleventh centuries The age of Horace (aetas Horatiana), and placed it between the aetas Vergiliana of the eighth and ninth centuries, and the aetas Ovidiana of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a distinction supposed to reflect the dominant classical Latin influences of those times. Such a distinction is over-schematized since Horace was a substantial influence in the ninth century as well. Traube had focused too much on Horace's Satires. Almost all of Horace's work found favour in the Medieval period. In fact medieval scholars were also guilty of over-schematism, associating Horace's different genres with the different ages of man. A twelfth-century scholar encapsulated the theory: "...Horace wrote four different kinds of poems on account of the four ages, the Odes for boys, the Ars Poetica for young men, the Satires for mature men, the Epistles for old and complete men." It was even thought that Horace had composed his works in the order in which they had been placed by ancient scholars. Despite its naivety, the schematism involved an appreciation of Horace's works as a collection, the Ars Poetica, Satires and Epistles appearing to find favour as well as the Odes. The later Middle Ages however gave special significance to Satires and Epistles, being considered Horace's mature works. Dante referred to Horace as Orazio satiro, and he awarded him a privileged position in the first circle of Hell, with Homer, Ovid and Lucan.
Horace's popularity is revealed in the large number of quotes from all his works found in almost every genre of medieval literature, and also in the number of poets imitating him in quantitative Latin meter. The most prolific imitator of his Odes was the Bavarian monk, Metellus of Tegernsee, who dedicated his work to the patron saint of Tegernsee Abbey, St Quirinus, around the year 1170. He imitated all Horace's lyrical meters then followed these up with imitations of other meters used by Prudentius and Boethius, indicating that variety, as first modelled by Horace, was considered a fundamental aspect of the lyric genre. The content of his poems however was restricted to simple piety. Among the most successful imitators of Satires and Epistles was another Germanic author, calling himself Sextus Amarcius, around 1100, who composed four books, the first two exemplifying vices, the second pair mainly virtues.
Petrarch is a key figure in the imitation of Horace in accentual meters. His verse letters in Latin were modelled on the Epistles and he wrote a letter to Horace in the form of an ode. However he also borrowed from Horace when composing his Italian sonnets. One modern scholar has speculated that authors who imitated Horace in accentual rhythms (including stressed Latin and vernacular languages) may have considered their work a natural sequel to Horace's metrical variety. In France, Horace and Pindar were the poetic models for a group of vernacular authors called the Pléiade, including for example Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay. Montaigne made constant and inventive use of Horatian quotes. The vernacular languages were dominant in Castilia and Portugal in the sixteenth century, where Horace's influence is notable in the works of such authors as Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Boscán, Sá de Miranda, Antonio Ferreira and Fray Luis de León, the last writing odes on the Horatian theme beatus ille (happy the man). The sixteenth century in western Europe was also an age of translations (except in Germany, where Horace wasn't translated into the vernacular until well into the seventeenth century). The first English translator was Thomas Drant, who placed translations of Jeremiah and Horace side by side in Medicinable Morall, 1566. That was also the year that the Scot George Buchanan paraphrased the Psalms in a Horatian setting. Ben Jonson put Horace on the stage in 1601 in Poetaster, along with other classical Latin authors, giving them all their own verses to speak in translation. Horace's part evinces the independent spirit, moral earnestness and critical insight that many readers look for in his poems.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or the Age of Enlightenment, neoclassical culture was pervasive. English literature in the middle of that period has been dubbed Augustan. It is not always easy to distinguish Horace's influence during those centuries (the mixing of influences is shown for example in one poet's pseudonym, Horace Juvenal). However a measure of his influence can be found in the diversity of the people interested in his works, both among readers and authors.
New editions of his works were published almost yearly. There were three new editions in 1612 (two in Leiden, one in Frankfurt) and again in 1699 (Utrecht, Barcelona, Cambridge). Cheap editions were plentiful and fine editions were also produced, including one whose entire text was engraved by John Pine in copperplate. The poet James Thomson owned five editions of Horace's work and the physician James Douglas had five hundred books with Horace-related titles. Horace was often commended in periodicals such as The Spectator, as a hallmark of good judgement, moderation and manliness, a focus for moralising. His verses offered a fund of mottoes, such as simplex munditiis (elegance in simplicity), splendide mendax (nobly untruthful), sapere aude (dare to know), nunc est bibendum (now is the time to drink), carpe diem (seize the day, perhaps the only one still in common use today). These were quoted even in works as prosaic as Edmund Quincy's A treatise of hemp-husbandry (1765). The fictional hero Tom Jones recited his verses with feeling. His works were also used to justify commonplace themes, such as patriotic obedience, as in James Parry's English lines from an Oxford University collection in 1736:
What friendly Muse will teach my Lays To emulate the Roman fire? Justly to sound a Caesar's praise Demands a bold Horatian lyre.
Horatian-style lyrics were increasingly typical of Oxford and Cambridge verse collections for this period, most of them in Latin but some like the previous ode in English. John Milton's Lycidas first appeared in such a collection. It has few Horatian echoes yet Milton's associations with Horace were lifelong. He composed a controversial version of Odes 1.5, and Paradise Lost includes references to Horace's 'Roman' Odes 3.1–6 (Book 7 for example begins with echoes of Odes 3.4). Yet Horace's lyrics could offer inspiration to libertines as well as moralists, and neo-Latin sometimes served as a kind of discrete veil for the risqué. Thus for example Benjamin Loveling authored a catalogue of Drury Lane and Covent Garden prostitutes, in Sapphic stanzas, and an encomium for a dying lady "of salacious memory". Some Latin imitations of Horace were politically subversive, such as a marriage ode by Anthony Alsop that included a rallying cry for the Jacobite cause. On the other hand, Andrew Marvell took inspiration from Horace's Odes 1.37 to compose his English masterpiece Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, in which subtly nuanced reflections on the execution of Charles I echo Horace's ambiguous response to the death of Cleopatra (Marvell's ode was suppressed in spite of its subtlety and only began to be widely published in 1776). Samuel Johnson took particular pleasure in reading The Odes. Alexander Pope wrote direct Imitations of Horace (published with the original Latin alongside) and also echoed him in Essays and The Rape of the Lock. He even emerged as "a quite Horatian Homer" in his translation of the Iliad. Horace appealed also to female poets, such as Anna Seward (Original sonnets on various subjects, and odes paraphrased from Horace, 1799) and Elizabeth Tollet, who composed a Latin ode in Sapphic meter to celebrate her brother's return from overseas, with tea and coffee substituted for the wine of Horace's sympotic settings:
Horace's Ars Poetica is second only to Aristotle's Poetics in its influence on literary theory and criticism. Milton recommended both works in his treatise of Education. Horace's Satires and Epistles however also had a huge impact, influencing theorists and critics such as John Dryden. There was considerable debate over the value of different lyrical forms for contemporary poets, as represented on one hand by the kind of four-line stanzas made familiar by Horace's Sapphic and Alcaic Odes and, on the other, the loosely structured Pindarics associated with the odes of Pindar. Translations occasionally involved scholars in the dilemmas of censorship. Thus Christopher Smart entirely omitted Odes 4.10 and re-numbered the remaining odes. He also removed the ending of Odes 4.1. Thomas Creech printed Epodes 8 and 12 in the original Latin but left out their English translations. Philip Francis left out both the English and Latin for those same two epodes, a gap in the numbering the only indication that something was amiss. French editions of Horace were influential in England and these too were regularly bowdlerized.
Most European nations had their own 'Horaces': thus for example Friedrich von Hagedorn was called The German Horace and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski The Polish Horace (the latter was much imitated by English poets such as Henry Vaughan and Abraham Cowley). Pope Urban VIII wrote voluminously in Horatian meters, including an ode on gout.
Horace maintained a central role in the education of English-speaking elites right up until the 1960s. A pedantic emphasis on the formal aspects of language-learning at the expense of literary appreciation may have made him unpopular in some quarters yet it also confirmed his influence—a tension in his reception that underlies Byron's famous lines from Childe Harold (Canto iv, 77):
Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, To comprehend, but never love thy verse.
William Wordsworth's mature poetry, including the preface to Lyrical Ballads, reveals Horace's influence in its rejection of false ornament and he once expressed "a wish / to meet the shade of Horace...". John Keats echoed the opening of Horace's Epodes 14 in the opening lines of Ode to a Nightingale.
The Roman poet was presented in the nineteenth century as an honorary English gentleman. William Thackeray produced a version of Odes 1.38 in which Horace's 'boy' became 'Lucy', and Gerard Manley Hopkins translated the boy innocently as 'child'. Horace was translated by Sir Theodore Martin (biographer of Prince Albert) but minus some ungentlemanly verses, such as the erotic Odes 1.25 and Epodes 8 and 12. Edward Bulwer-Lytton produced a popular translation and William Gladstone also wrote translations during his last days as Prime Minister.
Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, though formally derived from the Persian ruba'i, nevertheless shows a strong Horatian influence, since, as one modern scholar has observed, "...the quatrains inevitably recall the stanzas of the 'Odes', as does the narrating first person of the world-weary, ageing Epicurean Omar himself, mixing sympotic exhortation and 'carpe diem' with splendid moralising and 'memento mori' nihilism." Matthew Arnold advised a friend in verse not to worry about politics, an echo of Odes 2.11, yet later became a critic of Horace's inadequacies relative to Greek poets, as role models of Victorian virtues, observing: "If human life were complete without faith, without enthusiasm, without energy, Horace...would be the perfect interpreter of human life." Christina Rossetti composed a sonnet depicting a woman willing her own death steadily, drawing on Horace's depiction of 'Glycera' in Odes 1.19.5–6 and Cleopatra in Odes 1.37. A. E. Housman considered Odes 4.7, in Archilochian couplets, the most beautiful poem of antiquity and yet he generally shared Horace's penchant for quatrains, being readily adapted to his own elegiac and melancholy strain. The most famous poem of Ernest Dowson took its title and its heroine's name from a line of Odes 4.1, Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, as well as its motif of nostalgia for a former flame. Kipling wrote a famous parody of the Odes, satirising their stylistic idiosyncrasies and especially the extraordinary syntax, but he also used Horace's Roman patriotism as a focus for British imperialism, as in the story Regulus in the school collection Stalky & Co., which he based on Odes 3.5. Wilfred Owen's famous poem, quoted above, incorporated Horatian text to question patriotism while ignoring the rules of Latin scansion. However, there were few other echoes of Horace in the war period, possibly because war is not actually a major theme of Horace's work. The Spanish poet Miquel Costa i Llobera published his renowned collection of poems named Horacianes, thus being dedicated to the Latin poet Horace, and employing Sapphics, Alcaics and similar types of stanzas.
Both W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice began their careers as teachers of classics and both responded as poets to Horace's influence. Auden for example evoked the fragile world of the 1930s in terms echoing Odes 2.11.1–4, where Horace advises a friend not to let worries about frontier wars interfere with current pleasures.
And, gentle, do not care to know Where Poland draws her Eastern bow, What violence is done; Nor ask what doubtful act allows Our freedom in this English house, Our picnics in the sun.
The American poet Robert Frost echoed Horace's Satires in the conversational and sententious idiom of some of his longer poems, such as The Lesson for Today (1941), and also in his gentle advocacy of life on the farm, as in Hyla Brook (1916), evoking Horace's fons Bandusiae in Ode 3.13. Now at the start of the third millennium, poets are still absorbing and re-configuring the Horatian influence, sometimes in translation (such as a 2002 English/American edition of the Odes by thirty-six poets) and sometimes as inspiration for their own work (such as a 2003 collection of odes by a New Zealand poet).
Horace's Epodes have largely been ignored in the modern era, excepting those with political associations of historical significance. The obscene qualities of some of the poems have repulsed even scholars yet more recently a better understanding of the nature of Iambic poetry has led to a re-evaluation of the whole collection. A re-appraisal of the Epodes also appears in creative adaptations by recent poets (such as a 2004 collection of poems that relocates the ancient context to a 1950s industrial town).
The Oxford Latin Course textbooks use the life of Horace to illustrate an average Roman's life in the late Republic to Early Empire. Horace was portrayed by Norman Shelley in the 1976 miniseries I, Claudius. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Classical Latin: [ˈkʷiːntʊs (h)ɔˈraːtiʊs ˈfɫakːʊs]; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (/ˈhɒrɪs/), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: \"He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Satires and Epistles) and caustic iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are amusing yet serious works, friendly in tone, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: \"as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from a republic to an empire. An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was \"a master of the graceful sidestep\") but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, \"a well-mannered court slave\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Horace can be regarded as the world's first autobiographer. In his writings, he tells us far more about himself, his character, his development, and his way of life, than any other great poet of antiquity. Some of the biographical material contained in his work can be supplemented from the short but valuable \"Life of Horace\" by Suetonius (in his Lives of the Poets).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "He was born on 8 December 65 BC in the Samnite south of Italy. His home town, Venusia, lay on a trade route in the border region between Apulia and Lucania (Basilicata). Various Italic dialects were spoken in the area and this perhaps enriched his feeling for language. He could have been familiar with Greek words even as a young boy and later he poked fun at the jargon of mixed Greek and Oscan spoken in neighbouring Canusium. One of the works he probably studied in school was the Odyssia of Livius Andronicus, taught by teachers like the 'Orbilius' mentioned in one of his poems. Army veterans could have been settled there at the expense of local families uprooted by Rome as punishment for their part in the Social War (91–88 BC). Such state-sponsored migration must have added still more linguistic variety to the area. According to a local tradition reported by Horace, a colony of Romans or Latins had been installed in Venusia after the Samnites had been driven out early in the third century. In that case, young Horace could have felt himself to be a Roman though there are also indications that he regarded himself as a Samnite or Sabellus by birth. Italians in modern and ancient times have always been devoted to their home towns, even after success in the wider world, and Horace was no different. Images of his childhood setting and references to it are found throughout his poems.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Horace's father was probably a Venutian taken captive by Romans in the Social War, or possibly he was descended from a Sabine captured in the Samnite Wars. Either way, he was a slave for at least part of his life. He was evidently a man of strong abilities however and managed to gain his freedom and improve his social position. Thus Horace claimed to be the free-born son of a prosperous 'coactor'. The term 'coactor' could denote various roles, such as tax collector, but its use by Horace was explained by scholia as a reference to 'coactor argentareus' i.e. an auctioneer with some of the functions of a banker, paying the seller out of his own funds and later recovering the sum with interest from the buyer.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The father spent a small fortune on his son's education, eventually accompanying him to Rome to oversee his schooling and moral development. The poet later paid tribute to him in a poem that one modern scholar considers the best memorial by any son to his father. The poem includes this passage:",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son. Satires 1.6.65–92",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "He never mentioned his mother in his verses and he might not have known much about her. Perhaps she also had been a slave.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Horace left Rome, possibly after his father's death, and continued his formal education in Athens, a great centre of learning in the ancient world, where he arrived at nineteen years of age, enrolling in The Academy. Founded by Plato, The Academy was now dominated by Epicureans and Stoics, whose theories and practises made a deep impression on the young man from Venusia. Meanwhile, he mixed and lounged about with the elite of Roman youth, such as Marcus, the idle son of Cicero, and the Pompeius to whom he later addressed a poem. It was in Athens too that he probably acquired deep familiarity with the ancient tradition of Greek lyric poetry, at that time largely the preserve of grammarians and academic specialists (access to such material was easier in Athens than in Rome, where the public libraries had yet to be built by Asinius Pollio and Augustus).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Rome's troubles following the assassination of Julius Caesar were soon to catch up with him. Marcus Junius Brutus came to Athens seeking support for the republican cause. Brutus was fêted around town in grand receptions and he made a point of attending academic lectures, all the while recruiting supporters among the young men studying there, including Horace. An educated young Roman could begin military service high in the ranks and Horace was made tribunus militum (one of six senior officers of a typical legion), a post usually reserved for men of senatorial or equestrian rank and which seems to have inspired jealousy among his well-born confederates. He learned the basics of military life while on the march, particularly in the wilds of northern Greece, whose rugged scenery became a backdrop to some of his later poems. It was there in 42 BC that Octavian (later Augustus) and his associate Mark Antony crushed the republican forces at the Battle of Philippi. Horace later recorded it as a day of embarrassment for himself, when he fled without his shield, but allowance should be made for his self-deprecating humour. Moreover, the incident allowed him to identify himself with some famous poets who had long ago abandoned their shields in battle, notably his heroes Alcaeus and Archilochus. The comparison with the latter poet is uncanny: Archilochus lost his shield in a part of Thrace near Philippi, and he was deeply involved in the Greek colonization of Thasos, where Horace's die-hard comrades finally surrendered.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Octavian offered an early amnesty to his opponents and Horace quickly accepted it. On returning to Italy, he was confronted with yet another loss: his father's estate in Venusia was one of many throughout Italy to be confiscated for the settlement of veterans (Virgil lost his estate in the north about the same time). Horace later claimed that he was reduced to poverty and this led him to try his hand at poetry. In reality, there was no money to be had from versifying. At best, it offered future prospects through contacts with other poets and their patrons among the rich. Meanwhile, he obtained the sinecure of scriba quaestorius, a civil service position at the aerarium or Treasury, profitable enough to be purchased even by members of the ordo equester and not very demanding in its work-load, since tasks could be delegated to scribae or permanent clerks. It was about this time that he began writing his Satires and Epodes.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "He describes in glowing terms the country villa which his patron, Maecenas, had given him in a letter to his friend Quintius:",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "\"It lies on a range of hills, broken by a shady valley which is so placed that the sun when rising strikes the right side, and when descending in his flying chariot, warms the left. You would like the climate; and if you were to see my fruit trees, bearing ruddy cornils and plums, my oaks and ilex supplying food to my herds, and abundant shade to the master, you would say, Tarentum in its beauty has been brought near to Rome! There is a fountain too, large enough to give a name to the river which it feeds; and the Ebro itself does not flow through Thrace with cooler or purer stream. Its waters also are good for the head and useful for digestion. This sweet, and, if you will believe me, charming retreat keeps me in good health during the autumnal days.\"",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The remains of Horace's Villa are situated on a wooded hillside above the river at Licenza, which joins the Aniene as it flows on to Tivoli.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Epodes belong to iambic poetry. Iambic poetry features insulting and obscene language; sometimes, it is referred to as blame poetry. Blame poetry, or shame poetry, is poetry written to blame and shame fellow citizens into a sense of their social obligations. Each poem normally has a archetype person Horace decides to shame, or teach a lesson to. Horace modelled these poems on the poetry of Archilochus. Social bonds in Rome had been decaying since the destruction of Carthage a little more than a hundred years earlier, due to the vast wealth that could be gained by plunder and corruption. These social ills were magnified by rivalry between Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and confederates like Sextus Pompey, all jockeying for a bigger share of the spoils. One modern scholar has counted a dozen civil wars in the hundred years leading up to 31 BC, including the Spartacus rebellion, eight years before Horace's birth. As the heirs to Hellenistic culture, Horace and his fellow Romans were not well prepared to deal with these problems:",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "At bottom, all the problems that the times were stirring up were of a social nature, which the Hellenistic thinkers were ill qualified to grapple with. Some of them censured oppression of the poor by the rich, but they gave no practical lead, though they may have hoped to see well-meaning rulers doing so. Philosophy was drifting into absorption in self, a quest for private contentedness, to be achieved by self-control and restraint, without much regard for the fate of a disintegrating community.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Horace's Hellenistic background is clear in his Satires, even though the genre was unique to Latin literature. He brought to it a style and outlook suited to the social and ethical issues confronting Rome but he changed its role from public, social engagement to private meditation. Meanwhile, he was beginning to interest Octavian's supporters, a gradual process described by him in one of his satires. The way was opened for him by his friend, the poet Virgil, who had gained admission into the privileged circle around Maecenas, Octavian's lieutenant, following the success of his Eclogues. An introduction soon followed and, after a discreet interval, Horace too was accepted. He depicted the process as an honourable one, based on merit and mutual respect, eventually leading to true friendship, and there is reason to believe that his relationship was genuinely friendly, not just with Maecenas but afterwards with Augustus as well. On the other hand, the poet has been unsympathetically described by one scholar as \"a sharp and rising young man, with an eye to the main chance.\" There were advantages on both sides: Horace gained encouragement and material support, the politicians gained a hold on a potential dissident. His republican sympathies, and his role at Philippi, may have caused him some pangs of remorse over his new status. However, most Romans considered the civil wars to be the result of contentio dignitatis, or rivalry between the foremost families of the city, and he too seems to have accepted the principate as Rome's last hope for much needed peace.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 37 BC, Horace accompanied Maecenas on a journey to Brundisium, described in one of his poems as a series of amusing incidents and charming encounters with other friends along the way, such as Virgil. In fact the journey was political in its motivation, with Maecenas en route to negotiate the Treaty of Tarentum with Antony, a fact Horace artfully keeps from the reader (political issues are largely avoided in the first book of satires). Horace was probably also with Maecenas on one of Octavian's naval expeditions against the piratical Sextus Pompeius, which ended in a disastrous storm off Palinurus in 36 BC, briefly alluded to by Horace in terms of near-drowning. There are also some indications in his verses that he was with Maecenas at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, where Octavian defeated his great rival, Antony. By then Horace had already received from Maecenas the famous gift of his Sabine farm, probably not long after the publication of the first book of Satires. The gift, which included income from five tenants, may have ended his career at the Treasury, or at least allowed him to give it less time and energy. It signalled his identification with the Octavian regime yet, in the second book of Satires that soon followed, he continued the apolitical stance of the first book. By this time, he had attained the status of eques Romanus (Roman 'cavalryman', 'knight'), perhaps as a result of his work at the Treasury.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Odes 1–3 were the next focus for his artistic creativity. He adapted their forms and themes from Greek lyric poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries BC. The fragmented nature of the Greek world had enabled his literary heroes to express themselves freely and his semi-retirement from the Treasury in Rome to his own estate in the Sabine hills perhaps empowered him to some extent also yet even when his lyrics touched on public affairs they reinforced the importance of private life. Nevertheless, his work in the period 30–27 BC began to show his closeness to the regime and his sensitivity to its developing ideology. In Odes 1.2, for example, he eulogized Octavian in hyperboles that echo Hellenistic court poetry. The name Augustus, which Octavian assumed in 27 January BC, is first attested in Odes 3.3 and 3.5. In the period 27–24 BC, political allusions in the Odes concentrated on foreign wars in Britain (1.35), Arabia (1.29) Hispania (3.8) and Parthia (2.2). He greeted Augustus on his return to Rome in 24 BC as a beloved ruler upon whose good health he depended for his own happiness (3.14).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The public reception of Odes 1–3 disappointed him, however. He attributed the lack of success to jealousy among imperial courtiers and to his isolation from literary cliques. Perhaps it was disappointment that led him to put aside the genre in favour of verse letters. He addressed his first book of Epistles to a variety of friends and acquaintances in an urbane style reflecting his new social status as a knight. In the opening poem, he professed a deeper interest in moral philosophy than poetry but, though the collection demonstrates a leaning towards stoic theory, it reveals no sustained thinking about ethics. Maecenas was still the dominant confidante but Horace had now begun to assert his own independence, suavely declining constant invitations to attend his patron. In the final poem of the first book of Epistles, he revealed himself to be forty-four years old in the consulship of Lollius and Lepidus i.e. 21 BC, and \"of small stature, fond of the sun, prematurely grey, quick-tempered but easily placated\".",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "According to Suetonius, the second book of Epistles was prompted by Augustus, who desired a verse epistle to be addressed to himself. Augustus was in fact a prolific letter-writer and he once asked Horace to be his personal secretary. Horace refused the secretarial role but complied with the emperor's request for a verse letter. The letter to Augustus may have been slow in coming, being published possibly as late as 11 BC. It celebrated, among other things, the 15 BC military victories of his stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, yet it and the following letter were largely devoted to literary theory and criticism. The literary theme was explored still further in Ars Poetica, published separately but written in the form of an epistle and sometimes referred to as Epistles 2.3 (possibly the last poem he ever wrote). He was also commissioned to write odes commemorating the victories of Drusus and Tiberius and one to be sung in a temple of Apollo for the Secular Games, a long-abandoned festival that Augustus revived in accordance with his policy of recreating ancient customs (Carmen Saeculare).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Suetonius recorded some gossip about Horace's sexual activities late in life, claiming that the walls of his bedchamber were covered with obscene pictures and mirrors, so that he saw erotica wherever he looked. The poet died at 56 years of age, not long after his friend Maecenas, near whose tomb he was laid to rest. Both men bequeathed their property to Augustus, an honour that the emperor expected of his friends.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The dating of Horace's works isn't known precisely and scholars often debate the exact order in which they were first 'published'. There are persuasive arguments for the following chronology:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Horace composed in traditional metres borrowed from Archaic Greece, employing hexameters in his Satires and Epistles, and iambs in his Epodes, all of which were relatively easy to adapt into Latin forms. His Odes featured more complex measures, including alcaics and sapphics, which were sometimes a difficult fit for Latin structure and syntax. Despite these traditional metres, he presented himself as a partisan in the development of a new and sophisticated style. He was influenced in particular by Hellenistic aesthetics of brevity, elegance and polish, as modelled in the work of Callimachus.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "As soon as Horace, stirred by his own genius and encouraged by the example of Virgil, Varius, and perhaps some other poets of the same generation, had determined to make his fame as a poet, being by temperament a fighter, he wanted to fight against all kinds of prejudice, amateurish slovenliness, philistinism, reactionary tendencies, in short to fight for the new and noble type of poetry which he and his friends were endeavouring to bring about.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In modern literary theory, a distinction is often made between immediate personal experience (Urerlebnis) and experience mediated by cultural vectors such as literature, philosophy and the visual arts (Bildungserlebnis). The distinction has little relevance for Horace however since his personal and literary experiences are implicated in each other. Satires 1.5, for example, recounts in detail a real trip Horace made with Virgil and some of his other literary friends, and which parallels a Satire by Lucilius, his predecessor. Unlike much Hellenistic-inspired literature, however, his poetry was not composed for a small coterie of admirers and fellow poets, nor does it rely on abstruse allusions for many of its effects. Though elitist in its literary standards, it was written for a wide audience, as a public form of art. Ambivalence also characterizes his literary persona, since his presentation of himself as part of a small community of philosophically aware people, seeking true peace of mind while shunning vices like greed, was well adapted to Augustus's plans to reform public morality, corrupted by greed—his personal plea for moderation was part of the emperor's grand message to the nation.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Horace generally followed the examples of poets established as classics in different genres, such as Archilochus in the Epodes, Lucilius in the Satires and Alcaeus in the Odes, later broadening his scope for the sake of variation and because his models weren't actually suited to the realities confronting him. Archilochus and Alcaeus were aristocratic Greeks whose poetry had a social and religious function that was immediately intelligible to their audiences but which became a mere artifice or literary motif when transposed to Rome. However, the artifice of the Odes is also integral to their success, since they could now accommodate a wide range of emotional effects, and the blend of Greek and Roman elements adds a sense of detachment and universality. Horace proudly claimed to introduce into Latin the spirit and iambic poetry of Archilochus but (unlike Archilochus) without persecuting anyone (Epistles 1.19.23–25). It was no idle boast. His Epodes were modelled on the verses of the Greek poet, as 'blame poetry', yet he avoided targeting real scapegoats. Whereas Archilochus presented himself as a serious and vigorous opponent of wrong-doers, Horace aimed for comic effects and adopted the persona of a weak and ineffectual critic of his times (as symbolized for example in his surrender to the witch Canidia in the final epode). He also claimed to be the first to introduce into Latin the lyrical methods of Alcaeus (Epistles 1.19.32–33) and he actually was the first Latin poet to make consistent use of Alcaic meters and themes: love, politics and the symposium. He imitated other Greek lyric poets as well, employing a 'motto' technique, beginning each ode with some reference to a Greek original and then diverging from it.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The satirical poet Lucilius was a senator's son who could castigate his peers with impunity. Horace was a mere freedman's son who had to tread carefully. Lucilius was a rugged patriot and a significant voice in Roman self-awareness, endearing himself to his countrymen by his blunt frankness and explicit politics. His work expressed genuine freedom or libertas. His style included 'metrical vandalism' and looseness of structure. Horace instead adopted an oblique and ironic style of satire, ridiculing stock characters and anonymous targets. His libertas was the private freedom of a philosophical outlook, not a political or social privilege. His Satires are relatively easy-going in their use of meter (relative to the tight lyric meters of the Odes) but formal and highly controlled relative to the poems of Lucilius, whom Horace mocked for his sloppy standards (Satires 1.10.56–61)",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Epistles may be considered among Horace's most innovative works. There was nothing like it in Greek or Roman literature. Occasionally poems had had some resemblance to letters, including an elegiac poem from Solon to Mimnermus and some lyrical poems from Pindar to Hieron of Syracuse. Lucilius had composed a satire in the form of a letter, and some epistolary poems were composed by Catullus and Propertius. But nobody before Horace had ever composed an entire collection of verse letters, let alone letters with a focus on philosophical problems. The sophisticated and flexible style that he had developed in his Satires was adapted to the more serious needs of this new genre. Such refinement of style was not unusual for Horace. His craftsmanship as a wordsmith is apparent even in his earliest attempts at this or that kind of poetry, but his handling of each genre tended to improve over time as he adapted it to his own needs. Thus for example it is generally agreed that his second book of Satires, where human folly is revealed through dialogue between characters, is superior to the first, where he propounds his ethics in monologues. Nevertheless, the first book includes some of his most popular poems.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Horace developed a number of inter-related themes throughout his poetic career, including politics, love, philosophy and ethics, his own social role, as well as poetry itself. His Epodes and Satires are forms of 'blame poetry' and both have a natural affinity with the moralising and diatribes of Cynicism. This often takes the form of allusions to the work and philosophy of Bion of Borysthenes but it is as much a literary game as a philosophical alignment.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "By the time he composed his Epistles, he was a critic of Cynicism along with all impractical and \"high-falutin\" philosophy in general.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Satires also include a strong element of Epicureanism, with frequent allusions to the Epicurean poet Lucretius. So for example the Epicurean sentiment carpe diem is the inspiration behind Horace's repeated punning on his own name (Horatius ~ hora) in Satires 2.6. The Satires also feature some Stoic, Peripatetic and Platonic (Dialogues) elements. In short, the Satires present a medley of philosophical programmes, dished up in no particular order—a style of argument typical of the genre.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Odes display a wide range of topics. Over time, he becomes more confident about his political voice. Although he is often thought of as an overly intellectual lover, he is ingenious in representing passion. The \"Odes\" weave various philosophical strands together, with allusions and statements of doctrine present in about a third of the Odes Books 1–3, ranging from the flippant (1.22, 3.28) to the solemn (2.10, 3.2, 3.3). Epicureanism is the dominant influence, characterising about twice as many of these odes as Stoicism.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A group of odes combines these two influences in tense relationships, such as Odes 1.7, praising Stoic virility and devotion to public duty while also advocating private pleasures among friends. While generally favouring the Epicurean lifestyle, the lyric poet is as eclectic as the satiric poet, and in Odes 2.10 even proposes Aristotle's golden mean as a remedy for Rome's political troubles.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Many of Horace's poems also contain much reflection on genre, the lyric tradition, and the function of poetry. Odes 4, thought to be composed at the emperor's request, takes the themes of the first three books of \"Odes\" to a new level. This book shows greater poetic confidence after the public performance of his \"Carmen saeculare\" or \"Century hymn\" at a public festival orchestrated by Augustus. In it, Horace addresses the emperor Augustus directly with more confidence and proclaims his power to grant poetic immortality to those he praises. It is the least philosophical collection of his verses, excepting the twelfth ode, addressed to the dead Virgil as if he were living. In that ode, the epic poet and the lyric poet are aligned with Stoicism and Epicureanism respectively, in a mood of bitter-sweet pathos.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The first poem of the Epistles sets the philosophical tone for the rest of the collection: \"So now I put aside both verses and all those other games: What is true and what befits is my care, this my question, this my whole concern.\" His poetic renunciation of poetry in favour of philosophy is intended to be ambiguous. Ambiguity is the hallmark of the Epistles. It is uncertain if those being addressed by the self-mocking poet-philosopher are being honoured or criticised. Though he emerges as an Epicurean, it is on the understanding that philosophical preferences, like political and social choices, are a matter of personal taste. Thus he depicts the ups and downs of the philosophical life more realistically than do most philosophers.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The reception of Horace's work has varied from one epoch to another and varied markedly even in his own lifetime. Odes 1–3 were not well received when first 'published' in Rome, yet Augustus later commissioned a ceremonial ode for the Centennial Games in 17 BC and also encouraged the publication of Odes 4, after which Horace's reputation as Rome's premier lyricist was assured. His Odes were to become the best received of all his poems in ancient times, acquiring a classic status that discouraged imitation: no other poet produced a comparable body of lyrics in the four centuries that followed (though that might also be attributed to social causes, particularly the parasitism that Italy was sinking into). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ode-writing became highly fashionable in England and a large number of aspiring poets imitated Horace both in English and in Latin.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In a verse epistle to Augustus (Epistle 2.1), in 12 BC, Horace argued for classic status to be awarded to contemporary poets, including Virgil and apparently himself. In the final poem of his third book of Odes he claimed to have created for himself a monument more durable than bronze (\"Exegi monumentum aere perennius\", Carmina 3.30.1). For one modern scholar, however, Horace's personal qualities are more notable than the monumental quality of his achievement:",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "... when we hear his name we don't really think of a monument. We think rather of a voice which varies in tone and resonance but is always recognizable, and which by its unsentimental humanity evokes a very special blend of liking and respect.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Yet for men like Wilfred Owen, scarred by experiences of World War I, his poetry stood for discredited values:",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The Old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The same motto, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, had been adapted to the ethos of martyrdom in the lyrics of early Christian poets like Prudentius.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "These preliminary comments touch on a small sample of developments in the reception of Horace's work. More developments are covered epoch by epoch in the following sections.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Horace's influence can be observed in the work of his near contemporaries, Ovid and Propertius. Ovid followed his example in creating a completely natural style of expression in hexameter verse, and Propertius cheekily mimicked him in his third book of elegies. His Epistles provided them both with a model for their own verse letters and it also shaped Ovid's exile poetry.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "His influence had a perverse aspect. As mentioned before, the brilliance of his Odes may have discouraged imitation. Conversely, they may have created a vogue for the lyrics of the archaic Greek poet Pindar, due to the fact that Horace had neglected that style of lyric (see Influence and Legacy of Pindar). The iambic genre seems almost to have disappeared after publication of Horace's Epodes. Ovid's Ibis was a rare attempt at the form but it was inspired mainly by Callimachus, and there are some iambic elements in Martial but the main influence there was Catullus. A revival of popular interest in the satires of Lucilius may have been inspired by Horace's criticism of his unpolished style. Both Horace and Lucilius were considered good role-models by Persius, who critiqued his own satires as lacking both the acerbity of Lucillius and the gentler touch of Horace. Juvenal's caustic satire was influenced mainly by Lucilius but Horace by then was a school classic and Juvenal could refer to him respectfully and in a round-about way as \"the Venusine lamp\".",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Statius paid homage to Horace by composing one poem in Sapphic and one in Alcaic meter (the verse forms most often associated with Odes), which he included in his collection of occasional poems, Silvae. Ancient scholars wrote commentaries on the lyric meters of the Odes, including the scholarly poet Caesius Bassus. By a process called derivatio, he varied established meters through the addition or omission of syllables, a technique borrowed by Seneca the Younger when adapting Horatian meters to the stage.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Horace's poems continued to be school texts into late antiquity. Works attributed to Helenius Acro and Pomponius Porphyrio are the remnants of a much larger body of Horatian scholarship. Porphyrio arranged the poems in non-chronological order, beginning with the Odes, because of their general popularity and their appeal to scholars (the Odes were to retain this privileged position in the medieval manuscript tradition and thus in modern editions also). Horace was often evoked by poets of the fourth century, such as Ausonius and Claudian. Prudentius presented himself as a Christian Horace, adapting Horatian meters to his own poetry and giving Horatian motifs a Christian tone. On the other hand, St Jerome, modelled an uncompromising response to the pagan Horace, observing: \"What harmony can there be between Christ and the Devil? What has Horace to do with the Psalter?\" By the early sixth century, Horace and Prudentius were both part of a classical heritage that was struggling to survive the disorder of the times. Boethius, the last major author of classical Latin literature, could still take inspiration from Horace, sometimes mediated by Senecan tragedy. It can be argued that Horace's influence extended beyond poetry to dignify core themes and values of the early Christian era, such as self-sufficiency, inner contentment and courage.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Classical texts almost ceased being copied in the period between the mid sixth century and the Carolingian revival. Horace's work probably survived in just two or three books imported into northern Europe from Italy. These became the ancestors of six extant manuscripts dated to the ninth century. Two of those six manuscripts are French in origin, one was produced in Alsace, and the other three show Irish influence but were probably written in continental monasteries (Lombardy for example). By the last half of the ninth century, it was not uncommon for literate people to have direct experience of Horace's poetry. His influence on the Carolingian Renaissance can be found in the poems of Heiric of Auxerre and in some manuscripts marked with neumes, mysterious notations that may have been an aid to the memorization and discussion of his lyric meters. Ode 4.11 is neumed with the melody of a hymn to John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis, composed in Sapphic stanzas. This hymn later became the basis of the solfege system (Do, re, mi...)—an association with western music quite appropriate for a lyric poet like Horace, though the language of the hymn is mainly Prudentian. Lyons argues that the melody in question was linked with Horace's Ode well before Guido d'Arezzo fitted Ut queant laxis to it. However, the melody is unlikely to be a survivor from classical times, although Ovid testifies to Horace's use of the lyre while performing his Odes.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The German scholar, Ludwig Traube, once dubbed the tenth and eleventh centuries The age of Horace (aetas Horatiana), and placed it between the aetas Vergiliana of the eighth and ninth centuries, and the aetas Ovidiana of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a distinction supposed to reflect the dominant classical Latin influences of those times. Such a distinction is over-schematized since Horace was a substantial influence in the ninth century as well. Traube had focused too much on Horace's Satires. Almost all of Horace's work found favour in the Medieval period. In fact medieval scholars were also guilty of over-schematism, associating Horace's different genres with the different ages of man. A twelfth-century scholar encapsulated the theory: \"...Horace wrote four different kinds of poems on account of the four ages, the Odes for boys, the Ars Poetica for young men, the Satires for mature men, the Epistles for old and complete men.\" It was even thought that Horace had composed his works in the order in which they had been placed by ancient scholars. Despite its naivety, the schematism involved an appreciation of Horace's works as a collection, the Ars Poetica, Satires and Epistles appearing to find favour as well as the Odes. The later Middle Ages however gave special significance to Satires and Epistles, being considered Horace's mature works. Dante referred to Horace as Orazio satiro, and he awarded him a privileged position in the first circle of Hell, with Homer, Ovid and Lucan.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Horace's popularity is revealed in the large number of quotes from all his works found in almost every genre of medieval literature, and also in the number of poets imitating him in quantitative Latin meter. The most prolific imitator of his Odes was the Bavarian monk, Metellus of Tegernsee, who dedicated his work to the patron saint of Tegernsee Abbey, St Quirinus, around the year 1170. He imitated all Horace's lyrical meters then followed these up with imitations of other meters used by Prudentius and Boethius, indicating that variety, as first modelled by Horace, was considered a fundamental aspect of the lyric genre. The content of his poems however was restricted to simple piety. Among the most successful imitators of Satires and Epistles was another Germanic author, calling himself Sextus Amarcius, around 1100, who composed four books, the first two exemplifying vices, the second pair mainly virtues.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Petrarch is a key figure in the imitation of Horace in accentual meters. His verse letters in Latin were modelled on the Epistles and he wrote a letter to Horace in the form of an ode. However he also borrowed from Horace when composing his Italian sonnets. One modern scholar has speculated that authors who imitated Horace in accentual rhythms (including stressed Latin and vernacular languages) may have considered their work a natural sequel to Horace's metrical variety. In France, Horace and Pindar were the poetic models for a group of vernacular authors called the Pléiade, including for example Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay. Montaigne made constant and inventive use of Horatian quotes. The vernacular languages were dominant in Castilia and Portugal in the sixteenth century, where Horace's influence is notable in the works of such authors as Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Boscán, Sá de Miranda, Antonio Ferreira and Fray Luis de León, the last writing odes on the Horatian theme beatus ille (happy the man). The sixteenth century in western Europe was also an age of translations (except in Germany, where Horace wasn't translated into the vernacular until well into the seventeenth century). The first English translator was Thomas Drant, who placed translations of Jeremiah and Horace side by side in Medicinable Morall, 1566. That was also the year that the Scot George Buchanan paraphrased the Psalms in a Horatian setting. Ben Jonson put Horace on the stage in 1601 in Poetaster, along with other classical Latin authors, giving them all their own verses to speak in translation. Horace's part evinces the independent spirit, moral earnestness and critical insight that many readers look for in his poems.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or the Age of Enlightenment, neoclassical culture was pervasive. English literature in the middle of that period has been dubbed Augustan. It is not always easy to distinguish Horace's influence during those centuries (the mixing of influences is shown for example in one poet's pseudonym, Horace Juvenal). However a measure of his influence can be found in the diversity of the people interested in his works, both among readers and authors.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "New editions of his works were published almost yearly. There were three new editions in 1612 (two in Leiden, one in Frankfurt) and again in 1699 (Utrecht, Barcelona, Cambridge). Cheap editions were plentiful and fine editions were also produced, including one whose entire text was engraved by John Pine in copperplate. The poet James Thomson owned five editions of Horace's work and the physician James Douglas had five hundred books with Horace-related titles. Horace was often commended in periodicals such as The Spectator, as a hallmark of good judgement, moderation and manliness, a focus for moralising. His verses offered a fund of mottoes, such as simplex munditiis (elegance in simplicity), splendide mendax (nobly untruthful), sapere aude (dare to know), nunc est bibendum (now is the time to drink), carpe diem (seize the day, perhaps the only one still in common use today). These were quoted even in works as prosaic as Edmund Quincy's A treatise of hemp-husbandry (1765). The fictional hero Tom Jones recited his verses with feeling. His works were also used to justify commonplace themes, such as patriotic obedience, as in James Parry's English lines from an Oxford University collection in 1736:",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "What friendly Muse will teach my Lays To emulate the Roman fire? Justly to sound a Caesar's praise Demands a bold Horatian lyre.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Horatian-style lyrics were increasingly typical of Oxford and Cambridge verse collections for this period, most of them in Latin but some like the previous ode in English. John Milton's Lycidas first appeared in such a collection. It has few Horatian echoes yet Milton's associations with Horace were lifelong. He composed a controversial version of Odes 1.5, and Paradise Lost includes references to Horace's 'Roman' Odes 3.1–6 (Book 7 for example begins with echoes of Odes 3.4). Yet Horace's lyrics could offer inspiration to libertines as well as moralists, and neo-Latin sometimes served as a kind of discrete veil for the risqué. Thus for example Benjamin Loveling authored a catalogue of Drury Lane and Covent Garden prostitutes, in Sapphic stanzas, and an encomium for a dying lady \"of salacious memory\". Some Latin imitations of Horace were politically subversive, such as a marriage ode by Anthony Alsop that included a rallying cry for the Jacobite cause. On the other hand, Andrew Marvell took inspiration from Horace's Odes 1.37 to compose his English masterpiece Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, in which subtly nuanced reflections on the execution of Charles I echo Horace's ambiguous response to the death of Cleopatra (Marvell's ode was suppressed in spite of its subtlety and only began to be widely published in 1776). Samuel Johnson took particular pleasure in reading The Odes. Alexander Pope wrote direct Imitations of Horace (published with the original Latin alongside) and also echoed him in Essays and The Rape of the Lock. He even emerged as \"a quite Horatian Homer\" in his translation of the Iliad. Horace appealed also to female poets, such as Anna Seward (Original sonnets on various subjects, and odes paraphrased from Horace, 1799) and Elizabeth Tollet, who composed a Latin ode in Sapphic meter to celebrate her brother's return from overseas, with tea and coffee substituted for the wine of Horace's sympotic settings:",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Horace's Ars Poetica is second only to Aristotle's Poetics in its influence on literary theory and criticism. Milton recommended both works in his treatise of Education. Horace's Satires and Epistles however also had a huge impact, influencing theorists and critics such as John Dryden. There was considerable debate over the value of different lyrical forms for contemporary poets, as represented on one hand by the kind of four-line stanzas made familiar by Horace's Sapphic and Alcaic Odes and, on the other, the loosely structured Pindarics associated with the odes of Pindar. Translations occasionally involved scholars in the dilemmas of censorship. Thus Christopher Smart entirely omitted Odes 4.10 and re-numbered the remaining odes. He also removed the ending of Odes 4.1. Thomas Creech printed Epodes 8 and 12 in the original Latin but left out their English translations. Philip Francis left out both the English and Latin for those same two epodes, a gap in the numbering the only indication that something was amiss. French editions of Horace were influential in England and these too were regularly bowdlerized.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Most European nations had their own 'Horaces': thus for example Friedrich von Hagedorn was called The German Horace and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski The Polish Horace (the latter was much imitated by English poets such as Henry Vaughan and Abraham Cowley). Pope Urban VIII wrote voluminously in Horatian meters, including an ode on gout.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Horace maintained a central role in the education of English-speaking elites right up until the 1960s. A pedantic emphasis on the formal aspects of language-learning at the expense of literary appreciation may have made him unpopular in some quarters yet it also confirmed his influence—a tension in his reception that underlies Byron's famous lines from Childe Harold (Canto iv, 77):",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, To comprehend, but never love thy verse.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "William Wordsworth's mature poetry, including the preface to Lyrical Ballads, reveals Horace's influence in its rejection of false ornament and he once expressed \"a wish / to meet the shade of Horace...\". John Keats echoed the opening of Horace's Epodes 14 in the opening lines of Ode to a Nightingale.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The Roman poet was presented in the nineteenth century as an honorary English gentleman. William Thackeray produced a version of Odes 1.38 in which Horace's 'boy' became 'Lucy', and Gerard Manley Hopkins translated the boy innocently as 'child'. Horace was translated by Sir Theodore Martin (biographer of Prince Albert) but minus some ungentlemanly verses, such as the erotic Odes 1.25 and Epodes 8 and 12. Edward Bulwer-Lytton produced a popular translation and William Gladstone also wrote translations during his last days as Prime Minister.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, though formally derived from the Persian ruba'i, nevertheless shows a strong Horatian influence, since, as one modern scholar has observed, \"...the quatrains inevitably recall the stanzas of the 'Odes', as does the narrating first person of the world-weary, ageing Epicurean Omar himself, mixing sympotic exhortation and 'carpe diem' with splendid moralising and 'memento mori' nihilism.\" Matthew Arnold advised a friend in verse not to worry about politics, an echo of Odes 2.11, yet later became a critic of Horace's inadequacies relative to Greek poets, as role models of Victorian virtues, observing: \"If human life were complete without faith, without enthusiasm, without energy, Horace...would be the perfect interpreter of human life.\" Christina Rossetti composed a sonnet depicting a woman willing her own death steadily, drawing on Horace's depiction of 'Glycera' in Odes 1.19.5–6 and Cleopatra in Odes 1.37. A. E. Housman considered Odes 4.7, in Archilochian couplets, the most beautiful poem of antiquity and yet he generally shared Horace's penchant for quatrains, being readily adapted to his own elegiac and melancholy strain. The most famous poem of Ernest Dowson took its title and its heroine's name from a line of Odes 4.1, Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, as well as its motif of nostalgia for a former flame. Kipling wrote a famous parody of the Odes, satirising their stylistic idiosyncrasies and especially the extraordinary syntax, but he also used Horace's Roman patriotism as a focus for British imperialism, as in the story Regulus in the school collection Stalky & Co., which he based on Odes 3.5. Wilfred Owen's famous poem, quoted above, incorporated Horatian text to question patriotism while ignoring the rules of Latin scansion. However, there were few other echoes of Horace in the war period, possibly because war is not actually a major theme of Horace's work. The Spanish poet Miquel Costa i Llobera published his renowned collection of poems named Horacianes, thus being dedicated to the Latin poet Horace, and employing Sapphics, Alcaics and similar types of stanzas.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Both W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice began their careers as teachers of classics and both responded as poets to Horace's influence. Auden for example evoked the fragile world of the 1930s in terms echoing Odes 2.11.1–4, where Horace advises a friend not to let worries about frontier wars interfere with current pleasures.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "And, gentle, do not care to know Where Poland draws her Eastern bow, What violence is done; Nor ask what doubtful act allows Our freedom in this English house, Our picnics in the sun.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The American poet Robert Frost echoed Horace's Satires in the conversational and sententious idiom of some of his longer poems, such as The Lesson for Today (1941), and also in his gentle advocacy of life on the farm, as in Hyla Brook (1916), evoking Horace's fons Bandusiae in Ode 3.13. Now at the start of the third millennium, poets are still absorbing and re-configuring the Horatian influence, sometimes in translation (such as a 2002 English/American edition of the Odes by thirty-six poets) and sometimes as inspiration for their own work (such as a 2003 collection of odes by a New Zealand poet).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Horace's Epodes have largely been ignored in the modern era, excepting those with political associations of historical significance. The obscene qualities of some of the poems have repulsed even scholars yet more recently a better understanding of the nature of Iambic poetry has led to a re-evaluation of the whole collection. A re-appraisal of the Epodes also appears in creative adaptations by recent poets (such as a 2004 collection of poems that relocates the ancient context to a 1950s industrial town).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Oxford Latin Course textbooks use the life of Horace to illustrate an average Roman's life in the late Republic to Early Empire. Horace was portrayed by Norman Shelley in the 1976 miniseries I, Claudius.",
"title": "In literature and the arts"
}
]
| Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words." Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses and caustic iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are amusing yet serious works, friendly in tone, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings". His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from a republic to an empire. An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, "a well-mannered court slave". | 2001-08-27T17:35:59Z | 2023-12-07T01:24:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace |
13,694 | Microsoft Windows version history | Microsoft Windows was announced by Bill Gates on November 10, 1983. Microsoft introduced Windows as a graphical user interface for MS-DOS, which had been introduced two years earlier. The product line evolved in the 1990s from an operating environment into a fully complete, modern operating system over two lines of development, each with their own separate codebase.
The first versions of Windows (1.0 through to 3.11) were graphical shells that ran from MS-DOS. Windows 95, though still being based on MS-DOS, was its own operating system, using a 16-bit DOS-based kernel and a 32-bit user space. Windows 95 also had a significant amount of 16-bit code ported from Windows 3.1. Windows 95 introduced many features that have been part of the product ever since, including the Start menu, the taskbar, and Windows Explorer (renamed File Explorer in Windows 8). In 1997, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4 which included the (at the time controversial) Windows Desktop Update. It aimed to integrate Internet Explorer and the web into the user interface and also brought many new features into Windows, such as the ability to display JPEG images as the desktop wallpaper and single window navigation in Windows Explorer. In 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98, which also included the Windows Desktop Update and Internet Explorer 4 by default. The inclusion of Internet Explorer 4 and the Desktop Update led to an antitrust case in the United States. Windows 98 included USB support out of the box, and also plug and play, which allows devices to work when plugged in without requiring a system reboot or manual configuration. Windows Me, the last DOS-based version of Windows, was aimed at consumers and released in 2000. It introduced System Restore, Help and Support Center, updated versions of the Disk Defragmenter and other system tools.
In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, the first version of the newly developed Windows NT operating system, followed by Windows NT 3.5 in 1994, and Windows NT 3.51 in 1995. "NT" is an initialism for "New Technology". Unlike the Windows 9x series of operating systems, it is a fully 32-bit operating system. NT 3.1 introduced NTFS, a file system designed to replace the older File Allocation Table (FAT) which was used by DOS and the DOS-based Windows operating systems. In 1996, Windows NT 4.0 was released, which includes a fully 32-bit version of Windows Explorer written specifically for it, making the operating system work like Windows 95. Windows NT was originally designed to be used on high-end systems and servers, but with the release of Windows 2000, many consumer-oriented features from Windows 95 and Windows 98 were included, such as the Windows Desktop Update, Internet Explorer 5, USB support and Windows Media Player. These consumer-oriented features were further extended in Windows XP in 2001, which included a new visual style called Luna, a more user-friendly interface, updated versions of Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 6 by default, and extended features from Windows Me, such as the Help and Support Center and System Restore. Windows Vista, which was released in 2007, focused on securing the Windows operating system against computer viruses and other malicious software by introducing features such as User Account Control. New features include Windows Aero, updated versions of the standard games (e.g. Solitaire), Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Mail to replace Outlook Express. Despite this, Windows Vista was critically panned for its poor performance on older hardware and its at-the-time high system requirements. Windows 7 followed in 2009 nearly three years after its launch, and despite it technically having higher system requirements, reviewers noted that it ran better than Windows Vista. Windows 7 removed many applications, such as Windows Movie Maker, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Mail, instead requiring users to download separate Windows Live Essentials to gain some of those features and other online services. Windows 8, which was released in 2012, introduced many controversial changes, such as the replacement of the Start menu with the Start Screen, the removal of the Aero interface in favor of a flat, colored interface as well as the introduction of "Metro" apps (later renamed to Universal Windows Platform apps), and the Charms Bar user interface element, all of which received considerable criticism from reviewers. Windows 8.1, a free upgrade to Windows 8, was released in 2013.
The following version of Windows, Windows 10, which was released in 2015, reintroduced the Start menu and added the ability to run Universal Windows Platform apps in a window instead of always in full screen. Windows 10 was generally well-received, with many reviewers stating that Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been.
The latest version of Windows, Windows 11, was released on October 5, 2021. Windows 11 incorporates a redesigned user interface, including a new Start menu, a visual style featuring rounded corners, and a new layout for the Microsoft Store, and also included Microsoft Edge by default.
The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on November 20, 1985, achieved little popularity. The project was briefly codenamed "Interface Manager" before the windowing system was implemented—contrary to popular belief that it was the original name for Windows and Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, convinced the company that the name Windows would be more appealing to customers.
Windows 1.0 was not a complete operating system, but rather an "operating environment" that extended MS-DOS, and shared the latter's inherent flaws.
The first version of Microsoft Windows included a simple graphics painting program called Windows Paint; Windows Write, a simple word processor; an appointment calendar; a card-filer; a notepad; a clock; a control panel; a computer terminal; Clipboard; and RAM driver. It also included the MS-DOS Executive and a game called Reversi.
Microsoft had worked with Apple Computer to develop applications for Apple's new Macintosh computer, which featured a graphical user interface. As part of the related business negotiations, Microsoft had licensed certain aspects of the Macintosh user interface from Apple; in later litigation, a district court summarized these aspects as "screen displays". In the development of Windows 1.0, Microsoft intentionally limited its borrowing of certain GUI elements from the Macintosh user interface, to comply with its license. For example, windows were only displayed "tiled" on the screen; that is, they could not overlap or overlie one another.
On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared Windows 1.0 obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system.
Microsoft Windows version 2.0 (2.01 and 2.03 internally) came out on December 9, 1987 and proved slightly more popular than its predecessor. Much of the popularity for Windows 2.0 came by way of its inclusion as a "run-time version" with Microsoft's new graphical applications, Excel and Word for Windows. They could be run from MS-DOS, executing Windows for the duration of their activity, and closing down Windows upon exit.
Microsoft Windows received a major boost around this time when Aldus PageMaker appeared in a Windows version, having previously run only on Macintosh. Some computer historians date this, the first appearance of a significant and non-Microsoft application for Windows, as the start of the success of Windows.
Like prior versions of Windows, version 2.0 could use the real-mode memory model, which confined it to a maximum of 1 megabyte of memory. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasker like DESQview, which used the 286 protected mode. It was also the first version to support the High Memory Area when running on an Intel 80286 compatible processor. This edition was renamed Windows/286 with the release of Windows 2.1.
A separate Windows/386 edition had a protected mode kernel, which required an 80386 compatible processor, with LIM-standard EMS emulation and VxD drivers in the kernel. All Windows and DOS-based applications at the time were real mode, and Windows/386 could run them over the protected mode kernel by using the virtual 8086 mode, which was new with the 80386 processor.
Version 2.1 came out on May 27, 1988, followed by version 2.11 on March 13, 1989; they included a few minor changes.
In Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., version 2.03, and later 3.0, faced challenges from Apple over its overlapping windows and other features Apple charged mimicked the ostensibly copyrighted "look and feel" of its operating system and "embodie[d] and generated a copy of the Macintosh" in its OS. Judge William Schwarzer dropped all but 10 of Apple's 189 claims of copyright infringement, and ruled that most of the remaining 10 were over uncopyrightable ideas.
On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared Windows 2.x obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system.
Windows 3.0, released in May 1990, improved capabilities given to native applications. It also allowed users to better multitask older MS-DOS based software compared to Windows/386, thanks to the introduction of virtual memory.
Windows 3.0's user interface finally resembled a serious competitor to the user interface of the Macintosh computer. PCs had improved graphics by this time, due to VGA video cards, and the protected/enhanced mode allowed Windows applications to use more memory in a more painless manner than their DOS counterparts could. Windows 3.0 could run in real, standard, or 386 enhanced modes, and was compatible with any Intel processor from the 8086/8088 up to the 80286 and 80386. This was the first version to run Windows programs in protected mode, although the 386 enhanced mode kernel was an enhanced version of the protected mode kernel in Windows/386.
Windows 3.0 received two updates. A few months after introduction, Windows 3.0a was released as a maintenance release, resolving bugs and improving stability. A "multimedia" version, Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions 1.0, was released in October 1991. This was bundled with "multimedia upgrade kits", comprising a CD-ROM drive and a sound card, such as the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro. This version was the precursor to the multimedia features available in Windows 3.1 (first released in April 1992) and later, and was part of Microsoft's specification for the Multimedia PC.
The features listed above and growing market support from application software developers made Windows 3.0 wildly successful, selling around 10 million copies in the two years before the release of version 3.1. Windows 3.0 became a major source of income for Microsoft, and led the company to revise some of its earlier plans. Support was discontinued on December 31, 2001.
During the mid to late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM had cooperatively been developing OS/2 as a successor to DOS. OS/2 would take full advantage of the aforementioned protected mode of the Intel 80286 processor and up to 16 MB of memory. OS/2 1.0, released in 1987, supported swapping and multitasking and allowed running of DOS executables.
IBM licensed Windows' GUI for OS/2 as Presentation Manager, and the two companies stated that it and Windows 2.0 would be almost identical. Presentation Manager was not available with OS/2 until version 1.1, released in 1988. Its API was incompatible with Windows. Version 1.2, released in 1989, introduced a new file system, HPFS, to replace the FAT file system.
By the early 1990s, conflicts developed in the Microsoft/IBM relationship. They cooperated with each other in developing their PC operating systems and had access to each other's code. Microsoft wanted to further develop Windows, while IBM desired for future work to be based on OS/2. In an attempt to resolve this tension, IBM and Microsoft agreed that IBM would develop OS/2 2.0, to replace OS/2 1.3 and Windows 3.0, while Microsoft would develop the next version, OS/2 3.0.
This agreement soon fell apart however, and the Microsoft/IBM relationship was terminated. IBM continued to develop OS/2, while Microsoft changed the name of its (as yet unreleased) OS/2 3.0 to Windows NT. Both retained the rights to use OS/2 and Windows technology developed up to the termination of the agreement; Windows NT, however, was to be written anew, mostly independently (see below).
After an interim 1.3 version to fix up many remaining problems with the 1.x series, IBM released OS/2 version 2.0 in 1992. This was a major improvement: it featured a new, object-oriented GUI, the Workplace Shell (WPS), that included a desktop and was considered by many to be OS/2's best feature. Microsoft would later imitate much of it in Windows 95. Version 2.0 also provided a full 32-bit API, offered smooth multitasking and could take advantage of the 4 gigabytes of address space provided by the Intel 80386. Still, much of the system had 16-bit code internally which required, among other things, device drivers to be 16-bit code as well. This was one of the reasons for the chronic shortage of OS/2 drivers for the latest devices. Version 2.0 could also run DOS and Windows 3.0 programs, since IBM had retained the right to use the DOS and Windows code as a result of the breakup.
In response to the impending release of OS/2 2.0, Microsoft developed Windows 3.1 (first released in April 1992), which included several improvements to Windows 3.0, such as display of TrueType scalable fonts (developed jointly with Apple), improved disk performance in 386 Enhanced Mode, multimedia support, and bugfixes. It also removed Real Mode, and only ran on an 80286 or better processor. Later Microsoft also released Windows 3.11, a touch-up to Windows 3.1 which included all of the patches and updates that followed the release of Windows 3.1 in 1992.
In 1992 and 1993, Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups (WfW), which was available both as an add-on for existing Windows 3.1 installations and in a version that included the base Windows environment and the networking extensions all in one package. Windows for Workgroups included improved network drivers and protocol stacks, and support for peer-to-peer networking. There were two versions of Windows for Workgroups, WfW 3.1 and WfW 3.11. Unlike prior versions, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 ran in 386 Enhanced Mode only, and needed at least an 80386SX processor. One optional download for WfW was the "Wolverine" TCP/IP protocol stack, which allowed for easy access to the Internet through corporate networks.
All these versions continued version 3.0's impressive sales pace. Even though the 3.1x series still lacked most of the important features of OS/2, such as long file names, a desktop, or protection of the system against misbehaving applications, Microsoft quickly took over the OS and GUI markets for the IBM PC. The Windows API became the de facto standard for consumer software.
On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared Windows 3.1 obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system. However, OEM licensing for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on embedded systems continued to be available until November 1, 2008.
Meanwhile, Microsoft continued to develop Windows NT. The main architect of the system was Dave Cutler, one of the chief architects of VAX/VMS at Digital Equipment Corporation. Microsoft hired him in October 1988 to create a successor to OS/2, but Cutler created a completely new system instead. Cutler had been developing a follow-on to VMS at DEC called MICA, and when DEC dropped the project he brought the expertise and around 20 engineers with him to Microsoft.
Windows NT Workstation (Microsoft marketing wanted Windows NT to appear to be a continuation of Windows 3.1) arrived in Beta form to developers at the July 1992 Professional Developers Conference in San Francisco. Microsoft announced at the conference its intentions to develop a successor to both Windows NT and Windows 3.1's replacement (Windows 95, codenamed Chicago), which would unify the two into one operating system. This successor was codenamed Cairo. In hindsight, Cairo was a much more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT and Chicago would not be unified until Windows XP—albeit Windows 2000, oriented to business, had already unified most of the system's bolts and gears, it was XP that was sold to home consumers like Windows 95 and came to be viewed as the final unified OS. Parts of Cairo have still not made it into Windows as of 2020: most notably, the WinFS file system, which was the much touted Object File System of Cairo. Microsoft announced that they have discontinued the separate release of WinFS for Windows XP and Windows Vista and will gradually incorporate the technologies developed for WinFS in other products and technologies, notably Microsoft SQL Server.
Driver support was lacking due to the increased programming difficulty in dealing with NT's superior hardware abstraction model. This problem plagued the NT line all the way through Windows 2000. Programmers complained that it was too hard to write drivers for NT, and hardware developers were not going to go through the trouble of developing drivers for a small segment of the market. Additionally, although allowing for good performance and fuller exploitation of system resources, it was also resource-intensive on limited hardware, and thus was only suitable for larger, more expensive machines.
However, these same features made Windows NT perfect for the LAN server market (which in 1993 was experiencing a rapid boom, as office networking was becoming common). NT also had advanced network connectivity options and NTFS, an efficient file system. Windows NT version 3.51 was Microsoft's entry into this field, and took away market share from Novell (the dominant player) in the following years.
One of Microsoft's biggest advances initially developed for Windows NT was a new 32-bit API, to replace the legacy 16-bit Windows API. This API was called Win32, and from then on Microsoft referred to the older 16-bit API as Win16. The Win32 API had three levels of implementation: the complete one for Windows NT, a subset for Chicago (originally called Win32c) missing features primarily of interest to enterprise customers (at the time) such as security and Unicode support, and a more limited subset called Win32s which could be used on Windows 3.1 systems. Thus Microsoft sought to ensure some degree of compatibility between the Chicago design and Windows NT, even though the two systems had radically different internal architectures.
Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel. The hybrid kernel was designed as a modified microkernel, influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but without meeting all of the criteria of a pure microkernel.
As released, Windows NT 3.x went through three versions (3.1, 3.5, and 3.51), changes were primarily internal and reflected back end changes. The 3.5 release added support for new types of hardware and improved performance and data reliability; the 3.51 release was primarily to update the Win32 APIs to be compatible with software being written for the Win32c APIs in what became Windows 95. Support for Windows NT 3.51 ended in 2001 and 2002 for the Workstation and Server editions, respectively.
After Windows 3.11, Microsoft began to develop a new consumer-oriented version of the operating system codenamed Chicago. Chicago was designed to have support for 32-bit preemptive multitasking like OS/2 and Windows NT, although a 16-bit kernel would remain for the sake of backward compatibility. The Win32 API first introduced with Windows NT was adopted as the standard 32-bit programming interface, with Win16 compatibility being preserved through a technique known as "thunking". A new object-oriented GUI was not originally planned as part of the release, although elements of the Cairo user interface were borrowed and added as other aspects of the release (notably Plug and Play) slipped.
Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to 32-bit; parts of it remained 16-bit (albeit not directly using real mode) for reasons of compatibility, performance, and development time. Additionally it was necessary to carry over design decisions from earlier versions of Windows for reasons of backwards compatibility, even if these design decisions no longer matched a more modern computing environment. These factors eventually began to impact the operating system's efficiency and stability.
Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on August 24, 1995. Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first, it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS, secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system and MS DOS 7 would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in 386 enhanced mode, with a flat 32-bit address space and virtual memory. These features make it possible for Win32 applications to address up to 2 gigabytes of virtual RAM (with another 2 GB reserved for the operating system), and in theory prevented them from inadvertently corrupting the memory space of other Win32 applications. In this respect the functionality of Windows 95 moved closer to Windows NT, although Windows 95/98/Me did not support more than 512 megabytes of physical RAM without obscure system tweaks. Three years after its introduction, Windows 95 was succeeded by Windows 98.
IBM continued to market OS/2, producing later versions in OS/2 3.0 and 4.0 (also called Warp). Responding to complaints about OS/2 2.0's high demands on computer hardware, version 3.0 was significantly optimized both for speed and size. Before Windows 95 was released, OS/2 Warp 3.0 was even shipped pre-installed with several large German hardware vendor chains. However, with the release of Windows 95, OS/2 began to lose market share.
It is probably impossible to choose one specific reason why OS/2 failed to gain much market share. While OS/2 continued to run Windows 3.1 applications, it lacked support for anything but the Win32s subset of Win32 API (see above). Unlike with Windows 3.1, IBM did not have access to the source code for Windows 95 and was unwilling to commit the time and resources to emulate the moving target of the Win32 API. IBM later introduced OS/2 into the United States v. Microsoft case, blaming unfair marketing tactics on Microsoft's part.
Microsoft went on to release five different versions of Windows 95:
OSR2, OSR2.1, and OSR2.5 were not released to the general public, rather, they were available only to OEMs that would preload the OS onto computers. Some companies sold new hard drives with OSR2 preinstalled (officially justifying this as needed due to the hard drive's capacity).
The first Microsoft Plus! add-on pack was sold for Windows 95. Microsoft ended extended support for Windows 95 on December 31, 2001.
Microsoft released the successor to NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, on August 24, 1996, one year after the release of Windows 95. It was Microsoft's primary business-oriented operating system until the introduction of Windows 2000. Major new features included the new Explorer shell from Windows 95, scalability and feature improvements to the core architecture, kernel, USER32, COM and MSRPC.
Windows NT 4.0 came in five versions:
Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on June 30, 2002, and ended extended support on June 30, 2004, while Windows NT 4.0 Server mainstream support ended on December 31, 2002, and extended support ended on December 31, 2004. Both editions were succeeded by Windows 2000 Professional and the Windows 2000 Server Family, respectively.
Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Embedded on June 30, 2003, and ended extended support on July 11, 2006. This edition was succeeded by Windows XP Embedded.
On June 25, 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98 (code-named Memphis), three years after the release of Windows 95, two years after the release of Windows NT 4.0, and 21 months before the release of Windows 2000. It included new hardware drivers and the FAT32 file system which supports disk partitions that are larger than 2 GB (first introduced in Windows 95 OSR2). USB support in Windows 98 is marketed as a vast improvement over Windows 95. The release continued the controversial inclusion of the Internet Explorer browser with the operating system that started with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1. The action eventually led to the filing of the United States v. Microsoft case, dealing with the question of whether Microsoft was introducing unfair practices into the market in an effort to eliminate competition from other companies such as Netscape.
In 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition, an interim release. One of the more notable new features was the addition of Internet Connection Sharing, a form of network address translation, allowing several machines on a LAN (Local Area Network) to share a single Internet connection. Hardware support through device drivers was increased and this version shipped with Internet Explorer 5. Many minor problems that existed in the first edition were fixed making it, according to many, the most stable release of the Windows 9x family.
Mainstream support for Windows 98 and 98 SE ended on June 30, 2002. Extended support ended on July 11, 2006.
Microsoft released Windows 2000 on February 17, 2000, as the successor to Windows NT 4.0, 17 months after the release of Windows 98. It has the version number Windows NT 5.0, and it was Microsoft's business-oriented operating system starting with the official release on February 17, 2000, until 2001 when it was succeeded by Windows XP. Windows 2000 has had four official service packs. It was successfully deployed both on the server and the workstation markets. Amongst Windows 2000's most significant new features was Active Directory, a near-complete replacement of the NT 4.0 Windows Server domain model, which built on industry-standard technologies like DNS, LDAP, and Kerberos to connect machines to one another. Terminal Services, previously only available as a separate edition of NT 4, was expanded to all server versions. A number of features from Windows 98 were incorporated also, such as an improved Device Manager, Windows Media Player, and a revised DirectX that made it possible for the first time for many modern games to work on the NT kernel. Windows 2000 is also the last NT-kernel Windows operating system to lack product activation.
While Windows 2000 upgrades were available for Windows 95 and Windows 98, it was not intended for home users.
Windows 2000 was available in four editions:
Microsoft ended support for both Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 on July 13, 2010.
On September 14, 2000, Microsoft released a successor to Windows 98 called Windows Me, short for "Millennium Edition". It was the last DOS-based operating system from Microsoft. Windows Me introduced a new multimedia-editing application called Windows Movie Maker, came standard with Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Media Player 7, and debuted the first version of System Restore – a recovery utility that enables the operating system to revert system files back to a prior date and time. System Restore was a notable feature that would continue to thrive in all later versions of Windows.
Windows Me was conceived as a quick one-year project that served as a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP. Many of the new features were available from the Windows Update site as updates for older Windows versions (System Restore and Windows Movie Maker were exceptions). Windows Me was criticized for stability issues, as well as for lacking real mode DOS support, to the point of being referred to as the "Mistake Edition". Windows Me was the last operating system to be based on the Windows 9x (monolithic) kernel and MS-DOS, with its successor Windows XP being based on Microsoft's Windows NT kernel instead.
On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler"). The merging of the Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/98/Me lines was finally achieved with Windows XP. Windows XP uses the Windows NT 5.1 kernel, marking the entrance of the Windows NT core to the consumer market, to replace the aging Windows 9x branch. The initial release was met with considerable criticism, particularly in the area of security, leading to the release of three major Service Packs. Windows XP SP1 was released in September 2002, SP2 was released in August 2004 and SP3 was released in April 2008. Service Pack 2 provided significant improvements and encouraged widespread adoption of XP among both home and business users. Windows XP was one of Microsoft's longest-running flagship operating systems, beginning with the public release on October 25, 2001, for at least 5 years, and ending on January 30, 2007, when it was succeeded by Windows Vista.
Windows XP is available in a number of versions:
On April 25, 2003, Microsoft launched Windows Server 2003, a notable update to Windows 2000 Server encompassing many new security features, a new "Manage Your Server" wizard that simplifies configuring a machine for specific roles, and improved performance. It is based on the Windows NT 5.2 kernel. A few services not essential for server environments are disabled by default for stability reasons, most noticeable are the "Windows Audio" and "Themes" services; users have to enable them manually to get sound or the "Luna" look as per Windows XP. The hardware acceleration for display is also turned off by default, users have to turn the acceleration level up themselves if they trust the display card driver.
In December 2005, Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 R2, which is actually Windows Server 2003 with SP1 (Service Pack 1), together with an add-on package. Among the new features are a number of management features for branch offices, file serving, printing and company-wide identity integration.
Windows Server 2003 is available in six editions:
Windows Server 2003 R2, an update of Windows Server 2003, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. It is distributed on two CDs, with one CD being the Windows Server 2003 SP1 CD. The other CD adds many optionally installable features for Windows Server 2003. The R2 update was released for all x86 and x64 versions, except Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, which was not released for Itanium.
On April 25, 2005, Microsoft released Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003, x64 Editions in Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is an edition of Windows XP for x86-64 personal computers. It is designed to use the expanded 64-bit memory address space provided by the x86–64 architecture.
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is based on the Windows Server 2003 codebase, with the server features removed and client features added. Both Windows Server 2003 x64 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition use identical kernels.
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is not to be confused with Windows XP 64-bit Edition, as the latter was designed for Intel Itanium processors. During the initial development phases, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition was named Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems.
In July 2006, Microsoft released a thin-client version of Windows XP Service Pack 2, called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (WinFLP). It is only available to Software Assurance customers. The aim of WinFLP is to give companies a viable upgrade option for older PCs that are running Windows 95, 98, and Me that will be supported with patches and updates for the next several years. Most user applications will typically be run on a remote machine using Terminal Services or Citrix.
While being visually the same as Windows XP, it has some differences. For example, if the screen has been set to 16 bit colors, the Windows 2000 recycle bin icon and some XP 16-bit icons will show. Paint and some games like Solitaire aren't present too.
Windows Home Server (code-named Q, Quattro) is a server product based on Windows Server 2003, designed for consumer use. The system was announced on January 7, 2007, by Bill Gates. Windows Home Server can be configured and monitored using a console program that can be installed on a client PC. Such features as Media Sharing, local and remote drive backup and file duplication are all listed as features. The release of Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 added support for Windows 7 to Windows Home Server.
Windows Vista was released on November 30, 2006, to business customers—consumer versions followed on January 30, 2007. Windows Vista intended to have enhanced security by introducing a new restricted user mode called User Account Control, replacing the "administrator-by-default" philosophy of Windows XP. Vista was the target of much criticism and negative press, and in general was not well regarded, this was seen as leading to the relatively swift release of Windows 7.
One major difference between Vista and earlier versions of Windows, Windows 95 and later, was that the original start button was replaced with the Windows icon in a circle (called the Start Orb). Vista also featured new graphics features, the Windows Aero GUI, new applications (such as Windows Calendar, Windows DVD Maker and some new games including Chess, Mahjong, and Purble Place), Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11, and a large number of underlying architectural changes. Windows Vista had the version number NT 6.0. During its lifetime, Windows Vista had two service packs.
Windows Vista shipped in six editions:
All editions (except Starter edition) were available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The biggest advantage of the 64-bit version was breaking the 4 gigabyte memory barrier, which 32-bit computers cannot fully access.
Windows Server 2008, released on February 27, 2008, was originally known as Windows Server Codename "Longhorn". Windows Server 2008 built on the technological and security advances first introduced with Windows Vista, and was significantly more modular than its predecessor, Windows Server 2003.
Windows Server 2008 shipped in ten editions:
Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and reached general retail availability on October 22, 2009. Since its release, Windows 7 had one service pack.
Some features of Windows 7 were faster booting, Device Stage, Windows PowerShell, less obtrusive User Account Control, multi-touch, and improved window management. The interface was renewed with a bigger taskbar and some improvements in the searching system and the Start menu. Features included with Windows Vista and not in Windows 7 include the sidebar (although gadgets remain) and several programs that were removed in favor of downloading their Windows Live counterparts. Windows 7 met with positive reviews, which said the OS was faster and easier to use than Windows Vista.
Windows 7 shipped in six editions:
In some countries in the European Union, there were other editions that lacked some features such as Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and Internet Explorer—these editions were called names such as "Windows 7 N." Microsoft focused on selling Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional. All editions, except the Starter edition, were available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Unlike the corresponding Vista editions, the Professional and Enterprise editions were supersets of the Home Premium edition.
At the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008, Microsoft also announced Windows Server 2008 R2, as the server variant of Windows 7. Windows Server 2008 R2 shipped in 64-bit versions (x64 and Itanium) only.
In 2010, Microsoft released Windows Thin PC or WinTPC, which was a feature-and size-reduced locked-down version of Windows 7 expressly designed to turn older PCs into thin clients. WinTPC was available for software assurance customers and relied on cloud computing in a business network. Wireless operation is supported since WinTPC has full wireless stack integration, but wireless operation may not be as good as the operation on a wired connection.
Windows Home Server 2011 code named 'Vail' was released on April 6, 2011. Windows Home Server 2011 is built on the Windows Server 2008 R2 code base and removed the Drive Extender drive pooling technology in the original Windows Home Server release. Windows Home Server 2011 is considered a "major release". Its predecessor was built on Windows Server 2003. WHS 2011 only supports x86-64 hardware.
Microsoft decided to discontinue Windows Home Server 2011 on July 5, 2012, while including its features into Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Windows Home Server 2011 was supported until April 12, 2016.
On June 1, 2011, Microsoft previewed Windows 8 at both Computex Taipei and the D9: All Things Digital conference in California. The first public preview of Windows Server 2012 was shown by Microsoft at the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Windows 8 Release Preview and Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate were both released on May 31, 2012. Product development on Windows 8 was completed on August 1, 2012, and it was released to manufacturing the same day. Windows Server 2012 went on sale to the public on September 4, 2012. Windows 8 went on sale to the public on October 26, 2012. One edition, Windows RT, runs on some system-on-a-chip devices with mobile 32-bit ARM (ARMv7) processors. Windows 8 features a redesigned user interface, designed to make it easier for touchscreen users to use Windows. The interface introduced an updated Start menu known as the Start screen, and a new full-screen application platform. The desktop interface is also present for running windowed applications, although Windows RT will not run any desktop applications not included in the system. On the Building Windows 8 blog, it was announced that a computer running Windows 8 can boot up much faster than Windows 7. New features also include USB 3.0 support, the Windows Store, the ability to run from USB drives with Windows To Go, and others.
Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 were released on October 17, 2013. Windows 8.1 is available as an update in the Windows Store for Windows 8 users only and also available to download for clean installation. The update adds new options for resizing the live tiles on the Start screen. Windows 8 was given the kernel number NT 6.2, with its successor 8.1 receiving the kernel number 6.3. So far, neither has had any service packs yet, although many consider Windows 8.1 to be a service pack for Windows 8. However, Windows 8.1 received two main updates in 2014. Both versions received some criticism due to the removal of the Start menu and some difficulties to perform tasks and commands.
Windows 8 is available in the following editions:
Microsoft ended support for Windows 8 on January 12, 2016 and for Windows 8.1 on January 10, 2023.
Windows 10 was unveiled on September 30, 2014, as the successor for Windows 8, and was released on July 29, 2015. It was distributed without charge to Windows 7 and 8.1 users for one year after release. A number of new features like Cortana, the Microsoft Edge web browser, the ability to view Windows Store apps as a window instead of fullscreen, the return of the Start menu, virtual desktops, revamped core apps, Continuum, and a unified Settings app were all features debuted in Windows 10. Like its successor, the operating system was announced as a service OS that would receive constant performance and stability updates. Unlike Windows 8, Windows 10 received mostly positive reviews, praising improvements of stability and practicality than its predecessor, however, it received some criticism due to mandatory update installation, privacy concerns and advertising-supported software tactics.
Although Microsoft claimed Windows 10 would be the last Windows version, eventually a new major release, Windows 11, was announced in 2021. That made Windows 10 last longer as Microsoft's flagship operating system than any other version of Windows, beginning with the public release on July 29, 2015, for six years, and ending on October 5, 2021, when Windows 11 was released. Windows 10 had received thirteen main updates.
Windows Server 2016 is a release of the Microsoft Windows Server operating system that was unveiled on September 30, 2014. Windows Server 2016 was officially released at Microsoft's Ignite Conference, September 26–30, 2016. It is based on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update codebase.
Windows Server 2019 is a release of the Microsoft Windows Server operating system that was announced on March 20, 2018. The first Windows Insider preview version was released on the same day. It was released for general availability on October 2, 2018. Windows Server 2019 is based on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update codebase.
On October 6, 2018, distribution of Windows version 1809 (build 17763) was paused while Microsoft investigated an issue with user data being deleted during an in-place upgrade. It affected systems where a user profile folder (e.g. Documents, Music or Pictures) had been moved to another location, but data was left in the original location. As Windows Server 2019 is based on the Windows version 1809 codebase, it too was removed from distribution at the time, but was re-released on November 13, 2018. The software product life cycle for Server 2019 was reset in accordance with the new release date.
Windows Server 2022 was released on August 18, 2021. This is the first NT server version which does not share the build number with any of its client version counterpart, although its codename is 21H2, similar to the Windows 10 November 2021 Update.
Windows 11 is the next generation release of Windows NT, and the successor to Windows 10. Codenamed "Sun Valley", it was unveiled on June 24, 2021, and was released on October 5, 2021. It is distributed for free to all Windows 10 users with compatible PCs via a Windows Update. Microsoft's PC Health Check App lets you check compatibility for your PC. According to Microsoft, Windows 11 will be released for newer PCs first and then the initial release will continue till mid-2022. Windows 11 revamps the GUI and brings modern code, thus making it much faster than Windows 10. It is also noted that Windows 11 updates are significantly compressed, so the updates are downloaded faster. Also, Windows 11 does not show signs of the 'Installing Updates' screen while installing updates during 'Update and Restart' phase, thus finishing updates within 5 minutes.
The system incorporates a renewed interface called "Mica", which includes translucent backgrounds, rounded edges and color combinations. The taskbar and the Start Menu have been redesigned and for the first time it is possible to place the icons in the center of the bar. The MSN widget panel, the Microsoft Store, and the file browser, among other applications, have also been redesigned. However, some features and programs such as Cortana, Internet Explorer and Paint 3D were removed. Apps like 3D Viewer, Paint 3D, Skype and OneNote for Windows 10 can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store. It is expected that it will soon include compatibility with Android applications. It is worth noting the increase in requirements compared to its predecessors, requiring a minimum of 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of free space and a TPM 2.0 security chip, besides losing official compatibility with 7th generation Intel Core processors, 1st generation AMD Ryzen, and earlier. In addition to this, it is the first version of Windows that only supports 64-bit processors. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Microsoft Windows was announced by Bill Gates on November 10, 1983. Microsoft introduced Windows as a graphical user interface for MS-DOS, which had been introduced two years earlier. The product line evolved in the 1990s from an operating environment into a fully complete, modern operating system over two lines of development, each with their own separate codebase.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first versions of Windows (1.0 through to 3.11) were graphical shells that ran from MS-DOS. Windows 95, though still being based on MS-DOS, was its own operating system, using a 16-bit DOS-based kernel and a 32-bit user space. Windows 95 also had a significant amount of 16-bit code ported from Windows 3.1. Windows 95 introduced many features that have been part of the product ever since, including the Start menu, the taskbar, and Windows Explorer (renamed File Explorer in Windows 8). In 1997, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4 which included the (at the time controversial) Windows Desktop Update. It aimed to integrate Internet Explorer and the web into the user interface and also brought many new features into Windows, such as the ability to display JPEG images as the desktop wallpaper and single window navigation in Windows Explorer. In 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98, which also included the Windows Desktop Update and Internet Explorer 4 by default. The inclusion of Internet Explorer 4 and the Desktop Update led to an antitrust case in the United States. Windows 98 included USB support out of the box, and also plug and play, which allows devices to work when plugged in without requiring a system reboot or manual configuration. Windows Me, the last DOS-based version of Windows, was aimed at consumers and released in 2000. It introduced System Restore, Help and Support Center, updated versions of the Disk Defragmenter and other system tools.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, the first version of the newly developed Windows NT operating system, followed by Windows NT 3.5 in 1994, and Windows NT 3.51 in 1995. \"NT\" is an initialism for \"New Technology\". Unlike the Windows 9x series of operating systems, it is a fully 32-bit operating system. NT 3.1 introduced NTFS, a file system designed to replace the older File Allocation Table (FAT) which was used by DOS and the DOS-based Windows operating systems. In 1996, Windows NT 4.0 was released, which includes a fully 32-bit version of Windows Explorer written specifically for it, making the operating system work like Windows 95. Windows NT was originally designed to be used on high-end systems and servers, but with the release of Windows 2000, many consumer-oriented features from Windows 95 and Windows 98 were included, such as the Windows Desktop Update, Internet Explorer 5, USB support and Windows Media Player. These consumer-oriented features were further extended in Windows XP in 2001, which included a new visual style called Luna, a more user-friendly interface, updated versions of Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 6 by default, and extended features from Windows Me, such as the Help and Support Center and System Restore. Windows Vista, which was released in 2007, focused on securing the Windows operating system against computer viruses and other malicious software by introducing features such as User Account Control. New features include Windows Aero, updated versions of the standard games (e.g. Solitaire), Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Mail to replace Outlook Express. Despite this, Windows Vista was critically panned for its poor performance on older hardware and its at-the-time high system requirements. Windows 7 followed in 2009 nearly three years after its launch, and despite it technically having higher system requirements, reviewers noted that it ran better than Windows Vista. Windows 7 removed many applications, such as Windows Movie Maker, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Mail, instead requiring users to download separate Windows Live Essentials to gain some of those features and other online services. Windows 8, which was released in 2012, introduced many controversial changes, such as the replacement of the Start menu with the Start Screen, the removal of the Aero interface in favor of a flat, colored interface as well as the introduction of \"Metro\" apps (later renamed to Universal Windows Platform apps), and the Charms Bar user interface element, all of which received considerable criticism from reviewers. Windows 8.1, a free upgrade to Windows 8, was released in 2013.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The following version of Windows, Windows 10, which was released in 2015, reintroduced the Start menu and added the ability to run Universal Windows Platform apps in a window instead of always in full screen. Windows 10 was generally well-received, with many reviewers stating that Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The latest version of Windows, Windows 11, was released on October 5, 2021. Windows 11 incorporates a redesigned user interface, including a new Start menu, a visual style featuring rounded corners, and a new layout for the Microsoft Store, and also included Microsoft Edge by default.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on November 20, 1985, achieved little popularity. The project was briefly codenamed \"Interface Manager\" before the windowing system was implemented—contrary to popular belief that it was the original name for Windows and Rowland Hanson, the head of marketing at Microsoft, convinced the company that the name Windows would be more appealing to customers.",
"title": "Windows 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Windows 1.0 was not a complete operating system, but rather an \"operating environment\" that extended MS-DOS, and shared the latter's inherent flaws.",
"title": "Windows 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The first version of Microsoft Windows included a simple graphics painting program called Windows Paint; Windows Write, a simple word processor; an appointment calendar; a card-filer; a notepad; a clock; a control panel; a computer terminal; Clipboard; and RAM driver. It also included the MS-DOS Executive and a game called Reversi.",
"title": "Windows 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Microsoft had worked with Apple Computer to develop applications for Apple's new Macintosh computer, which featured a graphical user interface. As part of the related business negotiations, Microsoft had licensed certain aspects of the Macintosh user interface from Apple; in later litigation, a district court summarized these aspects as \"screen displays\". In the development of Windows 1.0, Microsoft intentionally limited its borrowing of certain GUI elements from the Macintosh user interface, to comply with its license. For example, windows were only displayed \"tiled\" on the screen; that is, they could not overlap or overlie one another.",
"title": "Windows 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared Windows 1.0 obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system.",
"title": "Windows 1.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Microsoft Windows version 2.0 (2.01 and 2.03 internally) came out on December 9, 1987 and proved slightly more popular than its predecessor. Much of the popularity for Windows 2.0 came by way of its inclusion as a \"run-time version\" with Microsoft's new graphical applications, Excel and Word for Windows. They could be run from MS-DOS, executing Windows for the duration of their activity, and closing down Windows upon exit.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Microsoft Windows received a major boost around this time when Aldus PageMaker appeared in a Windows version, having previously run only on Macintosh. Some computer historians date this, the first appearance of a significant and non-Microsoft application for Windows, as the start of the success of Windows.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Like prior versions of Windows, version 2.0 could use the real-mode memory model, which confined it to a maximum of 1 megabyte of memory. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasker like DESQview, which used the 286 protected mode. It was also the first version to support the High Memory Area when running on an Intel 80286 compatible processor. This edition was renamed Windows/286 with the release of Windows 2.1.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A separate Windows/386 edition had a protected mode kernel, which required an 80386 compatible processor, with LIM-standard EMS emulation and VxD drivers in the kernel. All Windows and DOS-based applications at the time were real mode, and Windows/386 could run them over the protected mode kernel by using the virtual 8086 mode, which was new with the 80386 processor.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Version 2.1 came out on May 27, 1988, followed by version 2.11 on March 13, 1989; they included a few minor changes.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., version 2.03, and later 3.0, faced challenges from Apple over its overlapping windows and other features Apple charged mimicked the ostensibly copyrighted \"look and feel\" of its operating system and \"embodie[d] and generated a copy of the Macintosh\" in its OS. Judge William Schwarzer dropped all but 10 of Apple's 189 claims of copyright infringement, and ruled that most of the remaining 10 were over uncopyrightable ideas.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared Windows 2.x obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system.",
"title": "Windows 2.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Windows 3.0, released in May 1990, improved capabilities given to native applications. It also allowed users to better multitask older MS-DOS based software compared to Windows/386, thanks to the introduction of virtual memory.",
"title": "Windows 3.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Windows 3.0's user interface finally resembled a serious competitor to the user interface of the Macintosh computer. PCs had improved graphics by this time, due to VGA video cards, and the protected/enhanced mode allowed Windows applications to use more memory in a more painless manner than their DOS counterparts could. Windows 3.0 could run in real, standard, or 386 enhanced modes, and was compatible with any Intel processor from the 8086/8088 up to the 80286 and 80386. This was the first version to run Windows programs in protected mode, although the 386 enhanced mode kernel was an enhanced version of the protected mode kernel in Windows/386.",
"title": "Windows 3.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Windows 3.0 received two updates. A few months after introduction, Windows 3.0a was released as a maintenance release, resolving bugs and improving stability. A \"multimedia\" version, Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions 1.0, was released in October 1991. This was bundled with \"multimedia upgrade kits\", comprising a CD-ROM drive and a sound card, such as the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro. This version was the precursor to the multimedia features available in Windows 3.1 (first released in April 1992) and later, and was part of Microsoft's specification for the Multimedia PC.",
"title": "Windows 3.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The features listed above and growing market support from application software developers made Windows 3.0 wildly successful, selling around 10 million copies in the two years before the release of version 3.1. Windows 3.0 became a major source of income for Microsoft, and led the company to revise some of its earlier plans. Support was discontinued on December 31, 2001.",
"title": "Windows 3.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "During the mid to late 1980s, Microsoft and IBM had cooperatively been developing OS/2 as a successor to DOS. OS/2 would take full advantage of the aforementioned protected mode of the Intel 80286 processor and up to 16 MB of memory. OS/2 1.0, released in 1987, supported swapping and multitasking and allowed running of DOS executables.",
"title": "OS/2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "IBM licensed Windows' GUI for OS/2 as Presentation Manager, and the two companies stated that it and Windows 2.0 would be almost identical. Presentation Manager was not available with OS/2 until version 1.1, released in 1988. Its API was incompatible with Windows. Version 1.2, released in 1989, introduced a new file system, HPFS, to replace the FAT file system.",
"title": "OS/2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "By the early 1990s, conflicts developed in the Microsoft/IBM relationship. They cooperated with each other in developing their PC operating systems and had access to each other's code. Microsoft wanted to further develop Windows, while IBM desired for future work to be based on OS/2. In an attempt to resolve this tension, IBM and Microsoft agreed that IBM would develop OS/2 2.0, to replace OS/2 1.3 and Windows 3.0, while Microsoft would develop the next version, OS/2 3.0.",
"title": "OS/2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "This agreement soon fell apart however, and the Microsoft/IBM relationship was terminated. IBM continued to develop OS/2, while Microsoft changed the name of its (as yet unreleased) OS/2 3.0 to Windows NT. Both retained the rights to use OS/2 and Windows technology developed up to the termination of the agreement; Windows NT, however, was to be written anew, mostly independently (see below).",
"title": "OS/2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "After an interim 1.3 version to fix up many remaining problems with the 1.x series, IBM released OS/2 version 2.0 in 1992. This was a major improvement: it featured a new, object-oriented GUI, the Workplace Shell (WPS), that included a desktop and was considered by many to be OS/2's best feature. Microsoft would later imitate much of it in Windows 95. Version 2.0 also provided a full 32-bit API, offered smooth multitasking and could take advantage of the 4 gigabytes of address space provided by the Intel 80386. Still, much of the system had 16-bit code internally which required, among other things, device drivers to be 16-bit code as well. This was one of the reasons for the chronic shortage of OS/2 drivers for the latest devices. Version 2.0 could also run DOS and Windows 3.0 programs, since IBM had retained the right to use the DOS and Windows code as a result of the breakup.",
"title": "OS/2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In response to the impending release of OS/2 2.0, Microsoft developed Windows 3.1 (first released in April 1992), which included several improvements to Windows 3.0, such as display of TrueType scalable fonts (developed jointly with Apple), improved disk performance in 386 Enhanced Mode, multimedia support, and bugfixes. It also removed Real Mode, and only ran on an 80286 or better processor. Later Microsoft also released Windows 3.11, a touch-up to Windows 3.1 which included all of the patches and updates that followed the release of Windows 3.1 in 1992.",
"title": "Windows 3.1x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1992 and 1993, Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups (WfW), which was available both as an add-on for existing Windows 3.1 installations and in a version that included the base Windows environment and the networking extensions all in one package. Windows for Workgroups included improved network drivers and protocol stacks, and support for peer-to-peer networking. There were two versions of Windows for Workgroups, WfW 3.1 and WfW 3.11. Unlike prior versions, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 ran in 386 Enhanced Mode only, and needed at least an 80386SX processor. One optional download for WfW was the \"Wolverine\" TCP/IP protocol stack, which allowed for easy access to the Internet through corporate networks.",
"title": "Windows 3.1x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "All these versions continued version 3.0's impressive sales pace. Even though the 3.1x series still lacked most of the important features of OS/2, such as long file names, a desktop, or protection of the system against misbehaving applications, Microsoft quickly took over the OS and GUI markets for the IBM PC. The Windows API became the de facto standard for consumer software.",
"title": "Windows 3.1x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "On December 31, 2001, Microsoft declared Windows 3.1 obsolete and stopped providing support and updates for the system. However, OEM licensing for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on embedded systems continued to be available until November 1, 2008.",
"title": "Windows 3.1x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Meanwhile, Microsoft continued to develop Windows NT. The main architect of the system was Dave Cutler, one of the chief architects of VAX/VMS at Digital Equipment Corporation. Microsoft hired him in October 1988 to create a successor to OS/2, but Cutler created a completely new system instead. Cutler had been developing a follow-on to VMS at DEC called MICA, and when DEC dropped the project he brought the expertise and around 20 engineers with him to Microsoft.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Windows NT Workstation (Microsoft marketing wanted Windows NT to appear to be a continuation of Windows 3.1) arrived in Beta form to developers at the July 1992 Professional Developers Conference in San Francisco. Microsoft announced at the conference its intentions to develop a successor to both Windows NT and Windows 3.1's replacement (Windows 95, codenamed Chicago), which would unify the two into one operating system. This successor was codenamed Cairo. In hindsight, Cairo was a much more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT and Chicago would not be unified until Windows XP—albeit Windows 2000, oriented to business, had already unified most of the system's bolts and gears, it was XP that was sold to home consumers like Windows 95 and came to be viewed as the final unified OS. Parts of Cairo have still not made it into Windows as of 2020: most notably, the WinFS file system, which was the much touted Object File System of Cairo. Microsoft announced that they have discontinued the separate release of WinFS for Windows XP and Windows Vista and will gradually incorporate the technologies developed for WinFS in other products and technologies, notably Microsoft SQL Server.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Driver support was lacking due to the increased programming difficulty in dealing with NT's superior hardware abstraction model. This problem plagued the NT line all the way through Windows 2000. Programmers complained that it was too hard to write drivers for NT, and hardware developers were not going to go through the trouble of developing drivers for a small segment of the market. Additionally, although allowing for good performance and fuller exploitation of system resources, it was also resource-intensive on limited hardware, and thus was only suitable for larger, more expensive machines.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "However, these same features made Windows NT perfect for the LAN server market (which in 1993 was experiencing a rapid boom, as office networking was becoming common). NT also had advanced network connectivity options and NTFS, an efficient file system. Windows NT version 3.51 was Microsoft's entry into this field, and took away market share from Novell (the dominant player) in the following years.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "One of Microsoft's biggest advances initially developed for Windows NT was a new 32-bit API, to replace the legacy 16-bit Windows API. This API was called Win32, and from then on Microsoft referred to the older 16-bit API as Win16. The Win32 API had three levels of implementation: the complete one for Windows NT, a subset for Chicago (originally called Win32c) missing features primarily of interest to enterprise customers (at the time) such as security and Unicode support, and a more limited subset called Win32s which could be used on Windows 3.1 systems. Thus Microsoft sought to ensure some degree of compatibility between the Chicago design and Windows NT, even though the two systems had radically different internal architectures.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel. The hybrid kernel was designed as a modified microkernel, influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but without meeting all of the criteria of a pure microkernel.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "As released, Windows NT 3.x went through three versions (3.1, 3.5, and 3.51), changes were primarily internal and reflected back end changes. The 3.5 release added support for new types of hardware and improved performance and data reliability; the 3.51 release was primarily to update the Win32 APIs to be compatible with software being written for the Win32c APIs in what became Windows 95. Support for Windows NT 3.51 ended in 2001 and 2002 for the Workstation and Server editions, respectively.",
"title": "Windows NT 3.x"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "After Windows 3.11, Microsoft began to develop a new consumer-oriented version of the operating system codenamed Chicago. Chicago was designed to have support for 32-bit preemptive multitasking like OS/2 and Windows NT, although a 16-bit kernel would remain for the sake of backward compatibility. The Win32 API first introduced with Windows NT was adopted as the standard 32-bit programming interface, with Win16 compatibility being preserved through a technique known as \"thunking\". A new object-oriented GUI was not originally planned as part of the release, although elements of the Cairo user interface were borrowed and added as other aspects of the release (notably Plug and Play) slipped.",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to 32-bit; parts of it remained 16-bit (albeit not directly using real mode) for reasons of compatibility, performance, and development time. Additionally it was necessary to carry over design decisions from earlier versions of Windows for reasons of backwards compatibility, even if these design decisions no longer matched a more modern computing environment. These factors eventually began to impact the operating system's efficiency and stability.",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on August 24, 1995. Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first, it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS, secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system and MS DOS 7 would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in 386 enhanced mode, with a flat 32-bit address space and virtual memory. These features make it possible for Win32 applications to address up to 2 gigabytes of virtual RAM (with another 2 GB reserved for the operating system), and in theory prevented them from inadvertently corrupting the memory space of other Win32 applications. In this respect the functionality of Windows 95 moved closer to Windows NT, although Windows 95/98/Me did not support more than 512 megabytes of physical RAM without obscure system tweaks. Three years after its introduction, Windows 95 was succeeded by Windows 98.",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "IBM continued to market OS/2, producing later versions in OS/2 3.0 and 4.0 (also called Warp). Responding to complaints about OS/2 2.0's high demands on computer hardware, version 3.0 was significantly optimized both for speed and size. Before Windows 95 was released, OS/2 Warp 3.0 was even shipped pre-installed with several large German hardware vendor chains. However, with the release of Windows 95, OS/2 began to lose market share.",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "It is probably impossible to choose one specific reason why OS/2 failed to gain much market share. While OS/2 continued to run Windows 3.1 applications, it lacked support for anything but the Win32s subset of Win32 API (see above). Unlike with Windows 3.1, IBM did not have access to the source code for Windows 95 and was unwilling to commit the time and resources to emulate the moving target of the Win32 API. IBM later introduced OS/2 into the United States v. Microsoft case, blaming unfair marketing tactics on Microsoft's part.",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Microsoft went on to release five different versions of Windows 95:",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "OSR2, OSR2.1, and OSR2.5 were not released to the general public, rather, they were available only to OEMs that would preload the OS onto computers. Some companies sold new hard drives with OSR2 preinstalled (officially justifying this as needed due to the hard drive's capacity).",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The first Microsoft Plus! add-on pack was sold for Windows 95. Microsoft ended extended support for Windows 95 on December 31, 2001.",
"title": "Windows 95"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Microsoft released the successor to NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, on August 24, 1996, one year after the release of Windows 95. It was Microsoft's primary business-oriented operating system until the introduction of Windows 2000. Major new features included the new Explorer shell from Windows 95, scalability and feature improvements to the core architecture, kernel, USER32, COM and MSRPC.",
"title": "Windows NT 4.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Windows NT 4.0 came in five versions:",
"title": "Windows NT 4.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on June 30, 2002, and ended extended support on June 30, 2004, while Windows NT 4.0 Server mainstream support ended on December 31, 2002, and extended support ended on December 31, 2004. Both editions were succeeded by Windows 2000 Professional and the Windows 2000 Server Family, respectively.",
"title": "Windows NT 4.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows NT 4.0 Embedded on June 30, 2003, and ended extended support on July 11, 2006. This edition was succeeded by Windows XP Embedded.",
"title": "Windows NT 4.0"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On June 25, 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98 (code-named Memphis), three years after the release of Windows 95, two years after the release of Windows NT 4.0, and 21 months before the release of Windows 2000. It included new hardware drivers and the FAT32 file system which supports disk partitions that are larger than 2 GB (first introduced in Windows 95 OSR2). USB support in Windows 98 is marketed as a vast improvement over Windows 95. The release continued the controversial inclusion of the Internet Explorer browser with the operating system that started with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1. The action eventually led to the filing of the United States v. Microsoft case, dealing with the question of whether Microsoft was introducing unfair practices into the market in an effort to eliminate competition from other companies such as Netscape.",
"title": "Windows 98"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition, an interim release. One of the more notable new features was the addition of Internet Connection Sharing, a form of network address translation, allowing several machines on a LAN (Local Area Network) to share a single Internet connection. Hardware support through device drivers was increased and this version shipped with Internet Explorer 5. Many minor problems that existed in the first edition were fixed making it, according to many, the most stable release of the Windows 9x family.",
"title": "Windows 98"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Mainstream support for Windows 98 and 98 SE ended on June 30, 2002. Extended support ended on July 11, 2006.",
"title": "Windows 98"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Microsoft released Windows 2000 on February 17, 2000, as the successor to Windows NT 4.0, 17 months after the release of Windows 98. It has the version number Windows NT 5.0, and it was Microsoft's business-oriented operating system starting with the official release on February 17, 2000, until 2001 when it was succeeded by Windows XP. Windows 2000 has had four official service packs. It was successfully deployed both on the server and the workstation markets. Amongst Windows 2000's most significant new features was Active Directory, a near-complete replacement of the NT 4.0 Windows Server domain model, which built on industry-standard technologies like DNS, LDAP, and Kerberos to connect machines to one another. Terminal Services, previously only available as a separate edition of NT 4, was expanded to all server versions. A number of features from Windows 98 were incorporated also, such as an improved Device Manager, Windows Media Player, and a revised DirectX that made it possible for the first time for many modern games to work on the NT kernel. Windows 2000 is also the last NT-kernel Windows operating system to lack product activation.",
"title": "Windows 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "While Windows 2000 upgrades were available for Windows 95 and Windows 98, it was not intended for home users.",
"title": "Windows 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Windows 2000 was available in four editions:",
"title": "Windows 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Microsoft ended support for both Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 on July 13, 2010.",
"title": "Windows 2000"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On September 14, 2000, Microsoft released a successor to Windows 98 called Windows Me, short for \"Millennium Edition\". It was the last DOS-based operating system from Microsoft. Windows Me introduced a new multimedia-editing application called Windows Movie Maker, came standard with Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Media Player 7, and debuted the first version of System Restore – a recovery utility that enables the operating system to revert system files back to a prior date and time. System Restore was a notable feature that would continue to thrive in all later versions of Windows.",
"title": "Windows Me"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Windows Me was conceived as a quick one-year project that served as a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP. Many of the new features were available from the Windows Update site as updates for older Windows versions (System Restore and Windows Movie Maker were exceptions). Windows Me was criticized for stability issues, as well as for lacking real mode DOS support, to the point of being referred to as the \"Mistake Edition\". Windows Me was the last operating system to be based on the Windows 9x (monolithic) kernel and MS-DOS, with its successor Windows XP being based on Microsoft's Windows NT kernel instead.",
"title": "Windows Me"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP (codenamed \"Whistler\"). The merging of the Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/98/Me lines was finally achieved with Windows XP. Windows XP uses the Windows NT 5.1 kernel, marking the entrance of the Windows NT core to the consumer market, to replace the aging Windows 9x branch. The initial release was met with considerable criticism, particularly in the area of security, leading to the release of three major Service Packs. Windows XP SP1 was released in September 2002, SP2 was released in August 2004 and SP3 was released in April 2008. Service Pack 2 provided significant improvements and encouraged widespread adoption of XP among both home and business users. Windows XP was one of Microsoft's longest-running flagship operating systems, beginning with the public release on October 25, 2001, for at least 5 years, and ending on January 30, 2007, when it was succeeded by Windows Vista.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Windows XP is available in a number of versions:",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "On April 25, 2003, Microsoft launched Windows Server 2003, a notable update to Windows 2000 Server encompassing many new security features, a new \"Manage Your Server\" wizard that simplifies configuring a machine for specific roles, and improved performance. It is based on the Windows NT 5.2 kernel. A few services not essential for server environments are disabled by default for stability reasons, most noticeable are the \"Windows Audio\" and \"Themes\" services; users have to enable them manually to get sound or the \"Luna\" look as per Windows XP. The hardware acceleration for display is also turned off by default, users have to turn the acceleration level up themselves if they trust the display card driver.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In December 2005, Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 R2, which is actually Windows Server 2003 with SP1 (Service Pack 1), together with an add-on package. Among the new features are a number of management features for branch offices, file serving, printing and company-wide identity integration.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Windows Server 2003 is available in six editions:",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Windows Server 2003 R2, an update of Windows Server 2003, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. It is distributed on two CDs, with one CD being the Windows Server 2003 SP1 CD. The other CD adds many optionally installable features for Windows Server 2003. The R2 update was released for all x86 and x64 versions, except Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, which was not released for Itanium.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "On April 25, 2005, Microsoft released Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003, x64 Editions in Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is an edition of Windows XP for x86-64 personal computers. It is designed to use the expanded 64-bit memory address space provided by the x86–64 architecture.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is based on the Windows Server 2003 codebase, with the server features removed and client features added. Both Windows Server 2003 x64 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition use identical kernels.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is not to be confused with Windows XP 64-bit Edition, as the latter was designed for Intel Itanium processors. During the initial development phases, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition was named Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In July 2006, Microsoft released a thin-client version of Windows XP Service Pack 2, called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (WinFLP). It is only available to Software Assurance customers. The aim of WinFLP is to give companies a viable upgrade option for older PCs that are running Windows 95, 98, and Me that will be supported with patches and updates for the next several years. Most user applications will typically be run on a remote machine using Terminal Services or Citrix.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "While being visually the same as Windows XP, it has some differences. For example, if the screen has been set to 16 bit colors, the Windows 2000 recycle bin icon and some XP 16-bit icons will show. Paint and some games like Solitaire aren't present too.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Windows Home Server (code-named Q, Quattro) is a server product based on Windows Server 2003, designed for consumer use. The system was announced on January 7, 2007, by Bill Gates. Windows Home Server can be configured and monitored using a console program that can be installed on a client PC. Such features as Media Sharing, local and remote drive backup and file duplication are all listed as features. The release of Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 added support for Windows 7 to Windows Home Server.",
"title": "Windows XP, Server 2003 series and Fundamentals for Legacy PCs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Windows Vista was released on November 30, 2006, to business customers—consumer versions followed on January 30, 2007. Windows Vista intended to have enhanced security by introducing a new restricted user mode called User Account Control, replacing the \"administrator-by-default\" philosophy of Windows XP. Vista was the target of much criticism and negative press, and in general was not well regarded, this was seen as leading to the relatively swift release of Windows 7.",
"title": "Windows Vista and Server 2008"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "One major difference between Vista and earlier versions of Windows, Windows 95 and later, was that the original start button was replaced with the Windows icon in a circle (called the Start Orb). Vista also featured new graphics features, the Windows Aero GUI, new applications (such as Windows Calendar, Windows DVD Maker and some new games including Chess, Mahjong, and Purble Place), Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11, and a large number of underlying architectural changes. Windows Vista had the version number NT 6.0. During its lifetime, Windows Vista had two service packs.",
"title": "Windows Vista and Server 2008"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Windows Vista shipped in six editions:",
"title": "Windows Vista and Server 2008"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "All editions (except Starter edition) were available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The biggest advantage of the 64-bit version was breaking the 4 gigabyte memory barrier, which 32-bit computers cannot fully access.",
"title": "Windows Vista and Server 2008"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Windows Server 2008, released on February 27, 2008, was originally known as Windows Server Codename \"Longhorn\". Windows Server 2008 built on the technological and security advances first introduced with Windows Vista, and was significantly more modular than its predecessor, Windows Server 2003.",
"title": "Windows Vista and Server 2008"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Windows Server 2008 shipped in ten editions:",
"title": "Windows Vista and Server 2008"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and reached general retail availability on October 22, 2009. Since its release, Windows 7 had one service pack.",
"title": "Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Some features of Windows 7 were faster booting, Device Stage, Windows PowerShell, less obtrusive User Account Control, multi-touch, and improved window management. The interface was renewed with a bigger taskbar and some improvements in the searching system and the Start menu. Features included with Windows Vista and not in Windows 7 include the sidebar (although gadgets remain) and several programs that were removed in favor of downloading their Windows Live counterparts. Windows 7 met with positive reviews, which said the OS was faster and easier to use than Windows Vista.",
"title": "Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Windows 7 shipped in six editions:",
"title": "Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In some countries in the European Union, there were other editions that lacked some features such as Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and Internet Explorer—these editions were called names such as \"Windows 7 N.\" Microsoft focused on selling Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional. All editions, except the Starter edition, were available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Unlike the corresponding Vista editions, the Professional and Enterprise editions were supersets of the Home Premium edition.",
"title": "Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "At the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2008, Microsoft also announced Windows Server 2008 R2, as the server variant of Windows 7. Windows Server 2008 R2 shipped in 64-bit versions (x64 and Itanium) only.",
"title": "Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 2010, Microsoft released Windows Thin PC or WinTPC, which was a feature-and size-reduced locked-down version of Windows 7 expressly designed to turn older PCs into thin clients. WinTPC was available for software assurance customers and relied on cloud computing in a business network. Wireless operation is supported since WinTPC has full wireless stack integration, but wireless operation may not be as good as the operation on a wired connection.",
"title": "Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Windows Home Server 2011 code named 'Vail' was released on April 6, 2011. Windows Home Server 2011 is built on the Windows Server 2008 R2 code base and removed the Drive Extender drive pooling technology in the original Windows Home Server release. Windows Home Server 2011 is considered a \"major release\". Its predecessor was built on Windows Server 2003. WHS 2011 only supports x86-64 hardware.",
"title": "Windows Home Server 2011"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Microsoft decided to discontinue Windows Home Server 2011 on July 5, 2012, while including its features into Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Windows Home Server 2011 was supported until April 12, 2016.",
"title": "Windows Home Server 2011"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "On June 1, 2011, Microsoft previewed Windows 8 at both Computex Taipei and the D9: All Things Digital conference in California. The first public preview of Windows Server 2012 was shown by Microsoft at the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Windows 8 Release Preview and Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate were both released on May 31, 2012. Product development on Windows 8 was completed on August 1, 2012, and it was released to manufacturing the same day. Windows Server 2012 went on sale to the public on September 4, 2012. Windows 8 went on sale to the public on October 26, 2012. One edition, Windows RT, runs on some system-on-a-chip devices with mobile 32-bit ARM (ARMv7) processors. Windows 8 features a redesigned user interface, designed to make it easier for touchscreen users to use Windows. The interface introduced an updated Start menu known as the Start screen, and a new full-screen application platform. The desktop interface is also present for running windowed applications, although Windows RT will not run any desktop applications not included in the system. On the Building Windows 8 blog, it was announced that a computer running Windows 8 can boot up much faster than Windows 7. New features also include USB 3.0 support, the Windows Store, the ability to run from USB drives with Windows To Go, and others.",
"title": "Windows 8 and Server 2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 were released on October 17, 2013. Windows 8.1 is available as an update in the Windows Store for Windows 8 users only and also available to download for clean installation. The update adds new options for resizing the live tiles on the Start screen. Windows 8 was given the kernel number NT 6.2, with its successor 8.1 receiving the kernel number 6.3. So far, neither has had any service packs yet, although many consider Windows 8.1 to be a service pack for Windows 8. However, Windows 8.1 received two main updates in 2014. Both versions received some criticism due to the removal of the Start menu and some difficulties to perform tasks and commands.",
"title": "Windows 8 and Server 2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Windows 8 is available in the following editions:",
"title": "Windows 8 and Server 2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Microsoft ended support for Windows 8 on January 12, 2016 and for Windows 8.1 on January 10, 2023.",
"title": "Windows 8 and Server 2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Windows 10 was unveiled on September 30, 2014, as the successor for Windows 8, and was released on July 29, 2015. It was distributed without charge to Windows 7 and 8.1 users for one year after release. A number of new features like Cortana, the Microsoft Edge web browser, the ability to view Windows Store apps as a window instead of fullscreen, the return of the Start menu, virtual desktops, revamped core apps, Continuum, and a unified Settings app were all features debuted in Windows 10. Like its successor, the operating system was announced as a service OS that would receive constant performance and stability updates. Unlike Windows 8, Windows 10 received mostly positive reviews, praising improvements of stability and practicality than its predecessor, however, it received some criticism due to mandatory update installation, privacy concerns and advertising-supported software tactics.",
"title": "Windows 10 and later Server versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Although Microsoft claimed Windows 10 would be the last Windows version, eventually a new major release, Windows 11, was announced in 2021. That made Windows 10 last longer as Microsoft's flagship operating system than any other version of Windows, beginning with the public release on July 29, 2015, for six years, and ending on October 5, 2021, when Windows 11 was released. Windows 10 had received thirteen main updates.",
"title": "Windows 10 and later Server versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Windows Server 2016 is a release of the Microsoft Windows Server operating system that was unveiled on September 30, 2014. Windows Server 2016 was officially released at Microsoft's Ignite Conference, September 26–30, 2016. It is based on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update codebase.",
"title": "Windows 10 and later Server versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Windows Server 2019 is a release of the Microsoft Windows Server operating system that was announced on March 20, 2018. The first Windows Insider preview version was released on the same day. It was released for general availability on October 2, 2018. Windows Server 2019 is based on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update codebase.",
"title": "Windows 10 and later Server versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "On October 6, 2018, distribution of Windows version 1809 (build 17763) was paused while Microsoft investigated an issue with user data being deleted during an in-place upgrade. It affected systems where a user profile folder (e.g. Documents, Music or Pictures) had been moved to another location, but data was left in the original location. As Windows Server 2019 is based on the Windows version 1809 codebase, it too was removed from distribution at the time, but was re-released on November 13, 2018. The software product life cycle for Server 2019 was reset in accordance with the new release date.",
"title": "Windows 10 and later Server versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Windows Server 2022 was released on August 18, 2021. This is the first NT server version which does not share the build number with any of its client version counterpart, although its codename is 21H2, similar to the Windows 10 November 2021 Update.",
"title": "Windows 10 and later Server versions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Windows 11 is the next generation release of Windows NT, and the successor to Windows 10. Codenamed \"Sun Valley\", it was unveiled on June 24, 2021, and was released on October 5, 2021. It is distributed for free to all Windows 10 users with compatible PCs via a Windows Update. Microsoft's PC Health Check App lets you check compatibility for your PC. According to Microsoft, Windows 11 will be released for newer PCs first and then the initial release will continue till mid-2022. Windows 11 revamps the GUI and brings modern code, thus making it much faster than Windows 10. It is also noted that Windows 11 updates are significantly compressed, so the updates are downloaded faster. Also, Windows 11 does not show signs of the 'Installing Updates' screen while installing updates during 'Update and Restart' phase, thus finishing updates within 5 minutes.",
"title": "Windows 11"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The system incorporates a renewed interface called \"Mica\", which includes translucent backgrounds, rounded edges and color combinations. The taskbar and the Start Menu have been redesigned and for the first time it is possible to place the icons in the center of the bar. The MSN widget panel, the Microsoft Store, and the file browser, among other applications, have also been redesigned. However, some features and programs such as Cortana, Internet Explorer and Paint 3D were removed. Apps like 3D Viewer, Paint 3D, Skype and OneNote for Windows 10 can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store. It is expected that it will soon include compatibility with Android applications. It is worth noting the increase in requirements compared to its predecessors, requiring a minimum of 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of free space and a TPM 2.0 security chip, besides losing official compatibility with 7th generation Intel Core processors, 1st generation AMD Ryzen, and earlier. In addition to this, it is the first version of Windows that only supports 64-bit processors.",
"title": "Windows 11"
}
]
| Microsoft Windows was announced by Bill Gates on November 10, 1983. Microsoft introduced Windows as a graphical user interface for MS-DOS, which had been introduced two years earlier. The product line evolved in the 1990s from an operating environment into a fully complete, modern operating system over two lines of development, each with their own separate codebase. The first versions of Windows were graphical shells that ran from MS-DOS. Windows 95, though still being based on MS-DOS, was its own operating system, using a 16-bit DOS-based kernel and a 32-bit user space. Windows 95 also had a significant amount of 16-bit code ported from Windows 3.1. Windows 95 introduced many features that have been part of the product ever since, including the Start menu, the taskbar, and Windows Explorer. In 1997, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4 which included the Windows Desktop Update. It aimed to integrate Internet Explorer and the web into the user interface and also brought many new features into Windows, such as the ability to display JPEG images as the desktop wallpaper and single window navigation in Windows Explorer. In 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98, which also included the Windows Desktop Update and Internet Explorer 4 by default. The inclusion of Internet Explorer 4 and the Desktop Update led to an antitrust case in the United States. Windows 98 included USB support out of the box, and also plug and play, which allows devices to work when plugged in without requiring a system reboot or manual configuration. Windows Me, the last DOS-based version of Windows, was aimed at consumers and released in 2000. It introduced System Restore, Help and Support Center, updated versions of the Disk Defragmenter and other system tools. In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, the first version of the newly developed Windows NT operating system, followed by Windows NT 3.5 in 1994, and Windows NT 3.51 in 1995. "NT" is an initialism for "New Technology". Unlike the Windows 9x series of operating systems, it is a fully 32-bit operating system. NT 3.1 introduced NTFS, a file system designed to replace the older File Allocation Table (FAT) which was used by DOS and the DOS-based Windows operating systems. In 1996, Windows NT 4.0 was released, which includes a fully 32-bit version of Windows Explorer written specifically for it, making the operating system work like Windows 95. Windows NT was originally designed to be used on high-end systems and servers, but with the release of Windows 2000, many consumer-oriented features from Windows 95 and Windows 98 were included, such as the Windows Desktop Update, Internet Explorer 5, USB support and Windows Media Player. These consumer-oriented features were further extended in Windows XP in 2001, which included a new visual style called Luna, a more user-friendly interface, updated versions of Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 6 by default, and extended features from Windows Me, such as the Help and Support Center and System Restore. Windows Vista, which was released in 2007, focused on securing the Windows operating system against computer viruses and other malicious software by introducing features such as User Account Control. New features include Windows Aero, updated versions of the standard games, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Mail to replace Outlook Express. Despite this, Windows Vista was critically panned for its poor performance on older hardware and its at-the-time high system requirements. Windows 7 followed in 2009 nearly three years after its launch, and despite it technically having higher system requirements, reviewers noted that it ran better than Windows Vista. Windows 7 removed many applications, such as Windows Movie Maker, Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Mail, instead requiring users to download separate Windows Live Essentials to gain some of those features and other online services. Windows 8, which was released in 2012, introduced many controversial changes, such as the replacement of the Start menu with the Start Screen, the removal of the Aero interface in favor of a flat, colored interface as well as the introduction of "Metro" apps, and the Charms Bar user interface element, all of which received considerable criticism from reviewers. Windows 8.1, a free upgrade to Windows 8, was released in 2013. The following version of Windows, Windows 10, which was released in 2015, reintroduced the Start menu and added the ability to run Universal Windows Platform apps in a window instead of always in full screen. Windows 10 was generally well-received, with many reviewers stating that Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been. The latest version of Windows, Windows 11, was released on October 5, 2021. Windows 11 incorporates a redesigned user interface, including a new Start menu, a visual style featuring rounded corners, and a new layout for the Microsoft Store, and also included Microsoft Edge by default. | 2001-11-19T04:47:18Z | 2023-12-18T19:05:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_version_history |
13,696 | Helsinki | Helsinki (/ˈhɛlsɪŋki/ HEL-sink-ee or /hɛlˈsɪŋki/ hel-SINK-ee; Finnish: [ˈhelsiŋki] ; Swedish: Helsingfors, Finland Swedish: [helsiŋˈforːs] ) is the capital, largest and most populous city in Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the Uusimaa region in southern Finland and has a population of 673,011. The city's urban area has a population of 1,268,296, making it by far the most populous urban area in Finland and the country's most important centre for politics, education, finance, culture and research. Helsinki is located 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 400 km (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 km (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has close historical links with these three cities.
Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen – and surrounding commuter towns, including the neighbouring municipality of Sipoo to the east – Helsinki forms the Greater Helsinki Metropolitan Area. It has a population of over 1.5 million. Often considered Finland's only metropolis, it is the world's northernmost metropolitan area with over one million inhabitants and the northernmost capital of an EU member state. Helsinki is the third largest municipality in the Nordic countries after Stockholm and Oslo, and its urban area is the second largest in the Nordic countries after Stockholm. The official languages are Finnish and Swedish. The city is served by Helsinki Airport, located in the neighbouring city of Vantaa, with frequent flights to many destinations in Europe, North America and Asia.
Helsinki hosted the 1952 Summer Olympics, the first CSCE/OSCE Summit in 1975, the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 and it was the 2012 World Design Capital.
Helsinki has one of the highest standards of urban living in the world. In 2011, the British magazine Monocle ranked Helsinki as the world's most liveable city in its liveable cities index. In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2016 liveability survey, Helsinki ranked ninth out of 140 cities. In July 2021, the American magazine Time named Helsinki as one of the world's greatest places in 2021, as a city that "can grow into a burgeoning cultural nest in the future" and that is already known as an environmental pioneer in the world. In an international Cities of Choice survey conducted in 2021 by the Boston Consulting Group and the BCG Henderson Institute, Helsinki was ranked the third best city in the world to live in, with London and New York City coming in first and second. In the Condé Nast Traveler magazine's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards, Helsinki was ranked 4th as the friendliest cities in Europe. Helsinki, along with Rovaniemi in Lapland, is also one of Finland's most important tourist cities. Due to the large number of sea passengers per year, Helsinki is classified as a major port city.
According to a theory put forward in the 1630s, at the time of Swedish colonisation of the Finnish coast, colonists from Hälsingland in central Sweden arrived at what is now the Vantaa River and called it Helsingå ('Helsinge River'), giving rise to the names of the village and church of Helsinge in the 1300s. This theory is questionable, as dialect research suggests that the settlers came from Uppland and the surrounding areas. Others have suggested that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, an archaic form of the word hals ('neck'), which refers to the narrowest part of a river, the rapids. Other Scandinavian towns in similar geographical locations were given similar names at the time, such as Helsingør in Denmark and Helsingborg in Sweden.
When a town was founded in the village of Forsby (later Koskela) in 1548, it was called Helsinge fors, 'Helsinge rapids'. The name refers to the Vanhankaupunginkoski [fi] rapids at the mouth of the river. The town was commonly known as Helsinge or Helsing, from which the modern Finnish name is derived.
Official Finnish government documents and Finnish language newspapers have used the name Helsinki since 1819, when the Senate of Finland moved to the city from Turku, the former capital of Finland. Decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish. During the Grand Duchy of Finland times which was at that time an autonomic state ruled by the Russian Empire, Helsinki was known in Russian as Gel'singfors (Гельсингфорс) from Swedish "Helsingfors".
In Helsinki slang, the city is called Stadi (from the Swedish word stad, meaning 'city'). Abbreviated form Hesa is equally common, but its use is associated with people of rural origin ("junantuomat", lit. "brought by a train") and frowned upon by locals. Helsset is the Northern Sami name for Helsinki.
After the end of the Ice Age and the retreat of the ice sheet, the first settlers arrived in the Helsinki area around 5000 BC. Their presence has been documented by archaeologists in Vantaa, Pitäjänmäki and Kaarela. Permanent settlements did not appear until the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, during the Iron Age, when the area was inhabited by the Tavastians. They used the area for fishing and hunting, but due to the lack of archaeological finds it is difficult to say how extensive their settlements were. Pollen analysis has shown that there were agricultural settlements in the area in the 10th century, and surviving historical records from the 14th century describe Tavastian settlements in the area.
The early settlements were raided by Vikings and later colonised by Christians from Sweden. They came mainly from the Swedish coastal regions of Norrland and Hälsingland, and their migration intensified around 1100. Swedes permanently colonised the Helsinki region's coastline in the late 13th century after the successful Second Crusade to Finland, which led to the defeat of the Tavastians.
Written chronicles from 1417 mention the village of Koskela near the rapids at the mouth of the River Vantaa, where Helsinki was to be founded.
Helsinki was founded by King Gustav I of Sweden on 12 June 1550 as a trading town called Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval (now Tallinn) on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. In order to populate the newly founded town at the mouth of the Vantaa River, the king ordered the bourgeoisie of Porvoo, Ekenäs, Rauma and Ulvila to move to the town. The shallowness of the bay did not allow for the construction of a harbour, and the king allowed the settlers to leave the unfortunate location. In 1640, Count Per Brahe the Younger, together with some descendants of the original settlers, moved the centre of the town to the Vironniemi peninsula by the sea, today's Kruununhaka district, where the Senate Square and Helsinki Cathedral are located today.
During the second half of the 17th century, Helsinki, as a wooden town, suffered from regular fires, and by the beginning of the 18th century the population had fallen below 1,700. For a long time, Helsinki was mainly a small administrative town for the governors of Nyland and Tavastehus County, but its importance began to grow when a more solid naval defence began to be built in front of the town in the 18th century. Little came of the plans, however, as Helsinki remained a small town plagued by poverty, wars and disease. The plague of 1710 killed most of Helsinki's population. After the Russians conquered Helsinki in May 1713 during the Great Northern War, the retreating Swedish administration set fire to parts of the town. Despite this, the town's population grew to 3,000 by the beginning of the 19th century. The construction of the naval fortress of Sveaborg (Viapori in Finnish, now also called Suomenlinna) in the 18th century helped improve Helsinki's status. However, it wasn't until Russia defeated Sweden in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that the town began to develop into a substantial city. The Russians besieged the Sveaborg fortress during the war, and about a quarter of the town was destroyed in a fire in 1808.
Emperor Alexander I of Russia moved the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki on 8 April 1812 to reduce Swedish influence in Finland and to bring the capital closer to St Petersburg. Following the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the Royal Academy of Turku, the only university in the country at the time, was also moved to Helsinki and eventually became the modern University of Helsinki. The move consolidated the city's new role and helped set it on a path of continuous growth. This transformation is most evident in the city centre, which was rebuilt in the neoclassical style to resemble Saint Petersburg, largely according to a plan by the German-born architect C. L. Engel. As elsewhere, technological advances such as railways and industrialisation were key factors in the city's growth.
By the 1910s, the population of Helsinki was already over 100,000, and despite the tumultuous nature of Finnish history in the first half of the 20th century, Helsinki continued to grow steadily. This included the Finnish Civil War and the Winter War, both of which left their mark on the city. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were roughly equal numbers of Finnish and Swedish speakers in Helsinki; the majority of workers were Finnish-speaking. The local Helsinki slang (or stadin slangi) developed among Finnish children and young people from the 1890s as a mixed Finnish-Swedish language, with influences from German and Russian, and from the 1950s the slang began to become more Finnish. A landmark event was the 1952 Olympic Games, which were held in Helsinki. Finland's rapid urbanisation in the 1970s, which occurred late compared to the rest of Europe, tripled the population of the metropolitan area, and the Helsinki Metro subway system was built. Helsinki's relatively low population density and peculiar structure have often been attributed to its late growth.
Known as the "Daughter of the Baltic" or the "Pearl of the Baltic", Helsinki is located at the tip of a peninsula and on 315 islands. The city centre is located on a southern peninsula, Helsinginniemi ("Cape of Helsinki"), which is rarely referred to by its actual name, Vironniemi ("Cape of Estonia"). Population density is comparatively high in certain parts of downtown Helsinki, reaching 16,494 inhabitants per square kilometre (42,720/sq mi) in the district of Kallio, but overall Helsinki's population density of 3,113 per square kilometre (8,060/sq mi) ranks the city as sparsely populated compared to other European capitals. Outside the city centre, much of Helsinki consists of post-war suburbs separated by patches of forest. A narrow, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) long Helsinki Central Park, which stretches from the city centre to Helsinki's northern border, is an important recreational area for residents. The City of Helsinki has about 11,000 boat moorings and over 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres; 54 square miles) of marine fishing waters adjacent to the capital region. About 60 species of fish are found in this area, and recreational fishing is popular.
Helsinki's main islands include Seurasaari, Lauttasaari and Korkeasaari – the latter is home to Finland's largest zoo, Korkeasaari Zoo. The former military islands of Vallisaari and Isosaari are now open to the public, but Santahamina is still in military use. The most historic and remarkable island is the fortress of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg). The island of Pihlajasaari is a popular summer resort for gays and naturists, comparable to Fire Island in New York City.
There are 60 nature reserves in Helsinki with a total area of 95,480 acres (38,640 ha). Of the total area, 48,190 acres (19,500 ha) are water areas and 47,290 acres (19,140 ha) are land areas. The city also has seven nature reserves in Espoo, Sipoo, Hanko and Ingå. The largest nature reserve is the Vanhankaupunginselkä, with an area of 30,600 acres (12,400 ha). The city's first nature reserve, Tiiraluoto of Lauttasaari, was established in 1948.
Helsinki's official plant is the Norway maple and its official animal is the red squirrel.
The Helsinki metropolitan area, also known as the Capital Region (Finnish: Pääkaupunkiseutu, Swedish: Huvudstadsregionen) comprises four municipalities: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. The Helsinki urban area is considered to be the only metropolis in Finland. It has a population of over 1.1 million, and is the most densely populated area of Finland. The Capital Region spreads over a land area of 770 square kilometres (300 sq mi) and has a population density of 1,418 inhabitants per square kilometre (3,670/sq mi). With over 20 percent of the country's population in just 0.2 percent of its surface area, the area's housing density is high by Finnish standards.
The Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Greater Helsinki) consists of the cities of Helsinki Capital Region and ten surrounding municipalities: Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Tuusula, Pornainen, Mäntsälä and Vihti. The Metropolitan Area covers 3,697 square kilometres (1,427 sq mi) and has a population of over 1.4 million, or about a fourth of the total population of Finland. The metropolitan area has a high concentration of employment: approximately 750,000 jobs. Despite the intensity of land use, the region also has large recreational areas and green spaces. The Greater Helsinki area is the world's northernmost urban area with a population of over one million people, and the northernmost EU capital city.
The Helsinki urban area is an officially recognized urban area in Finland, defined by its population density. The area stretches throughout 11 municipalities, and is the largest such area in Finland, with a land area of 669.31 square kilometres (258.42 sq mi) and approximately 1.2 million inhabitants.
Helsinki has a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb). Owing to the mitigating influence of the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic Current (see also Extratropical cyclone), temperatures during the winter are higher than the northern location might suggest, with the average in January and February around −4 °C (25 °F).
Winters in Helsinki are notably warmer than in the north of Finland, and the snow season is much shorter in the capital, due to it being in extreme Southern Finland and the urban heat island effect. Temperatures below −20 °C (−4 °F) occur a few times a year at most. However, because of the latitude, days last 5 hours and 48 minutes around the winter solstice with very low sun (at noon, the sun is a little bit over 6 degrees in the sky), and the cloudy weather at this time of year exacerbates darkness. Conversely, Helsinki enjoys long daylight during the summer; during the summer solstice, days last 18 hours and 57 minutes.
The average maximum temperature from June to August is around 19 to 22 °C (66 to 72 °F). Due to the marine effect, especially during hot summer days, daily temperatures are a little cooler and night temperatures higher than further inland. The highest temperature ever recorded in the city was 33.2 °C (91.8 °F) on 28 July 2019 at Kaisaniemi weather station, breaking the previous record of 33.1 °C (91.6 °F) that was observed in July 1945 at Ilmala weather station. The lowest temperature ever recorded in the city was −34.3 °C (−29.7 °F) on 10 January 1987, although an unofficial low of −35 °C (−31 °F) was recorded in December 1876. Helsinki Airport (in Vantaa, 17 kilometres (11 mi) north of the Helsinki city centre) recorded a temperature of 33.7 °C (92.7 °F) on 29 July 2010 and a low of −35.9 °C (−33 °F) on 9 January 1987. Precipitation is received from frontal passages and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are most common in the summer.
Helsinki is divided into three major areas: Helsinki Downtown (Finnish: Helsingin kantakaupunki, Swedish: Helsingfors innerstad), North Helsinki (Finnish: Pohjois-Helsinki, Swedish: Norra Helsingfors) and East Helsinki (Finnish: Itä-Helsinki, Swedish: Östra Helsingfors). Of these, Helsinki Downtown means the undefined core area of capital, as opposed to suburbs. The designations business center and city center usually refer to Kluuvi, Kamppi and Punavuori. Other subdivisional centers outside the downtown area include Malmi (Swedish: Malm), located in the northeastern part of city, and Itäkeskus (Swedish: Östra centrum), in the eastern part of city.
Carl Ludvig Engel, appointed to plan a new city centre on his own, designed several neoclassical buildings in Helsinki. The focal point of Engel's city plan was the Senate Square. It is surrounded by the Government Palace (to the east), the main building of Helsinki University (to the west), and (to the north) the large Helsinki Cathedral, which was finished in 1852, twelve years after Engel's death. Helsinki's epithet, "The White City of the North", derives from this construction era. Most of Helsinki's older buildings were built after the 1808 fire; before that time, the oldest surviving building in the center of Helsinki is the Sederholm House [fr] (1757) at the intersection of Senate Square and the Katariinankatu street. Suomenlinna also has buildings completed in the 18th century, including the Kuninkaanportti on the Kustaanmiekka Island [fr] (1753–1754). The oldest church in Helsinki is the Old Church (1826) designed by Engel.
Helsinki is also home to numerous Art Nouveau-influenced (Jugend in Finnish) buildings belonging to the Kansallisromantiikka (romantic nationalism) trend, designed in the early 20th century and strongly influenced by Kalevala, which was a common theme of the era. Helsinki's Art Nouveau style is also featured in central residential districts, such as Katajanokka and Ullanlinna. An important architect of the Finnish Art Nouveau style was Eliel Saarinen, whose architectural masterpiece was the Helsinki Central Station. Opposite the Bank of Finland building is the Renaissance Revivalish the House of the Estates (1891).
The only visible public buildings of the Gothic Revival architecture in Helsinki are St. John's Church (1891) in Ullanlinna, which is the largest stone church in Finland, and its twin towers rise to 74 meters and have 2,600 seats. Other examples of neo-Gothic include the House of Nobility in Kruununhaka and the Catholic St. Henry's Cathedral.
In addition to other cities in Northern Europe that were not under the Soviet Union, such as Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki's neoclassical buildings gained also popularity as a backdrop for scenes intended to depict the Soviet Union in numerous Hollywood movies during the Cold War era, when filming within the actual USSR was not possible. Some of them, including The Kremlin Letter (1970), Reds (1981), and Gorky Park (1983). was possible due to such Russian cities as Leningrad and Moscow also having similar neoclassical architecture. At the same time due to Cold War and Finnish relations with the USSR the government secretly instructed Finnish officials not to extend assistance to such film projects. There are some films where Helsinki has been represented on its own in films, most notably the 1967 British-American espionage thriller Billion Dollar Brain, starring Michael Caine. The city has large amounts of underground areas such as shelters and tunnels, many used daily as swimming pool, church, water management, entertainment etc.
Helsinki also features several buildings by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, recognized as one of the pioneers of architectural functionalism. However, some of his works, such as the headquarters of the paper company Stora Enso and the concert venue Finlandia Hall, have been subject to divided opinions from the citizens.
Functionalist buildings in Helsinki by other architects include the Olympic Stadium, the Tennis Palace, the Rowing Stadium, the Swimming Stadium, the Velodrome, the Glass Palace, the Töölö Sports Hall, and Helsinki-Malmi Airport. The sports venues were built to serve the 1940 Helsinki Olympic Games; the games were initially cancelled due to the Second World War, but the venues fulfilled their purpose in the 1952 Olympic Games. Many of them are listed by DoCoMoMo as significant examples of modern architecture. The Olympic Stadium and Helsinki-Malmi Airport are also catalogued by the Finnish Heritage Agency as cultural-historical environments of national significance.
When Finland became heavily urbanized in the 1960s and 1970s, the district of Pihlajamäki, for example, was built in Helsinki for new residents, where for the first time in Finland, precast concrete was used on a large scale. Pikku Huopalahti, built in the 1980s and 1990s, has tried to get rid of a one-size-fits-all grid pattern, which means that its look is very organic and its streets are not repeated in the same way. Itäkeskus in Eastern Helsinki was the first regional center in the 1980s. Efforts have also been made to protect Helsinki in the late 20th century, and many old buildings have been renovated. Modern architecture is represented, for example, by the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, which consists of two straight and curved-walled parts, though this style strongly divided the opinions from the citizens. Next to Kiasma is the glass-walled Sanomatalo (1999).
The start of the 21st century marked the beginning of highrise construction in Helsinki, when the city decided to allow the construction of skyscrapers; prior to this, Hotel Torni (69.5 m (228 ft)), built in 1931, has generally been called Finland's first skyscraper, and was at time the tallest building in Finland until 1976. As of April 2017 there are no skyscrapers taller than 100 meters in the Helsinki area, but there are several projects under construction or planning, mainly in Pasila and Kalasatama. An international architecture competition for at least 10 high-rises to be built in Pasila is being held. Construction of the towers will start in 2023. In Kalasatama, the first 35-story (130 m (430 ft); called Majakka) and 32-story (122 m (400 ft); called Loisto [fi]) residential towers are already completed. Later they will be joined by a 37-story, two 32-story, 31-story, and 27-story residential buildings. In the Kalasatama area, there will be about 15 high-rises within 10 years. Even higher skyscrapers under the name Trigoni are planned for the Central Pasila area near the Mall of Tripla shopping centre; the highest of which is to become about 200 meters high, and it can be seen even in good weather all the way to the Estonian coast.
Well-known statues and monuments strongly embedded in the cityscape of Helsinki include the Keisarinnankivi ("Stone of the Empress", 1835), the statue of Russian Emperor Alexander II (1894), the fountain sculpture Havis Amanda (1908), the Paavo Nurmi statue (1925), the Three Smiths Statue (1932), the Aleksis Kivi Memorial (1939), the Eino Leino Statue (1953), the Equestrian statue of Marshal Mannerheim (1960) and the Sibelius Monument (1967).
As is the case with all Finnish municipalities, Helsinki's city council is the main decision-making organ in local politics, dealing with issues such as urban planning, schools, health care, and public transport. The council is chosen in the nationally held municipal elections, which are held every four years.
Helsinki's city council consists of eighty-five members. Following the most recent municipal elections in 2017, the three largest parties are the National Coalition Party (25), the Green League (21), and the Social Democratic Party (12).
The Mayor of Helsinki is Juhana Vartiainen.
The city of Helsinki has 673,011 inhabitants, making it the most populous municipality in Finland and the third in the Nordics. The Greater Helsinki region is the largest urbanised area in Finland with 1,576,438 inhabitants. The city of Helsinki is home to 12% of Finland's population. 18.6% of the population has a foreign background, which is twice above the national average. However, it is lower than in the major Finnish cities of Espoo or Vantaa.
At 53 percent of the population, women form a greater proportion of Helsinki residents than the national average of 51 percent. Helsinki's population density of 2,739.36 people per square kilometre makes Helsinki the most densely-populated city in Finland. The life expectancy for men and women is slightly below the national averages: 75.1 years for men as compared to 75.7 years, 81.7 years for women as compared to 82.5 years.
Helsinki has experienced strong growth since the 1810s, when it replaced Turku as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which later became the sovereign Republic of Finland. The city continued its growth from that time on, with an exception during the Finnish Civil War. From the end of World War II up until the 1970s there was a massive exodus of people from the countryside to the cities of Finland, in particular Helsinki. Between 1944 and 1969 the population of the city nearly doubled from 275,000 to 525,600.
In the 1960s, the population growth of Helsinki began to decrease, mainly due to a lack of housing. Some residents began to move to the neighbouring cities of Espoo and Vantaa, resulting in increased population growth in both municipalities. Espoo's population increased ninefold in sixty years, from 22,874 people in 1950 to 244,353 in 2009. Vantaa saw an even more dramatic change in the same time span: from 14,976 in 1950 to 197,663 in 2009, a thirteenfold increase. These population changes prompted the municipalities of Greater Helsinki into more intense cooperation in areas such as public transportation – resulting in the foundation of HSL – and waste management. The increasing scarcity of housing and the higher costs of living in the capital region have pushed many daily commuters to find housing in formerly rural areas, and even further, to cities such as Lohja, Hämeenlinna, Lahti, and Porvoo.
Population by mother tongue (2022)
The city of Helsinki is officially bilingual, with both Finnish and Swedish as official languages. In 2022, the majority of the population, 76.1%, spoke Finnish as their mother tongue. There were 36,748 Swedish speakers, or 5.5% of the population. The number of people who speak Sámi, Finland's third official language, is only 63 inhabitants. In Helsinki, 18.3% of the population speak a mother tongue other than Finnish or Swedish. As English and Swedish are compulsory school subjects, functional bilingualism or trilingualism acquired through language studies is not uncommon.
Although few people speak the Sámi languages as their mother tongue, there are 527 people of Sami origin. There are 93 Tatar speakers in Helsinki, almost half of the total number of Tatar speakers in Finland.
Helsinki slang is a regional dialect of the city. Historically, it was a combination of Finnish and Swedish, with influences from Russian and German. Nowadays it has a strong English influence. Today, however, Finnish is the common language of communication between Finnish speakers, Swedish speakers and speakers of other languages (New Finns) in everyday public life between strangers.
The city of Helsinki and the national authorities have specifically targeted Swedish speakers. Knowledge of Finnish is essential in business and is usually a basic requirement in the labour market. Swedish speakers are most concentrated in the southern parts of the city. The district with the most Swedish speakers is Ullanlinna/Ulrikasborg with 2,098 (19.6%), while Byholmen is the only district where Swedish is the majority language (at 82.8%). The number of Swedish speakers decreased every year until 2008, and has increased every year since then. Since 2007, the number of Swedish speakers has increased by 2,351. In 1890, Finnish speakers overtook Swedish speakers to become the majority of the city's population. At that time, the population of Helsinki was 61,530.
The number of people with a foreign mother tongue is expected to reach 196,500 in 2035, representing 26% of the population. 114,000 will speak non-European languages, or 15% of the population. Today, at least 160 different languages are spoken in Helsinki. The most common foreign languages are Russian (3.1%), Somali (2.0%), Estonian (1.5%) and Arabic (1.5%).
In 2022, there were 123,676 people with an immigrant background living in Helsinki, or 18.6% of the population. There were 108,919 residents who were born abroad, or 16.4% of the population. The number of foreign citizens in Helsinki was 73,076.
The relative share of immigrants in Helsinki's population is twice the national average, and the city's new residents are increasingly of foreign origin. This will increase the proportion of foreign residents in the coming years. As a crossroads of many international ports and Finland's largest airport, Helsinki is the global gateway to and from Finland.
Most foreign-born citizens come from the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Somalia, Iraq, and Russia.
In 2022, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the largest religious group with 47.6% of the Helsinki population. Other religious groups made up 4.5% of the population. 47.9% of the population had no religious affiliation.
The most important churches in Helsinki are Helsinki Cathedral (1852), Uspenski Cathedral (1868), St. John's Church (1891), Kallio Church (1912) and Temppeliaukio Church (1969).
There are 21 Lutheran congregations in Helsinki, 18 of which are Finnish-speaking and 3 are Swedish-speaking. These form Helsinki's congregationgroup. Outside that there is Finland's German congregation with 3,000 members and Rikssvenska Olaus Petri-församlingen for Swedish-citizens with 1,000 members.
The largest Orthodox congregation is the Orthodox Church of Helsinki. It has 20,000 members. Its main church is the Uspenski Cathedral. The two largest Catholic congregations are the Cathedral of Saint Henry, with 4,552 members, established in 1860 and St Mary's Catholic Parish, with 4,107 members, established in 1954.
There are around 30 mosques in the Helsinki region. Many linguistic and ethnic groups such as Bangladeshis, Kosovars, Kurds and Bosniaks have established their own mosques. The largest congregation in both Helsinki and Finland is the Helsinki Islamic Center [fi], established in 1995. It has over 2,800 members as of 2017, and it received €24,131 in government assistance.
In 2015, imam Anas Hajar [fi] estimated that on big celebrations around 10,000 Muslims visit mosques. In 2004, it was estimated that there were 8,000 Muslims in Helsinki, 1.5% of the population at the time. The number of people in Helsinki with a background from Muslim majority countries was nearly 41,000 as of 2021, representing over 6% of the population.
The main synagogue of Helsinki is the Helsinki Synagogue from 1906, located in Kamppi. It has over 1,200 members, out of the 1,800 Jews in Finland, and it is the older of the two buildings in Finland originally built as a synagogue, followed by the Turku Synagogue in 1912. The congregation includes a synagogue, Jewish kindergarten, school, library, Jewish meat shop, two Jewish cemeteries and an retirement home. Many Jewish organizations and societies are based there, and the synagogue publishes the main Jewish magazine in Finland, HaKehila [fi].
Greater Helsinki generates approximately one third of Finland's GDP. GDP per capita is roughly 1.3 times the national average. Helsinki profits on serviced-related IT and public sectors. Having moved from heavy industrial works, shipping companies also employ a substantial number of people.
The metropolitan area's gross value added per capita is 200% of the mean of 27 European metropolitan areas, equalling those of Stockholm and Paris. The gross value added annual growth has been around 4%.
83 of the 100 largest Finnish companies have their headquarters in Greater Helsinki. Two-thirds of the 200 highest-paid Finnish executives live in Greater Helsinki and 42% in Helsinki. The average income of the top 50 earners was 1.65 million euro.
The tap water is of excellent quality and it is supplied by the 120 km (75 mi) Päijänne Water Tunnel, one of the world's longest continuous rock tunnels.
Helsinki has 190 comprehensive schools, 41 upper secondary schools, and 15 vocational institutes. Half of the 41 upper secondary schools are private or state-owned, the other half municipal. There are two major research universities in Helsinki, the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, and a number of other higher level institutions and polytechnics which focus on higher-level professional education.
Helsinki is one of the co-location centres of the Knowledge and Innovation Community (Future information and communication society) of The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).
The biggest historical museum in Helsinki is the National Museum of Finland, which displays a vast collection from prehistoric times to the 21st century. The museum building itself, a national romantic-style neomedieval castle, is a tourist attraction. Another major historical museum is the Helsinki City Museum, which introduces visitors to Helsinki's 500-year history. The University of Helsinki also has many significant museums, including the Helsinki University Museum "Arppeanum" and the Finnish Museum of Natural History.
The Finnish National Gallery consists of three museums: Ateneum Art Museum for classical Finnish art, Sinebrychoff Art Museum for classical European art, and Kiasma Art Museum for modern art, in a building by architect Steven Holl. The old Ateneum, a neo-Renaissance palace from the 19th century, is one of the city's major historical buildings. All three museum buildings are state-owned through Senate Properties.
The city of Helsinki hosts its own art collection in the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), primarily located in its Tennispalatsi gallery. Around 200 pieces of public art lie outside. The art is all city property.
Helsinki Art Museum will in 2020 launch the Helsinki Biennial, which will bring art to maritime Helsinki – in its first year to the island of Vallisaari.
The Design Museum is devoted to the exhibition of both Finnish and foreign design, including industrial design, fashion, and graphic design. Other museums in Helsinki include the Military Museum of Finland, Didrichsen Art Museum, Amos Rex Art Museum, and the Tram Museum [fi].
Helsinki has three major theatres: The Finnish National Theatre, the Helsinki City Theatre, and the Swedish Theatre (Svenska Teatern). Other notable theatres in the city include the Alexander Theatre, Q-teatteri [fi], Savoy Theatre [fi], KOM-theatre [fi], and Teatteri Jurkka [fi].
Helsinki is home to two full-size symphony orchestras, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, both of which perform at the Helsinki Music Centre concert hall. Acclaimed contemporary composers Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Einojuhani Rautavaara, among others, were born and raised in Helsinki, and studied at the Sibelius Academy. The Finnish National Opera, the only full-time, professional opera company in Finland, is located in Helsinki. The opera singer Martti Wallén, one of the company's long-time soloists, was born and raised in Helsinki, as was mezzo-soprano Monica Groop.
Many widely renowned and acclaimed bands have originated in Helsinki, including Nightwish, Children of Bodom, Hanoi Rocks, HIM, Stratovarius, The 69 Eyes, Finntroll, Ensiferum, Wintersun, The Rasmus, Poets of the Fall, and Apocalyptica. The most significant of the metal music events in Helsinki is the Tuska Open Air Metal Festival in Suvilahti, Sörnäinen.
The city's main musical venues are the Finnish National Opera, the Finlandia concert hall, and the Helsinki Music Centre. The Music Centre also houses a part of the Sibelius Academy. Bigger concerts and events are usually held at one of the city's two big ice hockey arenas: the Helsinki Halli or the Helsinki Ice Hall. Helsinki has Finland's largest fairgrounds, the Messukeskus Helsinki, which is attended by more than a million visitors a year.
Helsinki Arena hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, the first Eurovision Song Contest arranged in Finland, following Lordi's win in 2006.
The Helsinki Day (Helsinki-päivä) will be celebrated on every 12 June, with numerous entertainment events culminating in an open-air concert. Also, the Helsinki Festival is an annual arts and culture festival, which takes place every August (including the Night of the Arts).
At the Senate Square in fall 2010, Finland's largest open-air art exhibition to date took place: About 1.4 million people saw the international exhibition of United Buddy Bears.
Helsinki was the 2012 World Design Capital, in recognition of the use of design as an effective tool for social, cultural, and economic development in the city. In choosing Helsinki, the World Design Capital selection jury highlighted Helsinki's use of 'Embedded Design', which has tied design in the city to innovation, "creating global brands, such as Nokia, Kone, and Marimekko, popular events, like the annual Helsinki Design Week [fi], outstanding education and research institutions, such as the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, and exemplary architects and designers such as Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto".
Helsinki hosts many film festivals. Most of them are small venues, while some have generated interest internationally. The most prolific of these is the Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy film festival, also known as Helsinki International Film Festival, which features films on a wide spectrum. Night Visions, on the other hand, focuses on genre cinema, screening horror, fantasy, and science fiction films in very popular movie marathons that last the entire night. Another popular film festival is DocPoint [fi], a festival that focuses solely on documentary cinema.
Today, there are around 200 newspapers, 320 popular magazines, 2,100 professional magazines, 67 commercial radio stations, three digital radio channels, and one nationwide and five national public service radio channels.
Sanoma publishes Finland's journal of record, Helsingin Sanomat, the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, the commerce-oriented Taloussanomat, and the television channel Nelonen. Another Helsinki-based media house, Alma Media, publishes over thirty magazines, including the tabloid Iltalehti, and the commerce-oriented Kauppalehti.
Finland's national public-broadcasting institution Yle operates five television channels and thirteen radio channels in both national languages. Yle is headquartered in the neighbourhood of Pasila. All TV channels are broadcast digitally, both terrestrially and on cable. Yle's studio area houses the 146-metre (479 ft) high television and radio tower, Yle Transmission Tower (Pasilan linkkitorni), which is the third tallest structure in Helsinki and one of Helsinki's most famous landmarks, from the top of which, in good weather, can be seen even as far as Tallinn over the Gulf of Finland.
The commercial television channel MTV3 and commercial radio channel Radio Nova are owned by Nordic Broadcasting (Bonnier and Proventus).
Helsinki was already known in the 18th century for its abundant number of inns and pubs, where both locals and those who landed in the harbor were offered plenty of alcoholic beverages. At that time, taxes on the sale of alcohol were a very significant source of income for Helsinki, and one of the most important sellers of alcohol was Johan Sederholm [fr] (1722–1805), a trade councilor who attracted rural merchants with alcohol and made good deals. Gradually, a new kind of beverage culture began to grow in the next century, and as early as 1852, the first café of Finland, Café Ekberg [fi], was established by confectioner Fredrik Ekberg [fi] (1825–1891) after attending his studies in St. Petersburg. Ekberg has also been said to have created Finland's "national pastry tradition". At first, café culture was only a prerogative of sophisticated elite, when it recently began to take shape as the right of every man. Today, there are several hundred cafés in Helsinki, the most notable of which is Cafe Regatta, which is very popular with foreign tourists.
As an important port city on the Baltic Sea, Helsinki has long been known for its fish food, and it has recently started to become one of the leading fish food capitals in Northern Europe. Helsinki's Market Square is especially known for its traditional herring market, which has been organized since 1743. Salmon is also a typical Helsinki fish dish, both fried and souped. The most prestigious restaurants specializing in seafood include Restaurant Fisken på Disken.
Helsinki is currently experiencing a period of booming food culture, and it has developed into an internationally acclaimed food city, receiving recognition for promoting food culture. The local food culture is made up of cuisines from around the world and the fusions they form. Various Asian restaurants such as Chinese, Thai, Indian and Nepalese are particularly prominent in Helsinki's cityscape, but over the past couple of years, restaurants serving Vietnamese food have been very popular. Sushi restaurant buffets have also made their way into the city's restaurant offerings in one fell swoop. The third prominent trend is restaurants serving pure local food, many of which specialize primarily in serving pure Nordic flavors. In past years Middle Eastern food culture rose in its popularity. Especially Helsinki's eastern part offers many different options for Middle Eastern cuisine lovers. There is also some touches of Russian cuisine, one of which is the Finnish version of blinis, a thick pancakes that are usually fried in a cast iron pan. One of the most significant food culture venues in Helsinki is the general public area known as Teurastamo in the Hermanni district, which operated as the city's slaughterhouse between 1933 and 1992, to which the name of the place also refers.
A nationwide food carnival called Restaurant Day (Ravintolapäivä) has begun in Helsinki and has traditionally been celebrated since May 2011. The purpose of the day is to have fun, share new food experiences and enjoy the common environment with the group.
Vappu is an annual carnival for students and workers on 1 May. The last week of June marks the Helsinki Pride human rights event, which was attended by 100,000 marchers in 2018.
Helsinki has a long tradition of sports: the city gained much of its initial international recognition during the 1952 Summer Olympics, and the city has arranged sporting events such as the first World Championships in Athletics 1983 and 2005, and the European Championships in Athletics 1971, 1994, and 2012. Helsinki hosts successful local teams in both of the most popular team sports in Finland: football and ice hockey. Helsinki houses HJK Helsinki, Finland's largest and most successful football club, and IFK Helsingfors, their local rivals with 7 championship titles. The fixtures between the two are commonly known as Stadin derby. Helsinki's track and field club Helsingin Kisa-Veikot is also dominant within Finland. Ice hockey is popular among many Helsinki residents, who usually support either of the local clubs IFK Helsingfors (HIFK) or Jokerit. HIFK, with 14 Finnish championships titles, also plays in the highest bandy division, along with Botnia-69. The Olympic stadium hosted the first ever Bandy World Championship in 1957.
Helsinki was elected host-city of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but due to World War II they were canceled. Instead Helsinki was the host of the 1952 Summer Olympics. The Olympics were a landmark event symbolically and economically for Helsinki and Finland as a whole that was recovering from the winter war and the continuation war fought with the Soviet Union. Helsinki was also in 1983 the first ever city to host the World Championships in Athletics. Helsinki also hosted the event in 2005, thus also becoming the first city to ever host the Championships for a second time. The Helsinki City Marathon has been held in the city every year since 1981, usually in August. A Formula 3000 race through the city streets was held on 25 May 1997. In 2009 Helsinki was host of the European Figure Skating Championships, and in 2017 it hosted World Figure Skating Championships. The city will host the 2021 FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup.
Most of Helsinki's sports venues are under the responsibility of the city's sports office, such as 70 sports halls and about 350 sports fields. There are nine ice rinks, three of which are managed by the Helsinki Sports Agency (Helsingin liikuntavirasto). In winter, there are seven artificial ice rinks. People can swim in Helsinki in 14 swimming pools, the largest of which is the Mäkelänrinne Swimming Centre [fi], two inland swimming pools and more than 20 beaches, of which Hietaniemi Beach is probably the most famous.
The backbone of Helsinki's motorway network consists of three semicircular beltways, Ring I, Ring II, and Ring III, which connect expressways heading to other parts of Finland, and the western and eastern arteries of Länsiväylä and Itäväylä respectively. While variants of a Keskustatunneli tunnel under the city centre have been repeatedly proposed, as of 2017 the plan remains on the drawing board.
Many important Finnish highways leave Helsinki for various parts of Finland; most of them in the form of motorways, but a few of these exceptions include Vihdintie. The most significant highways are:
Helsinki has some 390 cars per 1000 inhabitants. This is less than in cities of similar population and construction density, such as Brussels' 483 per 1000, Stockholm's 401, and Oslo's 413.
Helsinki Central Railway Station is the main terminus of the rail network in Finland. Two rail corridors lead out of Helsinki, the Main Line to the north (to Tampere, Oulu, Rovaniemi), and the Coastal Line to the west (to Turku). The Main Line (päärata), which is the first railway line in Finland, was officially opened on 17 March 1862, between cities of Helsinki and Hämeenlinna. The railway connection to the east branches from the Main Line outside of Helsinki at Kerava, and leads via Lahti to eastern parts of Finland.
A majority of intercity passenger services in Finland originate or terminate at the Helsinki Central Railway Station. All major cities in Finland are connected to Helsinki by rail service, with departures several times a day. The most frequent service is to Tampere, with more than 25 intercity departures per day as of 2017.
Until 2022 there also was an international services from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The Saint Petersburg to Helsinki route was operated by Allegro high-speed trains.
A Helsinki to Tallinn Tunnel has been proposed and agreed upon by representatives of the cities. The rail tunnel would connect Helsinki to the Estonian capital Tallinn, further linking Helsinki to the rest of continental Europe by Rail Baltica.
Air traffic is handled primarily from Helsinki Airport, located approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) north of Helsinki's downtown area, in the neighbouring city of Vantaa. Helsinki's own airport, Helsinki-Malmi Airport, is mainly used for general and private aviation. Charter flights are available from Hernesaari Heliport.
Like many other cities, Helsinki was deliberately founded at a location on the sea in order to take advantage of shipping. The freezing of the sea imposed limitations on sea traffic up to the end of the 19th century. But for the last hundred years, the routes leading to Helsinki have been kept open even in winter with the aid of icebreakers, many of them built in the Helsinki Hietalahti shipyard. The arrival and departure of ships has also been a part of everyday life in Helsinki. Regular route traffic from Helsinki to Stockholm, Tallinn, and Saint Petersburg began as far back as 1837. Over 300 cruise ships and 360,000 cruise passengers visit Helsinki annually. There are international cruise ship docks in South Harbour, Katajanokka, West Harbour, and Hernesaari. In terms of combined liner and cruise passengers, the Port of Helsinki overtook the Port of Dover in 2017 to become the busiest passenger port in the world.
Ferry connections to Tallinn, Mariehamn, and Stockholm are serviced by various companies; very popular MS J. L. Runeberg ferry connection to Finland's second oldest city, medieval old town of Porvoo, is also available for tourists. Finnlines passenger-freight ferries to Gdynia, Poland; Travemünde, Germany; and Rostock, Germany are also available. St. Peter Line offers passenger ferry service to Saint Petersburg several times a week.
In the Helsinki metropolitan area, public transportation is managed by the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority, the metropolitan area transportation authority. The diverse public transport system consists of trams, commuter rail, the metro, bus lines, two ferry lines and a public bike system.
Helsinki's tram system officially began in Helsinki in 1891, when the first trams were horse-drawn; with electric drive, it has been in operation continuously since 1900. 13 routes that cover the inner part of the city are operated. As of 2017, the city is expanding the tram network, with several major tram line construction projects under way. These include the Jokeri light rail (replacing the 550 bus line), roughly along Ring I around the city center, and a new tramway to the island of Laajasalo. Tram line 9 is planned to be extended from Pasila to Ilmala, largely along the new line, and line 6 from Hietalahti first to Eiranranta, later to Hernesaari. New line sections are also planned for the Kalasatama area; construction work on the new tram as the number line 13 (Nihti–Kalasatama–Vallilanlaakso–Pasila) has begun in May 2020, and the line is scheduled for completion in 2024. In August 2016, the city council decided to implement the Crown Bridges project, and the goal for the completion of the entire tram connection of the Crown Bridges is 2026.
The commuter rail system includes purpose-built double track for local services in two rail corridors along intercity railways, and the Ring Rail Line, an urban double-track railway with a station at the Helsinki Airport in Vantaa. Electric operation of commuter trains was first begun in 1969, and the system has been gradually expanded since. 15 different services are operated as of 2017, some extending outside of the Helsinki region. The frequent services run at a 10-minute headway in peak traffic.
Helsinki is officially the sister city of Beijing, China (since 2006). In addition, the city has a special partnership relation with:
Until 2022, Helsinki had also international partnership with Russian cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Helsinki (/ˈhɛlsɪŋki/ HEL-sink-ee or /hɛlˈsɪŋki/ hel-SINK-ee; Finnish: [ˈhelsiŋki] ; Swedish: Helsingfors, Finland Swedish: [helsiŋˈforːs] ) is the capital, largest and most populous city in Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the Uusimaa region in southern Finland and has a population of 673,011. The city's urban area has a population of 1,268,296, making it by far the most populous urban area in Finland and the country's most important centre for politics, education, finance, culture and research. Helsinki is located 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 400 km (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 km (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has close historical links with these three cities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen – and surrounding commuter towns, including the neighbouring municipality of Sipoo to the east – Helsinki forms the Greater Helsinki Metropolitan Area. It has a population of over 1.5 million. Often considered Finland's only metropolis, it is the world's northernmost metropolitan area with over one million inhabitants and the northernmost capital of an EU member state. Helsinki is the third largest municipality in the Nordic countries after Stockholm and Oslo, and its urban area is the second largest in the Nordic countries after Stockholm. The official languages are Finnish and Swedish. The city is served by Helsinki Airport, located in the neighbouring city of Vantaa, with frequent flights to many destinations in Europe, North America and Asia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Helsinki hosted the 1952 Summer Olympics, the first CSCE/OSCE Summit in 1975, the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 and it was the 2012 World Design Capital.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Helsinki has one of the highest standards of urban living in the world. In 2011, the British magazine Monocle ranked Helsinki as the world's most liveable city in its liveable cities index. In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2016 liveability survey, Helsinki ranked ninth out of 140 cities. In July 2021, the American magazine Time named Helsinki as one of the world's greatest places in 2021, as a city that \"can grow into a burgeoning cultural nest in the future\" and that is already known as an environmental pioneer in the world. In an international Cities of Choice survey conducted in 2021 by the Boston Consulting Group and the BCG Henderson Institute, Helsinki was ranked the third best city in the world to live in, with London and New York City coming in first and second. In the Condé Nast Traveler magazine's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards, Helsinki was ranked 4th as the friendliest cities in Europe. Helsinki, along with Rovaniemi in Lapland, is also one of Finland's most important tourist cities. Due to the large number of sea passengers per year, Helsinki is classified as a major port city.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "According to a theory put forward in the 1630s, at the time of Swedish colonisation of the Finnish coast, colonists from Hälsingland in central Sweden arrived at what is now the Vantaa River and called it Helsingå ('Helsinge River'), giving rise to the names of the village and church of Helsinge in the 1300s. This theory is questionable, as dialect research suggests that the settlers came from Uppland and the surrounding areas. Others have suggested that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, an archaic form of the word hals ('neck'), which refers to the narrowest part of a river, the rapids. Other Scandinavian towns in similar geographical locations were given similar names at the time, such as Helsingør in Denmark and Helsingborg in Sweden.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When a town was founded in the village of Forsby (later Koskela) in 1548, it was called Helsinge fors, 'Helsinge rapids'. The name refers to the Vanhankaupunginkoski [fi] rapids at the mouth of the river. The town was commonly known as Helsinge or Helsing, from which the modern Finnish name is derived.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Official Finnish government documents and Finnish language newspapers have used the name Helsinki since 1819, when the Senate of Finland moved to the city from Turku, the former capital of Finland. Decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish. During the Grand Duchy of Finland times which was at that time an autonomic state ruled by the Russian Empire, Helsinki was known in Russian as Gel'singfors (Гельсингфорс) from Swedish \"Helsingfors\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In Helsinki slang, the city is called Stadi (from the Swedish word stad, meaning 'city'). Abbreviated form Hesa is equally common, but its use is associated with people of rural origin (\"junantuomat\", lit. \"brought by a train\") and frowned upon by locals. Helsset is the Northern Sami name for Helsinki.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "After the end of the Ice Age and the retreat of the ice sheet, the first settlers arrived in the Helsinki area around 5000 BC. Their presence has been documented by archaeologists in Vantaa, Pitäjänmäki and Kaarela. Permanent settlements did not appear until the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, during the Iron Age, when the area was inhabited by the Tavastians. They used the area for fishing and hunting, but due to the lack of archaeological finds it is difficult to say how extensive their settlements were. Pollen analysis has shown that there were agricultural settlements in the area in the 10th century, and surviving historical records from the 14th century describe Tavastian settlements in the area.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The early settlements were raided by Vikings and later colonised by Christians from Sweden. They came mainly from the Swedish coastal regions of Norrland and Hälsingland, and their migration intensified around 1100. Swedes permanently colonised the Helsinki region's coastline in the late 13th century after the successful Second Crusade to Finland, which led to the defeat of the Tavastians.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Written chronicles from 1417 mention the village of Koskela near the rapids at the mouth of the River Vantaa, where Helsinki was to be founded.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Helsinki was founded by King Gustav I of Sweden on 12 June 1550 as a trading town called Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval (now Tallinn) on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. In order to populate the newly founded town at the mouth of the Vantaa River, the king ordered the bourgeoisie of Porvoo, Ekenäs, Rauma and Ulvila to move to the town. The shallowness of the bay did not allow for the construction of a harbour, and the king allowed the settlers to leave the unfortunate location. In 1640, Count Per Brahe the Younger, together with some descendants of the original settlers, moved the centre of the town to the Vironniemi peninsula by the sea, today's Kruununhaka district, where the Senate Square and Helsinki Cathedral are located today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During the second half of the 17th century, Helsinki, as a wooden town, suffered from regular fires, and by the beginning of the 18th century the population had fallen below 1,700. For a long time, Helsinki was mainly a small administrative town for the governors of Nyland and Tavastehus County, but its importance began to grow when a more solid naval defence began to be built in front of the town in the 18th century. Little came of the plans, however, as Helsinki remained a small town plagued by poverty, wars and disease. The plague of 1710 killed most of Helsinki's population. After the Russians conquered Helsinki in May 1713 during the Great Northern War, the retreating Swedish administration set fire to parts of the town. Despite this, the town's population grew to 3,000 by the beginning of the 19th century. The construction of the naval fortress of Sveaborg (Viapori in Finnish, now also called Suomenlinna) in the 18th century helped improve Helsinki's status. However, it wasn't until Russia defeated Sweden in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that the town began to develop into a substantial city. The Russians besieged the Sveaborg fortress during the war, and about a quarter of the town was destroyed in a fire in 1808.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Emperor Alexander I of Russia moved the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki on 8 April 1812 to reduce Swedish influence in Finland and to bring the capital closer to St Petersburg. Following the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the Royal Academy of Turku, the only university in the country at the time, was also moved to Helsinki and eventually became the modern University of Helsinki. The move consolidated the city's new role and helped set it on a path of continuous growth. This transformation is most evident in the city centre, which was rebuilt in the neoclassical style to resemble Saint Petersburg, largely according to a plan by the German-born architect C. L. Engel. As elsewhere, technological advances such as railways and industrialisation were key factors in the city's growth.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "By the 1910s, the population of Helsinki was already over 100,000, and despite the tumultuous nature of Finnish history in the first half of the 20th century, Helsinki continued to grow steadily. This included the Finnish Civil War and the Winter War, both of which left their mark on the city. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were roughly equal numbers of Finnish and Swedish speakers in Helsinki; the majority of workers were Finnish-speaking. The local Helsinki slang (or stadin slangi) developed among Finnish children and young people from the 1890s as a mixed Finnish-Swedish language, with influences from German and Russian, and from the 1950s the slang began to become more Finnish. A landmark event was the 1952 Olympic Games, which were held in Helsinki. Finland's rapid urbanisation in the 1970s, which occurred late compared to the rest of Europe, tripled the population of the metropolitan area, and the Helsinki Metro subway system was built. Helsinki's relatively low population density and peculiar structure have often been attributed to its late growth.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Known as the \"Daughter of the Baltic\" or the \"Pearl of the Baltic\", Helsinki is located at the tip of a peninsula and on 315 islands. The city centre is located on a southern peninsula, Helsinginniemi (\"Cape of Helsinki\"), which is rarely referred to by its actual name, Vironniemi (\"Cape of Estonia\"). Population density is comparatively high in certain parts of downtown Helsinki, reaching 16,494 inhabitants per square kilometre (42,720/sq mi) in the district of Kallio, but overall Helsinki's population density of 3,113 per square kilometre (8,060/sq mi) ranks the city as sparsely populated compared to other European capitals. Outside the city centre, much of Helsinki consists of post-war suburbs separated by patches of forest. A narrow, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) long Helsinki Central Park, which stretches from the city centre to Helsinki's northern border, is an important recreational area for residents. The City of Helsinki has about 11,000 boat moorings and over 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres; 54 square miles) of marine fishing waters adjacent to the capital region. About 60 species of fish are found in this area, and recreational fishing is popular.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Helsinki's main islands include Seurasaari, Lauttasaari and Korkeasaari – the latter is home to Finland's largest zoo, Korkeasaari Zoo. The former military islands of Vallisaari and Isosaari are now open to the public, but Santahamina is still in military use. The most historic and remarkable island is the fortress of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg). The island of Pihlajasaari is a popular summer resort for gays and naturists, comparable to Fire Island in New York City.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There are 60 nature reserves in Helsinki with a total area of 95,480 acres (38,640 ha). Of the total area, 48,190 acres (19,500 ha) are water areas and 47,290 acres (19,140 ha) are land areas. The city also has seven nature reserves in Espoo, Sipoo, Hanko and Ingå. The largest nature reserve is the Vanhankaupunginselkä, with an area of 30,600 acres (12,400 ha). The city's first nature reserve, Tiiraluoto of Lauttasaari, was established in 1948.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Helsinki's official plant is the Norway maple and its official animal is the red squirrel.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Helsinki metropolitan area, also known as the Capital Region (Finnish: Pääkaupunkiseutu, Swedish: Huvudstadsregionen) comprises four municipalities: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. The Helsinki urban area is considered to be the only metropolis in Finland. It has a population of over 1.1 million, and is the most densely populated area of Finland. The Capital Region spreads over a land area of 770 square kilometres (300 sq mi) and has a population density of 1,418 inhabitants per square kilometre (3,670/sq mi). With over 20 percent of the country's population in just 0.2 percent of its surface area, the area's housing density is high by Finnish standards.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Greater Helsinki) consists of the cities of Helsinki Capital Region and ten surrounding municipalities: Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Tuusula, Pornainen, Mäntsälä and Vihti. The Metropolitan Area covers 3,697 square kilometres (1,427 sq mi) and has a population of over 1.4 million, or about a fourth of the total population of Finland. The metropolitan area has a high concentration of employment: approximately 750,000 jobs. Despite the intensity of land use, the region also has large recreational areas and green spaces. The Greater Helsinki area is the world's northernmost urban area with a population of over one million people, and the northernmost EU capital city.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Helsinki urban area is an officially recognized urban area in Finland, defined by its population density. The area stretches throughout 11 municipalities, and is the largest such area in Finland, with a land area of 669.31 square kilometres (258.42 sq mi) and approximately 1.2 million inhabitants.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Helsinki has a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb). Owing to the mitigating influence of the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic Current (see also Extratropical cyclone), temperatures during the winter are higher than the northern location might suggest, with the average in January and February around −4 °C (25 °F).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Winters in Helsinki are notably warmer than in the north of Finland, and the snow season is much shorter in the capital, due to it being in extreme Southern Finland and the urban heat island effect. Temperatures below −20 °C (−4 °F) occur a few times a year at most. However, because of the latitude, days last 5 hours and 48 minutes around the winter solstice with very low sun (at noon, the sun is a little bit over 6 degrees in the sky), and the cloudy weather at this time of year exacerbates darkness. Conversely, Helsinki enjoys long daylight during the summer; during the summer solstice, days last 18 hours and 57 minutes.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The average maximum temperature from June to August is around 19 to 22 °C (66 to 72 °F). Due to the marine effect, especially during hot summer days, daily temperatures are a little cooler and night temperatures higher than further inland. The highest temperature ever recorded in the city was 33.2 °C (91.8 °F) on 28 July 2019 at Kaisaniemi weather station, breaking the previous record of 33.1 °C (91.6 °F) that was observed in July 1945 at Ilmala weather station. The lowest temperature ever recorded in the city was −34.3 °C (−29.7 °F) on 10 January 1987, although an unofficial low of −35 °C (−31 °F) was recorded in December 1876. Helsinki Airport (in Vantaa, 17 kilometres (11 mi) north of the Helsinki city centre) recorded a temperature of 33.7 °C (92.7 °F) on 29 July 2010 and a low of −35.9 °C (−33 °F) on 9 January 1987. Precipitation is received from frontal passages and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are most common in the summer.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Helsinki is divided into three major areas: Helsinki Downtown (Finnish: Helsingin kantakaupunki, Swedish: Helsingfors innerstad), North Helsinki (Finnish: Pohjois-Helsinki, Swedish: Norra Helsingfors) and East Helsinki (Finnish: Itä-Helsinki, Swedish: Östra Helsingfors). Of these, Helsinki Downtown means the undefined core area of capital, as opposed to suburbs. The designations business center and city center usually refer to Kluuvi, Kamppi and Punavuori. Other subdivisional centers outside the downtown area include Malmi (Swedish: Malm), located in the northeastern part of city, and Itäkeskus (Swedish: Östra centrum), in the eastern part of city.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Carl Ludvig Engel, appointed to plan a new city centre on his own, designed several neoclassical buildings in Helsinki. The focal point of Engel's city plan was the Senate Square. It is surrounded by the Government Palace (to the east), the main building of Helsinki University (to the west), and (to the north) the large Helsinki Cathedral, which was finished in 1852, twelve years after Engel's death. Helsinki's epithet, \"The White City of the North\", derives from this construction era. Most of Helsinki's older buildings were built after the 1808 fire; before that time, the oldest surviving building in the center of Helsinki is the Sederholm House [fr] (1757) at the intersection of Senate Square and the Katariinankatu street. Suomenlinna also has buildings completed in the 18th century, including the Kuninkaanportti on the Kustaanmiekka Island [fr] (1753–1754). The oldest church in Helsinki is the Old Church (1826) designed by Engel.",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Helsinki is also home to numerous Art Nouveau-influenced (Jugend in Finnish) buildings belonging to the Kansallisromantiikka (romantic nationalism) trend, designed in the early 20th century and strongly influenced by Kalevala, which was a common theme of the era. Helsinki's Art Nouveau style is also featured in central residential districts, such as Katajanokka and Ullanlinna. An important architect of the Finnish Art Nouveau style was Eliel Saarinen, whose architectural masterpiece was the Helsinki Central Station. Opposite the Bank of Finland building is the Renaissance Revivalish the House of the Estates (1891).",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The only visible public buildings of the Gothic Revival architecture in Helsinki are St. John's Church (1891) in Ullanlinna, which is the largest stone church in Finland, and its twin towers rise to 74 meters and have 2,600 seats. Other examples of neo-Gothic include the House of Nobility in Kruununhaka and the Catholic St. Henry's Cathedral.",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In addition to other cities in Northern Europe that were not under the Soviet Union, such as Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki's neoclassical buildings gained also popularity as a backdrop for scenes intended to depict the Soviet Union in numerous Hollywood movies during the Cold War era, when filming within the actual USSR was not possible. Some of them, including The Kremlin Letter (1970), Reds (1981), and Gorky Park (1983). was possible due to such Russian cities as Leningrad and Moscow also having similar neoclassical architecture. At the same time due to Cold War and Finnish relations with the USSR the government secretly instructed Finnish officials not to extend assistance to such film projects. There are some films where Helsinki has been represented on its own in films, most notably the 1967 British-American espionage thriller Billion Dollar Brain, starring Michael Caine. The city has large amounts of underground areas such as shelters and tunnels, many used daily as swimming pool, church, water management, entertainment etc.",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Helsinki also features several buildings by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, recognized as one of the pioneers of architectural functionalism. However, some of his works, such as the headquarters of the paper company Stora Enso and the concert venue Finlandia Hall, have been subject to divided opinions from the citizens.",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Functionalist buildings in Helsinki by other architects include the Olympic Stadium, the Tennis Palace, the Rowing Stadium, the Swimming Stadium, the Velodrome, the Glass Palace, the Töölö Sports Hall, and Helsinki-Malmi Airport. The sports venues were built to serve the 1940 Helsinki Olympic Games; the games were initially cancelled due to the Second World War, but the venues fulfilled their purpose in the 1952 Olympic Games. Many of them are listed by DoCoMoMo as significant examples of modern architecture. The Olympic Stadium and Helsinki-Malmi Airport are also catalogued by the Finnish Heritage Agency as cultural-historical environments of national significance.",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "When Finland became heavily urbanized in the 1960s and 1970s, the district of Pihlajamäki, for example, was built in Helsinki for new residents, where for the first time in Finland, precast concrete was used on a large scale. Pikku Huopalahti, built in the 1980s and 1990s, has tried to get rid of a one-size-fits-all grid pattern, which means that its look is very organic and its streets are not repeated in the same way. Itäkeskus in Eastern Helsinki was the first regional center in the 1980s. Efforts have also been made to protect Helsinki in the late 20th century, and many old buildings have been renovated. Modern architecture is represented, for example, by the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, which consists of two straight and curved-walled parts, though this style strongly divided the opinions from the citizens. Next to Kiasma is the glass-walled Sanomatalo (1999).",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The start of the 21st century marked the beginning of highrise construction in Helsinki, when the city decided to allow the construction of skyscrapers; prior to this, Hotel Torni (69.5 m (228 ft)), built in 1931, has generally been called Finland's first skyscraper, and was at time the tallest building in Finland until 1976. As of April 2017 there are no skyscrapers taller than 100 meters in the Helsinki area, but there are several projects under construction or planning, mainly in Pasila and Kalasatama. An international architecture competition for at least 10 high-rises to be built in Pasila is being held. Construction of the towers will start in 2023. In Kalasatama, the first 35-story (130 m (430 ft); called Majakka) and 32-story (122 m (400 ft); called Loisto [fi]) residential towers are already completed. Later they will be joined by a 37-story, two 32-story, 31-story, and 27-story residential buildings. In the Kalasatama area, there will be about 15 high-rises within 10 years. Even higher skyscrapers under the name Trigoni are planned for the Central Pasila area near the Mall of Tripla shopping centre; the highest of which is to become about 200 meters high, and it can be seen even in good weather all the way to the Estonian coast.",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Well-known statues and monuments strongly embedded in the cityscape of Helsinki include the Keisarinnankivi (\"Stone of the Empress\", 1835), the statue of Russian Emperor Alexander II (1894), the fountain sculpture Havis Amanda (1908), the Paavo Nurmi statue (1925), the Three Smiths Statue (1932), the Aleksis Kivi Memorial (1939), the Eino Leino Statue (1953), the Equestrian statue of Marshal Mannerheim (1960) and the Sibelius Monument (1967).",
"title": "Cityscape"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "As is the case with all Finnish municipalities, Helsinki's city council is the main decision-making organ in local politics, dealing with issues such as urban planning, schools, health care, and public transport. The council is chosen in the nationally held municipal elections, which are held every four years.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Helsinki's city council consists of eighty-five members. Following the most recent municipal elections in 2017, the three largest parties are the National Coalition Party (25), the Green League (21), and the Social Democratic Party (12).",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Mayor of Helsinki is Juhana Vartiainen.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The city of Helsinki has 673,011 inhabitants, making it the most populous municipality in Finland and the third in the Nordics. The Greater Helsinki region is the largest urbanised area in Finland with 1,576,438 inhabitants. The city of Helsinki is home to 12% of Finland's population. 18.6% of the population has a foreign background, which is twice above the national average. However, it is lower than in the major Finnish cities of Espoo or Vantaa.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "At 53 percent of the population, women form a greater proportion of Helsinki residents than the national average of 51 percent. Helsinki's population density of 2,739.36 people per square kilometre makes Helsinki the most densely-populated city in Finland. The life expectancy for men and women is slightly below the national averages: 75.1 years for men as compared to 75.7 years, 81.7 years for women as compared to 82.5 years.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Helsinki has experienced strong growth since the 1810s, when it replaced Turku as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which later became the sovereign Republic of Finland. The city continued its growth from that time on, with an exception during the Finnish Civil War. From the end of World War II up until the 1970s there was a massive exodus of people from the countryside to the cities of Finland, in particular Helsinki. Between 1944 and 1969 the population of the city nearly doubled from 275,000 to 525,600.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the 1960s, the population growth of Helsinki began to decrease, mainly due to a lack of housing. Some residents began to move to the neighbouring cities of Espoo and Vantaa, resulting in increased population growth in both municipalities. Espoo's population increased ninefold in sixty years, from 22,874 people in 1950 to 244,353 in 2009. Vantaa saw an even more dramatic change in the same time span: from 14,976 in 1950 to 197,663 in 2009, a thirteenfold increase. These population changes prompted the municipalities of Greater Helsinki into more intense cooperation in areas such as public transportation – resulting in the foundation of HSL – and waste management. The increasing scarcity of housing and the higher costs of living in the capital region have pushed many daily commuters to find housing in formerly rural areas, and even further, to cities such as Lohja, Hämeenlinna, Lahti, and Porvoo.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Population by mother tongue (2022)",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The city of Helsinki is officially bilingual, with both Finnish and Swedish as official languages. In 2022, the majority of the population, 76.1%, spoke Finnish as their mother tongue. There were 36,748 Swedish speakers, or 5.5% of the population. The number of people who speak Sámi, Finland's third official language, is only 63 inhabitants. In Helsinki, 18.3% of the population speak a mother tongue other than Finnish or Swedish. As English and Swedish are compulsory school subjects, functional bilingualism or trilingualism acquired through language studies is not uncommon.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Although few people speak the Sámi languages as their mother tongue, there are 527 people of Sami origin. There are 93 Tatar speakers in Helsinki, almost half of the total number of Tatar speakers in Finland.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Helsinki slang is a regional dialect of the city. Historically, it was a combination of Finnish and Swedish, with influences from Russian and German. Nowadays it has a strong English influence. Today, however, Finnish is the common language of communication between Finnish speakers, Swedish speakers and speakers of other languages (New Finns) in everyday public life between strangers.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The city of Helsinki and the national authorities have specifically targeted Swedish speakers. Knowledge of Finnish is essential in business and is usually a basic requirement in the labour market. Swedish speakers are most concentrated in the southern parts of the city. The district with the most Swedish speakers is Ullanlinna/Ulrikasborg with 2,098 (19.6%), while Byholmen is the only district where Swedish is the majority language (at 82.8%). The number of Swedish speakers decreased every year until 2008, and has increased every year since then. Since 2007, the number of Swedish speakers has increased by 2,351. In 1890, Finnish speakers overtook Swedish speakers to become the majority of the city's population. At that time, the population of Helsinki was 61,530.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The number of people with a foreign mother tongue is expected to reach 196,500 in 2035, representing 26% of the population. 114,000 will speak non-European languages, or 15% of the population. Today, at least 160 different languages are spoken in Helsinki. The most common foreign languages are Russian (3.1%), Somali (2.0%), Estonian (1.5%) and Arabic (1.5%).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 2022, there were 123,676 people with an immigrant background living in Helsinki, or 18.6% of the population. There were 108,919 residents who were born abroad, or 16.4% of the population. The number of foreign citizens in Helsinki was 73,076.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The relative share of immigrants in Helsinki's population is twice the national average, and the city's new residents are increasingly of foreign origin. This will increase the proportion of foreign residents in the coming years. As a crossroads of many international ports and Finland's largest airport, Helsinki is the global gateway to and from Finland.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Most foreign-born citizens come from the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Somalia, Iraq, and Russia.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 2022, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the largest religious group with 47.6% of the Helsinki population. Other religious groups made up 4.5% of the population. 47.9% of the population had no religious affiliation.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The most important churches in Helsinki are Helsinki Cathedral (1852), Uspenski Cathedral (1868), St. John's Church (1891), Kallio Church (1912) and Temppeliaukio Church (1969).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "There are 21 Lutheran congregations in Helsinki, 18 of which are Finnish-speaking and 3 are Swedish-speaking. These form Helsinki's congregationgroup. Outside that there is Finland's German congregation with 3,000 members and Rikssvenska Olaus Petri-församlingen for Swedish-citizens with 1,000 members.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The largest Orthodox congregation is the Orthodox Church of Helsinki. It has 20,000 members. Its main church is the Uspenski Cathedral. The two largest Catholic congregations are the Cathedral of Saint Henry, with 4,552 members, established in 1860 and St Mary's Catholic Parish, with 4,107 members, established in 1954.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "There are around 30 mosques in the Helsinki region. Many linguistic and ethnic groups such as Bangladeshis, Kosovars, Kurds and Bosniaks have established their own mosques. The largest congregation in both Helsinki and Finland is the Helsinki Islamic Center [fi], established in 1995. It has over 2,800 members as of 2017, and it received €24,131 in government assistance.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 2015, imam Anas Hajar [fi] estimated that on big celebrations around 10,000 Muslims visit mosques. In 2004, it was estimated that there were 8,000 Muslims in Helsinki, 1.5% of the population at the time. The number of people in Helsinki with a background from Muslim majority countries was nearly 41,000 as of 2021, representing over 6% of the population.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The main synagogue of Helsinki is the Helsinki Synagogue from 1906, located in Kamppi. It has over 1,200 members, out of the 1,800 Jews in Finland, and it is the older of the two buildings in Finland originally built as a synagogue, followed by the Turku Synagogue in 1912. The congregation includes a synagogue, Jewish kindergarten, school, library, Jewish meat shop, two Jewish cemeteries and an retirement home. Many Jewish organizations and societies are based there, and the synagogue publishes the main Jewish magazine in Finland, HaKehila [fi].",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Greater Helsinki generates approximately one third of Finland's GDP. GDP per capita is roughly 1.3 times the national average. Helsinki profits on serviced-related IT and public sectors. Having moved from heavy industrial works, shipping companies also employ a substantial number of people.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The metropolitan area's gross value added per capita is 200% of the mean of 27 European metropolitan areas, equalling those of Stockholm and Paris. The gross value added annual growth has been around 4%.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "83 of the 100 largest Finnish companies have their headquarters in Greater Helsinki. Two-thirds of the 200 highest-paid Finnish executives live in Greater Helsinki and 42% in Helsinki. The average income of the top 50 earners was 1.65 million euro.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The tap water is of excellent quality and it is supplied by the 120 km (75 mi) Päijänne Water Tunnel, one of the world's longest continuous rock tunnels.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Helsinki has 190 comprehensive schools, 41 upper secondary schools, and 15 vocational institutes. Half of the 41 upper secondary schools are private or state-owned, the other half municipal. There are two major research universities in Helsinki, the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, and a number of other higher level institutions and polytechnics which focus on higher-level professional education.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Helsinki is one of the co-location centres of the Knowledge and Innovation Community (Future information and communication society) of The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The biggest historical museum in Helsinki is the National Museum of Finland, which displays a vast collection from prehistoric times to the 21st century. The museum building itself, a national romantic-style neomedieval castle, is a tourist attraction. Another major historical museum is the Helsinki City Museum, which introduces visitors to Helsinki's 500-year history. The University of Helsinki also has many significant museums, including the Helsinki University Museum \"Arppeanum\" and the Finnish Museum of Natural History.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The Finnish National Gallery consists of three museums: Ateneum Art Museum for classical Finnish art, Sinebrychoff Art Museum for classical European art, and Kiasma Art Museum for modern art, in a building by architect Steven Holl. The old Ateneum, a neo-Renaissance palace from the 19th century, is one of the city's major historical buildings. All three museum buildings are state-owned through Senate Properties.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The city of Helsinki hosts its own art collection in the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM), primarily located in its Tennispalatsi gallery. Around 200 pieces of public art lie outside. The art is all city property.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Helsinki Art Museum will in 2020 launch the Helsinki Biennial, which will bring art to maritime Helsinki – in its first year to the island of Vallisaari.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The Design Museum is devoted to the exhibition of both Finnish and foreign design, including industrial design, fashion, and graphic design. Other museums in Helsinki include the Military Museum of Finland, Didrichsen Art Museum, Amos Rex Art Museum, and the Tram Museum [fi].",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Helsinki has three major theatres: The Finnish National Theatre, the Helsinki City Theatre, and the Swedish Theatre (Svenska Teatern). Other notable theatres in the city include the Alexander Theatre, Q-teatteri [fi], Savoy Theatre [fi], KOM-theatre [fi], and Teatteri Jurkka [fi].",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Helsinki is home to two full-size symphony orchestras, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, both of which perform at the Helsinki Music Centre concert hall. Acclaimed contemporary composers Kaija Saariaho, Magnus Lindberg, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Einojuhani Rautavaara, among others, were born and raised in Helsinki, and studied at the Sibelius Academy. The Finnish National Opera, the only full-time, professional opera company in Finland, is located in Helsinki. The opera singer Martti Wallén, one of the company's long-time soloists, was born and raised in Helsinki, as was mezzo-soprano Monica Groop.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Many widely renowned and acclaimed bands have originated in Helsinki, including Nightwish, Children of Bodom, Hanoi Rocks, HIM, Stratovarius, The 69 Eyes, Finntroll, Ensiferum, Wintersun, The Rasmus, Poets of the Fall, and Apocalyptica. The most significant of the metal music events in Helsinki is the Tuska Open Air Metal Festival in Suvilahti, Sörnäinen.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The city's main musical venues are the Finnish National Opera, the Finlandia concert hall, and the Helsinki Music Centre. The Music Centre also houses a part of the Sibelius Academy. Bigger concerts and events are usually held at one of the city's two big ice hockey arenas: the Helsinki Halli or the Helsinki Ice Hall. Helsinki has Finland's largest fairgrounds, the Messukeskus Helsinki, which is attended by more than a million visitors a year.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Helsinki Arena hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, the first Eurovision Song Contest arranged in Finland, following Lordi's win in 2006.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Helsinki Day (Helsinki-päivä) will be celebrated on every 12 June, with numerous entertainment events culminating in an open-air concert. Also, the Helsinki Festival is an annual arts and culture festival, which takes place every August (including the Night of the Arts).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "At the Senate Square in fall 2010, Finland's largest open-air art exhibition to date took place: About 1.4 million people saw the international exhibition of United Buddy Bears.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Helsinki was the 2012 World Design Capital, in recognition of the use of design as an effective tool for social, cultural, and economic development in the city. In choosing Helsinki, the World Design Capital selection jury highlighted Helsinki's use of 'Embedded Design', which has tied design in the city to innovation, \"creating global brands, such as Nokia, Kone, and Marimekko, popular events, like the annual Helsinki Design Week [fi], outstanding education and research institutions, such as the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, and exemplary architects and designers such as Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto\".",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Helsinki hosts many film festivals. Most of them are small venues, while some have generated interest internationally. The most prolific of these is the Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy film festival, also known as Helsinki International Film Festival, which features films on a wide spectrum. Night Visions, on the other hand, focuses on genre cinema, screening horror, fantasy, and science fiction films in very popular movie marathons that last the entire night. Another popular film festival is DocPoint [fi], a festival that focuses solely on documentary cinema.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Today, there are around 200 newspapers, 320 popular magazines, 2,100 professional magazines, 67 commercial radio stations, three digital radio channels, and one nationwide and five national public service radio channels.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Sanoma publishes Finland's journal of record, Helsingin Sanomat, the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, the commerce-oriented Taloussanomat, and the television channel Nelonen. Another Helsinki-based media house, Alma Media, publishes over thirty magazines, including the tabloid Iltalehti, and the commerce-oriented Kauppalehti.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Finland's national public-broadcasting institution Yle operates five television channels and thirteen radio channels in both national languages. Yle is headquartered in the neighbourhood of Pasila. All TV channels are broadcast digitally, both terrestrially and on cable. Yle's studio area houses the 146-metre (479 ft) high television and radio tower, Yle Transmission Tower (Pasilan linkkitorni), which is the third tallest structure in Helsinki and one of Helsinki's most famous landmarks, from the top of which, in good weather, can be seen even as far as Tallinn over the Gulf of Finland.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The commercial television channel MTV3 and commercial radio channel Radio Nova are owned by Nordic Broadcasting (Bonnier and Proventus).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Helsinki was already known in the 18th century for its abundant number of inns and pubs, where both locals and those who landed in the harbor were offered plenty of alcoholic beverages. At that time, taxes on the sale of alcohol were a very significant source of income for Helsinki, and one of the most important sellers of alcohol was Johan Sederholm [fr] (1722–1805), a trade councilor who attracted rural merchants with alcohol and made good deals. Gradually, a new kind of beverage culture began to grow in the next century, and as early as 1852, the first café of Finland, Café Ekberg [fi], was established by confectioner Fredrik Ekberg [fi] (1825–1891) after attending his studies in St. Petersburg. Ekberg has also been said to have created Finland's \"national pastry tradition\". At first, café culture was only a prerogative of sophisticated elite, when it recently began to take shape as the right of every man. Today, there are several hundred cafés in Helsinki, the most notable of which is Cafe Regatta, which is very popular with foreign tourists.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "As an important port city on the Baltic Sea, Helsinki has long been known for its fish food, and it has recently started to become one of the leading fish food capitals in Northern Europe. Helsinki's Market Square is especially known for its traditional herring market, which has been organized since 1743. Salmon is also a typical Helsinki fish dish, both fried and souped. The most prestigious restaurants specializing in seafood include Restaurant Fisken på Disken.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Helsinki is currently experiencing a period of booming food culture, and it has developed into an internationally acclaimed food city, receiving recognition for promoting food culture. The local food culture is made up of cuisines from around the world and the fusions they form. Various Asian restaurants such as Chinese, Thai, Indian and Nepalese are particularly prominent in Helsinki's cityscape, but over the past couple of years, restaurants serving Vietnamese food have been very popular. Sushi restaurant buffets have also made their way into the city's restaurant offerings in one fell swoop. The third prominent trend is restaurants serving pure local food, many of which specialize primarily in serving pure Nordic flavors. In past years Middle Eastern food culture rose in its popularity. Especially Helsinki's eastern part offers many different options for Middle Eastern cuisine lovers. There is also some touches of Russian cuisine, one of which is the Finnish version of blinis, a thick pancakes that are usually fried in a cast iron pan. One of the most significant food culture venues in Helsinki is the general public area known as Teurastamo in the Hermanni district, which operated as the city's slaughterhouse between 1933 and 1992, to which the name of the place also refers.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "A nationwide food carnival called Restaurant Day (Ravintolapäivä) has begun in Helsinki and has traditionally been celebrated since May 2011. The purpose of the day is to have fun, share new food experiences and enjoy the common environment with the group.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Vappu is an annual carnival for students and workers on 1 May. The last week of June marks the Helsinki Pride human rights event, which was attended by 100,000 marchers in 2018.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Helsinki has a long tradition of sports: the city gained much of its initial international recognition during the 1952 Summer Olympics, and the city has arranged sporting events such as the first World Championships in Athletics 1983 and 2005, and the European Championships in Athletics 1971, 1994, and 2012. Helsinki hosts successful local teams in both of the most popular team sports in Finland: football and ice hockey. Helsinki houses HJK Helsinki, Finland's largest and most successful football club, and IFK Helsingfors, their local rivals with 7 championship titles. The fixtures between the two are commonly known as Stadin derby. Helsinki's track and field club Helsingin Kisa-Veikot is also dominant within Finland. Ice hockey is popular among many Helsinki residents, who usually support either of the local clubs IFK Helsingfors (HIFK) or Jokerit. HIFK, with 14 Finnish championships titles, also plays in the highest bandy division, along with Botnia-69. The Olympic stadium hosted the first ever Bandy World Championship in 1957.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Helsinki was elected host-city of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but due to World War II they were canceled. Instead Helsinki was the host of the 1952 Summer Olympics. The Olympics were a landmark event symbolically and economically for Helsinki and Finland as a whole that was recovering from the winter war and the continuation war fought with the Soviet Union. Helsinki was also in 1983 the first ever city to host the World Championships in Athletics. Helsinki also hosted the event in 2005, thus also becoming the first city to ever host the Championships for a second time. The Helsinki City Marathon has been held in the city every year since 1981, usually in August. A Formula 3000 race through the city streets was held on 25 May 1997. In 2009 Helsinki was host of the European Figure Skating Championships, and in 2017 it hosted World Figure Skating Championships. The city will host the 2021 FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Most of Helsinki's sports venues are under the responsibility of the city's sports office, such as 70 sports halls and about 350 sports fields. There are nine ice rinks, three of which are managed by the Helsinki Sports Agency (Helsingin liikuntavirasto). In winter, there are seven artificial ice rinks. People can swim in Helsinki in 14 swimming pools, the largest of which is the Mäkelänrinne Swimming Centre [fi], two inland swimming pools and more than 20 beaches, of which Hietaniemi Beach is probably the most famous.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The backbone of Helsinki's motorway network consists of three semicircular beltways, Ring I, Ring II, and Ring III, which connect expressways heading to other parts of Finland, and the western and eastern arteries of Länsiväylä and Itäväylä respectively. While variants of a Keskustatunneli tunnel under the city centre have been repeatedly proposed, as of 2017 the plan remains on the drawing board.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Many important Finnish highways leave Helsinki for various parts of Finland; most of them in the form of motorways, but a few of these exceptions include Vihdintie. The most significant highways are:",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Helsinki has some 390 cars per 1000 inhabitants. This is less than in cities of similar population and construction density, such as Brussels' 483 per 1000, Stockholm's 401, and Oslo's 413.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Helsinki Central Railway Station is the main terminus of the rail network in Finland. Two rail corridors lead out of Helsinki, the Main Line to the north (to Tampere, Oulu, Rovaniemi), and the Coastal Line to the west (to Turku). The Main Line (päärata), which is the first railway line in Finland, was officially opened on 17 March 1862, between cities of Helsinki and Hämeenlinna. The railway connection to the east branches from the Main Line outside of Helsinki at Kerava, and leads via Lahti to eastern parts of Finland.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "A majority of intercity passenger services in Finland originate or terminate at the Helsinki Central Railway Station. All major cities in Finland are connected to Helsinki by rail service, with departures several times a day. The most frequent service is to Tampere, with more than 25 intercity departures per day as of 2017.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Until 2022 there also was an international services from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The Saint Petersburg to Helsinki route was operated by Allegro high-speed trains.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "A Helsinki to Tallinn Tunnel has been proposed and agreed upon by representatives of the cities. The rail tunnel would connect Helsinki to the Estonian capital Tallinn, further linking Helsinki to the rest of continental Europe by Rail Baltica.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Air traffic is handled primarily from Helsinki Airport, located approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) north of Helsinki's downtown area, in the neighbouring city of Vantaa. Helsinki's own airport, Helsinki-Malmi Airport, is mainly used for general and private aviation. Charter flights are available from Hernesaari Heliport.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Like many other cities, Helsinki was deliberately founded at a location on the sea in order to take advantage of shipping. The freezing of the sea imposed limitations on sea traffic up to the end of the 19th century. But for the last hundred years, the routes leading to Helsinki have been kept open even in winter with the aid of icebreakers, many of them built in the Helsinki Hietalahti shipyard. The arrival and departure of ships has also been a part of everyday life in Helsinki. Regular route traffic from Helsinki to Stockholm, Tallinn, and Saint Petersburg began as far back as 1837. Over 300 cruise ships and 360,000 cruise passengers visit Helsinki annually. There are international cruise ship docks in South Harbour, Katajanokka, West Harbour, and Hernesaari. In terms of combined liner and cruise passengers, the Port of Helsinki overtook the Port of Dover in 2017 to become the busiest passenger port in the world.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Ferry connections to Tallinn, Mariehamn, and Stockholm are serviced by various companies; very popular MS J. L. Runeberg ferry connection to Finland's second oldest city, medieval old town of Porvoo, is also available for tourists. Finnlines passenger-freight ferries to Gdynia, Poland; Travemünde, Germany; and Rostock, Germany are also available. St. Peter Line offers passenger ferry service to Saint Petersburg several times a week.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In the Helsinki metropolitan area, public transportation is managed by the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority, the metropolitan area transportation authority. The diverse public transport system consists of trams, commuter rail, the metro, bus lines, two ferry lines and a public bike system.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Helsinki's tram system officially began in Helsinki in 1891, when the first trams were horse-drawn; with electric drive, it has been in operation continuously since 1900. 13 routes that cover the inner part of the city are operated. As of 2017, the city is expanding the tram network, with several major tram line construction projects under way. These include the Jokeri light rail (replacing the 550 bus line), roughly along Ring I around the city center, and a new tramway to the island of Laajasalo. Tram line 9 is planned to be extended from Pasila to Ilmala, largely along the new line, and line 6 from Hietalahti first to Eiranranta, later to Hernesaari. New line sections are also planned for the Kalasatama area; construction work on the new tram as the number line 13 (Nihti–Kalasatama–Vallilanlaakso–Pasila) has begun in May 2020, and the line is scheduled for completion in 2024. In August 2016, the city council decided to implement the Crown Bridges project, and the goal for the completion of the entire tram connection of the Crown Bridges is 2026.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The commuter rail system includes purpose-built double track for local services in two rail corridors along intercity railways, and the Ring Rail Line, an urban double-track railway with a station at the Helsinki Airport in Vantaa. Electric operation of commuter trains was first begun in 1969, and the system has been gradually expanded since. 15 different services are operated as of 2017, some extending outside of the Helsinki region. The frequent services run at a 10-minute headway in peak traffic.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Helsinki is officially the sister city of Beijing, China (since 2006). In addition, the city has a special partnership relation with:",
"title": "International relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Until 2022, Helsinki had also international partnership with Russian cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.",
"title": "International relations"
}
]
| Helsinki is the capital, largest and most populous city in Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the Uusimaa region in southern Finland and has a population of 673,011. The city's urban area has a population of 1,268,296, making it by far the most populous urban area in Finland and the country's most important centre for politics, education, finance, culture and research. Helsinki is located 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 400 km (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 km (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has close historical links with these three cities. Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen – and surrounding commuter towns, including the neighbouring municipality of Sipoo to the east – Helsinki forms the Greater Helsinki Metropolitan Area. It has a population of over 1.5 million. Often considered Finland's only metropolis, it is the world's northernmost metropolitan area with over one million inhabitants and the northernmost capital of an EU member state. Helsinki is the third largest municipality in the Nordic countries after Stockholm and Oslo, and its urban area is the second largest in the Nordic countries after Stockholm. The official languages are Finnish and Swedish. The city is served by Helsinki Airport, located in the neighbouring city of Vantaa, with frequent flights to many destinations in Europe, North America and Asia. Helsinki hosted the 1952 Summer Olympics, the first CSCE/OSCE Summit in 1975, the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 and it was the 2012 World Design Capital. Helsinki has one of the highest standards of urban living in the world. In 2011, the British magazine Monocle ranked Helsinki as the world's most liveable city in its liveable cities index. In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2016 liveability survey, Helsinki ranked ninth out of 140 cities. In July 2021, the American magazine Time named Helsinki as one of the world's greatest places in 2021, as a city that "can grow into a burgeoning cultural nest in the future" and that is already known as an environmental pioneer in the world. In an international Cities of Choice survey conducted in 2021 by the Boston Consulting Group and the BCG Henderson Institute, Helsinki was ranked the third best city in the world to live in, with London and New York City coming in first and second. In the Condé Nast Traveler magazine's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards, Helsinki was ranked 4th as the friendliest cities in Europe. Helsinki, along with Rovaniemi in Lapland, is also one of Finland's most important tourist cities. Due to the large number of sea passengers per year, Helsinki is classified as a major port city. | 2001-08-28T13:18:41Z | 2023-12-31T21:53:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki |
13,699 | Hobart | Hobart (/ˈhoʊbɑːrt/ HOH-bart; Nuennonne/palawa kani: nipaluna) is the capital and most populous city of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the southernmost and least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-smallest if territories are taken into account, before Darwin, Northern Territory. Hobart is located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, making it the most southern of Australia's capital cities. Its skyline is dominated by the 1,271-metre (4,170 ft) kunanyi/Mount Wellington, and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world, with much of the city's waterfront consisting of reclaimed land. The metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the seven local government areas that cover the city. It has a mild maritime climate.
The city lies on country which was known by the local Mouheneener people as nipaluna, a name which includes surrounding features such as kunanyi/Mt. Wellington and timtumili minanya (River Derwent). Prior to British settlement, the land had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years by Aboriginal Tasmanians.
Founded in 1804 as a British penal colony, Hobart is Australia's second-oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. Whaling quickly emerged as a major industry in the area, and for a time Hobart served as the Southern Ocean's main whaling port. Penal transportation ended in the 1850s, after which the city experienced periods of growth and decline. The early 20th century saw an economic boom on the back of mining, agriculture and other primary industries, and the loss of men who served in the world wars was counteracted by an influx of immigration. Despite the rise in migration from Asia and other non-English speaking regions, Hobart's population remains predominantly ethnically Anglo-Celtic, and has the highest percentage of Australian-born residents among Australia's capital cities.
Today, Hobart is the financial and administrative hub of Tasmania, serving as the home port for both Australian and French Antarctic operations and acting as a tourist destination, with over 1.192 million visitors in 2011–12, and 924,000 during 2022–23. Well-known drawcards include its convict-era architecture, Salamanca Market and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum.
The first European settlement began in 1803 as a military camp at Risdon Cove on the eastern shores of the River Derwent, amid British concerns over the presence of French explorers. In 1804, along with the military, settlers and convicts from the abandoned Port Phillip settlement, the camp at Risdon Cove was moved by Captain David Collins to a better location at the present site of Hobart at Sullivans Cove. The city, initially known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, was named after Lord Hobart, the British Secretary of State for war and the colonies.
The area's indigenous inhabitants were members of the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe. Violent conflict with the European settlers, and the effects of diseases brought by them, dramatically reduced the Aboriginal population, which was rapidly replaced by free settlers and the convict population. Charles Darwin visited Hobart Town in February 1836 as part of the Beagle expedition. He writes of Hobart and the Derwent estuary in The Voyage of the Beagle:
"...The lower parts of the hills which skirt the bay are cleared; and the bright yellow fields of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes, appear very luxuriant... I was chiefly struck with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either built or building. Hobart Town, from the census of 1835, contained 13,826 inhabitants, and the whole of Tasmania 36,505."
The River Derwent was one of Australia's finest deepwater ports and was the centre of South Seas whaling and sealing trades. The settlement rapidly grew into a major port, with allied industries such as shipbuilding.
Hobart Town became a city on 21 August 1842, and was renamed Hobart from the beginning of 1881.
On 7 September 1936, one of the last known surviving thylacines died at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart.
During the mid 20th century, the state and local governments invested in building Hobart's reputation as a tourist attraction - in 1956 the Lanherne Airport (now Hobart International Airport) was opened. Australia's first legal casino, Wrest Point Hotel Casino opened in 1973. Despite these successes, Hobart faced significant challenges during the 20th century, including the 1967 Tasmanian fires, which claimed 64 lives in Hobart itself and destroyed over 1200 homes, and the 1975 Tasman Bridge disaster, when a bulk ore carrier collided with and destroyed the concrete span bridge that connected the city to its eastern suburbs.
In the 21st century, Hobart benefited as Tasmania's economy recovered from the 1990s recession, and the city's long-stagnant population growth began to reverse. A period of significant growth has followed, including the redevelopment of the former Macquarie Point railyards, Parliament Square, and new hotel developments throughout the city.
Hobart is located on the estuary of the River Derwent in the state's south-east. Geologically Hobart is built predominantly on Jurassic dolerite around the foothills interspersed with smaller areas of Triassic siltstone and Permian mudstone. Hobart extends along both sides of the River Derwent; on the western shore from the Derwent valley in the north through the flatter areas of Glenorchy which rests on older Triassic sediment and into the hilly areas of New Town, Lenah Valley. Both of these areas rest on the younger Jurassic dolerite deposits, before stretching into the lower areas such as the beaches of Sandy Bay in the south, in the Derwent estuary. South of the Derwent estuary lies Storm Bay and the Tasman Peninsula.
The Eastern Shore also extends from the Derwent valley area in a southerly direction hugging the Meehan Range in the east before sprawling into flatter land in suburbs such as Bellerive. These flatter areas of the eastern shore rest on far younger deposits from the Quaternary. From there the city extends in an easterly direction through the Meehan Range into the hilly areas of Rokeby and Oakdowns, before reaching into the tidal flatland area of Lauderdale.
Hobart has access to a number of beach areas including those in the Derwent estuary itself; Long Beach, Nutgrove Beach, Bellerive Beach, Cornelian Bay, Kingston, and Howrah Beaches as well as many more in Frederick Henry Bay such as; Seven Mile, Roaches, Cremorne, Clifton, and Goats Beaches.`
Hobart has a mild temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb). The highest temperature recorded was 41.8 °C (107.2 °F) on 4 January 2013 and the lowest was −2.8 °C (27.0 °F) on 25 June 1972 and 11 July 1981. Annually, Hobart receives only 40.8 clear days without rain. Compared to other major Australian cities, Hobart has the fewest daily average hours of sunshine, with only 5.9 hours per day. However, during the summer it has the same hours of daylight of any Australian city, with 15.3 hours on the summer solstice. By global standards, Hobart has cool summers and mild winters for its relative latitude, being heavily influenced by its seaside location.
Although Hobart itself rarely receives snow during the winter due to the foehn effect created by the Central Highlands (the city's geographic position causes a rainshadow), the adjacent Kunanyi/Mount Wellington is frequently seen with a snowcap throughout the year including in summer. During the 20th century, the city itself has received snowfalls at sea level on average only once every 5 years; however, outer suburbs lying higher on the slopes of Mount Wellington receive snow more often, owing to the more exposed position coupled with them resting at higher altitude. These snow-bearing winds often carry on through Tasmania and Victoria to the Snowy Mountains in Victoria and southern New South Wales.
The average temperature of the sea ranges from 12.5 °C (54.5 °F) in September to 16.5 °C (61.7 °F) in February.
At the 2021 census, there were 247,068 people in the Greater Hobart. The City of Hobart local government area had a population of 55,077.
As of 2021, the median weekly household income was $1,542, compared with $1,746 nationally.
18.1% of households total weekly income is less than $650 week, while 18.9% of households weekly income exceeds $3,000. This compares to national rates of 16.5% and 24.3% respectively.
35.4% of renting households, and 10.3% of owned households with a mortgage experience housing stress, where rent or mortgage repayments exceed 30% of income.
At the 2016 census, The most common occupation categories were professionals (22.6%), clerical and administrative workers (14.7%), technicians and trades workers (13.3%), community and personal service workers (12.8%), and managers (11.3%).
4.5% of the population (11,216 people) are Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders).
At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated ancestry groups include:
23.4% of the population was born overseas at the 2021 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (3.3%), Mainland China (2.2%), Nepal (1.7%), India (1.6%) and New Zealand (0.9%).
At the 2021 census, 82.6% of the population spoke only English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Mandarin (2.6%), Nepali (1.8%), Punjabi (0.7%), Cantonese (0.5%) and Vietnamese (0.4%).
In the 2021 census, 49.9% of Greater Hobart residents specified no religion. Christianity comprised the largest religious affiliation (37.1%), with the largest denominations being Anglicanism (14.1%) and Catholicism (14.1%). Hinduism (2.6%), Buddhism (1.3%), Islam (1.3%) and Sikhism (0.6%) constitute the remaining largest religious affiliations.
Hobart has a small community of 456 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with meetinghouses in Glenorchy, Rosny, and Glen Huon. There is also a synagogue, with a Jewish community of 203 people. Hobart has a Baháʼí community, with a Baháʼí Centre of Learning, located within the city. In 2013, Hillsong Church established a Hillsong Connect campus in Hobart.
Shipping is significant to the city's economy. Hobart is the home port for the Antarctic activities of Australia and France. The port loads around 2,000 tonnes of Antarctic cargo a year for the Australian research vessel Nuyina (previously the Aurora Australis). The city is also a popular cruise ship destination during the summer months, with 47 such ships docking during the course of the 2016–17 summer season.
The city also supports many other industries. Major local employers include catamaran builder Incat, zinc refinery Nyrstar Hobart, Cascade Brewery and Cadbury's Chocolate Factory, Norske Skog Boyer and Wrest Point Casino. The city also supports a host of light industry manufacturers, as well as a range of redevelopment projects, including the $689 million Royal Hobart Hospital Redevelopment – standing as the states largest ever Health Infrastructure project.
Tourism is a significant part of the economy, with visitors coming to the city to explore its historic inner suburbs and nationally acclaimed restaurants and cafes, as well as its vibrant music and nightlife culture. The two major draw-cards are the weekly market in Salamanca Place, and the Museum of Old and New Art. The city is also used as a base from which to explore the rest of Tasmania.
The last 15–20 years have seen Hobart's wine industry thrive as many vineyards have developed in countryside areas outside of the city in the Coal River Wine Region and D'Entrecasteaux Channel, including Moorilla Estate at Berriedale one of the most awarded vineyards in Australia.
Hobart is an Antarctic gateway city, with geographical proximity to East Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Infrastructure is provided by the port of Hobart for scientific research and cruise ships, and Hobart International Airport supports an Antarctic Airlink to Wilkins Runway at Casey Station. Hobart is a logistics point for the French icebreaker L'Astrolabe.
Hobart is the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, and provides port services for other visiting Antarctic nations and Antarctic cruise ships. Antarctic and Southern Ocean expeditions are supported by a specialist cluster offering cold climate products, services and scientific expertise. The majority of these businesses and organisations are members of the Tasmanian polar network, supported in part by the Tasmanian State Government.
Tasmania has a high concentration of Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientists. Hobart is home to the following Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientific institutions:
Hobart serves as a focal point and mecca for tourism in the state of Tasmania. Hobart has been a significant tourist destination for many years, however tourism has evolved to a core industry in the last decade. This process has been termed the "MONA Effect" - referring to the significant influence of the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum, on the local tourist economy - compared to the effect of the Guggenheim on Bilbao. Since opening in 2011, MONA had received 2.5 million visitors by 2022 and has helped establish a number of art and food venues and events, including MONA FOMA, and the winter festivals of Mid-Winter Fest and Dark Mofo. 27% of visitors to Tasmania visit the museum.
In 2016, Hobart received 1.8 million visitors, surpassing both Perth and Canberra, tying equally with Brisbane. Visitor numbers reached a low of 744,200 in 2021, primarily as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, with expectations that numbers would return to normal by 2023.
Many local tourist attractions focuses on the convict history of Hobart, the city's historic architecture, art experiences, and food and alcohol experiences. Hobart is home to a significant number of nationally known restaurants, boutique alcohol producers, including Sullivans Cove Whiskey, which won world's best single malt in 2014, boutique hotels, and art experiences. Other significant tourist attractions include Australia's second oldest botanic gardens, the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, which holds extensive significant plant collections, a range of public and private museums including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Maritime Museum Tasmania, and kunanyi/Mount Wellington, one of the dominant features of Hobart's skyline. At 1,271 metres (4,170 ft), the mountain has its own ecosystems, is rich in biodiversity and plays a large part in determining the local weather.
Hobart is known for its well-preserved Georgian and Victorian architecture, giving the city a distinctly "Old World" feel. For locals, this became a source of discomfiture about the city's convict past, but is now a draw card for tourists. Regions within the city centre, such as Salamanca Place and Battery Point, contain many of the city's heritage-listed buildings. Historic homes and mansions also exist in the suburbs, much of the inner-city neighbourhoods are dotted with weatherboard cottages and two-storey Victorian houses. Hobart has a significant body of notable buildings, including the Cascades Female Factory, one of the UNESCO Australian Convict Sites, the Hobart Synagogue, which is the oldest synagogue in Australia and a rare surviving example of an Egyptian Revival synagogue, Hadley's Orient Hotel, on Hobart's Murray Street, which is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Australia, and the Theatre Royal, the oldest continually operating theatre in Australia.
Kelly's Steps were built in 1839 by shipwright and adventurer James Kelly to provide a short-cut from Kelly Street and Arthur Circus in Battery Point to the warehouse and dockyards district of Salamanca Place. In 1835, John Lee Archer designed and oversaw the construction of the sandstone Customs House, facing Sullivans Cove. Completed in 1840, it was used as Tasmania's parliament house, and is now commemorated by a pub bearing the same name (built in 1844) which is frequented by yachtsmen after they have completed the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.
Hobart is also home to many historic churches. The Scots Church (formerly known as St Andrew's) was built in Bathurst Street from 1834 to 1836, and a small sandstone building within the churchyard was used as the city's first Presbyterian Church. The Salamanca Place warehouses and the Theatre Royal were also constructed in this period. The Greek revival St George's Anglican Church in Battery Point was completed in 1838, and a classical tower, designed by James Blackburn, was added in 1847. St Joseph's was built in 1840. St David's Cathedral, Hobart's first cathedral, was consecrated in 1874.
Hobart has very few high-rise buildings in comparison to other Australian capital cities. This is partly a result of height limits imposed due to Hobart's proximity to the River Derwent and Mount Wellington.
Hobart is home to Australia's oldest continuously operating theatre, the Theatre Royal, built in 1837. Other theatres in the city include the Playhouse theatre, the Backspace Theatre, and many smaller stage theatres.
The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is based at the Federation Concert Hall on the city's waterfront. The Federation Concert Hall also hosts the University of Tasmania's Australian International Symphony Orchestra Institute (AISOI) which fosters advanced young musicians from across Australia and internationally.
Australia's first novel, Quintus Servinton, was published in 1831 by convict Henry Savery and published in Hobart, where he wrote the work during his imprisonment. A generally autobiographical work, it is the story of what happens to a well educated man from a relatively well to do family, who makes poor choices in life. Mary Leman Grimstone, whose book Woman's Love was written in Hobart between 1826 and 1829, holds the distinction of being the first non-biographical Australian novel. It was printed in London in 1832.
The city has also long been home to a thriving classical, jazz, folk, punk, hip-hop, electro, metal and rock music scene. Internationally recognised musicians such as metal acts Striborg and Psycroptic, indie-electro bands The Paradise Motel and The Scientists of Modern Music, singer-songwriters Sacha Lucashenko (of The Morning After Girls), Michael Noga (of The Drones), and Monique Brumby, two-thirds of indie rock band Love of Diagrams, post punk band Sea Scouts, theremin player Miles Brown, blues guitarist Phil Manning (of blues-rock band Chain), power-pop group The Innocents, and TikTok artist Kim Dracula all originated in Hobart. In addition, founding member of Violent Femmes, Brian Ritchie, now calls Hobart home, and has formed a local band, The Green Mist. Ritchie also curates the annual international arts festival MONA FOMA, held at Salamanca Place's waterfront venue, Princes Wharf, Shed No. 1. Hobart hosts many significant festivals including summer's Taste of Tasmania celebrating local produce, wine and music, Dark Mofo marking the winter solstice, Australia's premier festival celebration of voice the Festival of Voices, and Tasmania's biennial international arts festival Ten Days On The Island. Other festivals, including the Hobart Fringe Festival, Hobart Summer Festival, Southern Roots Festival, the Falls Festival in Marion Bay and the Soundscape Festival also capitalise on Hobart's artistic communities.
Hobart is home to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The Meadowbank Estate winery and restaurant features a floor mural by Tom Samek, part funded by the Federal Government. The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) opened in 2011 to coincide with the third annual MONA FOMA festival. The multi-storey MONA gallery was built directly underneath the historic Sir Roy Grounds courtyard house, overlooking the River Derwent. This building serves as the entrance to the MONA Gallery. The Lady Franklin Gallery became Australia's first privately funded museum when established by Lady Jane Franklin in 1843. The Art Society of Tasmania has operated from the premises since 1949. Maritime Museum Tasmania is on Hobart's historic waterfront, and explores the influence of the sea on the lives of Tasmanians and the strong maritime heritage of the island.
Hobart has a growing street art scene thanks to a program called Hobart Walls, which was launched in association with the Vibrance Festival, an annual mural-painting event. The City of Hobart and Vibrance Festival launched Hobart's first legal street art wall in Bidencopes Lane in 2018, allowing any artist to paint there, on any day of the week, provided they sign up for a permit and paint between 9 am and 10 pm.
Designed by the prolific architect Sir Roy Grounds, the 17-storey Wrest Point Hotel Casino in Sandy Bay, opened as Australia's first legal casino in 1973.
The city's nightlife primarily revolves around Salamanca Place, the waterfront area, Elizabeth St in North Hobart and Sandy Bay, but popular pubs, bars and nightclubs exist around the city as well. Major national and international music events are usually held at the Derwent Entertainment Centre, or the Casino. Popular restaurant strips include Elizabeth Street in North Hobart, and Salamanca Place near the waterfront. These include numerous ethnic restaurants including Chinese, Thai, Greek, Pakistani, Italian, Indian and Mexican. The major shopping street in the CBD is Elizabeth Street, with the pedestrianised Elizabeth Mall and the General Post Office.
Close Shave, one of Australia's longest serving male a cappella quartets, is based in Hobart.
Hobart is internationally famous among the yachting community as the finish of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race which starts in Sydney on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day). The arrival of the yachts is celebrated as part of the Hobart Summer Festival, a food and wine festival beginning just after Christmas and ending in mid-January. The Taste of Tasmania is a major part of the festival, where locals and visitors can taste fine local and international food and wine.
The city is the finishing point of the Targa Tasmania rally car event, which has been held annually in April since 1991.
The annual Tulip Festival at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens is a popular Spring celebration in the city.
The Australian Wooden Boat Festival is a biennial event held in Hobart celebrating wooden boats. It is held concurrently with the Royal Hobart Regatta, which began in 1830 and is therefore Tasmania's oldest surviving sporting event.
Most professional Hobart-based sports teams represent Tasmania as a whole rather than exclusively the city.
Cricket is a popular game of the city. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team plays its home games at the Bellerive Oval on the Eastern Shore. A new team, Hobart Hurricanes represent the city in the Big Bash League. Bellerive Oval has been the breeding ground of some world class cricket players including the former Australia captain Ricky Ponting.
Despite Australian rules football's huge popularity in the state of Tasmania, the state does not have a team in the Australian Football League. However, a bid for a Tasmanian AFL team is a popular topic among football fans. The State government is one of the potential sponsors of such a team. Local domestic club football is still played. Tasmanian State League football features five clubs from Hobart, and other leagues such as Southern Football League and the Old Scholars Football Association are also played each Winter.
The city has two local rugby league football teams (Hobart Tigers and South Hobart Storm) that compete in the Tasmanian Rugby League.
Tasmania is not represented by teams in the NRL, Super Rugby, ANZ Championship or A-League. However, the Tasmania JackJumpers entered the NBL in the 2021/22 season. The Hobart Chargers also represent Hobart in the second-tier South East Australian Basketball League. Besides the bid for an AFL club which was passed over in favour of a second Queensland team, despite several major local businesses and the Premier pioneering for a club, there is also a Hobart bid for entry into the A-League.
The Tassie Tigers field men's and women's representative sides in the national hockey league, Hockey One (which replaced the Australian Hockey League in 2019). They play their home matches at the Tasmanian Hockey Centre in New Town near Cornelian Bay, which features three synthetic hockey pitches that have also hosted international competition such as the Men's FIH Pro League as recently as 2019. The Kookaburras current co-Captain and games record holder, Eddie Ockenden, is a product of the Hobart-based club North West Graduates.
The city co-hosted the basketball FIBA Oceania Championship 1975, where the Australian national basketball team won the gold medal.
Five free-to-air television stations service Hobart:
Each station broadcasts a primary channel and several multichannels.
Hobart is served by twenty-nine digital free-to-air television channels:
The majority of pay television services are provided by Foxtel via satellite, although other smaller pay television providers do service Hobart.
Commercial radio stations licensed to cover the Hobart market include Triple M Hobart, hit100.9 Hobart and 7HO FM. Local community radio stations include Christian radio station Ultra106five, Edge Radio and Hobart FM which targets the wider community with specialist programmes. The five ABC radio networks available on analogue radio broadcast to Hobart via 936 ABC Hobart, Radio National, Triple J, NewsRadio and ABC Classic FM. Hobart is also home to the video creation company Biteable.
Hobart's major newspaper is The Mercury, which was founded by John Davies in 1854 and has been continually published ever since. The paper is owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited.
Greater Hobart as of the 2021 Census is divided into seven local government areas - three of which are designated as cities, City of Hobart, City of Glenorchy and City of Clarence. The remaining metropolitan area is within the Municipality of Kingborough, the Municipality of Brighton, the Municipality of Sorell and the Municipality of Derwent Valley. Each local government area has an elected council which manages functions delegated by the Tasmanian state government such as roads, planning, animal control and parks. Mains water and sewerage processing are serviced by TasWater, which is a state-wide authority part owned by the state government and local government areas.
Hobart is the seat of the Parliament of Tasmania, located at Parliament House, Salamanca Place, and the location of the official residence of the Governor of Tasmania, Government House. The senior sitting of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, and only sitting of the Court's appeal division, sit in Hobart.
Hobart was made the seat of government for the southern district of Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land), Buckingham County in 1804, with the northern half of the state separately governed from Port Dalrymple, now George Town. At the time, Van Diemen's Land remained part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1812, the northern lieutenant governorship ceased and Hobart become de facto seat of government for the entire island. Hobart officially became capital of an independent colony of Van Diemen's Land in 1825, and the seat of responsible self government in 1850 with the Australian Constitutions Act 1850.
Hobart is home to the main campus of the University of Tasmania, located in Sandy Bay. On-site accommodation colleges include Christ College, Jane Franklin Hall and St John Fisher College. Other campuses are in Launceston and Burnie.
The Greater Hobart area contains 122 primary, secondary and pretertiary (College) schools distributed throughout Clarence, Glenorchy and Hobart City Councils and Kingborough and Brighton Municipalities. These schools are made up of a mix of public, catholic, private and independent run, with the heaviest distribution lying in the more densely populated West around the Hobart city core. TasTAFE operates a total of seven polytechnic campuses within the Greater Hobart area that provide vocational education and training.
Royal Hobart Hospital is a major public hospital in central Hobart with 501 beds, which also serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Tasmania.
A private hospital, Hobart Private Hospital is located adjacent to it and operated by Australian healthcare provider Healthscope. The company also owns another hospital in the city, the St. Helen's Private Hospital, which features a mother-baby unit.
The only public transportation within the city of Hobart is via a network of Metro Tasmania buses funded by the Tasmanian Government and a small number of private bus services, departing from the centrally located Hobart City Interchange on Elizabeth Street. Like many large Australian cities, Hobart once operated passenger tram services, a trolleybus network consisting of six routes which operated until 1968. However, the tramway closed in the early 1960s. The tracks are still visible in the older streets of Hobart.
Suburban passenger trains, run by the Tasmanian Government Railways, were closed in 1974 and the intrastate passenger service, the Tasman Limited, ceased running in 1978. Recently though there has been a push from the city, and increasingly from government, to establish a light rail network, intended to be fast, efficient, and eco-friendly, along existing tracks in a North South corridor; to help relieve the frequent jamming of traffic in Hobart CBD.
The main arterial routes within the urban area are the Brooker Highway to Glenorchy and the northern suburbs, the Tasman Bridge and Bowen Bridge across the river to Rosny and the Eastern Shore. The East Derwent Highway to Lindisfarne, Geilston Bay, and Northwards to Brighton, the South Arm Highway leading to Howrah, Rokeby, Lauderdale and Opossum Bay and the Southern Outlet south to Kingston and the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Leaving the city, motorists can travel the Lyell Highway to the west coast, Midland Highway to Launceston and the north, Tasman Highway to the east coast, or the Huon Highway to the far south.
Ferry services from Hobart's Eastern Shore into the city were once a common form of public transportation, but with lack of government funding, as well as a lack of interest from the private sector, there has been the demise of a regular commuter ferry service – leaving Hobart's commuters relying solely on travel by automobiles and buses. There is however a water taxi service operating from the Eastern Shore into Hobart which provides an alternative to the Tasman Bridge.
In 2021, the State Government begun a ferry service that operates on the Derwent between Brooke Street Pier and Bellerive. Derwent Ferries was initiated as a year-long trial servicing between Brooke Street Pier in Hobart centre to Bellerive Pier on the eastern shore. The ferry provides a convenient alternative to crossing the Tasman Bridge choke point, with its purpose being to reduce congestion. It is seen as a first step in diversifying Hobart's transport options to ameliorate traffic problems that involves taking cars off the road rather than inducing more traffic. Due to the success of the trial, the ferry service was made permanent, with more than 2100 passengers in the first three weeks.
Hobart is served by Hobart International Airport with flights to/from Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, and regional destinations including the Bass Strait islands. The smaller Cambridge Aerodrome mainly serves small charter airlines offering local tourist flights. In the past decade, Hobart International Airport received a huge upgrade, with the airport now being a first class airport facility.
In 2009, it was announced that Hobart Airport would receive more upgrades, including a first floor, aerobridges (currently, passengers must walk on the tarmac) and shopping facilities. Possible new international flights to Asia and New Zealand, and possible new domestic flights to Darwin and Cairns have been proposed. A second runway, possibly to be constructed in the next 15 years, would assist with growing passenger numbers to Hobart. Hobart Control Tower may be renovated and fitted with new radar equipment, and the airport's carpark may be extended further. Also, new facilities will be built just outside the airport. A new service station, hotel and day care centre have already been built and the road leading to the airport has been maintained and re-sealed. In 2016, work began on a 500-metre extension of the existing runway in addition to a $100 million upgrade of the airport. The runway extension is expected to allow international flights to land and increase air-traffic with Antarctica. This upgrade was, in part, funded under a promise made during the 2013 federal election by the Abbott government. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hobart (/ˈhoʊbɑːrt/ HOH-bart; Nuennonne/palawa kani: nipaluna) is the capital and most populous city of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the southernmost and least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-smallest if territories are taken into account, before Darwin, Northern Territory. Hobart is located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, making it the most southern of Australia's capital cities. Its skyline is dominated by the 1,271-metre (4,170 ft) kunanyi/Mount Wellington, and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world, with much of the city's waterfront consisting of reclaimed land. The metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the seven local government areas that cover the city. It has a mild maritime climate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The city lies on country which was known by the local Mouheneener people as nipaluna, a name which includes surrounding features such as kunanyi/Mt. Wellington and timtumili minanya (River Derwent). Prior to British settlement, the land had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years by Aboriginal Tasmanians.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Founded in 1804 as a British penal colony, Hobart is Australia's second-oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. Whaling quickly emerged as a major industry in the area, and for a time Hobart served as the Southern Ocean's main whaling port. Penal transportation ended in the 1850s, after which the city experienced periods of growth and decline. The early 20th century saw an economic boom on the back of mining, agriculture and other primary industries, and the loss of men who served in the world wars was counteracted by an influx of immigration. Despite the rise in migration from Asia and other non-English speaking regions, Hobart's population remains predominantly ethnically Anglo-Celtic, and has the highest percentage of Australian-born residents among Australia's capital cities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Today, Hobart is the financial and administrative hub of Tasmania, serving as the home port for both Australian and French Antarctic operations and acting as a tourist destination, with over 1.192 million visitors in 2011–12, and 924,000 during 2022–23. Well-known drawcards include its convict-era architecture, Salamanca Market and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first European settlement began in 1803 as a military camp at Risdon Cove on the eastern shores of the River Derwent, amid British concerns over the presence of French explorers. In 1804, along with the military, settlers and convicts from the abandoned Port Phillip settlement, the camp at Risdon Cove was moved by Captain David Collins to a better location at the present site of Hobart at Sullivans Cove. The city, initially known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, was named after Lord Hobart, the British Secretary of State for war and the colonies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The area's indigenous inhabitants were members of the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe. Violent conflict with the European settlers, and the effects of diseases brought by them, dramatically reduced the Aboriginal population, which was rapidly replaced by free settlers and the convict population. Charles Darwin visited Hobart Town in February 1836 as part of the Beagle expedition. He writes of Hobart and the Derwent estuary in The Voyage of the Beagle:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "\"...The lower parts of the hills which skirt the bay are cleared; and the bright yellow fields of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes, appear very luxuriant... I was chiefly struck with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either built or building. Hobart Town, from the census of 1835, contained 13,826 inhabitants, and the whole of Tasmania 36,505.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The River Derwent was one of Australia's finest deepwater ports and was the centre of South Seas whaling and sealing trades. The settlement rapidly grew into a major port, with allied industries such as shipbuilding.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hobart Town became a city on 21 August 1842, and was renamed Hobart from the beginning of 1881.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On 7 September 1936, one of the last known surviving thylacines died at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During the mid 20th century, the state and local governments invested in building Hobart's reputation as a tourist attraction - in 1956 the Lanherne Airport (now Hobart International Airport) was opened. Australia's first legal casino, Wrest Point Hotel Casino opened in 1973. Despite these successes, Hobart faced significant challenges during the 20th century, including the 1967 Tasmanian fires, which claimed 64 lives in Hobart itself and destroyed over 1200 homes, and the 1975 Tasman Bridge disaster, when a bulk ore carrier collided with and destroyed the concrete span bridge that connected the city to its eastern suburbs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the 21st century, Hobart benefited as Tasmania's economy recovered from the 1990s recession, and the city's long-stagnant population growth began to reverse. A period of significant growth has followed, including the redevelopment of the former Macquarie Point railyards, Parliament Square, and new hotel developments throughout the city.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Hobart is located on the estuary of the River Derwent in the state's south-east. Geologically Hobart is built predominantly on Jurassic dolerite around the foothills interspersed with smaller areas of Triassic siltstone and Permian mudstone. Hobart extends along both sides of the River Derwent; on the western shore from the Derwent valley in the north through the flatter areas of Glenorchy which rests on older Triassic sediment and into the hilly areas of New Town, Lenah Valley. Both of these areas rest on the younger Jurassic dolerite deposits, before stretching into the lower areas such as the beaches of Sandy Bay in the south, in the Derwent estuary. South of the Derwent estuary lies Storm Bay and the Tasman Peninsula.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Eastern Shore also extends from the Derwent valley area in a southerly direction hugging the Meehan Range in the east before sprawling into flatter land in suburbs such as Bellerive. These flatter areas of the eastern shore rest on far younger deposits from the Quaternary. From there the city extends in an easterly direction through the Meehan Range into the hilly areas of Rokeby and Oakdowns, before reaching into the tidal flatland area of Lauderdale.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hobart has access to a number of beach areas including those in the Derwent estuary itself; Long Beach, Nutgrove Beach, Bellerive Beach, Cornelian Bay, Kingston, and Howrah Beaches as well as many more in Frederick Henry Bay such as; Seven Mile, Roaches, Cremorne, Clifton, and Goats Beaches.`",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Hobart has a mild temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb). The highest temperature recorded was 41.8 °C (107.2 °F) on 4 January 2013 and the lowest was −2.8 °C (27.0 °F) on 25 June 1972 and 11 July 1981. Annually, Hobart receives only 40.8 clear days without rain. Compared to other major Australian cities, Hobart has the fewest daily average hours of sunshine, with only 5.9 hours per day. However, during the summer it has the same hours of daylight of any Australian city, with 15.3 hours on the summer solstice. By global standards, Hobart has cool summers and mild winters for its relative latitude, being heavily influenced by its seaside location.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Although Hobart itself rarely receives snow during the winter due to the foehn effect created by the Central Highlands (the city's geographic position causes a rainshadow), the adjacent Kunanyi/Mount Wellington is frequently seen with a snowcap throughout the year including in summer. During the 20th century, the city itself has received snowfalls at sea level on average only once every 5 years; however, outer suburbs lying higher on the slopes of Mount Wellington receive snow more often, owing to the more exposed position coupled with them resting at higher altitude. These snow-bearing winds often carry on through Tasmania and Victoria to the Snowy Mountains in Victoria and southern New South Wales.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The average temperature of the sea ranges from 12.5 °C (54.5 °F) in September to 16.5 °C (61.7 °F) in February.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "At the 2021 census, there were 247,068 people in the Greater Hobart. The City of Hobart local government area had a population of 55,077.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "As of 2021, the median weekly household income was $1,542, compared with $1,746 nationally.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "18.1% of households total weekly income is less than $650 week, while 18.9% of households weekly income exceeds $3,000. This compares to national rates of 16.5% and 24.3% respectively.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "35.4% of renting households, and 10.3% of owned households with a mortgage experience housing stress, where rent or mortgage repayments exceed 30% of income.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "At the 2016 census, The most common occupation categories were professionals (22.6%), clerical and administrative workers (14.7%), technicians and trades workers (13.3%), community and personal service workers (12.8%), and managers (11.3%).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "4.5% of the population (11,216 people) are Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "At the 2021 census, the most commonly nominated ancestry groups include:",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "23.4% of the population was born overseas at the 2021 census. The five largest groups of overseas-born were from England (3.3%), Mainland China (2.2%), Nepal (1.7%), India (1.6%) and New Zealand (0.9%).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "At the 2021 census, 82.6% of the population spoke only English at home. The other languages most commonly spoken at home were Mandarin (2.6%), Nepali (1.8%), Punjabi (0.7%), Cantonese (0.5%) and Vietnamese (0.4%).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 2021 census, 49.9% of Greater Hobart residents specified no religion. Christianity comprised the largest religious affiliation (37.1%), with the largest denominations being Anglicanism (14.1%) and Catholicism (14.1%). Hinduism (2.6%), Buddhism (1.3%), Islam (1.3%) and Sikhism (0.6%) constitute the remaining largest religious affiliations.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Hobart has a small community of 456 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with meetinghouses in Glenorchy, Rosny, and Glen Huon. There is also a synagogue, with a Jewish community of 203 people. Hobart has a Baháʼí community, with a Baháʼí Centre of Learning, located within the city. In 2013, Hillsong Church established a Hillsong Connect campus in Hobart.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Shipping is significant to the city's economy. Hobart is the home port for the Antarctic activities of Australia and France. The port loads around 2,000 tonnes of Antarctic cargo a year for the Australian research vessel Nuyina (previously the Aurora Australis). The city is also a popular cruise ship destination during the summer months, with 47 such ships docking during the course of the 2016–17 summer season.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The city also supports many other industries. Major local employers include catamaran builder Incat, zinc refinery Nyrstar Hobart, Cascade Brewery and Cadbury's Chocolate Factory, Norske Skog Boyer and Wrest Point Casino. The city also supports a host of light industry manufacturers, as well as a range of redevelopment projects, including the $689 million Royal Hobart Hospital Redevelopment – standing as the states largest ever Health Infrastructure project.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Tourism is a significant part of the economy, with visitors coming to the city to explore its historic inner suburbs and nationally acclaimed restaurants and cafes, as well as its vibrant music and nightlife culture. The two major draw-cards are the weekly market in Salamanca Place, and the Museum of Old and New Art. The city is also used as a base from which to explore the rest of Tasmania.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The last 15–20 years have seen Hobart's wine industry thrive as many vineyards have developed in countryside areas outside of the city in the Coal River Wine Region and D'Entrecasteaux Channel, including Moorilla Estate at Berriedale one of the most awarded vineyards in Australia.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hobart is an Antarctic gateway city, with geographical proximity to East Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Infrastructure is provided by the port of Hobart for scientific research and cruise ships, and Hobart International Airport supports an Antarctic Airlink to Wilkins Runway at Casey Station. Hobart is a logistics point for the French icebreaker L'Astrolabe.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Hobart is the home port for the Australian and French Antarctic programs, and provides port services for other visiting Antarctic nations and Antarctic cruise ships. Antarctic and Southern Ocean expeditions are supported by a specialist cluster offering cold climate products, services and scientific expertise. The majority of these businesses and organisations are members of the Tasmanian polar network, supported in part by the Tasmanian State Government.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Tasmania has a high concentration of Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientists. Hobart is home to the following Antarctic and Southern Ocean scientific institutions:",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Hobart serves as a focal point and mecca for tourism in the state of Tasmania. Hobart has been a significant tourist destination for many years, however tourism has evolved to a core industry in the last decade. This process has been termed the \"MONA Effect\" - referring to the significant influence of the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum, on the local tourist economy - compared to the effect of the Guggenheim on Bilbao. Since opening in 2011, MONA had received 2.5 million visitors by 2022 and has helped establish a number of art and food venues and events, including MONA FOMA, and the winter festivals of Mid-Winter Fest and Dark Mofo. 27% of visitors to Tasmania visit the museum.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2016, Hobart received 1.8 million visitors, surpassing both Perth and Canberra, tying equally with Brisbane. Visitor numbers reached a low of 744,200 in 2021, primarily as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, with expectations that numbers would return to normal by 2023.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Many local tourist attractions focuses on the convict history of Hobart, the city's historic architecture, art experiences, and food and alcohol experiences. Hobart is home to a significant number of nationally known restaurants, boutique alcohol producers, including Sullivans Cove Whiskey, which won world's best single malt in 2014, boutique hotels, and art experiences. Other significant tourist attractions include Australia's second oldest botanic gardens, the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, which holds extensive significant plant collections, a range of public and private museums including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Maritime Museum Tasmania, and kunanyi/Mount Wellington, one of the dominant features of Hobart's skyline. At 1,271 metres (4,170 ft), the mountain has its own ecosystems, is rich in biodiversity and plays a large part in determining the local weather.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Hobart is known for its well-preserved Georgian and Victorian architecture, giving the city a distinctly \"Old World\" feel. For locals, this became a source of discomfiture about the city's convict past, but is now a draw card for tourists. Regions within the city centre, such as Salamanca Place and Battery Point, contain many of the city's heritage-listed buildings. Historic homes and mansions also exist in the suburbs, much of the inner-city neighbourhoods are dotted with weatherboard cottages and two-storey Victorian houses. Hobart has a significant body of notable buildings, including the Cascades Female Factory, one of the UNESCO Australian Convict Sites, the Hobart Synagogue, which is the oldest synagogue in Australia and a rare surviving example of an Egyptian Revival synagogue, Hadley's Orient Hotel, on Hobart's Murray Street, which is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Australia, and the Theatre Royal, the oldest continually operating theatre in Australia.",
"title": "Architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Kelly's Steps were built in 1839 by shipwright and adventurer James Kelly to provide a short-cut from Kelly Street and Arthur Circus in Battery Point to the warehouse and dockyards district of Salamanca Place. In 1835, John Lee Archer designed and oversaw the construction of the sandstone Customs House, facing Sullivans Cove. Completed in 1840, it was used as Tasmania's parliament house, and is now commemorated by a pub bearing the same name (built in 1844) which is frequented by yachtsmen after they have completed the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.",
"title": "Architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Hobart is also home to many historic churches. The Scots Church (formerly known as St Andrew's) was built in Bathurst Street from 1834 to 1836, and a small sandstone building within the churchyard was used as the city's first Presbyterian Church. The Salamanca Place warehouses and the Theatre Royal were also constructed in this period. The Greek revival St George's Anglican Church in Battery Point was completed in 1838, and a classical tower, designed by James Blackburn, was added in 1847. St Joseph's was built in 1840. St David's Cathedral, Hobart's first cathedral, was consecrated in 1874.",
"title": "Architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Hobart has very few high-rise buildings in comparison to other Australian capital cities. This is partly a result of height limits imposed due to Hobart's proximity to the River Derwent and Mount Wellington.",
"title": "Architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Hobart is home to Australia's oldest continuously operating theatre, the Theatre Royal, built in 1837. Other theatres in the city include the Playhouse theatre, the Backspace Theatre, and many smaller stage theatres.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is based at the Federation Concert Hall on the city's waterfront. The Federation Concert Hall also hosts the University of Tasmania's Australian International Symphony Orchestra Institute (AISOI) which fosters advanced young musicians from across Australia and internationally.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Australia's first novel, Quintus Servinton, was published in 1831 by convict Henry Savery and published in Hobart, where he wrote the work during his imprisonment. A generally autobiographical work, it is the story of what happens to a well educated man from a relatively well to do family, who makes poor choices in life. Mary Leman Grimstone, whose book Woman's Love was written in Hobart between 1826 and 1829, holds the distinction of being the first non-biographical Australian novel. It was printed in London in 1832.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The city has also long been home to a thriving classical, jazz, folk, punk, hip-hop, electro, metal and rock music scene. Internationally recognised musicians such as metal acts Striborg and Psycroptic, indie-electro bands The Paradise Motel and The Scientists of Modern Music, singer-songwriters Sacha Lucashenko (of The Morning After Girls), Michael Noga (of The Drones), and Monique Brumby, two-thirds of indie rock band Love of Diagrams, post punk band Sea Scouts, theremin player Miles Brown, blues guitarist Phil Manning (of blues-rock band Chain), power-pop group The Innocents, and TikTok artist Kim Dracula all originated in Hobart. In addition, founding member of Violent Femmes, Brian Ritchie, now calls Hobart home, and has formed a local band, The Green Mist. Ritchie also curates the annual international arts festival MONA FOMA, held at Salamanca Place's waterfront venue, Princes Wharf, Shed No. 1. Hobart hosts many significant festivals including summer's Taste of Tasmania celebrating local produce, wine and music, Dark Mofo marking the winter solstice, Australia's premier festival celebration of voice the Festival of Voices, and Tasmania's biennial international arts festival Ten Days On The Island. Other festivals, including the Hobart Fringe Festival, Hobart Summer Festival, Southern Roots Festival, the Falls Festival in Marion Bay and the Soundscape Festival also capitalise on Hobart's artistic communities.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Hobart is home to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The Meadowbank Estate winery and restaurant features a floor mural by Tom Samek, part funded by the Federal Government. The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) opened in 2011 to coincide with the third annual MONA FOMA festival. The multi-storey MONA gallery was built directly underneath the historic Sir Roy Grounds courtyard house, overlooking the River Derwent. This building serves as the entrance to the MONA Gallery. The Lady Franklin Gallery became Australia's first privately funded museum when established by Lady Jane Franklin in 1843. The Art Society of Tasmania has operated from the premises since 1949. Maritime Museum Tasmania is on Hobart's historic waterfront, and explores the influence of the sea on the lives of Tasmanians and the strong maritime heritage of the island.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Hobart has a growing street art scene thanks to a program called Hobart Walls, which was launched in association with the Vibrance Festival, an annual mural-painting event. The City of Hobart and Vibrance Festival launched Hobart's first legal street art wall in Bidencopes Lane in 2018, allowing any artist to paint there, on any day of the week, provided they sign up for a permit and paint between 9 am and 10 pm.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Designed by the prolific architect Sir Roy Grounds, the 17-storey Wrest Point Hotel Casino in Sandy Bay, opened as Australia's first legal casino in 1973.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The city's nightlife primarily revolves around Salamanca Place, the waterfront area, Elizabeth St in North Hobart and Sandy Bay, but popular pubs, bars and nightclubs exist around the city as well. Major national and international music events are usually held at the Derwent Entertainment Centre, or the Casino. Popular restaurant strips include Elizabeth Street in North Hobart, and Salamanca Place near the waterfront. These include numerous ethnic restaurants including Chinese, Thai, Greek, Pakistani, Italian, Indian and Mexican. The major shopping street in the CBD is Elizabeth Street, with the pedestrianised Elizabeth Mall and the General Post Office.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Close Shave, one of Australia's longest serving male a cappella quartets, is based in Hobart.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Hobart is internationally famous among the yachting community as the finish of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race which starts in Sydney on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day). The arrival of the yachts is celebrated as part of the Hobart Summer Festival, a food and wine festival beginning just after Christmas and ending in mid-January. The Taste of Tasmania is a major part of the festival, where locals and visitors can taste fine local and international food and wine.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The city is the finishing point of the Targa Tasmania rally car event, which has been held annually in April since 1991.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The annual Tulip Festival at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens is a popular Spring celebration in the city.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Australian Wooden Boat Festival is a biennial event held in Hobart celebrating wooden boats. It is held concurrently with the Royal Hobart Regatta, which began in 1830 and is therefore Tasmania's oldest surviving sporting event.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Most professional Hobart-based sports teams represent Tasmania as a whole rather than exclusively the city.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Cricket is a popular game of the city. The Tasmanian Tigers cricket team plays its home games at the Bellerive Oval on the Eastern Shore. A new team, Hobart Hurricanes represent the city in the Big Bash League. Bellerive Oval has been the breeding ground of some world class cricket players including the former Australia captain Ricky Ponting.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Despite Australian rules football's huge popularity in the state of Tasmania, the state does not have a team in the Australian Football League. However, a bid for a Tasmanian AFL team is a popular topic among football fans. The State government is one of the potential sponsors of such a team. Local domestic club football is still played. Tasmanian State League football features five clubs from Hobart, and other leagues such as Southern Football League and the Old Scholars Football Association are also played each Winter.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The city has two local rugby league football teams (Hobart Tigers and South Hobart Storm) that compete in the Tasmanian Rugby League.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Tasmania is not represented by teams in the NRL, Super Rugby, ANZ Championship or A-League. However, the Tasmania JackJumpers entered the NBL in the 2021/22 season. The Hobart Chargers also represent Hobart in the second-tier South East Australian Basketball League. Besides the bid for an AFL club which was passed over in favour of a second Queensland team, despite several major local businesses and the Premier pioneering for a club, there is also a Hobart bid for entry into the A-League.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Tassie Tigers field men's and women's representative sides in the national hockey league, Hockey One (which replaced the Australian Hockey League in 2019). They play their home matches at the Tasmanian Hockey Centre in New Town near Cornelian Bay, which features three synthetic hockey pitches that have also hosted international competition such as the Men's FIH Pro League as recently as 2019. The Kookaburras current co-Captain and games record holder, Eddie Ockenden, is a product of the Hobart-based club North West Graduates.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The city co-hosted the basketball FIBA Oceania Championship 1975, where the Australian national basketball team won the gold medal.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Five free-to-air television stations service Hobart:",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Each station broadcasts a primary channel and several multichannels.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Hobart is served by twenty-nine digital free-to-air television channels:",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The majority of pay television services are provided by Foxtel via satellite, although other smaller pay television providers do service Hobart.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Commercial radio stations licensed to cover the Hobart market include Triple M Hobart, hit100.9 Hobart and 7HO FM. Local community radio stations include Christian radio station Ultra106five, Edge Radio and Hobart FM which targets the wider community with specialist programmes. The five ABC radio networks available on analogue radio broadcast to Hobart via 936 ABC Hobart, Radio National, Triple J, NewsRadio and ABC Classic FM. Hobart is also home to the video creation company Biteable.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Hobart's major newspaper is The Mercury, which was founded by John Davies in 1854 and has been continually published ever since. The paper is owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Greater Hobart as of the 2021 Census is divided into seven local government areas - three of which are designated as cities, City of Hobart, City of Glenorchy and City of Clarence. The remaining metropolitan area is within the Municipality of Kingborough, the Municipality of Brighton, the Municipality of Sorell and the Municipality of Derwent Valley. Each local government area has an elected council which manages functions delegated by the Tasmanian state government such as roads, planning, animal control and parks. Mains water and sewerage processing are serviced by TasWater, which is a state-wide authority part owned by the state government and local government areas.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Hobart is the seat of the Parliament of Tasmania, located at Parliament House, Salamanca Place, and the location of the official residence of the Governor of Tasmania, Government House. The senior sitting of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, and only sitting of the Court's appeal division, sit in Hobart.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Hobart was made the seat of government for the southern district of Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land), Buckingham County in 1804, with the northern half of the state separately governed from Port Dalrymple, now George Town. At the time, Van Diemen's Land remained part of the Colony of New South Wales. In 1812, the northern lieutenant governorship ceased and Hobart become de facto seat of government for the entire island. Hobart officially became capital of an independent colony of Van Diemen's Land in 1825, and the seat of responsible self government in 1850 with the Australian Constitutions Act 1850.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Hobart is home to the main campus of the University of Tasmania, located in Sandy Bay. On-site accommodation colleges include Christ College, Jane Franklin Hall and St John Fisher College. Other campuses are in Launceston and Burnie.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Greater Hobart area contains 122 primary, secondary and pretertiary (College) schools distributed throughout Clarence, Glenorchy and Hobart City Councils and Kingborough and Brighton Municipalities. These schools are made up of a mix of public, catholic, private and independent run, with the heaviest distribution lying in the more densely populated West around the Hobart city core. TasTAFE operates a total of seven polytechnic campuses within the Greater Hobart area that provide vocational education and training.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Royal Hobart Hospital is a major public hospital in central Hobart with 501 beds, which also serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Tasmania.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "A private hospital, Hobart Private Hospital is located adjacent to it and operated by Australian healthcare provider Healthscope. The company also owns another hospital in the city, the St. Helen's Private Hospital, which features a mother-baby unit.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The only public transportation within the city of Hobart is via a network of Metro Tasmania buses funded by the Tasmanian Government and a small number of private bus services, departing from the centrally located Hobart City Interchange on Elizabeth Street. Like many large Australian cities, Hobart once operated passenger tram services, a trolleybus network consisting of six routes which operated until 1968. However, the tramway closed in the early 1960s. The tracks are still visible in the older streets of Hobart.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Suburban passenger trains, run by the Tasmanian Government Railways, were closed in 1974 and the intrastate passenger service, the Tasman Limited, ceased running in 1978. Recently though there has been a push from the city, and increasingly from government, to establish a light rail network, intended to be fast, efficient, and eco-friendly, along existing tracks in a North South corridor; to help relieve the frequent jamming of traffic in Hobart CBD.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The main arterial routes within the urban area are the Brooker Highway to Glenorchy and the northern suburbs, the Tasman Bridge and Bowen Bridge across the river to Rosny and the Eastern Shore. The East Derwent Highway to Lindisfarne, Geilston Bay, and Northwards to Brighton, the South Arm Highway leading to Howrah, Rokeby, Lauderdale and Opossum Bay and the Southern Outlet south to Kingston and the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Leaving the city, motorists can travel the Lyell Highway to the west coast, Midland Highway to Launceston and the north, Tasman Highway to the east coast, or the Huon Highway to the far south.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Ferry services from Hobart's Eastern Shore into the city were once a common form of public transportation, but with lack of government funding, as well as a lack of interest from the private sector, there has been the demise of a regular commuter ferry service – leaving Hobart's commuters relying solely on travel by automobiles and buses. There is however a water taxi service operating from the Eastern Shore into Hobart which provides an alternative to the Tasman Bridge.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 2021, the State Government begun a ferry service that operates on the Derwent between Brooke Street Pier and Bellerive. Derwent Ferries was initiated as a year-long trial servicing between Brooke Street Pier in Hobart centre to Bellerive Pier on the eastern shore. The ferry provides a convenient alternative to crossing the Tasman Bridge choke point, with its purpose being to reduce congestion. It is seen as a first step in diversifying Hobart's transport options to ameliorate traffic problems that involves taking cars off the road rather than inducing more traffic. Due to the success of the trial, the ferry service was made permanent, with more than 2100 passengers in the first three weeks.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Hobart is served by Hobart International Airport with flights to/from Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, and regional destinations including the Bass Strait islands. The smaller Cambridge Aerodrome mainly serves small charter airlines offering local tourist flights. In the past decade, Hobart International Airport received a huge upgrade, with the airport now being a first class airport facility.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In 2009, it was announced that Hobart Airport would receive more upgrades, including a first floor, aerobridges (currently, passengers must walk on the tarmac) and shopping facilities. Possible new international flights to Asia and New Zealand, and possible new domestic flights to Darwin and Cairns have been proposed. A second runway, possibly to be constructed in the next 15 years, would assist with growing passenger numbers to Hobart. Hobart Control Tower may be renovated and fitted with new radar equipment, and the airport's carpark may be extended further. Also, new facilities will be built just outside the airport. A new service station, hotel and day care centre have already been built and the road leading to the airport has been maintained and re-sealed. In 2016, work began on a 500-metre extension of the existing runway in addition to a $100 million upgrade of the airport. The runway extension is expected to allow international flights to land and increase air-traffic with Antarctica. This upgrade was, in part, funded under a promise made during the 2013 federal election by the Abbott government.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
}
]
| Hobart is the capital and most populous city of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the southernmost and least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-smallest if territories are taken into account, before Darwin, Northern Territory. Hobart is located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, making it the most southern of Australia's capital cities. Its skyline is dominated by the 1,271-metre (4,170 ft) kunanyi/Mount Wellington, and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world, with much of the city's waterfront consisting of reclaimed land. The metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the seven local government areas that cover the city. It has a mild maritime climate. The city lies on country which was known by the local Mouheneener people as nipaluna, a name which includes surrounding features such as kunanyi/Mt. Wellington and timtumili minanya. Prior to British settlement, the land had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years by Aboriginal Tasmanians. Founded in 1804 as a British penal colony, Hobart is Australia's second-oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. Whaling quickly emerged as a major industry in the area, and for a time Hobart served as the Southern Ocean's main whaling port. Penal transportation ended in the 1850s, after which the city experienced periods of growth and decline. The early 20th century saw an economic boom on the back of mining, agriculture and other primary industries, and the loss of men who served in the world wars was counteracted by an influx of immigration. Despite the rise in migration from Asia and other non-English speaking regions, Hobart's population remains predominantly ethnically Anglo-Celtic, and has the highest percentage of Australian-born residents among Australia's capital cities. Today, Hobart is the financial and administrative hub of Tasmania, serving as the home port for both Australian and French Antarctic operations and acting as a tourist destination, with over 1.192 million visitors in 2011–12, and 924,000 during 2022–23. Well-known drawcards include its convict-era architecture, Salamanca Market and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), the Southern Hemisphere's largest private museum. | 2001-08-29T08:58:08Z | 2023-12-30T20:25:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart |
13,700 | Hesiod | Hesiod (/ˈhiːsiəd/ HEE-see-əd or /ˈhɛsiəd/ HEH-see-əd; Greek: Ἡσίοδος Hēsíodos) was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in scholarly circles (see § Dating below). Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony, that support inferences made by scholars. The former poem says that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis (on the coast of Asia Minor, a little south of the island Lesbos) and crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet, near Thespiae in Boeotia, named Ascra, "a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant" (Works 640). Hesiod's patrimony (property inherited from one's father or male ancestor) in Ascra, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses, who seems, at first, to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or "kings" but later became impoverished and ended up scrounging from the thrifty poet (Works 35, 396).
Unlike his father Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Athamas of Chalcis, and there won a tripod in a singing competition. He also describes a meeting between himself and the Muses on Mount Helicon, where he had been pasturing sheep when the goddesses presented him with a laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority (Theogony 22–35). Fanciful though the story might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode, or he would have been presented with a lyre instead.
Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days, but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting, as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have traveled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious. Gregory Nagy, on the other hand, sees both Pérsēs ("the destroyer" from πέρθω, pérthō) and Hēsíodos ("he who emits the voice" from ἵημι, híēmi and αὐδή, audḗ) as fictitious names for poetical personae.
It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Asia Minor westwards to mainland Greece, the opposite direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Hesiod himself gives no explanation for it. However around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of seagoing merchants from his original home in Cyme in Asia Minor to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with the Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia, where he eventually established himself and his family. The family association with Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with Eastern myths, evident in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them.
In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend (Works and Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.). One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially the catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant. The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging to the same dialect group. However, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of the time, Homer's Ionian.
It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passed them on orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise, the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained rhapsodes could do. It certainly wasn't in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However, some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute this to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter.
The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of "aristocratic withdrawal" typical of a rhapsode but is instead "argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women." He was in fact a "misogynist" of the same calibre as the later poet Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and "how a just and all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life". He recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealized view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings in Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for.
Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources:
Two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides, reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea, and so he fled to Locris, where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death) claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra, the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and set them in a place of honour in their agora, next to the tomb of Minyas, their eponymous founder. Eventually, they came to regard Hesiod too as their "hearth-founder" (οἰκιστής, oikistēs). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Yet another account taken from classical sources, cited by author Charles Abraham Elton in his The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules by Hesiod depicts Hesiod as being falsely accused of rape by a girl's brothers and murdered in reprisal despite his advanced age while the true culprit (his Milesian fellow-traveler) managed to escape.
Greeks in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer—in that order. Thereafter, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe the Homeridae were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense.
The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus, though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian Herodotus (Histories II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and the 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic ágōn (ἄγών), which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either side.
Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era. Imitations of his work have been observed in Alcaeus, Epimenides, Mimnermus, Semonides, Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, from which it has been inferred that the latest possible date for him is about 650 BC.
An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC (Theogony 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine, a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in the 8th century BC. (Theogony 337–45).
Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod (Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony, a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis.
Three works have survived which were attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles. Only fragments exist of other works attributed to him. The surviving works and fragments were all written in the conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, metre, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from the Shield of Heracles (see Hesiod's Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias).
Some scholars have detected a proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view rejected by Paul Cartledge, for example, on the grounds that Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification. Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse. He had "a passion for systematizing and explaining things". Ancient Greek poetry in general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates a deep interest in a wide range of 'philosophical' issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings of human society. Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b–987a) believed that the question of first causes may even have started with Hesiod (Theogony 116–53) and Homer (Iliad 14.201, 246).
He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in a tone of voice that has been described as having a "grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity" but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days, where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behaviour and happiness through the silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different world-views, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy.
The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite the different subject matter between this poem and the Works and Days, most scholars, with some notable exceptions, believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M. L. West writes, "Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him." An example:
Hateful strife bore painful Toil, Neglect, Starvation, and tearful Pain, Battles, Combats...
The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus and Eros, and shows a special interest in genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus, the accepted version that linked all Hellenes. It's the earliest known source for the myths of Pandora, Prometheus and the Golden Age.
The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis. This cultural crossover may have occurred in the eighth- and ninth-century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria. (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes and Peter Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East.)
Works and Days is a poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of new land.
Works and Days may have been influenced by an established tradition of didactic poetry based on Sumerian, Hebrew, Babylonian and Egyptian wisdom literature.
This work lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in a hive. In the horror of the triumph of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing the "Golden Age" present the social character and practice of nonviolent diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path of living sufficiently.
In addition to the Theogony and Works and Days, numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works are generally referred to as forming part of the "Hesiodic corpus" whether or not their authorship is accepted. The situation is summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most:
"Hesiod" is the name of a person; "Hesiodic" is a designation for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to the poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned to Hesiod himself.
Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles (Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους, Aspis Hērakleous) is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition.
Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, "Or like the one who ..."). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions.
Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod:
In addition to these works, the Suda lists an otherwise unknown "dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved".
Portrait of Hesiod from Augusta Treverorum (Trier), from the end of the 3rd century AD. The mosaic is signed in its central field by the maker, 'MONNUS FECIT' ('Monnus made this'). The figure is identified by name: 'ESIO-DVS' ('Hesiod'). It is the only known authenticated portrait of Hesiod.
The Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought not to be of Seneca the Younger. It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. In fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the bust was not of Seneca when an inscribed herma portrait of Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow Richter's identification.
Hesiod employed the conventional dialect of epic verse, which was Ionian. Comparisons with Homer, a native Ionian, can be unflattering. Hesiod's handling of the dactylic hexameter was not as masterful or fluent as Homer's and one modern scholar refers to his "hobnailed hexameters". His use of language and meter in Works and Days and Theogony distinguishes him also from the author of the Shield of Heracles. All three poets, for example, employed digamma inconsistently, sometimes allowing it to affect syllable length and meter, sometimes not. The ratio of observance/neglect of digamma varies between them. The extent of variation depends on how the evidence is collected and interpreted but there is a clear trend, revealed for example in the following set of statistics.
Hesiod does not observe digamma as often as the others do. That result is a bit counter-intuitive since digamma was still a feature of the Boeotian dialect that Hesiod probably spoke, whereas it had already vanished from the Ionic vernacular of Homer. This anomaly can be explained by the fact that Hesiod made a conscious effort to compose like an Ionian epic poet at a time when digamma was not heard in Ionian speech, while Homer tried to compose like an older generation of Ionian bards, when it was heard in Ionian speech. There is also a significant difference in the results for Theogony and Works and Days, but that is merely due to the fact that the former includes a catalog of divinities and therefore it makes frequent use of the definite article associated with digamma, oἱ.
Though typical of epic, his vocabulary features some significant differences from Homer's. One scholar has counted 278 un-Homeric words in Works and Days, 151 in Theogony and 95 in Shield of Heracles. The disproportionate number of un-Homeric words in W & D is due to its un-Homeric subject matter. Hesiod's vocabulary also includes quite a lot of formulaic phrases that are not found in Homer, which indicates that he may have been writing within a different tradition. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hesiod (/ˈhiːsiəd/ HEE-see-əd or /ˈhɛsiəd/ HEH-see-əd; Greek: Ἡσίοδος Hēsíodos) was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in scholarly circles (see § Dating below). Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony, that support inferences made by scholars. The former poem says that his father came from Cyme in Aeolis (on the coast of Asia Minor, a little south of the island Lesbos) and crossed the sea to settle at a hamlet, near Thespiae in Boeotia, named Ascra, \"a cursed place, cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant\" (Works 640). Hesiod's patrimony (property inherited from one's father or male ancestor) in Ascra, a small piece of ground at the foot of Mount Helicon, occasioned lawsuits with his brother Perses, who seems, at first, to have cheated him of his rightful share thanks to corrupt authorities or \"kings\" but later became impoverished and ended up scrounging from the thrifty poet (Works 35, 396).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Unlike his father Hesiod was averse to sea travel, but he once crossed the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and Euboea to participate in funeral celebrations for one Athamas of Chalcis, and there won a tripod in a singing competition. He also describes a meeting between himself and the Muses on Mount Helicon, where he had been pasturing sheep when the goddesses presented him with a laurel staff, a symbol of poetic authority (Theogony 22–35). Fanciful though the story might seem, the account has led ancient and modern scholars to infer that he was not a professionally trained rhapsode, or he would have been presented with a lyre instead.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Some scholars have seen Perses as a literary creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days, but there are also arguments against that theory. For example, it is quite common for works of moral instruction to have an imaginative setting, as a means of getting the audience's attention, but it could be difficult to see how Hesiod could have traveled around the countryside entertaining people with a narrative about himself if the account was known to be fictitious. Gregory Nagy, on the other hand, sees both Pérsēs (\"the destroyer\" from πέρθω, pérthō) and Hēsíodos (\"he who emits the voice\" from ἵημι, híēmi and αὐδή, audḗ) as fictitious names for poetical personae.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "It might seem unusual that Hesiod's father migrated from Asia Minor westwards to mainland Greece, the opposite direction to most colonial movements at the time, and Hesiod himself gives no explanation for it. However around 750 BC or a little later, there was a migration of seagoing merchants from his original home in Cyme in Asia Minor to Cumae in Campania (a colony they shared with the Euboeans), and possibly his move west had something to do with that, since Euboea is not far from Boeotia, where he eventually established himself and his family. The family association with Aeolian Cyme might explain his familiarity with Eastern myths, evident in his poems, though the Greek world might have already developed its own versions of them.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In spite of Hesiod's complaints about poverty, life on his father's farm could not have been too uncomfortable if Works and Days is anything to judge by, since he describes the routines of prosperous yeomanry rather than peasants. His farmer employs a friend (Works and Days 370) as well as servants (502, 573, 597, 608, 766), an energetic and responsible ploughman of mature years (469 ff.), a slave boy to cover the seed (441–6), a female servant to keep house (405, 602) and working teams of oxen and mules (405, 607f.). One modern scholar surmises that Hesiod may have learned about world geography, especially the catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a merchant. The father probably spoke in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme but Hesiod probably grew up speaking the local Boeotian, belonging to the same dialect group. However, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian. His basic language was the main literary dialect of the time, Homer's Ionian.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "It is probable that Hesiod wrote his poems down, or dictated them, rather than passed them on orally, as rhapsodes did—otherwise, the pronounced personality that now emerges from the poems would surely have been diluted through oral transmission from one rhapsode to another. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore, as trained rhapsodes could do. It certainly wasn't in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had probably no such notions for themselves. However, some scholars suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text and attribute this to oral transmission. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm, in the spring before the May harvest or the dead of winter.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The personality behind the poems is unsuited to the kind of \"aristocratic withdrawal\" typical of a rhapsode but is instead \"argumentative, suspicious, ironically humorous, frugal, fond of proverbs, wary of women.\" He was in fact a \"misogynist\" of the same calibre as the later poet Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and \"how a just and all-powerful god can allow the unjust to flourish in this life\". He recalls Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealized view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogize kings in Theogony (80 ff., 430, 434) and denounce them as corrupt in Works and Days suggests that he could resemble whichever audience he composed for.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Various legends accumulated about Hesiod and they are recorded in several sources:",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiod's grave. One, as early as Thucydides, reported in Plutarch, the Suda and John Tzetzes, states that the Delphic oracle warned Hesiod that he would die in Nemea, and so he fled to Locris, where he was killed at the local temple to Nemean Zeus, and buried there. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention: the oracle predicts accurately after all. The other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC (within a century or so of Hesiod's death) claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. According to Aristotle's Constitution of Orchomenus, when the Thespians ravaged Ascra, the villagers sought refuge at Orchomenus, where, following the advice of an oracle, they collected the ashes of Hesiod and set them in a place of honour in their agora, next to the tomb of Minyas, their eponymous founder. Eventually, they came to regard Hesiod too as their \"hearth-founder\" (οἰκιστής, oikistēs). Later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Yet another account taken from classical sources, cited by author Charles Abraham Elton in his The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules by Hesiod depicts Hesiod as being falsely accused of rape by a girl's brothers and murdered in reprisal despite his advanced age while the true culprit (his Milesian fellow-traveler) managed to escape.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Greeks in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer—in that order. Thereafter, Greek writers began to consider Homer earlier than Hesiod. Devotees of Orpheus and Musaeus were probably responsible for precedence being given to their two cult heroes and maybe the Homeridae were responsible in later antiquity for promoting Homer at Hesiod's expense.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The first known writers to locate Homer earlier than Hesiod were Xenophanes and Heraclides Ponticus, though Aristarchus of Samothrace was the first actually to argue the case. Ephorus made Homer a younger cousin of Hesiod, the 5th century BC historian Herodotus (Histories II, 53) evidently considered them near-contemporaries, and the 4th century BC sophist Alcidamas in his work Mouseion even brought them together for an imagined poetic ágōn (ἄγών), which survives today as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Most scholars today agree with Homer's priority but there are good arguments on either side.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Hesiod certainly predates the lyric and elegiac poets whose work has come down to the modern era. Imitations of his work have been observed in Alcaeus, Epimenides, Mimnermus, Semonides, Tyrtaeus and Archilochus, from which it has been inferred that the latest possible date for him is about 650 BC.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "An upper limit of 750 BC is indicated by a number of considerations, such as the probability that his work was written down, the fact that he mentions a sanctuary at Delphi that was of little national significance before c. 750 BC (Theogony 499), and he lists rivers that flow into the Euxine, a region explored and developed by Greek colonists beginning in the 8th century BC. (Theogony 337–45).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hesiod mentions a poetry contest at Chalcis in Euboea where the sons of one Amphidamas awarded him a tripod (Works and Days 654–662). Plutarch identified this Amphidamas with the hero of the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria and he concluded that the passage must be an interpolation into Hesiod's original work, assuming that the Lelantine War was too late for Hesiod. Modern scholars have accepted his identification of Amphidamas but disagreed with his conclusion. The date of the war is not known precisely but estimates placing it around 730–705 BC fit the estimated chronology for Hesiod. In that case, the tripod that Hesiod won might have been awarded for his rendition of Theogony, a poem that seems to presuppose the kind of aristocratic audience he would have met at Chalcis.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Three works have survived which were attributed to Hesiod by ancient commentators: Works and Days, Theogony, and Shield of Heracles. Only fragments exist of other works attributed to him. The surviving works and fragments were all written in the conventional metre and language of epic. However, the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC. Many ancient critics also rejected Theogony (e.g., Pausanias 9.31.3), even though Hesiod mentions himself by name in that poem. Theogony and Works and Days might be very different in subject matter, but they share a distinctive language, metre, and prosody that subtly distinguish them from Homer's work and from the Shield of Heracles (see Hesiod's Greek below). Moreover, they both refer to the same version of the Prometheus myth. Yet even these authentic poems may include interpolations. For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias).",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Some scholars have detected a proto-historical perspective in Hesiod, a view rejected by Paul Cartledge, for example, on the grounds that Hesiod advocates a not-forgetting without any attempt at verification. Hesiod has also been considered the father of gnomic verse. He had \"a passion for systematizing and explaining things\". Ancient Greek poetry in general had strong philosophical tendencies and Hesiod, like Homer, demonstrates a deep interest in a wide range of 'philosophical' issues, from the nature of divine justice to the beginnings of human society. Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b–987a) believed that the question of first causes may even have started with Hesiod (Theogony 116–53) and Homer (Iliad 14.201, 246).",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "He viewed the world from outside the charmed circle of aristocratic rulers, protesting against their injustices in a tone of voice that has been described as having a \"grumpy quality redeemed by a gaunt dignity\" but, as stated in the biography section, he could also change to suit the audience. This ambivalence appears to underlie his presentation of human history in Works and Days, where he depicts a golden period when life was easy and good, followed by a steady decline in behaviour and happiness through the silver, bronze, and Iron Ages – except that he inserts a heroic age between the last two, representing its warlike men as better than their bronze predecessors. He seems in this case to be catering to two different world-views, one epic and aristocratic, the other unsympathetic to the heroic traditions of the aristocracy.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Theogony is commonly considered Hesiod's earliest work. Despite the different subject matter between this poem and the Works and Days, most scholars, with some notable exceptions, believe that the two works were written by the same man. As M. L. West writes, \"Both bear the marks of a distinct personality: a surly, conservative countryman, given to reflection, no lover of women or life, who felt the gods' presence heavy about him.\" An example:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Hateful strife bore painful Toil, Neglect, Starvation, and tearful Pain, Battles, Combats...",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Theogony concerns the origins of the world (cosmogony) and of the gods (theogony), beginning with Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus and Eros, and shows a special interest in genealogy. Embedded in Greek myth, there remain fragments of quite variant tales, hinting at the rich variety of myth that once existed, city by city; but Hesiod's retelling of the old stories became, according to Herodotus, the accepted version that linked all Hellenes. It's the earliest known source for the myths of Pandora, Prometheus and the Golden Age.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The creation myth in Hesiod has long been held to have Eastern influences, such as the Hittite Song of Kumarbi and the Babylonian Enuma Elis. This cultural crossover may have occurred in the eighth- and ninth-century Greek trading colonies such as Al Mina in North Syria. (For more discussion, read Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes and Peter Walcot's Hesiod and the Near East.)",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Works and Days is a poem of over 800 lines which revolves around two general truths: labour is the universal lot of Man, but he who is willing to work will get by. Scholars have interpreted this work against a background of agrarian crisis in mainland Greece, which inspired a wave of documented colonisations in search of new land.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Works and Days may have been influenced by an established tradition of didactic poetry based on Sumerian, Hebrew, Babylonian and Egyptian wisdom literature.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "This work lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness and unjust judges (like those who decided in favour of Perses) as well as the practice of usury. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice. The poem regards labor as the source of all good, in that both gods and men hate the idle, who resemble drones in a hive. In the horror of the triumph of violence over hard work and honor, verses describing the \"Golden Age\" present the social character and practice of nonviolent diet through agriculture and fruit-culture as a higher path of living sufficiently.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In addition to the Theogony and Works and Days, numerous other poems were ascribed to Hesiod during antiquity. Modern scholarship has doubted their authenticity, and these works are generally referred to as forming part of the \"Hesiodic corpus\" whether or not their authorship is accepted. The situation is summed up in this formulation by Glenn Most:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "\"Hesiod\" is the name of a person; \"Hesiodic\" is a designation for a kind of poetry, including but not limited to the poems of which the authorship may reasonably be assigned to Hesiod himself.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles (Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους, Aspis Hērakleous) is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Classical authors also attributed to Hesiod a lengthy genealogical poem known as Catalogue of Women or Ehoiai (because sections began with the Greek words ē hoiē, \"Or like the one who ...\"). It was a mythological catalogue of the mortal women who had mated with gods, and of the offspring and descendants of these unions.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Several additional hexameter poems were ascribed to Hesiod:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In addition to these works, the Suda lists an otherwise unknown \"dirge for Batrachus, [Hesiod's] beloved\".",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Portrait of Hesiod from Augusta Treverorum (Trier), from the end of the 3rd century AD. The mosaic is signed in its central field by the maker, 'MONNUS FECIT' ('Monnus made this'). The figure is identified by name: 'ESIO-DVS' ('Hesiod'). It is the only known authenticated portrait of Hesiod.",
"title": "Depictions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Roman bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, of the late first century BC found at Herculaneum is now thought not to be of Seneca the Younger. It has been identified by Gisela Richter as an imagined portrait of Hesiod. In fact, it has been recognized since 1813 that the bust was not of Seneca when an inscribed herma portrait of Seneca with quite different features was discovered. Most scholars now follow Richter's identification.",
"title": "Depictions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hesiod employed the conventional dialect of epic verse, which was Ionian. Comparisons with Homer, a native Ionian, can be unflattering. Hesiod's handling of the dactylic hexameter was not as masterful or fluent as Homer's and one modern scholar refers to his \"hobnailed hexameters\". His use of language and meter in Works and Days and Theogony distinguishes him also from the author of the Shield of Heracles. All three poets, for example, employed digamma inconsistently, sometimes allowing it to affect syllable length and meter, sometimes not. The ratio of observance/neglect of digamma varies between them. The extent of variation depends on how the evidence is collected and interpreted but there is a clear trend, revealed for example in the following set of statistics.",
"title": "Hesiod's Greek"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Hesiod does not observe digamma as often as the others do. That result is a bit counter-intuitive since digamma was still a feature of the Boeotian dialect that Hesiod probably spoke, whereas it had already vanished from the Ionic vernacular of Homer. This anomaly can be explained by the fact that Hesiod made a conscious effort to compose like an Ionian epic poet at a time when digamma was not heard in Ionian speech, while Homer tried to compose like an older generation of Ionian bards, when it was heard in Ionian speech. There is also a significant difference in the results for Theogony and Works and Days, but that is merely due to the fact that the former includes a catalog of divinities and therefore it makes frequent use of the definite article associated with digamma, oἱ.",
"title": "Hesiod's Greek"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Though typical of epic, his vocabulary features some significant differences from Homer's. One scholar has counted 278 un-Homeric words in Works and Days, 151 in Theogony and 95 in Shield of Heracles. The disproportionate number of un-Homeric words in W & D is due to its un-Homeric subject matter. Hesiod's vocabulary also includes quite a lot of formulaic phrases that are not found in Homer, which indicates that he may have been writing within a different tradition.",
"title": "Hesiod's Greek"
}
]
| Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by Western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, Archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. | 2001-09-17T17:48:58Z | 2023-12-13T16:40:19Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesiod |
13,702 | Hebrew numerals | The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The system was adapted from that of the Greek numerals sometime between 200 and 78 BCE, the latter being the date of the earliest archeological evidence.
The current numeral system is also known as the Hebrew alphabetic numerals to contrast with earlier systems of writing numerals used in classical antiquity. These systems were inherited from usage in the Aramaic and Phoenician scripts, attested from c. 800 BCE in the Samaria Ostraca.
The Greek system was adopted in Hellenistic Judaism and had been in use in Greece since about the 5th century BCE.
In this system, there is no notation for zero, and the numeric values for individual letters are added together. Each unit (1, 2, ..., 9) is assigned a separate letter, each tens (10, 20, ..., 90) a separate letter, and the first four hundreds (100, 200, 300, 400) a separate letter. The later hundreds (500, 600, 700, 800 and 900) are represented by the sum of two or three letters representing the first four hundreds. To represent numbers from 1,000 to 999,999, the same letters are reused to serve as thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. Gematria (Jewish numerology) uses these transformations extensively.
In Israel today, the decimal system of Hindu–Arabic numeral system (ex. 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) is used in almost all cases (money, age, date on the civil calendar). The Hebrew numerals are used only in special cases, such as when using the Hebrew calendar, or numbering a list (similar to a, b, c, d, etc.), much as Roman numerals are used in the West.
The Hebrew language has names for common numbers that range from zero to one million. Letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used to represent numbers in a few traditional contexts, such as in calendars. In other situations, numerals from the Hindu–Arabic numeral system are used. Cardinal and ordinal numbers must agree in gender with the noun they are describing. If there is no such noun (e.g., in telephone numbers), the feminine form is used. For ordinal numbers greater than ten, the cardinal is used. Multiples of ten above the value 20 have no gender (20, 30, 40, ... are genderless), unless the number has the digit 1 in the tens position (110, 210, 310, ...).
Note: For ordinal numbers greater than 10, cardinal numbers are used instead.
Note: Officially, numbers greater than a million were represented by the long scale. However, since January 21, 2013, the modified short scale (under which the long scale milliard is substituted for the strict short scale billion), which was already the colloquial standard, became official.
Cardinal and ordinal numbers must agree in gender (masculine or feminine; mixed groups are treated as masculine) with the noun they are describing. If there is no such noun (e.g. a telephone number or a house number in a street address), the feminine form is used. Ordinal numbers must also agree in number and definite status like other adjectives. The cardinal number precedes the noun (e.g., shlosha yeladim), except for the number one which succeeds it (e.g., yeled echad). The number two is special: shnayim (m.) and shtayim (f.) become shney (m.) and shtey (f.) when followed by the noun they count. For ordinal numbers (numbers indicating position) greater than ten the cardinal is used.
The Hebrew numeric system operates on the additive principle in which the numeric values of the letters are added together to form the total. For example, 177 is represented as קעז which (from right to left) corresponds to 100 + 70 + 7 = 177.
Mathematically, this type of system requires 27 letters (1-9, 10–90, 100–900). In practice, the last letter, tav (which has the value 400), is used in combination with itself or other letters from qof (100) onwards to generate numbers from 500 and above. Alternatively, the 22-letter Hebrew numeral set is sometimes extended to 27 by using 5 sofit (final) forms of the Hebrew letters.
By convention, the numbers 15 and 16 are represented as ט״ו (9 + 6) and ט״ז (9 + 7), respectively, in order to refrain from using the two-letter combinations י-ה (10 + 5) and י-ו (10 + 6), which are alternate written forms for the Name of God in everyday writing. In the calendar, this manifests every full moon since all Hebrew months start on a new moon (see for example: Tu BiShvat).
Combinations which would spell out words with negative connotations are sometimes avoided by switching the order of the letters. For instance, 744 which should be written as תשמ״ד (meaning "you/it will be destroyed") might instead be written as תשד״מ or תמש״ד (meaning "end to demon").
The Hebrew numeral system has sometimes been extended to include the five final letter forms—ך for 500, ם for 600, ן for 700, ף for 800, ץ for 900.
The ordinary additive forms for 500 to 900 are ת״ק, ת״ר, ת״ש, ת״ת and תת״ק.
נפטר ביום כׄ אייר ונקבר ביום כׄגׄ אייר שנת תׄרׄצׄהׄ לפׄק
Passed away on day 20 Iyar And buried on day 23 Iyar Year 695 without the thousands [i.e. year 5695]
Gershayim (U+05F4 in Unicode, and resembling a double quote mark) (sometimes erroneously referred to as merkha'ot, which is Hebrew for double quote) are inserted before (to the right of) the last (leftmost) letter to indicate that the sequence of letters represents something other than a word. This is used in the case where a number is represented by two or more Hebrew numerals (e.g., 28 → כ״ח).
Similarly, a single geresh (U+05F3 in Unicode, and resembling a single quote mark) is appended after (to the left of) a single letter to indicate that the letter represents a number rather than a (one-letter) word. This is used in the case where a number is represented by a single Hebrew numeral (e.g. 100 → ק׳).
Note that geresh and gershayim merely indicate "not a (normal) word." Context usually determines whether they indicate a number or something else (such as an abbreviation).
An alternative method found in old manuscripts and still found on modern-day tombstones is to put a dot above each letter of the number.
In print, Arabic numerals are employed in Modern Hebrew for most purposes. Hebrew numerals are used nowadays primarily for writing the days and years of the Hebrew calendar; for references to traditional Jewish texts (particularly for Biblical chapter and verse and for Talmudic folios); for bulleted or numbered lists (similar to A, B, C, etc., in English); and in numerology (gematria).
Thousands are counted separately, and the thousands count precedes the rest of the number (to the right, since Hebrew is read from right to left). There are no special marks to signify that the "count" is starting over with thousands, which can theoretically lead to ambiguity, although a single quote mark is sometimes used after the letter. When specifying years of the Hebrew calendar in the present millennium, writers usually omit the thousands (which is presently 5 [ה]), but if they do not this is accepted to mean 5,000, with no ambiguity. The current Israeli coinage includes the thousands.
"Monday, 15 Adar 5764" (where 5764 = 5(×1000) + 400 + 300 + 60 + 4, and 15 = 9 + 6):
"Thursday, 3 Nisan 5767" (where 5767 = 5(×1000) + 400 + 300 + 60 + 7):
To see how today's date in the Hebrew calendar is written, see, for example, Hebcal date converter.
5781 (2020–21) = ה׳תשפ״א
5780 (2019–20) = ה׳תש״פ
5779 (2018–19) = ה׳תשע״ט
...
5772 (2011–12) = ה׳תשע״ב
5771 (2010–11) = ה׳תשע״א
5770 (2009–10) = ה׳תש״ע
5769 (2008–09) = ה׳תשס״ט
...
5761 (2000–01) = ה׳תשס״א
5760 (1999–2000) = ה׳תש״ס
The Abjad numerals are equivalent to the Hebrew numerals up to 400. The Greek numerals differ from the Hebrew ones from 90 upwards because in the Greek alphabet there is no equivalent for tsade (צ). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The system was adapted from that of the Greek numerals sometime between 200 and 78 BCE, the latter being the date of the earliest archeological evidence.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The current numeral system is also known as the Hebrew alphabetic numerals to contrast with earlier systems of writing numerals used in classical antiquity. These systems were inherited from usage in the Aramaic and Phoenician scripts, attested from c. 800 BCE in the Samaria Ostraca.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Greek system was adopted in Hellenistic Judaism and had been in use in Greece since about the 5th century BCE.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In this system, there is no notation for zero, and the numeric values for individual letters are added together. Each unit (1, 2, ..., 9) is assigned a separate letter, each tens (10, 20, ..., 90) a separate letter, and the first four hundreds (100, 200, 300, 400) a separate letter. The later hundreds (500, 600, 700, 800 and 900) are represented by the sum of two or three letters representing the first four hundreds. To represent numbers from 1,000 to 999,999, the same letters are reused to serve as thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. Gematria (Jewish numerology) uses these transformations extensively.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In Israel today, the decimal system of Hindu–Arabic numeral system (ex. 0, 1, 2, 3, etc.) is used in almost all cases (money, age, date on the civil calendar). The Hebrew numerals are used only in special cases, such as when using the Hebrew calendar, or numbering a list (similar to a, b, c, d, etc.), much as Roman numerals are used in the West.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Hebrew language has names for common numbers that range from zero to one million. Letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used to represent numbers in a few traditional contexts, such as in calendars. In other situations, numerals from the Hindu–Arabic numeral system are used. Cardinal and ordinal numbers must agree in gender with the noun they are describing. If there is no such noun (e.g., in telephone numbers), the feminine form is used. For ordinal numbers greater than ten, the cardinal is used. Multiples of ten above the value 20 have no gender (20, 30, 40, ... are genderless), unless the number has the digit 1 in the tens position (110, 210, 310, ...).",
"title": "Numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Note: For ordinal numbers greater than 10, cardinal numbers are used instead.",
"title": "Numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Note: Officially, numbers greater than a million were represented by the long scale. However, since January 21, 2013, the modified short scale (under which the long scale milliard is substituted for the strict short scale billion), which was already the colloquial standard, became official.",
"title": "Numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Cardinal and ordinal numbers must agree in gender (masculine or feminine; mixed groups are treated as masculine) with the noun they are describing. If there is no such noun (e.g. a telephone number or a house number in a street address), the feminine form is used. Ordinal numbers must also agree in number and definite status like other adjectives. The cardinal number precedes the noun (e.g., shlosha yeladim), except for the number one which succeeds it (e.g., yeled echad). The number two is special: shnayim (m.) and shtayim (f.) become shney (m.) and shtey (f.) when followed by the noun they count. For ordinal numbers (numbers indicating position) greater than ten the cardinal is used.",
"title": "Numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Hebrew numeric system operates on the additive principle in which the numeric values of the letters are added together to form the total. For example, 177 is represented as קעז which (from right to left) corresponds to 100 + 70 + 7 = 177.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Mathematically, this type of system requires 27 letters (1-9, 10–90, 100–900). In practice, the last letter, tav (which has the value 400), is used in combination with itself or other letters from qof (100) onwards to generate numbers from 500 and above. Alternatively, the 22-letter Hebrew numeral set is sometimes extended to 27 by using 5 sofit (final) forms of the Hebrew letters.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "By convention, the numbers 15 and 16 are represented as ט״ו (9 + 6) and ט״ז (9 + 7), respectively, in order to refrain from using the two-letter combinations י-ה (10 + 5) and י-ו (10 + 6), which are alternate written forms for the Name of God in everyday writing. In the calendar, this manifests every full moon since all Hebrew months start on a new moon (see for example: Tu BiShvat).",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Combinations which would spell out words with negative connotations are sometimes avoided by switching the order of the letters. For instance, 744 which should be written as תשמ״ד (meaning \"you/it will be destroyed\") might instead be written as תשד״מ or תמש״ד (meaning \"end to demon\").",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Hebrew numeral system has sometimes been extended to include the five final letter forms—ך for 500, ם for 600, ן for 700, ף for 800, ץ for 900.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The ordinary additive forms for 500 to 900 are ת״ק, ת״ר, ת״ש, ת״ת and תת״ק.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "נפטר ביום כׄ אייר ונקבר ביום כׄגׄ אייר שנת תׄרׄצׄהׄ לפׄק",
"title": "Gershayim"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Passed away on day 20 Iyar And buried on day 23 Iyar Year 695 without the thousands [i.e. year 5695]",
"title": "Gershayim"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Gershayim (U+05F4 in Unicode, and resembling a double quote mark) (sometimes erroneously referred to as merkha'ot, which is Hebrew for double quote) are inserted before (to the right of) the last (leftmost) letter to indicate that the sequence of letters represents something other than a word. This is used in the case where a number is represented by two or more Hebrew numerals (e.g., 28 → כ״ח).",
"title": "Gershayim"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Similarly, a single geresh (U+05F3 in Unicode, and resembling a single quote mark) is appended after (to the left of) a single letter to indicate that the letter represents a number rather than a (one-letter) word. This is used in the case where a number is represented by a single Hebrew numeral (e.g. 100 → ק׳).",
"title": "Gershayim"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Note that geresh and gershayim merely indicate \"not a (normal) word.\" Context usually determines whether they indicate a number or something else (such as an abbreviation).",
"title": "Gershayim"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "An alternative method found in old manuscripts and still found on modern-day tombstones is to put a dot above each letter of the number.",
"title": "Gershayim"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In print, Arabic numerals are employed in Modern Hebrew for most purposes. Hebrew numerals are used nowadays primarily for writing the days and years of the Hebrew calendar; for references to traditional Jewish texts (particularly for Biblical chapter and verse and for Talmudic folios); for bulleted or numbered lists (similar to A, B, C, etc., in English); and in numerology (gematria).",
"title": "Decimals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Thousands are counted separately, and the thousands count precedes the rest of the number (to the right, since Hebrew is read from right to left). There are no special marks to signify that the \"count\" is starting over with thousands, which can theoretically lead to ambiguity, although a single quote mark is sometimes used after the letter. When specifying years of the Hebrew calendar in the present millennium, writers usually omit the thousands (which is presently 5 [ה]), but if they do not this is accepted to mean 5,000, with no ambiguity. The current Israeli coinage includes the thousands.",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "\"Monday, 15 Adar 5764\" (where 5764 = 5(×1000) + 400 + 300 + 60 + 4, and 15 = 9 + 6):",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "\"Thursday, 3 Nisan 5767\" (where 5767 = 5(×1000) + 400 + 300 + 60 + 7):",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "To see how today's date in the Hebrew calendar is written, see, for example, Hebcal date converter.",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "5781 (2020–21) = ה׳תשפ״א",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "5780 (2019–20) = ה׳תש״פ",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "5779 (2018–19) = ה׳תשע״ט",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "...",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "5772 (2011–12) = ה׳תשע״ב",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "5771 (2010–11) = ה׳תשע״א",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "5770 (2009–10) = ה׳תש״ע",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "5769 (2008–09) = ה׳תשס״ט",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "...",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "5761 (2000–01) = ה׳תשס״א",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "5760 (1999–2000) = ה׳תש״ס",
"title": "Thousands and date formats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Abjad numerals are equivalent to the Hebrew numerals up to 400. The Greek numerals differ from the Hebrew ones from 90 upwards because in the Greek alphabet there is no equivalent for tsade (צ).",
"title": "Similar systems"
}
]
| The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
The system was adapted from that of the Greek numerals sometime between 200 and 78 BCE, the latter being the date of the earliest archeological evidence. The current numeral system is also known as the Hebrew alphabetic numerals to contrast with earlier systems of writing numerals used in classical antiquity. These systems were inherited from usage in the Aramaic and Phoenician scripts, attested from c. 800 BCE in the Samaria Ostraca. The Greek system was adopted in Hellenistic Judaism and had been in use in Greece since about the 5th century BCE. In this system, there is no notation for zero, and the numeric values for individual letters are added together. Each unit is assigned a separate letter, each tens a separate letter, and the first four hundreds a separate letter. The later hundreds are represented by the sum of two or three letters representing the first four hundreds. To represent numbers from 1,000 to 999,999, the same letters are reused to serve as thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. Gematria uses these transformations extensively. In Israel today, the decimal system of Hindu–Arabic numeral system is used in almost all cases. The Hebrew numerals are used only in special cases, such as when using the Hebrew calendar, or numbering a list, much as Roman numerals are used in the West. | 2001-09-20T01:28:49Z | 2023-10-20T06:29:42Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals |
13,704 | Hydroxy | Hydroxy can refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hydroxy can refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Hydroxy can refer to: In chemical nomenclature, the prefix "hydroxy-" shows the presence of a hydroxyl functional group (−OH).
An abbreviation for the medication hydroxyzine, which is commonly sold under the brand names Atarax, Ucerax, Serecid, and Vistaril.
Hydroxy gas, a nickname for oxyhydrogen, a combination of hydrogen and oxygen gas produced from the electrolysis of water. | 2020-07-04T20:06:39Z | [
"Template:Disambiguation"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxy |
|
13,706 | Hero | A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory and honor. Post-classical and modern heroes, on the other hand, perform great deeds or selfless acts for the common good instead of the classical goal of wealth, pride, and fame. The antonym of hero is villain. Other terms associated with the concept of hero may include good guy or white hat.
In classical literature, the hero is the main or revered character in heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time. Merriam Webster dictionary defines a hero as "a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities". Examples of heroes range from mythological figures, such as Gilgamesh, Achilles and Iphigenia, to historical and modern figures, such as Joan of Arc, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Sophie Scholl, Alvin York, Audie Murphy, and Chuck Yeager, and fictional "superheroes", including Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and Captain America.
The word hero comes from the Greek ἥρως (hērōs), "hero" (literally "protector" or "defender"), particularly one such as Heracles with divine ancestry or later given divine honors. Before the decipherment of Linear B the original form of the word was assumed to be *ἥρωϝ-, hērōw-, but the Mycenaean compound ti-ri-se-ro-e demonstrates the absence of -w-. Hero as a name appears in pre-Homeric Greek mythology, wherein Hero was a priestess of the goddess Aphrodite, in a myth that has been referred to often in literature.
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Proto-Indo-European root is *ser meaning "to protect". According to Eric Partridge in Origins, the Greek word hērōs "is akin to" the Latin seruāre, meaning to safeguard. Partridge concludes, "The basic sense of both Hera and hero would therefore be 'protector'." R. S. P. Beekes rejects an Indo-European derivation and asserts that the word has a Pre-Greek origin. Hera was a Greek goddess with many attributes, including protection and her worship appears to have similar proto-Indo-European origins.
A classical hero is considered to be a "warrior who lives and dies in the pursuit of honor" and asserts their greatness by "the brilliancy and efficiency with which they kill". Each classical hero's life focuses on fighting, which occurs in war or during an epic quest. Classical heroes are commonly semi-divine and extraordinarily gifted, such as Achilles, evolving into heroic characters through their perilous circumstances. While these heroes are incredibly resourceful and skilled, they are often foolhardy, court disaster, risk their followers' lives for trivial matters, and behave arrogantly in a childlike manner. During classical times, people regarded heroes with the highest esteem and utmost importance, explaining their prominence within epic literature. The appearance of these mortal figures marks a revolution of audiences and writers turning away from immortal gods to mortal mankind, whose heroic moments of glory survive in the memory of their descendants, extending their legacy.
Hector was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War, which is known primarily through Homer's Iliad. Hector acted as leader of the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, "killing 31,000 Greek fighters," offers Hyginus. Hector was known not only for his courage, but also for his noble and courtly nature. Indeed, Homer places Hector as peace-loving, thoughtful, as well as bold, a good son, husband and father, and without darker motives. However, his familial values conflict greatly with his heroic aspirations in the Iliad, as he cannot be both the protector of Troy and a father to his child. Hector is ultimately betrayed by the deities when Athena appears disguised as his ally Deiphobus and convinces him to challenge Achilles, leading to his death at the hands of a superior warrior.
Achilles was a Greek hero who was considered the most formidable military fighter in the entire Trojan War and the central character of the Iliad. He was the child of Thetis and Peleus, making him a demi-god. He wielded superhuman strength on the battlefield and was blessed with a close relationship to the deities. Achilles famously refused to fight after his dishonoring at the hands of Agamemnon, and only returned to the war due to unadulterated rage after Hector killed his beloved companion Patroclus. Achilles was known for uncontrollable rage that defined many of his bloodthirsty actions, such as defiling Hector's corpse by dragging it around the city of Troy. Achilles plays a tragic role in the Iliad brought about by constant de-humanization throughout the epic, having his menis (wrath) overpower his philos (love).
Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the deities. Thus, Heracles's name means "the glory of Hera", even though he was tormented all his life by Hera, the Queen of the Greek deities. Perhaps the most striking example is the Athenian king Erechtheus, whom Poseidon killed for choosing Athena rather than him as the city's patron deity. When the Athenians worshiped Erechtheus on the Acropolis, they invoked him as Poseidon Erechtheus.
Fate, or destiny, plays a massive role in the stories of classical heroes. The classical hero's heroic significance stems from battlefield conquests, an inherently dangerous action. The deities in Greek mythology, when interacting with the heroes, often foreshadow the hero's eventual death on the battlefield. Countless heroes and deities go to great lengths to alter their pre-destined fates, but with no success, as none, neither human or immortal can change their prescribed outcomes by the three powerful Fates. The most characteristic example of this is found in Oedipus Rex. After learning that his son, Oedipus, will end up killing him, the King of Thebes, Laius, takes huge steps to assure his son's death by removing him from the kingdom. When Oedipus encounters his father when his father was unknown to him in a dispute on the road many years later, Oedipus slays him without an afterthought. The lack of recognition enabled Oedipus to slay his father, ironically further binding his father to his fate.
Stories of heroism may serve as moral examples. However, classical heroes often didn't embody the Christian notion of an upstanding, perfectly moral hero. For example, Achilles's character-issues of hateful rage lead to merciless slaughter and his overwhelming pride lead to him only joining the Trojan War because he didn't want his soldiers to win all of the glory. Classical heroes, regardless of their morality, were placed in religion. In classical antiquity, cults that venerated deified heroes such as Heracles, Perseus, and Achilles played an important role in Ancient Greek religion. These ancient Greek hero cults worshipped heroes from oral epic tradition, with these heroes often bestowing blessings, especially healing ones, on individuals.
The concept of the "Mythic Hero Archetype" was first developed by Lord Raglan in his 1936 book, The Hero, A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama. It is a set of 22 common traits that he said were shared by many heroes in various cultures, myths, and religions throughout history and worldwide. Raglan argued that the higher the score, the more likely the figure is mythical.
The concept of a story archetype of the standard monomythical "hero's quest" that was reputed to be pervasive across all cultures is somewhat controversial. Expounded mainly by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it illustrates several uniting themes of hero stories that hold similar ideas of what a hero represents despite vastly different cultures and beliefs. The monomyth or Hero's Journey consists of three separate stages: the Departure, Initiation, and Return. Within these stages, there are several archetypes that the hero of either gender may follow, including the call to adventure (which they may initially refuse), supernatural aid, proceeding down a road of trials, achieving a realization about themselves (or an apotheosis), and attaining the freedom to live through their quest or journey. Campbell offered examples of stories with similar themes, such as Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus. One of the themes he explores is the androgynous hero, who combines male and female traits, such as Bodhisattva: "The first wonder to be noted here is the androgynous character of the Bodhisattva: masculine Avalokiteshvara, feminine Kwan Yin." In his 1968 book, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, Campbell writes, "It is clear that, whether accurate or not as to biographical detail, the moving legend of the Crucified and Risen Christ was fit to bring a new warmth, immediacy, and humanity, to the old motifs of the beloved Tammuz, Adonis, and Osiris cycles."
Vladimir Propp, in his analysis of Russian fairy tales, concluded that a fairy tale had only eight dramatis personæ, of which one was the hero, and his analysis has been widely applied to non-Russian folklore. The actions that fall into such a hero's sphere include:
Propp distinguished between seekers and victim-heroes. A villain could initiate the issue by kidnapping the hero or driving him out; these were victim-heroes. On the other hand, an antagonist could rob the hero, or kidnap someone close to him, or, without the villain's intervention, the hero could realize that he lacked something and set out to find it; these heroes are seekers. Victims may appear in tales with seeker heroes, but the tale does not follow them both.
The philosopher Hegel gave a central role to the "hero", personalized by Napoleon, as the incarnation of a particular culture's Volksgeist and thus of the general Zeitgeist. Thomas Carlyle's 1841 work, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, also accorded an essential function to heroes and great men in history. Carlyle centered history on the biographies of individuals, as in Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches and History of Frederick the Great. His heroes were not only political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states, but also religious figures, poets, authors, and captains of industry.
Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position were rare in the second part of the 20th century. Most in the philosophy of history school contend that the motive forces in history may best be described only with a wider lens than the one that Carlyle used for his portraits. For example, Karl Marx argued that history was determined by the massive social forces at play in "class struggles", not by the individuals by whom these forces are played out. After Marx, Herbert Spencer wrote at the end of the 19th century: "You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown...[b]efore he can remake his society, his society must make him." Michel Foucault argued in his analysis of societal communication and debate that history was mainly the "science of the sovereign", until its inversion by the "historical and political popular discourse".
Modern examples of the typical hero are, Minnie Vautrin, Norman Bethune, Alan Turing, Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Sugihara, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Oswaldo Payá, Óscar Elías Biscet, and Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Annales school, led by Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, and Fernand Braudel, would contest the exaggeration of the role of individual subjects in history. Indeed, Braudel distinguished various time scales, one accorded to the life of an individual, another accorded to the life of a few human generations, and the last one to civilizations, in which geography, economics, and demography play a role considerably more decisive than that of individual subjects.
Among noticeable events in the studies of the role of the hero and great man in history one should mention Sidney Hook's book (1943) The Hero in History. In the second half of the twentieth century such male-focused theory has been contested, among others by feminists writers such as Judith Fetterley in The Resisting Reader (1977) and literary theorist Nancy K. Miller, The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722–1782.
In the epoch of globalization an individual may change the development of the country and of the whole world, so this gives reasons to some scholars to suggest returning to the problem of the role of the hero in history from the viewpoint of modern historical knowledge and using up-to-date methods of historical analysis.
Within the frameworks of developing counterfactual history, attempts are made to examine some hypothetical scenarios of historical development. The hero attracts much attention because most of those scenarios are based on the suppositions: what would have happened if this or that historical individual had or had not been alive.
The word "hero" (or "heroine" in modern times), is sometimes used to describe the protagonist or the romantic interest of a story, a usage which may conflict with the superhuman expectations of heroism. A good example is Anna Karenina, the lead character in the novel of the same title by Leo Tolstoy. In modern literature the hero is more and more a problematic concept. In 1848, for example, William Makepeace Thackeray gave Vanity Fair the subtitle, A Novel without a Hero, and imagined a world in which no sympathetic character was to be found. Vanity Fair is a satirical representation of the absence of truly moral heroes in the modern world. The story focuses on the characters, Emmy Sedley and Becky Sharpe (the latter as the clearly defined anti-hero), with the plot focused on the eventual marriage of these two characters to rich men, revealing character flaws as the story progresses. Even the most sympathetic characters, such as Captain Dobbin, are susceptible to weakness, as he is often narcissistic and melancholic.
The larger-than-life hero is a more common feature of fantasy (particularly in comic books and epic fantasy) than more realist works. However, these larger-than life figures remain prevalent in society. The superhero genre is a multibillion-dollar industry that includes comic books, movies, toys, and video games. Superheroes usually possess extraordinary talents and powers that no living human could ever possess. The superhero stories often pit a super villain against the hero, with the hero fighting the crime caused by the super villain. Examples of long-running superheroes include Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Spider-Man.
Research indicates that male writers are more likely to make heroines superhuman, whereas female writers tend to make heroines ordinary humans, as well as making their male heroes more powerful than their heroines, possibly due to sex differences in valued traits.
Social psychology has begun paying attention to heroes and heroism. Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo point out differences between heroism and altruism, and they offer evidence that observer perceptions of unjustified risk play a role above and beyond risk type in determining the ascription of heroic status.
Psychologists have also identified the traits of heroes. Elaine Kinsella and her colleagues have identified 12 central traits of heroism, which consist of brave, moral integrity, conviction, courageous, self-sacrifice, protecting, honest, selfless, determined, saves others, inspiring, and helpful. Scott Allison and George Goethals uncovered evidence for "the great eight traits" of heroes consisting of wise, strong, resilient, reliable, charismatic, caring, selfless, and inspiring. These researchers have also identified four primary functions of heroism. Heroes give us wisdom; they enhance us; they provide moral modeling; and they offer protection.
An evolutionary psychology explanation for heroic risk-taking is that it is a costly signal demonstrating the ability of the hero. It may be seen as one form of altruism for which there are several other evolutionary explanations as well.
Roma Chatterji has suggested that the hero or more generally protagonist is first and foremost a symbolic representation of the person who is experiencing the story while reading, listening, or watching; thus the relevance of the hero to the individual relies a great deal on how much similarity there is between them and the character. Chatterji suggested that one reason for the hero-as-self interpretation of stories and myths is the human inability to view the world from any perspective but a personal one.
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker argues that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism. Becker explains that a basic duality in human life exists between the physical world of objects and a symbolic world of human meaning. Thus, since humanity has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, he asserts that humans are able to transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, by focusing attention mainly on the symbolic self. This symbolic self-focus takes the form of an individual's "immortality project" (or "causa sui project"), which is essentially a symbolic belief-system that ensures that one is believed superior to physical reality. By successfully living under the terms of the immortality project, people feel they can become heroic and, henceforth, part of something eternal; something that will never die as compared to their physical body. This he asserts, in turn, gives people the feeling that their lives have meaning, a purpose, and are significant in the grand scheme of things. Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity's traditional "hero-systems", such as religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do, because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life. The book states that we need new convincing "illusions" that enable people to feel heroic in ways that are agreeable. Becker, however, does not provide any definitive answer, mainly because he believes that there is no perfect solution. Instead, he hopes that gradual realization of humanity's innate motivations, namely death, may help to bring about a better world. Terror Management Theory (TMT) has generated evidence supporting this perspective.
Examining the success of resistance fighters on Crete during the Nazi occupation in WWII, author and endurance researcher C. McDougall drew connections to the Ancient Greek heroes and a culture of integrated physical self-mastery, training, and mental conditioning that fostered confidence to take action, and made it possible for individuals to accomplish feats of great prowess, even under the harshest of conditions. The skills established an "...ability to unleash tremendous resources of strength, endurance, and agility that many people don't realize they already have." McDougall cites examples of heroic acts, including a scholium to Pindar's Fifth Nemean Ode: "Much weaker in strength than the Minotaur, Theseus fought with it and won using pankration, as he had no knife." Pankration is an ancient Greek term meaning "total power and knowledge," one "...associated with gods and heroes...who conquer by tapping every talent." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory and honor. Post-classical and modern heroes, on the other hand, perform great deeds or selfless acts for the common good instead of the classical goal of wealth, pride, and fame. The antonym of hero is villain. Other terms associated with the concept of hero may include good guy or white hat.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In classical literature, the hero is the main or revered character in heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time. Merriam Webster dictionary defines a hero as \"a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities\". Examples of heroes range from mythological figures, such as Gilgamesh, Achilles and Iphigenia, to historical and modern figures, such as Joan of Arc, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Sophie Scholl, Alvin York, Audie Murphy, and Chuck Yeager, and fictional \"superheroes\", including Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and Captain America.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The word hero comes from the Greek ἥρως (hērōs), \"hero\" (literally \"protector\" or \"defender\"), particularly one such as Heracles with divine ancestry or later given divine honors. Before the decipherment of Linear B the original form of the word was assumed to be *ἥρωϝ-, hērōw-, but the Mycenaean compound ti-ri-se-ro-e demonstrates the absence of -w-. Hero as a name appears in pre-Homeric Greek mythology, wherein Hero was a priestess of the goddess Aphrodite, in a myth that has been referred to often in literature.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Proto-Indo-European root is *ser meaning \"to protect\". According to Eric Partridge in Origins, the Greek word hērōs \"is akin to\" the Latin seruāre, meaning to safeguard. Partridge concludes, \"The basic sense of both Hera and hero would therefore be 'protector'.\" R. S. P. Beekes rejects an Indo-European derivation and asserts that the word has a Pre-Greek origin. Hera was a Greek goddess with many attributes, including protection and her worship appears to have similar proto-Indo-European origins.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A classical hero is considered to be a \"warrior who lives and dies in the pursuit of honor\" and asserts their greatness by \"the brilliancy and efficiency with which they kill\". Each classical hero's life focuses on fighting, which occurs in war or during an epic quest. Classical heroes are commonly semi-divine and extraordinarily gifted, such as Achilles, evolving into heroic characters through their perilous circumstances. While these heroes are incredibly resourceful and skilled, they are often foolhardy, court disaster, risk their followers' lives for trivial matters, and behave arrogantly in a childlike manner. During classical times, people regarded heroes with the highest esteem and utmost importance, explaining their prominence within epic literature. The appearance of these mortal figures marks a revolution of audiences and writers turning away from immortal gods to mortal mankind, whose heroic moments of glory survive in the memory of their descendants, extending their legacy.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hector was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War, which is known primarily through Homer's Iliad. Hector acted as leader of the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, \"killing 31,000 Greek fighters,\" offers Hyginus. Hector was known not only for his courage, but also for his noble and courtly nature. Indeed, Homer places Hector as peace-loving, thoughtful, as well as bold, a good son, husband and father, and without darker motives. However, his familial values conflict greatly with his heroic aspirations in the Iliad, as he cannot be both the protector of Troy and a father to his child. Hector is ultimately betrayed by the deities when Athena appears disguised as his ally Deiphobus and convinces him to challenge Achilles, leading to his death at the hands of a superior warrior.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Achilles was a Greek hero who was considered the most formidable military fighter in the entire Trojan War and the central character of the Iliad. He was the child of Thetis and Peleus, making him a demi-god. He wielded superhuman strength on the battlefield and was blessed with a close relationship to the deities. Achilles famously refused to fight after his dishonoring at the hands of Agamemnon, and only returned to the war due to unadulterated rage after Hector killed his beloved companion Patroclus. Achilles was known for uncontrollable rage that defined many of his bloodthirsty actions, such as defiling Hector's corpse by dragging it around the city of Troy. Achilles plays a tragic role in the Iliad brought about by constant de-humanization throughout the epic, having his menis (wrath) overpower his philos (love).",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the deities. Thus, Heracles's name means \"the glory of Hera\", even though he was tormented all his life by Hera, the Queen of the Greek deities. Perhaps the most striking example is the Athenian king Erechtheus, whom Poseidon killed for choosing Athena rather than him as the city's patron deity. When the Athenians worshiped Erechtheus on the Acropolis, they invoked him as Poseidon Erechtheus.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Fate, or destiny, plays a massive role in the stories of classical heroes. The classical hero's heroic significance stems from battlefield conquests, an inherently dangerous action. The deities in Greek mythology, when interacting with the heroes, often foreshadow the hero's eventual death on the battlefield. Countless heroes and deities go to great lengths to alter their pre-destined fates, but with no success, as none, neither human or immortal can change their prescribed outcomes by the three powerful Fates. The most characteristic example of this is found in Oedipus Rex. After learning that his son, Oedipus, will end up killing him, the King of Thebes, Laius, takes huge steps to assure his son's death by removing him from the kingdom. When Oedipus encounters his father when his father was unknown to him in a dispute on the road many years later, Oedipus slays him without an afterthought. The lack of recognition enabled Oedipus to slay his father, ironically further binding his father to his fate.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Stories of heroism may serve as moral examples. However, classical heroes often didn't embody the Christian notion of an upstanding, perfectly moral hero. For example, Achilles's character-issues of hateful rage lead to merciless slaughter and his overwhelming pride lead to him only joining the Trojan War because he didn't want his soldiers to win all of the glory. Classical heroes, regardless of their morality, were placed in religion. In classical antiquity, cults that venerated deified heroes such as Heracles, Perseus, and Achilles played an important role in Ancient Greek religion. These ancient Greek hero cults worshipped heroes from oral epic tradition, with these heroes often bestowing blessings, especially healing ones, on individuals.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The concept of the \"Mythic Hero Archetype\" was first developed by Lord Raglan in his 1936 book, The Hero, A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama. It is a set of 22 common traits that he said were shared by many heroes in various cultures, myths, and religions throughout history and worldwide. Raglan argued that the higher the score, the more likely the figure is mythical.",
"title": "Myth and monomyth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The concept of a story archetype of the standard monomythical \"hero's quest\" that was reputed to be pervasive across all cultures is somewhat controversial. Expounded mainly by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it illustrates several uniting themes of hero stories that hold similar ideas of what a hero represents despite vastly different cultures and beliefs. The monomyth or Hero's Journey consists of three separate stages: the Departure, Initiation, and Return. Within these stages, there are several archetypes that the hero of either gender may follow, including the call to adventure (which they may initially refuse), supernatural aid, proceeding down a road of trials, achieving a realization about themselves (or an apotheosis), and attaining the freedom to live through their quest or journey. Campbell offered examples of stories with similar themes, such as Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus. One of the themes he explores is the androgynous hero, who combines male and female traits, such as Bodhisattva: \"The first wonder to be noted here is the androgynous character of the Bodhisattva: masculine Avalokiteshvara, feminine Kwan Yin.\" In his 1968 book, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, Campbell writes, \"It is clear that, whether accurate or not as to biographical detail, the moving legend of the Crucified and Risen Christ was fit to bring a new warmth, immediacy, and humanity, to the old motifs of the beloved Tammuz, Adonis, and Osiris cycles.\"",
"title": "Myth and monomyth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Vladimir Propp, in his analysis of Russian fairy tales, concluded that a fairy tale had only eight dramatis personæ, of which one was the hero, and his analysis has been widely applied to non-Russian folklore. The actions that fall into such a hero's sphere include:",
"title": "Slavic fairy tales"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Propp distinguished between seekers and victim-heroes. A villain could initiate the issue by kidnapping the hero or driving him out; these were victim-heroes. On the other hand, an antagonist could rob the hero, or kidnap someone close to him, or, without the villain's intervention, the hero could realize that he lacked something and set out to find it; these heroes are seekers. Victims may appear in tales with seeker heroes, but the tale does not follow them both.",
"title": "Slavic fairy tales"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The philosopher Hegel gave a central role to the \"hero\", personalized by Napoleon, as the incarnation of a particular culture's Volksgeist and thus of the general Zeitgeist. Thomas Carlyle's 1841 work, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, also accorded an essential function to heroes and great men in history. Carlyle centered history on the biographies of individuals, as in Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches and History of Frederick the Great. His heroes were not only political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states, but also religious figures, poets, authors, and captains of industry.",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position were rare in the second part of the 20th century. Most in the philosophy of history school contend that the motive forces in history may best be described only with a wider lens than the one that Carlyle used for his portraits. For example, Karl Marx argued that history was determined by the massive social forces at play in \"class struggles\", not by the individuals by whom these forces are played out. After Marx, Herbert Spencer wrote at the end of the 19th century: \"You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown...[b]efore he can remake his society, his society must make him.\" Michel Foucault argued in his analysis of societal communication and debate that history was mainly the \"science of the sovereign\", until its inversion by the \"historical and political popular discourse\".",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Modern examples of the typical hero are, Minnie Vautrin, Norman Bethune, Alan Turing, Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Sugihara, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Oswaldo Payá, Óscar Elías Biscet, and Aung San Suu Kyi.",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Annales school, led by Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, and Fernand Braudel, would contest the exaggeration of the role of individual subjects in history. Indeed, Braudel distinguished various time scales, one accorded to the life of an individual, another accorded to the life of a few human generations, and the last one to civilizations, in which geography, economics, and demography play a role considerably more decisive than that of individual subjects.",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Among noticeable events in the studies of the role of the hero and great man in history one should mention Sidney Hook's book (1943) The Hero in History. In the second half of the twentieth century such male-focused theory has been contested, among others by feminists writers such as Judith Fetterley in The Resisting Reader (1977) and literary theorist Nancy K. Miller, The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722–1782.",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the epoch of globalization an individual may change the development of the country and of the whole world, so this gives reasons to some scholars to suggest returning to the problem of the role of the hero in history from the viewpoint of modern historical knowledge and using up-to-date methods of historical analysis.",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Within the frameworks of developing counterfactual history, attempts are made to examine some hypothetical scenarios of historical development. The hero attracts much attention because most of those scenarios are based on the suppositions: what would have happened if this or that historical individual had or had not been alive.",
"title": "Historical studies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The word \"hero\" (or \"heroine\" in modern times), is sometimes used to describe the protagonist or the romantic interest of a story, a usage which may conflict with the superhuman expectations of heroism. A good example is Anna Karenina, the lead character in the novel of the same title by Leo Tolstoy. In modern literature the hero is more and more a problematic concept. In 1848, for example, William Makepeace Thackeray gave Vanity Fair the subtitle, A Novel without a Hero, and imagined a world in which no sympathetic character was to be found. Vanity Fair is a satirical representation of the absence of truly moral heroes in the modern world. The story focuses on the characters, Emmy Sedley and Becky Sharpe (the latter as the clearly defined anti-hero), with the plot focused on the eventual marriage of these two characters to rich men, revealing character flaws as the story progresses. Even the most sympathetic characters, such as Captain Dobbin, are susceptible to weakness, as he is often narcissistic and melancholic.",
"title": "Modern fiction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The larger-than-life hero is a more common feature of fantasy (particularly in comic books and epic fantasy) than more realist works. However, these larger-than life figures remain prevalent in society. The superhero genre is a multibillion-dollar industry that includes comic books, movies, toys, and video games. Superheroes usually possess extraordinary talents and powers that no living human could ever possess. The superhero stories often pit a super villain against the hero, with the hero fighting the crime caused by the super villain. Examples of long-running superheroes include Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Spider-Man.",
"title": "Modern fiction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Research indicates that male writers are more likely to make heroines superhuman, whereas female writers tend to make heroines ordinary humans, as well as making their male heroes more powerful than their heroines, possibly due to sex differences in valued traits.",
"title": "Modern fiction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Social psychology has begun paying attention to heroes and heroism. Zeno Franco and Philip Zimbardo point out differences between heroism and altruism, and they offer evidence that observer perceptions of unjustified risk play a role above and beyond risk type in determining the ascription of heroic status.",
"title": "Psychology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Psychologists have also identified the traits of heroes. Elaine Kinsella and her colleagues have identified 12 central traits of heroism, which consist of brave, moral integrity, conviction, courageous, self-sacrifice, protecting, honest, selfless, determined, saves others, inspiring, and helpful. Scott Allison and George Goethals uncovered evidence for \"the great eight traits\" of heroes consisting of wise, strong, resilient, reliable, charismatic, caring, selfless, and inspiring. These researchers have also identified four primary functions of heroism. Heroes give us wisdom; they enhance us; they provide moral modeling; and they offer protection.",
"title": "Psychology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "An evolutionary psychology explanation for heroic risk-taking is that it is a costly signal demonstrating the ability of the hero. It may be seen as one form of altruism for which there are several other evolutionary explanations as well.",
"title": "Psychology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Roma Chatterji has suggested that the hero or more generally protagonist is first and foremost a symbolic representation of the person who is experiencing the story while reading, listening, or watching; thus the relevance of the hero to the individual relies a great deal on how much similarity there is between them and the character. Chatterji suggested that one reason for the hero-as-self interpretation of stories and myths is the human inability to view the world from any perspective but a personal one.",
"title": "Psychology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker argues that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism. Becker explains that a basic duality in human life exists between the physical world of objects and a symbolic world of human meaning. Thus, since humanity has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, he asserts that humans are able to transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, by focusing attention mainly on the symbolic self. This symbolic self-focus takes the form of an individual's \"immortality project\" (or \"causa sui project\"), which is essentially a symbolic belief-system that ensures that one is believed superior to physical reality. By successfully living under the terms of the immortality project, people feel they can become heroic and, henceforth, part of something eternal; something that will never die as compared to their physical body. This he asserts, in turn, gives people the feeling that their lives have meaning, a purpose, and are significant in the grand scheme of things. Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity's traditional \"hero-systems\", such as religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do, because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life. The book states that we need new convincing \"illusions\" that enable people to feel heroic in ways that are agreeable. Becker, however, does not provide any definitive answer, mainly because he believes that there is no perfect solution. Instead, he hopes that gradual realization of humanity's innate motivations, namely death, may help to bring about a better world. Terror Management Theory (TMT) has generated evidence supporting this perspective.",
"title": "Psychology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Examining the success of resistance fighters on Crete during the Nazi occupation in WWII, author and endurance researcher C. McDougall drew connections to the Ancient Greek heroes and a culture of integrated physical self-mastery, training, and mental conditioning that fostered confidence to take action, and made it possible for individuals to accomplish feats of great prowess, even under the harshest of conditions. The skills established an \"...ability to unleash tremendous resources of strength, endurance, and agility that many people don't realize they already have.\" McDougall cites examples of heroic acts, including a scholium to Pindar's Fifth Nemean Ode: \"Much weaker in strength than the Minotaur, Theseus fought with it and won using pankration, as he had no knife.\" Pankration is an ancient Greek term meaning \"total power and knowledge,\" one \"...associated with gods and heroes...who conquer by tapping every talent.\"",
"title": "Mental and physical integration"
}
]
| A hero is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory and honor. Post-classical and modern heroes, on the other hand, perform great deeds or selfless acts for the common good instead of the classical goal of wealth, pride, and fame. The antonym of hero is villain. Other terms associated with the concept of hero may include good guy or white hat. In classical literature, the hero is the main or revered character in heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time. Merriam Webster dictionary defines a hero as "a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities". Examples of heroes range from mythological figures, such as Gilgamesh, Achilles and Iphigenia, to historical and modern figures, such as Joan of Arc, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Sophie Scholl, Alvin York, Audie Murphy, and Chuck Yeager, and fictional "superheroes", including Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and Captain America. | 2001-09-05T17:59:15Z | 2023-12-29T13:20:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero |
13,711 | Hydroxide | Hydroxide is a diatomic anion with chemical formula OH. It consists of an oxygen and hydrogen atom held together by a single covalent bond, and carries a negative electric charge. It is an important but usually minor constituent of water. It functions as a base, a ligand, a nucleophile, and a catalyst. The hydroxide ion forms salts, some of which dissociate in aqueous solution, liberating solvated hydroxide ions. Sodium hydroxide is a multi-million-ton per annum commodity chemical. The corresponding electrically neutral compound HO is the hydroxyl radical. The corresponding covalently bound group –OH of atoms is the hydroxy group. Both the hydroxide ion and hydroxy group are nucleophiles and can act as catalysts in organic chemistry.
Many inorganic substances which bear the word hydroxide in their names are not ionic compounds of the hydroxide ion, but covalent compounds which contain hydroxy groups.
The hydroxide ion is naturally produced from water by the self-ionization reaction:
The equilibrium constant for this reaction, defined as
has a value close to 10 at 25 °C, so the concentration of hydroxide ions in pure water is close to 10 mol∙dm, in order to satisfy the equal charge constraint. The pH of a solution is equal to the decimal cologarithm of the hydrogen cation concentration; the pH of pure water is close to 7 at ambient temperatures. The concentration of hydroxide ions can be expressed in terms of pOH, which is close to (14 − pH), so the pOH of pure water is also close to 7. Addition of a base to water will reduce the hydrogen cation concentration and therefore increase the hydroxide ion concentration (increase pH, decrease pOH) even if the base does not itself contain hydroxide. For example, ammonia solutions have a pH greater than 7 due to the reaction NH3 + H ⇌ NH4, which decreases the hydrogen cation concentration, which increases the hydroxide ion concentration. pOH can be kept at a nearly constant value with various buffer solutions.
In aqueous solution the hydroxide ion is a base in the Brønsted–Lowry sense as it can accept a proton from a Brønsted–Lowry acid to form a water molecule. It can also act as a Lewis base by donating a pair of electrons to a Lewis acid. In aqueous solution both hydrogen and hydroxide ions are strongly solvated, with hydrogen bonds between oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Indeed, the bihydroxide ion H3O2 has been characterized in the solid state. This compound is centrosymmetric and has a very short hydrogen bond (114.5 pm) that is similar to the length in the bifluoride ion HF2 (114 pm). In aqueous solution the hydroxide ion forms strong hydrogen bonds with water molecules. A consequence of this is that concentrated solutions of sodium hydroxide have high viscosity due to the formation of an extended network of hydrogen bonds as in hydrogen fluoride solutions.
In solution, exposed to air, the hydroxide ion reacts rapidly with atmospheric carbon dioxide, acting as an acid, to form, initially, the bicarbonate ion.
The equilibrium constant for this reaction can be specified either as a reaction with dissolved carbon dioxide or as a reaction with carbon dioxide gas (see Carbonic acid for values and details). At neutral or acid pH, the reaction is slow, but is catalyzed by the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which effectively creates hydroxide ions at the active site.
Solutions containing the hydroxide ion attack glass. In this case, the silicates in glass are acting as acids. Basic hydroxides, whether solids or in solution, are stored in airtight plastic containers.
The hydroxide ion can function as a typical electron-pair donor ligand, forming such complexes as tetrahydroxoaluminate/tetrahydroxidoaluminate [Al(OH)4]. It is also often found in mixed-ligand complexes of the type [MLx(OH)y], where L is a ligand. The hydroxide ion often serves as a bridging ligand, donating one pair of electrons to each of the atoms being bridged. As illustrated by [Pb2(OH)], metal hydroxides are often written in a simplified format. It can even act as a 3-electron-pair donor, as in the tetramer [PtMe3(OH)]4.
When bound to a strongly electron-withdrawing metal centre, hydroxide ligands tend to ionise into oxide ligands. For example, the bichromate ion [HCrO4] dissociates according to
with a pKa of about 5.9.
The infrared spectra of compounds containing the OH functional group have strong absorption bands in the region centered around 3500 cm. The high frequency of molecular vibration is a consequence of the small mass of the hydrogen atom as compared to the mass of the oxygen atom, and this makes detection of hydroxyl groups by infrared spectroscopy relatively easy. A band due to an OH group tends to be sharp. However, the band width increases when the OH group is involved in hydrogen bonding. A water molecule has an HOH bending mode at about 1600 cm, so the absence of this band can be used to distinguish an OH group from a water molecule.
When the OH group is bound to a metal ion in a coordination complex, an M−OH bending mode can be observed. For example, in [Sn(OH)6] it occurs at 1065 cm. The bending mode for a bridging hydroxide tends to be at a lower frequency as in [(bipyridine)Cu(OH)2Cu(bipyridine)] (955 cm). M−OH stretching vibrations occur below about 600 cm. For example, the tetrahedral ion [Zn(OH)4] has bands at 470 cm (Raman-active, polarized) and 420 cm (infrared). The same ion has a (HO)–Zn–(OH) bending vibration at 300 cm.
Sodium hydroxide solutions, also known as lye and caustic soda, are used in the manufacture of pulp and paper, textiles, drinking water, soaps and detergents, and as a drain cleaner. Worldwide production in 2004 was approximately 60 million tonnes. The principal method of manufacture is the chloralkali process.
Solutions containing the hydroxide ion are generated when a salt of a weak acid is dissolved in water. Sodium carbonate is used as an alkali, for example, by virtue of the hydrolysis reaction
Although the base strength of sodium carbonate solutions is lower than a concentrated sodium hydroxide solution, it has the advantage of being a solid. It is also manufactured on a vast scale (42 million tonnes in 2005) by the Solvay process. An example of the use of sodium carbonate as an alkali is when washing soda (another name for sodium carbonate) acts on insoluble esters, such as triglycerides, commonly known as fats, to hydrolyze them and make them soluble.
Bauxite, a basic hydroxide of aluminium, is the principal ore from which the metal is manufactured. Similarly, goethite (α-FeO(OH)) and lepidocrocite (γ-FeO(OH)), basic hydroxides of iron, are among the principal ores used for the manufacture of metallic iron.
Aside from NaOH and KOH, which enjoy very large scale applications, the hydroxides of the other alkali metals also are useful. Lithium hydroxide is a strong base, with a pKb of −0.36. Lithium hydroxide is used in breathing gas purification systems for spacecraft, submarines, and rebreathers to remove carbon dioxide from exhaled gas.
The hydroxide of lithium is preferred to that of sodium because of its lower mass. Sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, and the hydroxides of the other alkali metals are also strong bases.
Beryllium hydroxide Be(OH)2 is amphoteric. The hydroxide itself is insoluble in water, with a solubility product log K*sp of −11.7. Addition of acid gives soluble hydrolysis products, including the trimeric ion [Be3(OH)3(H2O)6], which has OH groups bridging between pairs of beryllium ions making a 6-membered ring. At very low pH the aqua ion [Be(H2O)4] is formed. Addition of hydroxide to Be(OH)2 gives the soluble tetrahydroxoberyllate or tetrahydroxidoberyllate anion, [Be(OH)4].
The solubility in water of the other hydroxides in this group increases with increasing atomic number. Magnesium hydroxide Mg(OH)2 is a strong base (up to the limit of its solubility, which is very low in pure water), as are the hydroxides of the heavier alkaline earths: calcium hydroxide, strontium hydroxide, and barium hydroxide. A solution or suspension of calcium hydroxide is known as limewater and can be used to test for the weak acid carbon dioxide. The reaction Ca(OH)2 + CO2 ⇌ Ca + HCO3 + OH illustrates the basicity of calcium hydroxide. Soda lime, which is a mixture of the strong bases NaOH and KOH with Ca(OH)2, is used as a CO2 absorbent.
The simplest hydroxide of boron B(OH)3, known as boric acid, is an acid. Unlike the hydroxides of the alkali and alkaline earth hydroxides, it does not dissociate in aqueous solution. Instead, it reacts with water molecules acting as a Lewis acid, releasing protons.
A variety of oxyanions of boron are known, which, in the protonated form, contain hydroxide groups.
Aluminium hydroxide Al(OH)3 is amphoteric and dissolves in alkaline solution.
In the Bayer process for the production of pure aluminium oxide from bauxite minerals this equilibrium is manipulated by careful control of temperature and alkali concentration. In the first phase, aluminium dissolves in hot alkaline solution as Al(OH)4, but other hydroxides usually present in the mineral, such as iron hydroxides, do not dissolve because they are not amphoteric. After removal of the insolubles, the so-called red mud, pure aluminium hydroxide is made to precipitate by reducing the temperature and adding water to the extract, which, by diluting the alkali, lowers the pH of the solution. Basic aluminium hydroxide AlO(OH), which may be present in bauxite, is also amphoteric.
In mildly acidic solutions, the hydroxo/hydroxido complexes formed by aluminium are somewhat different from those of boron, reflecting the greater size of Al(III) vs. B(III). The concentration of the species [Al13(OH)32] is very dependent on the total aluminium concentration. Various other hydroxo complexes are found in crystalline compounds. Perhaps the most important is the basic hydroxide AlO(OH), a polymeric material known by the names of the mineral forms boehmite or diaspore, depending on crystal structure. Gallium hydroxide, indium hydroxide, and thallium(III) hydroxide are also amphoteric. Thallium(I) hydroxide is a strong base.
Carbon forms no simple hydroxides. The hypothetical compound C(OH)4 (orthocarbonic acid or methanetetrol) is unstable in aqueous solution:
Carbon dioxide is also known as carbonic anhydride, meaning that it forms by dehydration of carbonic acid H2CO3 (OC(OH)2).
Silicic acid is the name given to a variety of compounds with a generic formula [SiOx(OH)4−2x]n. Orthosilicic acid has been identified in very dilute aqueous solution. It is a weak acid with pKa1 = 9.84, pKa2 = 13.2 at 25 °C. It is usually written as H4SiO4, but the formula Si(OH)4 is generally accepted. Other silicic acids such as metasilicic acid (H2SiO3), disilicic acid (H2Si2O5), and pyrosilicic acid (H6Si2O7) have been characterized. These acids also have hydroxide groups attached to the silicon; the formulas suggest that these acids are protonated forms of polyoxyanions.
Few hydroxo complexes of germanium have been characterized. Tin(II) hydroxide Sn(OH)2 was prepared in anhydrous media. When tin(II) oxide is treated with alkali the pyramidal hydroxo complex Sn(OH)3 is formed. When solutions containing this ion are acidified, the ion [Sn3(OH)4] is formed together with some basic hydroxo complexes. The structure of [Sn3(OH)4] has a triangle of tin atoms connected by bridging hydroxide groups. Tin(IV) hydroxide is unknown but can be regarded as the hypothetical acid from which stannates, with a formula [Sn(OH)6], are derived by reaction with the (Lewis) basic hydroxide ion.
Hydrolysis of Pb in aqueous solution is accompanied by the formation of various hydroxo-containing complexes, some of which are insoluble. The basic hydroxo complex [Pb6O(OH)6] is a cluster of six lead centres with metal–metal bonds surrounding a central oxide ion. The six hydroxide groups lie on the faces of the two external Pb4 tetrahedra. In strongly alkaline solutions soluble plumbate ions are formed, including [Pb(OH)6].
In the higher oxidation states of the pnictogens, chalcogens, halogens, and noble gases there are oxoacids in which the central atom is attached to oxide ions and hydroxide ions. Examples include phosphoric acid H3PO4, and sulfuric acid H2SO4. In these compounds one or more hydroxide groups can dissociate with the liberation of hydrogen cations as in a standard Brønsted–Lowry acid. Many oxoacids of sulfur are known and all feature OH groups that can dissociate.
Telluric acid is often written with the formula H2TeO4·2H2O but is better described structurally as Te(OH)6.
Ortho-periodic acid can lose all its protons, eventually forming the periodate ion [IO4]. It can also be protonated in strongly acidic conditions to give the octahedral ion [I(OH)6], completing the isoelectronic series, [E(OH)6], E = Sn, Sb, Te, I; z = −2, −1, 0, +1. Other acids of iodine(VII) that contain hydroxide groups are known, in particular in salts such as the mesoperiodate ion that occurs in K4[I2O8(OH)2]·8H2O.
As is common outside of the alkali metals, hydroxides of the elements in lower oxidation states are complicated. For example, phosphorous acid H3PO3 predominantly has the structure OP(H)(OH)2, in equilibrium with a small amount of P(OH)3.
The oxoacids of chlorine, bromine, and iodine have the formula On−1/2A(OH), where n is the oxidation number: +1, +3, +5, or +7, and A = Cl, Br, or I. The only oxoacid of fluorine is F(OH), hypofluorous acid. When these acids are neutralized the hydrogen atom is removed from the hydroxide group.
The hydroxides of the transition metals and post-transition metals usually have the metal in the +2 (M = Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn) or +3 (M = Fe, Ru, Rh, Ir) oxidation state. None are soluble in water, and many are poorly defined. One complicating feature of the hydroxides is their tendency to undergo further condensation to the oxides, a process called olation. Hydroxides of metals in the +1 oxidation state are also poorly defined or unstable. For example, silver hydroxide Ag(OH) decomposes spontaneously to the oxide (Ag2O). Copper(I) and gold(I) hydroxides are also unstable, although stable adducts of CuOH and AuOH are known. The polymeric compounds M(OH)2 and M(OH)3 are in general prepared by increasing the pH of an aqueous solutions of the corresponding metal cations until the hydroxide precipitates out of solution. On the converse, the hydroxides dissolve in acidic solution. Zinc hydroxide Zn(OH)2 is amphoteric, forming the tetrahydroxidozincate ion Zn(OH)4 in strongly alkaline solution.
Numerous mixed ligand complexes of these metals with the hydroxide ion exist. In fact, these are in general better defined than the simpler derivatives. Many can be made by deprotonation of the corresponding metal aquo complex.
Vanadic acid H3VO4 shows similarities with phosphoric acid H3PO4 though it has a much more complex vanadate oxoanion chemistry. Chromic acid H2CrO4, has similarities with sulfuric acid H2SO4; for example, both form acid salts A[HMO4]. Some metals, e.g. V, Cr, Nb, Ta, Mo, W, tend to exist in high oxidation states. Rather than forming hydroxides in aqueous solution, they convert to oxo clusters by the process of olation, forming polyoxometalates.
In some cases, the products of partial hydrolysis of metal ion, described above, can be found in crystalline compounds. A striking example is found with zirconium(IV). Because of the high oxidation state, salts of Zr are extensively hydrolyzed in water even at low pH. The compound originally formulated as ZrOCl2·8H2O was found to be the chloride salt of a tetrameric cation [Zr4(OH)8(H2O)16] in which there is a square of Zr ions with two hydroxide groups bridging between Zr atoms on each side of the square and with four water molecules attached to each Zr atom.
The mineral malachite is a typical example of a basic carbonate. The formula, Cu2CO3(OH)2 shows that it is halfway between copper carbonate and copper hydroxide. Indeed, in the past the formula was written as CuCO3·Cu(OH)2. The crystal structure is made up of copper, carbonate and hydroxide ions. The mineral atacamite is an example of a basic chloride. It has the formula, Cu2Cl(OH)3. In this case the composition is nearer to that of the hydroxide than that of the chloride CuCl2·3Cu(OH)2. Copper forms hydroxyphosphate (libethenite), arsenate (olivenite), sulfate (brochantite), and nitrate compounds. White lead is a basic lead carbonate, (PbCO3)2·Pb(OH)2, which has been used as a white pigment because of its opaque quality, though its use is now restricted because it can be a source for lead poisoning.
The hydroxide ion appears to rotate freely in crystals of the heavier alkali metal hydroxides at higher temperatures so as to present itself as a spherical ion, with an effective ionic radius of about 153 pm. Thus, the high-temperature forms of KOH and NaOH have the sodium chloride structure, which gradually freezes in a monoclinically distorted sodium chloride structure at temperatures below about 300 °C. The OH groups still rotate even at room temperature around their symmetry axes and, therefore, cannot be detected by X-ray diffraction. The room-temperature form of NaOH has the thallium iodide structure. LiOH, however, has a layered structure, made up of tetrahedral Li(OH)4 and (OH)Li4 units. This is consistent with the weakly basic character of LiOH in solution, indicating that the Li–OH bond has much covalent character.
The hydroxide ion displays cylindrical symmetry in hydroxides of divalent metals Ca, Cd, Mn, Fe, and Co. For example, magnesium hydroxide Mg(OH)2 (brucite) crystallizes with the cadmium iodide layer structure, with a kind of close-packing of magnesium and hydroxide ions.
The amphoteric hydroxide Al(OH)3 has four major crystalline forms: gibbsite (most stable), bayerite, nordstrandite, and doyleite. All these polymorphs are built up of double layers of hydroxide ions – the aluminium atoms on two-thirds of the octahedral holes between the two layers – and differ only in the stacking sequence of the layers. The structures are similar to the brucite structure. However, whereas the brucite structure can be described as a close-packed structure in gibbsite the OH groups on the underside of one layer rest on the groups of the layer below. This arrangement led to the suggestion that there are directional bonds between OH groups in adjacent layers. This is an unusual form of hydrogen bonding since the two hydroxide ion involved would be expected to point away from each other. The hydrogen atoms have been located by neutron diffraction experiments on α-AlO(OH) (diaspore). The O–H–O distance is very short, at 265 pm; the hydrogen is not equidistant between the oxygen atoms and the short OH bond makes an angle of 12° with the O–O line. A similar type of hydrogen bond has been proposed for other amphoteric hydroxides, including Be(OH)2, Zn(OH)2, and Fe(OH)3.
A number of mixed hydroxides are known with stoichiometry A3M(OH)6, A2M(OH)6, and AM(OH)6. As the formula suggests these substances contain M(OH)6 octahedral structural units. Layered double hydroxides may be represented by the formula [M1−xMx(OH)2](X)q⁄n·yH2O. Most commonly, z = 2, and M = Ca, Mg, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, or Zn; hence q = x.
Potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide are two well-known reagents in organic chemistry.
The hydroxide ion may act as a base catalyst. The base abstracts a proton from a weak acid to give an intermediate that goes on to react with another reagent. Common substrates for proton abstraction are alcohols, phenols, amines, and carbon acids. The pKa value for dissociation of a C–H bond is extremely high, but the pKa alpha hydrogens of a carbonyl compound are about 3 log units lower. Typical pKa values are 16.7 for acetaldehyde and 19 for acetone. Dissociation can occur in the presence of a suitable base.
The base should have a pKa value not less than about 4 log units smaller, or the equilibrium will lie almost completely to the left.
The hydroxide ion by itself is not a strong enough base, but it can be converted in one by adding sodium hydroxide to ethanol
to produce the ethoxide ion. The pKa for self-dissociation of ethanol is about 16, so the alkoxide ion is a strong enough base. The addition of an alcohol to an aldehyde to form a hemiacetal is an example of a reaction that can be catalyzed by the presence of hydroxide. Hydroxide can also act as a Lewis-base catalyst.
The hydroxide ion is intermediate in nucleophilicity between the fluoride ion F, and the amide ion NH2. Ester hydrolysis under alkaline conditions (also known as base hydrolysis)
is an example of a nucleophilic acyl substitution with the hydroxide ion acting as a nucleophile.
Early methods for manufacturing soap treated triglycerides from animal fat (the ester) with lye.
Other cases where hydroxide can act as a nucleophilic reagent are amide hydrolysis, the Cannizzaro reaction, nucleophilic aliphatic substitution, nucleophilic aromatic substitution, and in elimination reactions. The reaction medium for KOH and NaOH is usually water but with a phase-transfer catalyst the hydroxide anion can be shuttled into an organic solvent as well, for example in the generation of the reactive intermediate dichlorocarbene. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hydroxide is a diatomic anion with chemical formula OH. It consists of an oxygen and hydrogen atom held together by a single covalent bond, and carries a negative electric charge. It is an important but usually minor constituent of water. It functions as a base, a ligand, a nucleophile, and a catalyst. The hydroxide ion forms salts, some of which dissociate in aqueous solution, liberating solvated hydroxide ions. Sodium hydroxide is a multi-million-ton per annum commodity chemical. The corresponding electrically neutral compound HO is the hydroxyl radical. The corresponding covalently bound group –OH of atoms is the hydroxy group. Both the hydroxide ion and hydroxy group are nucleophiles and can act as catalysts in organic chemistry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Many inorganic substances which bear the word hydroxide in their names are not ionic compounds of the hydroxide ion, but covalent compounds which contain hydroxy groups.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The hydroxide ion is naturally produced from water by the self-ionization reaction:",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The equilibrium constant for this reaction, defined as",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "has a value close to 10 at 25 °C, so the concentration of hydroxide ions in pure water is close to 10 mol∙dm, in order to satisfy the equal charge constraint. The pH of a solution is equal to the decimal cologarithm of the hydrogen cation concentration; the pH of pure water is close to 7 at ambient temperatures. The concentration of hydroxide ions can be expressed in terms of pOH, which is close to (14 − pH), so the pOH of pure water is also close to 7. Addition of a base to water will reduce the hydrogen cation concentration and therefore increase the hydroxide ion concentration (increase pH, decrease pOH) even if the base does not itself contain hydroxide. For example, ammonia solutions have a pH greater than 7 due to the reaction NH3 + H ⇌ NH4, which decreases the hydrogen cation concentration, which increases the hydroxide ion concentration. pOH can be kept at a nearly constant value with various buffer solutions.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In aqueous solution the hydroxide ion is a base in the Brønsted–Lowry sense as it can accept a proton from a Brønsted–Lowry acid to form a water molecule. It can also act as a Lewis base by donating a pair of electrons to a Lewis acid. In aqueous solution both hydrogen and hydroxide ions are strongly solvated, with hydrogen bonds between oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Indeed, the bihydroxide ion H3O2 has been characterized in the solid state. This compound is centrosymmetric and has a very short hydrogen bond (114.5 pm) that is similar to the length in the bifluoride ion HF2 (114 pm). In aqueous solution the hydroxide ion forms strong hydrogen bonds with water molecules. A consequence of this is that concentrated solutions of sodium hydroxide have high viscosity due to the formation of an extended network of hydrogen bonds as in hydrogen fluoride solutions.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In solution, exposed to air, the hydroxide ion reacts rapidly with atmospheric carbon dioxide, acting as an acid, to form, initially, the bicarbonate ion.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The equilibrium constant for this reaction can be specified either as a reaction with dissolved carbon dioxide or as a reaction with carbon dioxide gas (see Carbonic acid for values and details). At neutral or acid pH, the reaction is slow, but is catalyzed by the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which effectively creates hydroxide ions at the active site.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Solutions containing the hydroxide ion attack glass. In this case, the silicates in glass are acting as acids. Basic hydroxides, whether solids or in solution, are stored in airtight plastic containers.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The hydroxide ion can function as a typical electron-pair donor ligand, forming such complexes as tetrahydroxoaluminate/tetrahydroxidoaluminate [Al(OH)4]. It is also often found in mixed-ligand complexes of the type [MLx(OH)y], where L is a ligand. The hydroxide ion often serves as a bridging ligand, donating one pair of electrons to each of the atoms being bridged. As illustrated by [Pb2(OH)], metal hydroxides are often written in a simplified format. It can even act as a 3-electron-pair donor, as in the tetramer [PtMe3(OH)]4.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "When bound to a strongly electron-withdrawing metal centre, hydroxide ligands tend to ionise into oxide ligands. For example, the bichromate ion [HCrO4] dissociates according to",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "with a pKa of about 5.9.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The infrared spectra of compounds containing the OH functional group have strong absorption bands in the region centered around 3500 cm. The high frequency of molecular vibration is a consequence of the small mass of the hydrogen atom as compared to the mass of the oxygen atom, and this makes detection of hydroxyl groups by infrared spectroscopy relatively easy. A band due to an OH group tends to be sharp. However, the band width increases when the OH group is involved in hydrogen bonding. A water molecule has an HOH bending mode at about 1600 cm, so the absence of this band can be used to distinguish an OH group from a water molecule.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When the OH group is bound to a metal ion in a coordination complex, an M−OH bending mode can be observed. For example, in [Sn(OH)6] it occurs at 1065 cm. The bending mode for a bridging hydroxide tends to be at a lower frequency as in [(bipyridine)Cu(OH)2Cu(bipyridine)] (955 cm). M−OH stretching vibrations occur below about 600 cm. For example, the tetrahedral ion [Zn(OH)4] has bands at 470 cm (Raman-active, polarized) and 420 cm (infrared). The same ion has a (HO)–Zn–(OH) bending vibration at 300 cm.",
"title": "Hydroxide ion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Sodium hydroxide solutions, also known as lye and caustic soda, are used in the manufacture of pulp and paper, textiles, drinking water, soaps and detergents, and as a drain cleaner. Worldwide production in 2004 was approximately 60 million tonnes. The principal method of manufacture is the chloralkali process.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Solutions containing the hydroxide ion are generated when a salt of a weak acid is dissolved in water. Sodium carbonate is used as an alkali, for example, by virtue of the hydrolysis reaction",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Although the base strength of sodium carbonate solutions is lower than a concentrated sodium hydroxide solution, it has the advantage of being a solid. It is also manufactured on a vast scale (42 million tonnes in 2005) by the Solvay process. An example of the use of sodium carbonate as an alkali is when washing soda (another name for sodium carbonate) acts on insoluble esters, such as triglycerides, commonly known as fats, to hydrolyze them and make them soluble.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Bauxite, a basic hydroxide of aluminium, is the principal ore from which the metal is manufactured. Similarly, goethite (α-FeO(OH)) and lepidocrocite (γ-FeO(OH)), basic hydroxides of iron, are among the principal ores used for the manufacture of metallic iron.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Aside from NaOH and KOH, which enjoy very large scale applications, the hydroxides of the other alkali metals also are useful. Lithium hydroxide is a strong base, with a pKb of −0.36. Lithium hydroxide is used in breathing gas purification systems for spacecraft, submarines, and rebreathers to remove carbon dioxide from exhaled gas.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The hydroxide of lithium is preferred to that of sodium because of its lower mass. Sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, and the hydroxides of the other alkali metals are also strong bases.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Beryllium hydroxide Be(OH)2 is amphoteric. The hydroxide itself is insoluble in water, with a solubility product log K*sp of −11.7. Addition of acid gives soluble hydrolysis products, including the trimeric ion [Be3(OH)3(H2O)6], which has OH groups bridging between pairs of beryllium ions making a 6-membered ring. At very low pH the aqua ion [Be(H2O)4] is formed. Addition of hydroxide to Be(OH)2 gives the soluble tetrahydroxoberyllate or tetrahydroxidoberyllate anion, [Be(OH)4].",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The solubility in water of the other hydroxides in this group increases with increasing atomic number. Magnesium hydroxide Mg(OH)2 is a strong base (up to the limit of its solubility, which is very low in pure water), as are the hydroxides of the heavier alkaline earths: calcium hydroxide, strontium hydroxide, and barium hydroxide. A solution or suspension of calcium hydroxide is known as limewater and can be used to test for the weak acid carbon dioxide. The reaction Ca(OH)2 + CO2 ⇌ Ca + HCO3 + OH illustrates the basicity of calcium hydroxide. Soda lime, which is a mixture of the strong bases NaOH and KOH with Ca(OH)2, is used as a CO2 absorbent.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The simplest hydroxide of boron B(OH)3, known as boric acid, is an acid. Unlike the hydroxides of the alkali and alkaline earth hydroxides, it does not dissociate in aqueous solution. Instead, it reacts with water molecules acting as a Lewis acid, releasing protons.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A variety of oxyanions of boron are known, which, in the protonated form, contain hydroxide groups.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Aluminium hydroxide Al(OH)3 is amphoteric and dissolves in alkaline solution.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the Bayer process for the production of pure aluminium oxide from bauxite minerals this equilibrium is manipulated by careful control of temperature and alkali concentration. In the first phase, aluminium dissolves in hot alkaline solution as Al(OH)4, but other hydroxides usually present in the mineral, such as iron hydroxides, do not dissolve because they are not amphoteric. After removal of the insolubles, the so-called red mud, pure aluminium hydroxide is made to precipitate by reducing the temperature and adding water to the extract, which, by diluting the alkali, lowers the pH of the solution. Basic aluminium hydroxide AlO(OH), which may be present in bauxite, is also amphoteric.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In mildly acidic solutions, the hydroxo/hydroxido complexes formed by aluminium are somewhat different from those of boron, reflecting the greater size of Al(III) vs. B(III). The concentration of the species [Al13(OH)32] is very dependent on the total aluminium concentration. Various other hydroxo complexes are found in crystalline compounds. Perhaps the most important is the basic hydroxide AlO(OH), a polymeric material known by the names of the mineral forms boehmite or diaspore, depending on crystal structure. Gallium hydroxide, indium hydroxide, and thallium(III) hydroxide are also amphoteric. Thallium(I) hydroxide is a strong base.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Carbon forms no simple hydroxides. The hypothetical compound C(OH)4 (orthocarbonic acid or methanetetrol) is unstable in aqueous solution:",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Carbon dioxide is also known as carbonic anhydride, meaning that it forms by dehydration of carbonic acid H2CO3 (OC(OH)2).",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Silicic acid is the name given to a variety of compounds with a generic formula [SiOx(OH)4−2x]n. Orthosilicic acid has been identified in very dilute aqueous solution. It is a weak acid with pKa1 = 9.84, pKa2 = 13.2 at 25 °C. It is usually written as H4SiO4, but the formula Si(OH)4 is generally accepted. Other silicic acids such as metasilicic acid (H2SiO3), disilicic acid (H2Si2O5), and pyrosilicic acid (H6Si2O7) have been characterized. These acids also have hydroxide groups attached to the silicon; the formulas suggest that these acids are protonated forms of polyoxyanions.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Few hydroxo complexes of germanium have been characterized. Tin(II) hydroxide Sn(OH)2 was prepared in anhydrous media. When tin(II) oxide is treated with alkali the pyramidal hydroxo complex Sn(OH)3 is formed. When solutions containing this ion are acidified, the ion [Sn3(OH)4] is formed together with some basic hydroxo complexes. The structure of [Sn3(OH)4] has a triangle of tin atoms connected by bridging hydroxide groups. Tin(IV) hydroxide is unknown but can be regarded as the hypothetical acid from which stannates, with a formula [Sn(OH)6], are derived by reaction with the (Lewis) basic hydroxide ion.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Hydrolysis of Pb in aqueous solution is accompanied by the formation of various hydroxo-containing complexes, some of which are insoluble. The basic hydroxo complex [Pb6O(OH)6] is a cluster of six lead centres with metal–metal bonds surrounding a central oxide ion. The six hydroxide groups lie on the faces of the two external Pb4 tetrahedra. In strongly alkaline solutions soluble plumbate ions are formed, including [Pb(OH)6].",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In the higher oxidation states of the pnictogens, chalcogens, halogens, and noble gases there are oxoacids in which the central atom is attached to oxide ions and hydroxide ions. Examples include phosphoric acid H3PO4, and sulfuric acid H2SO4. In these compounds one or more hydroxide groups can dissociate with the liberation of hydrogen cations as in a standard Brønsted–Lowry acid. Many oxoacids of sulfur are known and all feature OH groups that can dissociate.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Telluric acid is often written with the formula H2TeO4·2H2O but is better described structurally as Te(OH)6.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Ortho-periodic acid can lose all its protons, eventually forming the periodate ion [IO4]. It can also be protonated in strongly acidic conditions to give the octahedral ion [I(OH)6], completing the isoelectronic series, [E(OH)6], E = Sn, Sb, Te, I; z = −2, −1, 0, +1. Other acids of iodine(VII) that contain hydroxide groups are known, in particular in salts such as the mesoperiodate ion that occurs in K4[I2O8(OH)2]·8H2O.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "As is common outside of the alkali metals, hydroxides of the elements in lower oxidation states are complicated. For example, phosphorous acid H3PO3 predominantly has the structure OP(H)(OH)2, in equilibrium with a small amount of P(OH)3.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The oxoacids of chlorine, bromine, and iodine have the formula On−1/2A(OH), where n is the oxidation number: +1, +3, +5, or +7, and A = Cl, Br, or I. The only oxoacid of fluorine is F(OH), hypofluorous acid. When these acids are neutralized the hydrogen atom is removed from the hydroxide group.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The hydroxides of the transition metals and post-transition metals usually have the metal in the +2 (M = Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn) or +3 (M = Fe, Ru, Rh, Ir) oxidation state. None are soluble in water, and many are poorly defined. One complicating feature of the hydroxides is their tendency to undergo further condensation to the oxides, a process called olation. Hydroxides of metals in the +1 oxidation state are also poorly defined or unstable. For example, silver hydroxide Ag(OH) decomposes spontaneously to the oxide (Ag2O). Copper(I) and gold(I) hydroxides are also unstable, although stable adducts of CuOH and AuOH are known. The polymeric compounds M(OH)2 and M(OH)3 are in general prepared by increasing the pH of an aqueous solutions of the corresponding metal cations until the hydroxide precipitates out of solution. On the converse, the hydroxides dissolve in acidic solution. Zinc hydroxide Zn(OH)2 is amphoteric, forming the tetrahydroxidozincate ion Zn(OH)4 in strongly alkaline solution.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Numerous mixed ligand complexes of these metals with the hydroxide ion exist. In fact, these are in general better defined than the simpler derivatives. Many can be made by deprotonation of the corresponding metal aquo complex.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Vanadic acid H3VO4 shows similarities with phosphoric acid H3PO4 though it has a much more complex vanadate oxoanion chemistry. Chromic acid H2CrO4, has similarities with sulfuric acid H2SO4; for example, both form acid salts A[HMO4]. Some metals, e.g. V, Cr, Nb, Ta, Mo, W, tend to exist in high oxidation states. Rather than forming hydroxides in aqueous solution, they convert to oxo clusters by the process of olation, forming polyoxometalates.",
"title": "Inorganic hydroxides"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In some cases, the products of partial hydrolysis of metal ion, described above, can be found in crystalline compounds. A striking example is found with zirconium(IV). Because of the high oxidation state, salts of Zr are extensively hydrolyzed in water even at low pH. The compound originally formulated as ZrOCl2·8H2O was found to be the chloride salt of a tetrameric cation [Zr4(OH)8(H2O)16] in which there is a square of Zr ions with two hydroxide groups bridging between Zr atoms on each side of the square and with four water molecules attached to each Zr atom.",
"title": "Basic salts containing hydroxide"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The mineral malachite is a typical example of a basic carbonate. The formula, Cu2CO3(OH)2 shows that it is halfway between copper carbonate and copper hydroxide. Indeed, in the past the formula was written as CuCO3·Cu(OH)2. The crystal structure is made up of copper, carbonate and hydroxide ions. The mineral atacamite is an example of a basic chloride. It has the formula, Cu2Cl(OH)3. In this case the composition is nearer to that of the hydroxide than that of the chloride CuCl2·3Cu(OH)2. Copper forms hydroxyphosphate (libethenite), arsenate (olivenite), sulfate (brochantite), and nitrate compounds. White lead is a basic lead carbonate, (PbCO3)2·Pb(OH)2, which has been used as a white pigment because of its opaque quality, though its use is now restricted because it can be a source for lead poisoning.",
"title": "Basic salts containing hydroxide"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The hydroxide ion appears to rotate freely in crystals of the heavier alkali metal hydroxides at higher temperatures so as to present itself as a spherical ion, with an effective ionic radius of about 153 pm. Thus, the high-temperature forms of KOH and NaOH have the sodium chloride structure, which gradually freezes in a monoclinically distorted sodium chloride structure at temperatures below about 300 °C. The OH groups still rotate even at room temperature around their symmetry axes and, therefore, cannot be detected by X-ray diffraction. The room-temperature form of NaOH has the thallium iodide structure. LiOH, however, has a layered structure, made up of tetrahedral Li(OH)4 and (OH)Li4 units. This is consistent with the weakly basic character of LiOH in solution, indicating that the Li–OH bond has much covalent character.",
"title": "Structural chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The hydroxide ion displays cylindrical symmetry in hydroxides of divalent metals Ca, Cd, Mn, Fe, and Co. For example, magnesium hydroxide Mg(OH)2 (brucite) crystallizes with the cadmium iodide layer structure, with a kind of close-packing of magnesium and hydroxide ions.",
"title": "Structural chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The amphoteric hydroxide Al(OH)3 has four major crystalline forms: gibbsite (most stable), bayerite, nordstrandite, and doyleite. All these polymorphs are built up of double layers of hydroxide ions – the aluminium atoms on two-thirds of the octahedral holes between the two layers – and differ only in the stacking sequence of the layers. The structures are similar to the brucite structure. However, whereas the brucite structure can be described as a close-packed structure in gibbsite the OH groups on the underside of one layer rest on the groups of the layer below. This arrangement led to the suggestion that there are directional bonds between OH groups in adjacent layers. This is an unusual form of hydrogen bonding since the two hydroxide ion involved would be expected to point away from each other. The hydrogen atoms have been located by neutron diffraction experiments on α-AlO(OH) (diaspore). The O–H–O distance is very short, at 265 pm; the hydrogen is not equidistant between the oxygen atoms and the short OH bond makes an angle of 12° with the O–O line. A similar type of hydrogen bond has been proposed for other amphoteric hydroxides, including Be(OH)2, Zn(OH)2, and Fe(OH)3.",
"title": "Structural chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "A number of mixed hydroxides are known with stoichiometry A3M(OH)6, A2M(OH)6, and AM(OH)6. As the formula suggests these substances contain M(OH)6 octahedral structural units. Layered double hydroxides may be represented by the formula [M1−xMx(OH)2](X)q⁄n·yH2O. Most commonly, z = 2, and M = Ca, Mg, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, or Zn; hence q = x.",
"title": "Structural chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide are two well-known reagents in organic chemistry.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The hydroxide ion may act as a base catalyst. The base abstracts a proton from a weak acid to give an intermediate that goes on to react with another reagent. Common substrates for proton abstraction are alcohols, phenols, amines, and carbon acids. The pKa value for dissociation of a C–H bond is extremely high, but the pKa alpha hydrogens of a carbonyl compound are about 3 log units lower. Typical pKa values are 16.7 for acetaldehyde and 19 for acetone. Dissociation can occur in the presence of a suitable base.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The base should have a pKa value not less than about 4 log units smaller, or the equilibrium will lie almost completely to the left.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The hydroxide ion by itself is not a strong enough base, but it can be converted in one by adding sodium hydroxide to ethanol",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "to produce the ethoxide ion. The pKa for self-dissociation of ethanol is about 16, so the alkoxide ion is a strong enough base. The addition of an alcohol to an aldehyde to form a hemiacetal is an example of a reaction that can be catalyzed by the presence of hydroxide. Hydroxide can also act as a Lewis-base catalyst.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The hydroxide ion is intermediate in nucleophilicity between the fluoride ion F, and the amide ion NH2. Ester hydrolysis under alkaline conditions (also known as base hydrolysis)",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "is an example of a nucleophilic acyl substitution with the hydroxide ion acting as a nucleophile.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Early methods for manufacturing soap treated triglycerides from animal fat (the ester) with lye.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Other cases where hydroxide can act as a nucleophilic reagent are amide hydrolysis, the Cannizzaro reaction, nucleophilic aliphatic substitution, nucleophilic aromatic substitution, and in elimination reactions. The reaction medium for KOH and NaOH is usually water but with a phase-transfer catalyst the hydroxide anion can be shuttled into an organic solvent as well, for example in the generation of the reactive intermediate dichlorocarbene.",
"title": "In organic reactions"
}
]
| Hydroxide is a diatomic anion with chemical formula OH−. It consists of an oxygen and hydrogen atom held together by a single covalent bond, and carries a negative electric charge. It is an important but usually minor constituent of water. It functions as a base, a ligand, a nucleophile, and a catalyst. The hydroxide ion forms salts, some of which dissociate in aqueous solution, liberating solvated hydroxide ions. Sodium hydroxide is a multi-million-ton per annum commodity chemical.
The corresponding electrically neutral compound HO• is the hydroxyl radical. The corresponding covalently bound group –OH of atoms is the hydroxy group.
Both the hydroxide ion and hydroxy group are nucleophiles and can act as catalysts in organic chemistry. Many inorganic substances which bear the word hydroxide in their names are not ionic compounds of the hydroxide ion, but covalent compounds which contain hydroxy groups. | 2001-09-02T09:40:24Z | 2023-12-18T23:44:06Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxide |
13,713 | H. R. Giger | Hans Ruedi Giger (/ˈɡiːɡər/ GHEE-gər; German: [ˈɡiːɡər]; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as "biomechanical". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, and was responsible for creating the titular Alien itself. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including album covers, furniture, tattoos and video games.
Giger was born in 1940 in Chur, the capital city of Graubünden, the largest and easternmost Swiss canton. His father, a pharmacist, viewed art as a "breadless profession" and strongly encouraged him to enter pharmacy. He moved to Zürich in 1962where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970.
Giger's first success was when H. H. Kunz, co-owner of Switzerland's first poster publishing company, printed and distributed Giger's first posters, beginning in 1969.
Giger's style and thematic execution were influential. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their design work on the film Alien. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine contributed to his rise to international prominence. Giger was admitted to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. He is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums including Danzig III: How The Gods Kill by Danzig, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Attahk by Magma, Heartwork by Carcass, To Mega Therion by Celtic Frost, Eparistera Daimones and Melana Chasmata by Triptykon, Deborah Harry's KooKoo, Atomic Playboys by Steve Stevens, and Frankenchrist by the Dead Kennedys.
In 1998, Giger acquired the Saint-Germain Castle in Gruyères, Switzerland, which now houses the H.R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Giger had a relationship with Swiss actress Li Tobler until she died by suicide in 1975. Tobler's image appears in many of his paintings. He married Mia Bonzanigo in 1979; they divorced a year and a half later.
Giger lived and worked in Zürich with his second wife, Carmen Maria Scheifele Giger, who is the director of the H.R. Giger Museum.
On 12 May 2014, Giger died in a Zürich hospital after suffering injuries from a fall.
Giger started with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, he worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. He also worked with pastels, markers and ink.
Giger's most distinctive stylistic innovation was that of a representation of human bodies and machines in cold, interconnected relationships, which he described as "biomechanical". His main influences were painters Dado, Ernst Fuchs, and Salvador Dalí. He was introduced to Dali by painter Robert Venosa. Giger was also influenced by Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski, and by painters Austin Osman Spare and Mati Klarwein, and was a personal friend of Timothy Leary. He studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art in Zurich from 1962 to 1965, and made his first paintings as art therapy.
Giger directed a number of films, including Swiss Made (1968), Tagtraum (1973), Giger's Necronomicon (1975) and Giger's Alien (1979).
Giger created furniture designs, particularly the Harkonnen Capo Chair for a film of the novel Dune that was to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Many years later, David Lynch directed the film, using only rough concepts by Giger. Giger had wished to work with Lynch, as he stated in one of his books that Lynch's film Eraserhead was closer than even Giger's own films to realizing his vision.
Giger also applied his biomechanical style to interior design. One "Giger Bar" appeared in Tokyo, but the realization of his designs was a great disappointment to him, since the Japanese organization behind the venture did not wait for his final designs, and instead used Giger's rough preliminary sketches. For that reason Giger disowned the Tokyo bar. The two Giger Bars in his native Switzerland, in Gruyères and Chur, were built under Giger's close supervision and they accurately reflect his original concepts. At The Limelight in Manhattan, Giger's artwork was licensed to decorate the VIP room, the uppermost chapel of the landmarked church, but it was never intended to be a permanent installation and bore no similarity to the bars in Switzerland. The arrangement was terminated after two years when the Limelight closed.
Giger's art has greatly influenced tattooists and fetishists worldwide. Under a licensing deal Ibanez guitars released an H. R. Giger signature series: the Ibanez ICHRG2, an Ibanez Iceman, features "NY City VI", the Ibanez RGTHRG1 has "NY City XI" printed on it, the S Series SHRG1Z has a metal-coated engraving of "Biomechanical Matrix" on it, and a 4-string SRX bass, SRXHRG1, has "N.Y. City X" on it.
Giger is often referred to in popular culture, especially in science fiction and cyberpunk. William Gibson (who wrote an early script for Alien 3) seems particularly fascinated: A minor character in Virtual Light, Lowell, is described as having New York XXIV tattooed across his back, and in Idoru a secondary character, Yamazaki, describes the buildings of nanotech Japan as Giger-esque.
Giger was awarded the Inkpot Award in 1979.
In addition to his awards, Giger was recognized by a variety of festivals and institutions. On the one year anniversary of his death, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City staged the series The Unseen Cinema of HR Giger in May 2015.
Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World, a biographical documentary by Belinda Sallin, debuted 27 September 2014 in Zurich, Switzerland.
In July 2018, the asteroid 109712 Giger was named in his memory. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hans Ruedi Giger (/ˈɡiːɡər/ GHEE-gər; German: [ˈɡiːɡər]; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as \"biomechanical\". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, and was responsible for creating the titular Alien itself. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including album covers, furniture, tattoos and video games.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Giger was born in 1940 in Chur, the capital city of Graubünden, the largest and easternmost Swiss canton. His father, a pharmacist, viewed art as a \"breadless profession\" and strongly encouraged him to enter pharmacy. He moved to Zürich in 1962where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Giger's first success was when H. H. Kunz, co-owner of Switzerland's first poster publishing company, printed and distributed Giger's first posters, beginning in 1969.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Giger's style and thematic execution were influential. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their design work on the film Alien. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine contributed to his rise to international prominence. Giger was admitted to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013. He is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums including Danzig III: How The Gods Kill by Danzig, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Attahk by Magma, Heartwork by Carcass, To Mega Therion by Celtic Frost, Eparistera Daimones and Melana Chasmata by Triptykon, Deborah Harry's KooKoo, Atomic Playboys by Steve Stevens, and Frankenchrist by the Dead Kennedys.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1998, Giger acquired the Saint-Germain Castle in Gruyères, Switzerland, which now houses the H.R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Giger had a relationship with Swiss actress Li Tobler until she died by suicide in 1975. Tobler's image appears in many of his paintings. He married Mia Bonzanigo in 1979; they divorced a year and a half later.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Giger lived and worked in Zürich with his second wife, Carmen Maria Scheifele Giger, who is the director of the H.R. Giger Museum.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On 12 May 2014, Giger died in a Zürich hospital after suffering injuries from a fall.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Giger started with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, he worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. He also worked with pastels, markers and ink.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Giger's most distinctive stylistic innovation was that of a representation of human bodies and machines in cold, interconnected relationships, which he described as \"biomechanical\". His main influences were painters Dado, Ernst Fuchs, and Salvador Dalí. He was introduced to Dali by painter Robert Venosa. Giger was also influenced by Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski, and by painters Austin Osman Spare and Mati Klarwein, and was a personal friend of Timothy Leary. He studied interior and industrial design at the School of Commercial Art in Zurich from 1962 to 1965, and made his first paintings as art therapy.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Giger directed a number of films, including Swiss Made (1968), Tagtraum (1973), Giger's Necronomicon (1975) and Giger's Alien (1979).",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Giger created furniture designs, particularly the Harkonnen Capo Chair for a film of the novel Dune that was to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Many years later, David Lynch directed the film, using only rough concepts by Giger. Giger had wished to work with Lynch, as he stated in one of his books that Lynch's film Eraserhead was closer than even Giger's own films to realizing his vision.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Giger also applied his biomechanical style to interior design. One \"Giger Bar\" appeared in Tokyo, but the realization of his designs was a great disappointment to him, since the Japanese organization behind the venture did not wait for his final designs, and instead used Giger's rough preliminary sketches. For that reason Giger disowned the Tokyo bar. The two Giger Bars in his native Switzerland, in Gruyères and Chur, were built under Giger's close supervision and they accurately reflect his original concepts. At The Limelight in Manhattan, Giger's artwork was licensed to decorate the VIP room, the uppermost chapel of the landmarked church, but it was never intended to be a permanent installation and bore no similarity to the bars in Switzerland. The arrangement was terminated after two years when the Limelight closed.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Giger's art has greatly influenced tattooists and fetishists worldwide. Under a licensing deal Ibanez guitars released an H. R. Giger signature series: the Ibanez ICHRG2, an Ibanez Iceman, features \"NY City VI\", the Ibanez RGTHRG1 has \"NY City XI\" printed on it, the S Series SHRG1Z has a metal-coated engraving of \"Biomechanical Matrix\" on it, and a 4-string SRX bass, SRXHRG1, has \"N.Y. City X\" on it.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Giger is often referred to in popular culture, especially in science fiction and cyberpunk. William Gibson (who wrote an early script for Alien 3) seems particularly fascinated: A minor character in Virtual Light, Lowell, is described as having New York XXIV tattooed across his back, and in Idoru a secondary character, Yamazaki, describes the buildings of nanotech Japan as Giger-esque.",
"title": "Other works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Giger was awarded the Inkpot Award in 1979.",
"title": "Recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In addition to his awards, Giger was recognized by a variety of festivals and institutions. On the one year anniversary of his death, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City staged the series The Unseen Cinema of HR Giger in May 2015.",
"title": "Recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World, a biographical documentary by Belinda Sallin, debuted 27 September 2014 in Zurich, Switzerland.",
"title": "Recognition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In July 2018, the asteroid 109712 Giger was named in his memory.",
"title": "Recognition"
}
]
| Hans Ruedi Giger was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as "biomechanical". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, markers and ink. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design of Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, and was responsible for creating the titular Alien itself. His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyères, Switzerland. His style has been adapted to many forms of media, including album covers, furniture, tattoos and video games. | 2001-10-24T15:24:20Z | 2023-12-01T23:33:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger |
13,714 | Hispaniola | Hispaniola (/ˌhɪspənˈjoʊlə/,also UK: /-pænˈ-/) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the region's second largest in area, after the island of Cuba.
The 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi) island is divided into two separate nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic (48,445 km, 18,705 sq mi) to the east and the French/Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti (27,750 km, 10,710 sq mi) to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France (Saint Martin) and the Netherlands (Sint Maarten).
Hispaniola is the site of one of the first European forts in the Americas, La Navidad (1492–1493), as well as the first settlement and proper town, La Isabela (1493–1500), and the first permanent settlement, the current capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo (est. 1498). These settlements were founded successively during each of Christopher Columbus's first three voyages.
The Spanish Empire controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island. The official name was La Española, meaning "The Spanish (Island)". It was also called Santo Domingo, after Saint Dominic.
The island was called by various names by its native people, the Taíno. The Taino had no written language, hence, historical evidence for these names comes through three European historians: the Italian Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, and the Spaniards Bartolomé de las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Based on a comprehensive survey and map prepared by Andrés de Morales in 1508, Martyr reported that the island as a whole was called Quizquella (or Quisqueya) and Haiti referred to a rugged mountainous region on the eastern end of the island. Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus's second voyage, also noted that Haiti was the easternmost province of the island. On the other hand, Oviedo and Las Casas both recorded that the entire island was called Haití by the Taíno.
When Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it Insula Hispana in Latin and La Isla Española in Spanish, both meaning "the Spanish island". Las Casas shortened the name to Española, and when Peter Martyr detailed his account of the island in Latin, he rendered its name as Hispaniola.
Due to Taíno, Spanish and French influences on the island, historically the whole island was often referred to as Haiti, Hayti, Santo Domingo, or Saint-Domingue. Martyr's literary work was translated into English and French soon after being written, the name Hispaniola became the most frequently used term in English-speaking countries for the island in scientific and cartographic works. In 1918, the United States occupation government, led by Harry Shepard Knapp, obliged the use of the name Hispaniola on the island, and recommended the use of that name to the National Geographic Society.
The name "Haïti" was adopted by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804, as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, in tribute to the Amerindian predecessors. It was also adopted as the official name of independent Santo Domingo, as the Republic of Spanish Haiti, a state that existed from November 1821 until its annexation by Haiti in February 1822.
The Archaic Age people arrived from the mainland about 6,000 or 7,000 years ago. The primary indigenous group on the island of Hispaniola was the Taíno people. The Arawak tribe originated in the Orinoco Delta, spreading from what is now Venezuela. They arrived on Hispaniola around 1200 CE. Each society on the island was a small independent kingdom with a lead known as a cacique. In 1492, which is considered the peak of the Taíno, there were five different kingdoms on the island, the Xaragua, Higuey (Caizcimu), Magua (Huhabo), Ciguayos (Cayabo or Maguana), and Marien (Bainoa). Many distinct Taíno languages also existed in this time period. There is still heated debate over the population of Taíno people on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, but estimates range from no more than a few tens of thousands, according to a 2020 genetic analysis, to upwards of 750,000.
A Taíno home consisted of a circular building with woven straw and palm leaves as covering. Most individuals slept in fashioned hammocks, but grass beds were also used. The cacique lived in a different structure with larger rectangular walls and a porch. The Taíno village also had a flat court used for ball games and festivals. Religiously, the Taíno people were polytheists, and their gods were called Zemí. Religious worship and dancing were common, and medicine men or priests also consulted the Zemí for advice in public ceremonies.
For food, the Taíno relied on meat and fish as a primary source for protein. On the island they hunted small mammals, but also snakes, worms, and birds. In lakes and in the sea they were able to catch ducks and turtles. The Taíno also relied on agriculture as a primary food source. The indigenous people of Hispaniola raised crops in a conuco, which is a large mound packed with leaves and fixed crops to prevent erosion. Some common agricultural goods were cassava, maize, squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, cotton, and tobacco, which was used as an aspect of social life and religious ceremonies.
The Taíno people traveled often and used hollowed canoes with paddles when on the water for fishing or for migration purposes, and upwards of 100 people could fit into a single canoe. The Taíno came frequently in contact with the Caribs, another indigenous tribe. The Taíno people had to defend themselves using bows and arrows with poisoned tips and some war clubs. When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, many Taíno leaders wanted protection from the Caribs.
Christopher Columbus first landed at Hispaniola on December 6, 1492 at a small bay he named San Nicolas, now called Môle-Saint-Nicolas on the north coast of present-day Haiti. He was welcomed in a friendly fashion by the indigenous people known as the Taíno. Trading with the natives yielded more gold than they had come across previously on the other Caribbean islands and Columbus was led to believe that much more gold would be found inland. Before he could explore further, his flagship, the Santa Maria, ran aground and sank in the bay on December 24. With only two smaller ships remaining for the voyage home, Columbus built a fortified encampment, La Navidad, on the shore and left behind 21 crewman to await his return the following year.
Colonization began in earnest the following year when Columbus brought 1,300 men to Hispaniola in November 1493 with the intention of establishing a permanent settlement. They found the encampment at Navidad had been destroyed and all the crewmen left behind killed by the natives. Columbus decided to sail east in search of a better site to found a new settlement. In January 1494 they established La Isabela in present-day Dominican Republic.
In 1496, the town of Nueva Isabela was founded. After being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River and called Santo Domingo. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas. The island had an important role in the establishment of Latin American colonies for decades to come. Due to its strategic location, it was the military stronghold of conquistadors of the Spanish Empire, serving as a headquarters for the further colonial expansion into the Americas. The colony was a meeting point of European explorers, soldiers, and settlers who brought with them the culture, architecture, laws, and traditions of the Old World.
Spaniards imposed a harsh regime of forced labor and enslavement of the Taínos, as well as redirection of their food production and labor to Spaniards. This had a devastating impact on both mortality and fertility of the Taíno population over the first quarter century. Colonial administrators and Dominican and Hieronymite friars observed that the search for gold and agrarian enslavement through the encomienda system were deciminating the indigenous population. Demographic data from two provinces in 1514 shows a low birth rate, consistent with a 3.5% annual population decline. In 1503, Spaniards began to bring enslaved Africans after a charter was passed in 1501, allowing the import of African slaves by Ferdinand and Isabel. The Spanish believed Africans would be more capable of performing physical labor. From 1519 to 1533, the indigenous uprising known as Enriquillo's Revolt, after the Taíno cacique who led them, ensued, resulting from escaped African slaves on the island (maroons) possibly working with the Taíno people.
Precious metals played a large role in the history of the island after Columbus's arrival. One of the first inhabitants Columbus came across on this island was "a girl wearing only a gold nose plug". Soon the Taínos were trading pieces of gold for hawk's bells with their cacique declaring the gold came from Cibao. Traveling further east from Navidad, Columbus came across the Yaque del Norte River, which he named Río de Oro (River of Gold) because its "sands abound in gold dust".
On Columbus's return during his second voyage, he learned it was the chief Caonabo who had massacred his settlement at Navidad. While Columbus established a new settlement the village of La Isabela on Jan. 1494, he sent Alonso de Ojeda and 15 men to search for the mines of Cibao. After a six-day journey, Ojeda came across an area containing gold, in which the gold was extracted from streams by the Taíno people. Columbus himself visited the mines of Cibao on 12 March 1494. He constructed the Fort of Santo Tomás, present day Jánico, leaving Captain Pedro Margarit in command of 56 men. On 24 March 1495, Columbus, with his ally Guacanagarix, embarked on a war of revenge against Caonabo, capturing him and his family while killing and capturing many natives. Afterwards, every person over the age of fourteen had to produce a hawksbill of gold.
Gold mining using forced indigenous labor began early on Hispaniola. Miguel Díaz and Francisco de Garay discovered large gold nuggets on the lower Haina River in 1496. These San Cristobal mines were later known as the Minas Viejas mines. Then, in 1499, the first major discovery of gold was made in the cordillera central, which led to a mining boom. By 1501 Columbus's cousin, Giovanni Colombo, had discovered gold near Buenaventura. The deposits were later known as Minas Nuevas. Two major mining areas resulted, one along San Cristobal-Buenaventura, and another in Cibao within the La Vega-Cotuy-Bonao triangle, while Santiago de los Caballeros, Concepción, and Bonao became mining towns. The gold rush of 1500–1508 ensued, and Ovando expropriated the gold mines of Miguel Díaz and Francisco de Garay in 1504, as pit mines became royal mines for Ferdinand II of Aragon, who reserved the best mines for himself, though placers were open to private prospectors. King Ferdinand kept 967 natives in the San Cristóbal mining area, supervised by salaried miners.
Under the royal governor Nicolás de Ovando, the indigenous people were forced to work in the gold mines. By 1503, the Spanish Crown legalized the allocation of private grants of indigenous labor to particular Spaniards for mining through the encomienda system. Once the indigenous were forced into mining far from their home villages, they suffered hunger and other difficult conditions. By 1508, the Taíno population of about 400,000 was reduced to 60,000, and by 1514, only 26,334 remained. About half resided in the mining towns of Concepción, Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Buenaventura. The repartimiento of 1514 accelerated emigration of the Spanish colonists, coupled with the exhaustion of the mines. The first documented outbreak of smallpox, previously an Eastern hemisphere disease, occurred on Hispaniola in December 1518 among enslaved African miners. Some scholars speculate that European diseases arrived before this date, but there is no compelling evidence for an outbreak. The natives had no acquired immunity to European diseases, including smallpox. By May 1519, as many as one-third of the remaining Taínos had died. In the century following the Spanish arrival on Hispaniola, the Taíno population fell by up to 95% of the population, out of a pre-contact population estimated from tens of thousands to 8,000,000. Many authors have described the treatment of Tainos in Hispaniola under the Spanish Empire as genocide.
Sugar cane was introduced to Hispaniola by settlers from the Canary Islands, and the first sugar mill in the New World was established in 1516, on Hispaniola. The need for a labor force to meet the growing demands of sugar cane cultivation led to an exponential increase in the importation of slaves over the following two decades. The sugar mill owners soon formed a new colonial elite.
The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo during 1521, when enslaved Muslims of the Wolof nation led an uprising in the sugar plantation of admiral Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus. Many of these insurgents managed to escape where they formed independent maroon communities in the south of the island.
Beginning in the 1520s, the Caribbean Sea was raided by increasingly numerous French pirates. In 1541, Spain authorized the construction of Santo Domingo's fortified wall, and in 1560 decided to restrict sea travel to enormous, well-armed convoys. In another move, which would destroy Hispaniola's sugar industry, in 1561 Havana, more strategically located in relation to the Gulf Stream, was selected as the designated stopping point for the merchant flotas, which had a royal monopoly on commerce with the Americas. In 1564, the island's main inland cities Santiago de los Caballeros and Concepción de la Vega were destroyed by an earthquake. In the 1560s, English privateers joined the French in regularly raiding Spanish shipping in the Americas.
By the early 17th century, Hispaniola and its nearby islands (notably Tortuga) became regular stopping points for Caribbean pirates. In 1606, the government of Philip III ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, to fight against piracy. Rather than secure the island, his action meant that French, English, and Dutch pirates established their own bases on the less populated north and west coasts of the island.
In 1625, French and English pirates arrived on the island of Tortuga, just off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, which was originally settled by a few Spanish colonists. The pirates were attacked in 1629 by Spanish forces commanded by Don Fadrique de Toledo, who fortified the island, and expelled the French and English. As most of the Spanish army left for the main island of Hispaniola to root out French colonists there, the French returned to Tortuga in 1630 and had constant battles for several decades. In 1654, the Spanish re-captured Tortuga for the last time.
In 1655 the island of Tortuga was reoccupied by the English and French. In 1660 the English appointed a Frenchman as Governor who proclaimed the King of France, set up French colours, and defeated several English attempts to reclaim the island. In 1665, French colonization of the island was officially recognized by King Louis XIV. The French colony was given the name Saint-Domingue. By 1670 a Welsh privateer named Henry Morgan invited the pirates on the island of Tortuga to set sail under him. They were hired by the French as a striking force that allowed France to have a much stronger hold on the Caribbean region. Consequently, the pirates never really controlled the island and kept Tortuga as a neutral hideout. The capital of the French Colony of Saint-Domingue was moved from Tortuga to Port-de-Paix on the mainland of Hispaniola in 1676.
In 1680, new Acts of Parliament forbade sailing under foreign flags (in opposition to former practice). This was a major legal blow to the Caribbean pirates. Settlements were made in the Treaty of Ratisbon of 1684, signed by the European powers, that put an end to piracy. Most of the pirates after this time were hired out into the Royal services to suppress their former buccaneer allies. In the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, Spain formally ceded the western third of the island to France. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the east in both wealth and population. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles", it became the most prosperous colony in the West Indies, with a system of human slavery used to grow and harvest sugar cane during a time when European demand for sugar was high. Slavery kept costs low and profit was maximized. It was an important port in the Americas for goods and products flowing to and from France and Europe.
European colonists often died young due to tropical fevers, as well as from violent slave resistance in the late eighteenth century. In 1791, during the French Revolution, a major slave revolt broke out on Saint-Domingue. When the French Republic abolished slavery in the colonies on February 4, 1794, it was a European first. The ex-slave army joined forces with France in its war against its European neighbors. In the second 1795 Treaty of Basel (July 22), Spain ceded the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, later to become the Dominican Republic. French settlers had begun to colonize some areas in the Spanish side of the territory.
Under Napoleon, France reimposed slavery in most of its Caribbean islands in 1802 and sent an army to bring the island into full control. However, thousands of the French troops succumbed to yellow fever during the summer months, and more than half of the French army died because of disease. After an extremely brutal war with atrocities committed on both sides, the French removed the surviving 7,000 troops in late 1803, the leaders of the revolution declared western Hispaniola the new nation of independent Haiti in early 1804. France continued to rule Spanish Santo Domingo. In 1805, Haitian troops of General Henri Christophe tried to conquer all of Hispaniola. They invaded Santo Domingo and sacked the towns of Santiago de los Caballeros and Moca, killing most of their residents, but news of a French fleet sailing towards Haiti forced General Christophe to withdraw from the east, leaving it in French hands.
In 1808, following Napoleon's invasion of Spain, the criollos of Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and, with the aid of the United Kingdom, returned Santo Domingo to Spanish control. Fearing the influence of a society of slaves that had successfully revolted against their owners, the United States and European powers refused to recognize Haiti, the second republic in the Western Hemisphere. France demanded a high payment for compensation to slaveholders who lost their property, and Haiti was saddled with unmanageable debt for decades. Haiti would Annex Spanish Haiti which had recently gained independence. However, suppression of the Dominican culture would lead to the Dominican War of Independence. This is one of the reasons for the tensions between the two countries today. Haiti would become one of the poorest countries in the Americas, while the Dominican Republic gradually has developed into one of the largest economies of Central America and the Caribbean.
Hispaniola is the second-largest island in the Caribbean (after Cuba), with an area of 76,192 square kilometers (29,418 sq mi), 48,440 square kilometers (18,700 sq mi) of which is under the sovereignty of the Dominican Republic occupying the eastern portion and 27,750 square kilometers (10,710 sq mi) under the sovereignty of Haiti occupying the western portion.
The island of Cuba lies 80 kilometers (50 mi), Cayman Islands and Navassa Island to the northwest across the Windward Passage; 190 km (118 mi) to the southwest lies Jamaica, separated by the Jamaica Channel. Puerto Rico lies 130 km (80 mi) east of Hispaniola across the Mona Passage. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands lie to the north. Its westernmost point is known as Cap Carcasse. Cuba, Cayman Islands, Navassa Island, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico are collectively known as the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is also a part of the Antilles and the West Indies.
The island has five major ranges of mountains: The Central Range, known in the Dominican Republic as the Cordillera Central, spans the central part of the island, extending from the south coast of the Dominican Republic into northwestern Haiti, where it is known as the Massif du Nord. This mountain range boasts the highest peak in the Antilles, Pico Duarte at 3,101 meters (10,174 ft) above sea level. The Cordillera Septentrional runs parallel to the Central Range across the northern end of the Dominican Republic, extending into the Atlantic Ocean as the Samaná Peninsula. The Cordillera Central and Cordillera Septentrional are separated by the lowlands of the Cibao Valley and the Atlantic coastal plains, which extend westward into Haiti as the Plaine du Nord (Northern Plain). The lowest of the ranges is the Cordillera Oriental, in the eastern part of the country.
The Sierra de Neiba rises in the southwest of the Dominican Republic, and continues northwest into Haiti, parallel to the Cordillera Central, as the Montagnes Noires, Chaîne des Matheux and the Montagnes du Trou d'Eau. The Plateau Central lies between the Massif du Nord and the Montagnes Noires, and the Plaine de l'Artibonite lies between the Montagnes Noires and the Chaîne des Matheux, opening westward toward the Gulf of Gonâve, the largest gulf of the Antilles.
The southern range begins in the southwesternmost Dominican Republic as the Sierra de Bahoruco, and extends west into Haiti as the Massif de la Selle and the Massif de la Hotte, which form the mountainous spine of Haiti's southern peninsula. Pic de la Selle is the highest peak in the southern range, the third highest peak in the Antilles and consequently the highest point in Haiti, at 2,680 meters (8,790 ft) above sea level. A depression runs parallel to the southern range, between the southern range and the Chaîne des Matheux-Sierra de Neiba. It is known as the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac in Haiti, and Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince lies at its western end. The depression is home to a chain of salt lakes, including Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic.
The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to 2,100 meters (6,900 ft) elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above 850 metres (2,790 ft) elevation. The flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in the south central region of the island surrounds a chain of lakes and lagoons in which the most notable include that of Lake Azuei and Trou Caïman in Haiti and the nearby Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, which is not only the lowest point of the island, but also the lowest point for an island country.
Hispaniola's climate shows considerable variation due to its diverse mountainous topography, and is the most varied island of all the Antilles. Except in the Northern Hemisphere summer season, the predominant winds over Hispaniola are the northeast trade winds. As in Jamaica and Cuba, these winds deposit their moisture on the northern mountains, and create a distinct rain shadow on the southern coast, where some areas receive as little as 400 millimetres (16 in) of rainfall, and have semi-arid climates. Annual rainfall under 600 millimetres (24 in) also occurs on the southern coast of Haiti's northwest peninsula and in the central Azúa region of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac. In these regions, moreover, there is generally little rainfall outside hurricane season from August to October, and droughts are by no means uncommon when hurricanes do not come. On the northern coast, in contrast, rainfall may peak between December and February, though some rain falls in all months of the year. Annual amounts typically range from 1,700 to 2,000 millimetres (67 to 79 in) on the northern coastal lowlands; there is probably much more in the Cordillera Septentrional, though no data exist. The interior of Hispaniola, along with the southeastern coast centered around Santo Domingo, typically receives around 1,400 millimetres (55 in) per year, with a distinct season from May to October. Usually, this wet season has two peaks: one around May, the other around the hurricane season. In the interior highlands, rainfall is much greater, around 3,100 millimetres (120 in) per year, but with a similar pattern to that observed in the central lowlands.
The variations of temperature depend on altitude and are much less marked than rainfall variations in the island. Lowland Hispaniola is generally more hot and humid, with temperatures averaging 28 °C (82 °F). with high humidity during the daytime, and around 20 °C (68 °F) at night. At higher altitudes, temperatures fall steadily, so that frosts occur during the dry season on the highest peaks, where maxima are no higher than 18 °C (64 °F).
There are many bird species in Hispaniola, and the island's amphibian species are also diverse. There are many species endemic to the island including insects and other invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, fishs, birds and mammals (originally animals, native animals) and also (imported animals, introduced animals, not native animals or invasive species) just like farm animals, transport animals, house animals, pets and more. The two endemic terrestrial mammals on the island are the Hispaniolan hutia (Plagiodontia aedium) and the Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus). There are also many avian species on the island, with six endemic genera (Calyptophilus, Dulus, Nesoctites, Phaenicophilus, Xenoligea and Microligea). More than half of the original distribution of its ecoregions has been lost due to habitat destruction impacting the local fauna and some of the original animals either threat, threatened with extinction or totally extinct, because of climate change or because they have been hunted by humans or their habitats have been felled or changed for some reasons or have become some of the animals have been threatened by (introduced animals, not native animals or invasive species) or there are fighting for space to survive and perhaps some animals that feed on the same plants or animals or just something like that.
The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to 2,100 meters (6,900 ft) elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island, and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above 850 metres (2,790 ft) elevation. The flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in the south central region of the island surrounds a chain of lakes and lagoons, the most notable of which are Etang Saumatre and Trou Caïman in Haiti and the nearby Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic.
In Haiti, deforestation has long been cited by scientists as a source of ecological crisis; the timber industry dates back to French colonial rule. Haiti has seen a dramatic reduction of forests due to the excessive and increasing use of charcoal as fuel for cooking. Various media outlets have suggested that the country has just 2% forest cover, but this has not been substantiated by research.
Also extremely important are the rarely mentioned species of Pinguicula casabitoana (a carnivorous plant), Gonocalyx tetraptera, Gesneria sylvicola, Lyonia alaini and Myrcia saliana, as well as palo de viento (Didymopanax tremulus), jaiqui (Bumelia salicifolia), pino criciolio) (pino criciol) , sangre de pollo (Mecranium amigdalinum) and palo santo (Alpinia speciosa).
According to reports in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the flora in this naturally protected area consists of 621 species of vascular plants, of which 153 are highly endemic to La Hispaniola. The most prominent endemic species of flora that abound in the area are Ebano Verde (green ebony), Magnolia pallescens, a highly endangered hardwood.
Recent in-depth studies of satellite imagery and environmental analysis regarding forest classification conclude that Haiti actually has approximately 30% tree cover; this is, nevertheless, a stark decrease from the country's 60% forest cover in 1925. The country has been significantly deforested over the last 50 years, resulting in the desertification of many portions of Haitian territory. Haiti's poor citizens use cooking fires often, and this is a major culprit behind the nation's loss of trees. Haitians use trees as fuel either by burning the wood directly, or by first turning it into charcoal in ovens. Seventy-one percent of all fuel consumed in Haiti is wood or charcoal. Another significant contributor to deforestation in Haiti is agricultural expansion. Haiti's government began establishing protected areas across the country in 1968. These 26 areas today represent nearly 7 per cent of the country’s land and 1.5 per cent of its waters.
In the Dominican Republic, the forest cover has increased. In 2003, the Dominican Republic's forest cover had been reduced to 32% of its land area, but by 2011, forest cover had increased to nearly 40%. The success of the Dominican forest growth is due to several Dominican government policies and private organizations for the purpose of reforesting, and a strong educational campaign that has resulted in increased awareness by the Dominican people of the importance of forests for their welfare and other forms of life on the island.
Hispaniola is the most populous Caribbean island with a combined population of 23 million inhabitants as of July 2023.
The Dominican Republic is a Hispanophone nation of approximately 11.3 million people. Spanish is spoken by essentially all Dominicans as a primary language. Roman Catholicism is the official and dominant religion and some Evangelicalism and Protestant churches and The Church of Jesus Christ and minority religions such as African religions, Afro-American religions-African diaspora religions, Haitian Vodou, Dominican Vodou, Dominican Santeria-Congos Del Espiritu Santo, Dominican Protestants-Pentecostals, Judaism, Islam and Baháʼí Faith, Hinduism, Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalism and others also exist.
Haiti is a Creole-speaking nation of roughly 11.7 million people. Although French is spoken as a primary language by the educated and wealthy minority, virtually the entire population speaks Haitian Creole, one of several French-derived creole languages. Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion, practiced by more than half the population, although in some cases in combination with Haitian Vodou faith. Another 25% of the populace belong to Protestant churches.
The ethnic composition of the Dominican population is 73% mixed ethnicity, 16% white and 11% black. Descendants of early Spanish settlers and of black slaves from West Africa constitute the two main racial strains.
The ethnic composition of Haiti is estimated to be 95% black and 5% white and Mulatto.
In recent times, Dominican and Puerto Rican researchers identified in the current Dominican population the presence of genes belonging to the aborigines of the Canary Islands (commonly called Guanches). These genes also have been detected in Puerto Rico.
The island has the largest economy in the Greater Antilles; however, most of the economic development is found in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican economy being nearly 800% larger than the Haitian economy. As of 2018, the estimated annual per capita income is US$868 in Haiti and US$8,050 in the Dominican Republic.
The divergence between the level of economic development in Haiti and the Dominican Republic makes its border the highest contrast of all western land borders.
The island also has an economic history and current day interest and involvement in precious metals. In 1860, it was observed that the island contained a large supply of gold, which the early Spaniards had hardly developed. By 1919, Condit and Ross noted that much of the island was covered by government granted concessions for mining different types of minerals. Besides gold, these minerals included silver, manganese, copper, magnetite, iron and nickel.
Mining operations in 2016 have taken advantage of the volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits around Maimón. To the northeast, the Pueblo Viejo Gold Mine was operated by state-owned Rosario Dominicana from 1975 until 1991. In 2009, Pueblo Viejo Dominicana Corporation, formed by Barrick Gold and Goldcorp, started open-pit mining operations of the Monte Negro and Moore oxide deposits. The mined ore is processed with gold cyanidation. Pyrite and sphalerite are the main sulfide minerals found in the 120-meter thick volcanic conglomerates and agglomerates, which constitute the world's second largest sulphidation gold deposit.
Between Bonao and Maimón, Falconbridge Dominicana has been mining nickel laterites since 1971. The Cerro de Maimon copper/gold open-pit mine southeast of Maimón has been operated by Perilya since 2006. Copper is extracted from the sulfide ores, while gold and silver are extracted from both the sulfide and the oxide ores. Processing is via froth flotation and cyanidation. The ore is located in the VMS Early Cretaceous Maimón Formation. Goethite enriched with gold and silver is found in the 30-meter thick oxide cap. Below that cap is a supergene zone containing pyrite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. Below the supergene zone is found the unaltered massive sulphide mineralization.
This is a list of Dominican Republic and Haiti regions by Human Development Index as of 2018. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hispaniola (/ˌhɪspənˈjoʊlə/,also UK: /-pænˈ-/) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the region's second largest in area, after the island of Cuba.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi) island is divided into two separate nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic (48,445 km, 18,705 sq mi) to the east and the French/Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti (27,750 km, 10,710 sq mi) to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France (Saint Martin) and the Netherlands (Sint Maarten).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hispaniola is the site of one of the first European forts in the Americas, La Navidad (1492–1493), as well as the first settlement and proper town, La Isabela (1493–1500), and the first permanent settlement, the current capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo (est. 1498). These settlements were founded successively during each of Christopher Columbus's first three voyages.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Spanish Empire controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island. The official name was La Española, meaning \"The Spanish (Island)\". It was also called Santo Domingo, after Saint Dominic.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The island was called by various names by its native people, the Taíno. The Taino had no written language, hence, historical evidence for these names comes through three European historians: the Italian Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, and the Spaniards Bartolomé de las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Based on a comprehensive survey and map prepared by Andrés de Morales in 1508, Martyr reported that the island as a whole was called Quizquella (or Quisqueya) and Haiti referred to a rugged mountainous region on the eastern end of the island. Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus's second voyage, also noted that Haiti was the easternmost province of the island. On the other hand, Oviedo and Las Casas both recorded that the entire island was called Haití by the Taíno.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When Columbus took possession of the island in 1492, he named it Insula Hispana in Latin and La Isla Española in Spanish, both meaning \"the Spanish island\". Las Casas shortened the name to Española, and when Peter Martyr detailed his account of the island in Latin, he rendered its name as Hispaniola.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Due to Taíno, Spanish and French influences on the island, historically the whole island was often referred to as Haiti, Hayti, Santo Domingo, or Saint-Domingue. Martyr's literary work was translated into English and French soon after being written, the name Hispaniola became the most frequently used term in English-speaking countries for the island in scientific and cartographic works. In 1918, the United States occupation government, led by Harry Shepard Knapp, obliged the use of the name Hispaniola on the island, and recommended the use of that name to the National Geographic Society.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The name \"Haïti\" was adopted by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804, as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, in tribute to the Amerindian predecessors. It was also adopted as the official name of independent Santo Domingo, as the Republic of Spanish Haiti, a state that existed from November 1821 until its annexation by Haiti in February 1822.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Archaic Age people arrived from the mainland about 6,000 or 7,000 years ago. The primary indigenous group on the island of Hispaniola was the Taíno people. The Arawak tribe originated in the Orinoco Delta, spreading from what is now Venezuela. They arrived on Hispaniola around 1200 CE. Each society on the island was a small independent kingdom with a lead known as a cacique. In 1492, which is considered the peak of the Taíno, there were five different kingdoms on the island, the Xaragua, Higuey (Caizcimu), Magua (Huhabo), Ciguayos (Cayabo or Maguana), and Marien (Bainoa). Many distinct Taíno languages also existed in this time period. There is still heated debate over the population of Taíno people on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, but estimates range from no more than a few tens of thousands, according to a 2020 genetic analysis, to upwards of 750,000.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A Taíno home consisted of a circular building with woven straw and palm leaves as covering. Most individuals slept in fashioned hammocks, but grass beds were also used. The cacique lived in a different structure with larger rectangular walls and a porch. The Taíno village also had a flat court used for ball games and festivals. Religiously, the Taíno people were polytheists, and their gods were called Zemí. Religious worship and dancing were common, and medicine men or priests also consulted the Zemí for advice in public ceremonies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "For food, the Taíno relied on meat and fish as a primary source for protein. On the island they hunted small mammals, but also snakes, worms, and birds. In lakes and in the sea they were able to catch ducks and turtles. The Taíno also relied on agriculture as a primary food source. The indigenous people of Hispaniola raised crops in a conuco, which is a large mound packed with leaves and fixed crops to prevent erosion. Some common agricultural goods were cassava, maize, squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, cotton, and tobacco, which was used as an aspect of social life and religious ceremonies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Taíno people traveled often and used hollowed canoes with paddles when on the water for fishing or for migration purposes, and upwards of 100 people could fit into a single canoe. The Taíno came frequently in contact with the Caribs, another indigenous tribe. The Taíno people had to defend themselves using bows and arrows with poisoned tips and some war clubs. When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, many Taíno leaders wanted protection from the Caribs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Christopher Columbus first landed at Hispaniola on December 6, 1492 at a small bay he named San Nicolas, now called Môle-Saint-Nicolas on the north coast of present-day Haiti. He was welcomed in a friendly fashion by the indigenous people known as the Taíno. Trading with the natives yielded more gold than they had come across previously on the other Caribbean islands and Columbus was led to believe that much more gold would be found inland. Before he could explore further, his flagship, the Santa Maria, ran aground and sank in the bay on December 24. With only two smaller ships remaining for the voyage home, Columbus built a fortified encampment, La Navidad, on the shore and left behind 21 crewman to await his return the following year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Colonization began in earnest the following year when Columbus brought 1,300 men to Hispaniola in November 1493 with the intention of establishing a permanent settlement. They found the encampment at Navidad had been destroyed and all the crewmen left behind killed by the natives. Columbus decided to sail east in search of a better site to found a new settlement. In January 1494 they established La Isabela in present-day Dominican Republic.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1496, the town of Nueva Isabela was founded. After being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt on the opposite side of the Ozama River and called Santo Domingo. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas. The island had an important role in the establishment of Latin American colonies for decades to come. Due to its strategic location, it was the military stronghold of conquistadors of the Spanish Empire, serving as a headquarters for the further colonial expansion into the Americas. The colony was a meeting point of European explorers, soldiers, and settlers who brought with them the culture, architecture, laws, and traditions of the Old World.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Spaniards imposed a harsh regime of forced labor and enslavement of the Taínos, as well as redirection of their food production and labor to Spaniards. This had a devastating impact on both mortality and fertility of the Taíno population over the first quarter century. Colonial administrators and Dominican and Hieronymite friars observed that the search for gold and agrarian enslavement through the encomienda system were deciminating the indigenous population. Demographic data from two provinces in 1514 shows a low birth rate, consistent with a 3.5% annual population decline. In 1503, Spaniards began to bring enslaved Africans after a charter was passed in 1501, allowing the import of African slaves by Ferdinand and Isabel. The Spanish believed Africans would be more capable of performing physical labor. From 1519 to 1533, the indigenous uprising known as Enriquillo's Revolt, after the Taíno cacique who led them, ensued, resulting from escaped African slaves on the island (maroons) possibly working with the Taíno people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Precious metals played a large role in the history of the island after Columbus's arrival. One of the first inhabitants Columbus came across on this island was \"a girl wearing only a gold nose plug\". Soon the Taínos were trading pieces of gold for hawk's bells with their cacique declaring the gold came from Cibao. Traveling further east from Navidad, Columbus came across the Yaque del Norte River, which he named Río de Oro (River of Gold) because its \"sands abound in gold dust\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On Columbus's return during his second voyage, he learned it was the chief Caonabo who had massacred his settlement at Navidad. While Columbus established a new settlement the village of La Isabela on Jan. 1494, he sent Alonso de Ojeda and 15 men to search for the mines of Cibao. After a six-day journey, Ojeda came across an area containing gold, in which the gold was extracted from streams by the Taíno people. Columbus himself visited the mines of Cibao on 12 March 1494. He constructed the Fort of Santo Tomás, present day Jánico, leaving Captain Pedro Margarit in command of 56 men. On 24 March 1495, Columbus, with his ally Guacanagarix, embarked on a war of revenge against Caonabo, capturing him and his family while killing and capturing many natives. Afterwards, every person over the age of fourteen had to produce a hawksbill of gold.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Gold mining using forced indigenous labor began early on Hispaniola. Miguel Díaz and Francisco de Garay discovered large gold nuggets on the lower Haina River in 1496. These San Cristobal mines were later known as the Minas Viejas mines. Then, in 1499, the first major discovery of gold was made in the cordillera central, which led to a mining boom. By 1501 Columbus's cousin, Giovanni Colombo, had discovered gold near Buenaventura. The deposits were later known as Minas Nuevas. Two major mining areas resulted, one along San Cristobal-Buenaventura, and another in Cibao within the La Vega-Cotuy-Bonao triangle, while Santiago de los Caballeros, Concepción, and Bonao became mining towns. The gold rush of 1500–1508 ensued, and Ovando expropriated the gold mines of Miguel Díaz and Francisco de Garay in 1504, as pit mines became royal mines for Ferdinand II of Aragon, who reserved the best mines for himself, though placers were open to private prospectors. King Ferdinand kept 967 natives in the San Cristóbal mining area, supervised by salaried miners.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Under the royal governor Nicolás de Ovando, the indigenous people were forced to work in the gold mines. By 1503, the Spanish Crown legalized the allocation of private grants of indigenous labor to particular Spaniards for mining through the encomienda system. Once the indigenous were forced into mining far from their home villages, they suffered hunger and other difficult conditions. By 1508, the Taíno population of about 400,000 was reduced to 60,000, and by 1514, only 26,334 remained. About half resided in the mining towns of Concepción, Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Buenaventura. The repartimiento of 1514 accelerated emigration of the Spanish colonists, coupled with the exhaustion of the mines. The first documented outbreak of smallpox, previously an Eastern hemisphere disease, occurred on Hispaniola in December 1518 among enslaved African miners. Some scholars speculate that European diseases arrived before this date, but there is no compelling evidence for an outbreak. The natives had no acquired immunity to European diseases, including smallpox. By May 1519, as many as one-third of the remaining Taínos had died. In the century following the Spanish arrival on Hispaniola, the Taíno population fell by up to 95% of the population, out of a pre-contact population estimated from tens of thousands to 8,000,000. Many authors have described the treatment of Tainos in Hispaniola under the Spanish Empire as genocide.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Sugar cane was introduced to Hispaniola by settlers from the Canary Islands, and the first sugar mill in the New World was established in 1516, on Hispaniola. The need for a labor force to meet the growing demands of sugar cane cultivation led to an exponential increase in the importation of slaves over the following two decades. The sugar mill owners soon formed a new colonial elite.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo during 1521, when enslaved Muslims of the Wolof nation led an uprising in the sugar plantation of admiral Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus. Many of these insurgents managed to escape where they formed independent maroon communities in the south of the island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Beginning in the 1520s, the Caribbean Sea was raided by increasingly numerous French pirates. In 1541, Spain authorized the construction of Santo Domingo's fortified wall, and in 1560 decided to restrict sea travel to enormous, well-armed convoys. In another move, which would destroy Hispaniola's sugar industry, in 1561 Havana, more strategically located in relation to the Gulf Stream, was selected as the designated stopping point for the merchant flotas, which had a royal monopoly on commerce with the Americas. In 1564, the island's main inland cities Santiago de los Caballeros and Concepción de la Vega were destroyed by an earthquake. In the 1560s, English privateers joined the French in regularly raiding Spanish shipping in the Americas.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "By the early 17th century, Hispaniola and its nearby islands (notably Tortuga) became regular stopping points for Caribbean pirates. In 1606, the government of Philip III ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, to fight against piracy. Rather than secure the island, his action meant that French, English, and Dutch pirates established their own bases on the less populated north and west coasts of the island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1625, French and English pirates arrived on the island of Tortuga, just off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, which was originally settled by a few Spanish colonists. The pirates were attacked in 1629 by Spanish forces commanded by Don Fadrique de Toledo, who fortified the island, and expelled the French and English. As most of the Spanish army left for the main island of Hispaniola to root out French colonists there, the French returned to Tortuga in 1630 and had constant battles for several decades. In 1654, the Spanish re-captured Tortuga for the last time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1655 the island of Tortuga was reoccupied by the English and French. In 1660 the English appointed a Frenchman as Governor who proclaimed the King of France, set up French colours, and defeated several English attempts to reclaim the island. In 1665, French colonization of the island was officially recognized by King Louis XIV. The French colony was given the name Saint-Domingue. By 1670 a Welsh privateer named Henry Morgan invited the pirates on the island of Tortuga to set sail under him. They were hired by the French as a striking force that allowed France to have a much stronger hold on the Caribbean region. Consequently, the pirates never really controlled the island and kept Tortuga as a neutral hideout. The capital of the French Colony of Saint-Domingue was moved from Tortuga to Port-de-Paix on the mainland of Hispaniola in 1676.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1680, new Acts of Parliament forbade sailing under foreign flags (in opposition to former practice). This was a major legal blow to the Caribbean pirates. Settlements were made in the Treaty of Ratisbon of 1684, signed by the European powers, that put an end to piracy. Most of the pirates after this time were hired out into the Royal services to suppress their former buccaneer allies. In the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, Spain formally ceded the western third of the island to France. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the east in both wealth and population. Nicknamed the \"Pearl of the Antilles\", it became the most prosperous colony in the West Indies, with a system of human slavery used to grow and harvest sugar cane during a time when European demand for sugar was high. Slavery kept costs low and profit was maximized. It was an important port in the Americas for goods and products flowing to and from France and Europe.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "European colonists often died young due to tropical fevers, as well as from violent slave resistance in the late eighteenth century. In 1791, during the French Revolution, a major slave revolt broke out on Saint-Domingue. When the French Republic abolished slavery in the colonies on February 4, 1794, it was a European first. The ex-slave army joined forces with France in its war against its European neighbors. In the second 1795 Treaty of Basel (July 22), Spain ceded the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, later to become the Dominican Republic. French settlers had begun to colonize some areas in the Spanish side of the territory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Under Napoleon, France reimposed slavery in most of its Caribbean islands in 1802 and sent an army to bring the island into full control. However, thousands of the French troops succumbed to yellow fever during the summer months, and more than half of the French army died because of disease. After an extremely brutal war with atrocities committed on both sides, the French removed the surviving 7,000 troops in late 1803, the leaders of the revolution declared western Hispaniola the new nation of independent Haiti in early 1804. France continued to rule Spanish Santo Domingo. In 1805, Haitian troops of General Henri Christophe tried to conquer all of Hispaniola. They invaded Santo Domingo and sacked the towns of Santiago de los Caballeros and Moca, killing most of their residents, but news of a French fleet sailing towards Haiti forced General Christophe to withdraw from the east, leaving it in French hands.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1808, following Napoleon's invasion of Spain, the criollos of Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and, with the aid of the United Kingdom, returned Santo Domingo to Spanish control. Fearing the influence of a society of slaves that had successfully revolted against their owners, the United States and European powers refused to recognize Haiti, the second republic in the Western Hemisphere. France demanded a high payment for compensation to slaveholders who lost their property, and Haiti was saddled with unmanageable debt for decades. Haiti would Annex Spanish Haiti which had recently gained independence. However, suppression of the Dominican culture would lead to the Dominican War of Independence. This is one of the reasons for the tensions between the two countries today. Haiti would become one of the poorest countries in the Americas, while the Dominican Republic gradually has developed into one of the largest economies of Central America and the Caribbean.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hispaniola is the second-largest island in the Caribbean (after Cuba), with an area of 76,192 square kilometers (29,418 sq mi), 48,440 square kilometers (18,700 sq mi) of which is under the sovereignty of the Dominican Republic occupying the eastern portion and 27,750 square kilometers (10,710 sq mi) under the sovereignty of Haiti occupying the western portion.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The island of Cuba lies 80 kilometers (50 mi), Cayman Islands and Navassa Island to the northwest across the Windward Passage; 190 km (118 mi) to the southwest lies Jamaica, separated by the Jamaica Channel. Puerto Rico lies 130 km (80 mi) east of Hispaniola across the Mona Passage. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands lie to the north. Its westernmost point is known as Cap Carcasse. Cuba, Cayman Islands, Navassa Island, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico are collectively known as the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is also a part of the Antilles and the West Indies.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The island has five major ranges of mountains: The Central Range, known in the Dominican Republic as the Cordillera Central, spans the central part of the island, extending from the south coast of the Dominican Republic into northwestern Haiti, where it is known as the Massif du Nord. This mountain range boasts the highest peak in the Antilles, Pico Duarte at 3,101 meters (10,174 ft) above sea level. The Cordillera Septentrional runs parallel to the Central Range across the northern end of the Dominican Republic, extending into the Atlantic Ocean as the Samaná Peninsula. The Cordillera Central and Cordillera Septentrional are separated by the lowlands of the Cibao Valley and the Atlantic coastal plains, which extend westward into Haiti as the Plaine du Nord (Northern Plain). The lowest of the ranges is the Cordillera Oriental, in the eastern part of the country.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Sierra de Neiba rises in the southwest of the Dominican Republic, and continues northwest into Haiti, parallel to the Cordillera Central, as the Montagnes Noires, Chaîne des Matheux and the Montagnes du Trou d'Eau. The Plateau Central lies between the Massif du Nord and the Montagnes Noires, and the Plaine de l'Artibonite lies between the Montagnes Noires and the Chaîne des Matheux, opening westward toward the Gulf of Gonâve, the largest gulf of the Antilles.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The southern range begins in the southwesternmost Dominican Republic as the Sierra de Bahoruco, and extends west into Haiti as the Massif de la Selle and the Massif de la Hotte, which form the mountainous spine of Haiti's southern peninsula. Pic de la Selle is the highest peak in the southern range, the third highest peak in the Antilles and consequently the highest point in Haiti, at 2,680 meters (8,790 ft) above sea level. A depression runs parallel to the southern range, between the southern range and the Chaîne des Matheux-Sierra de Neiba. It is known as the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac in Haiti, and Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince lies at its western end. The depression is home to a chain of salt lakes, including Lake Azuei in Haiti and Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to 2,100 meters (6,900 ft) elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above 850 metres (2,790 ft) elevation. The flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in the south central region of the island surrounds a chain of lakes and lagoons in which the most notable include that of Lake Azuei and Trou Caïman in Haiti and the nearby Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic, which is not only the lowest point of the island, but also the lowest point for an island country.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Hispaniola's climate shows considerable variation due to its diverse mountainous topography, and is the most varied island of all the Antilles. Except in the Northern Hemisphere summer season, the predominant winds over Hispaniola are the northeast trade winds. As in Jamaica and Cuba, these winds deposit their moisture on the northern mountains, and create a distinct rain shadow on the southern coast, where some areas receive as little as 400 millimetres (16 in) of rainfall, and have semi-arid climates. Annual rainfall under 600 millimetres (24 in) also occurs on the southern coast of Haiti's northwest peninsula and in the central Azúa region of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac. In these regions, moreover, there is generally little rainfall outside hurricane season from August to October, and droughts are by no means uncommon when hurricanes do not come. On the northern coast, in contrast, rainfall may peak between December and February, though some rain falls in all months of the year. Annual amounts typically range from 1,700 to 2,000 millimetres (67 to 79 in) on the northern coastal lowlands; there is probably much more in the Cordillera Septentrional, though no data exist. The interior of Hispaniola, along with the southeastern coast centered around Santo Domingo, typically receives around 1,400 millimetres (55 in) per year, with a distinct season from May to October. Usually, this wet season has two peaks: one around May, the other around the hurricane season. In the interior highlands, rainfall is much greater, around 3,100 millimetres (120 in) per year, but with a similar pattern to that observed in the central lowlands.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The variations of temperature depend on altitude and are much less marked than rainfall variations in the island. Lowland Hispaniola is generally more hot and humid, with temperatures averaging 28 °C (82 °F). with high humidity during the daytime, and around 20 °C (68 °F) at night. At higher altitudes, temperatures fall steadily, so that frosts occur during the dry season on the highest peaks, where maxima are no higher than 18 °C (64 °F).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "There are many bird species in Hispaniola, and the island's amphibian species are also diverse. There are many species endemic to the island including insects and other invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, fishs, birds and mammals (originally animals, native animals) and also (imported animals, introduced animals, not native animals or invasive species) just like farm animals, transport animals, house animals, pets and more. The two endemic terrestrial mammals on the island are the Hispaniolan hutia (Plagiodontia aedium) and the Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus). There are also many avian species on the island, with six endemic genera (Calyptophilus, Dulus, Nesoctites, Phaenicophilus, Xenoligea and Microligea). More than half of the original distribution of its ecoregions has been lost due to habitat destruction impacting the local fauna and some of the original animals either threat, threatened with extinction or totally extinct, because of climate change or because they have been hunted by humans or their habitats have been felled or changed for some reasons or have become some of the animals have been threatened by (introduced animals, not native animals or invasive species) or there are fighting for space to survive and perhaps some animals that feed on the same plants or animals or just something like that.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The island has four distinct ecoregions. The Hispaniolan moist forests ecoregion covers approximately 50% of the island, especially the northern and eastern portions, predominantly in the lowlands but extending up to 2,100 meters (6,900 ft) elevation. The Hispaniolan dry forests ecoregion occupies approximately 20% of the island, lying in the rain shadow of the mountains in the southern and western portion of the island, and in the Cibao valley in the center-north of the island. The Hispaniolan pine forests occupy the mountainous 15% of the island, above 850 metres (2,790 ft) elevation. The flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in the south central region of the island surrounds a chain of lakes and lagoons, the most notable of which are Etang Saumatre and Trou Caïman in Haiti and the nearby Lake Enriquillo in the Dominican Republic.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In Haiti, deforestation has long been cited by scientists as a source of ecological crisis; the timber industry dates back to French colonial rule. Haiti has seen a dramatic reduction of forests due to the excessive and increasing use of charcoal as fuel for cooking. Various media outlets have suggested that the country has just 2% forest cover, but this has not been substantiated by research.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Also extremely important are the rarely mentioned species of Pinguicula casabitoana (a carnivorous plant), Gonocalyx tetraptera, Gesneria sylvicola, Lyonia alaini and Myrcia saliana, as well as palo de viento (Didymopanax tremulus), jaiqui (Bumelia salicifolia), pino criciolio) (pino criciol) , sangre de pollo (Mecranium amigdalinum) and palo santo (Alpinia speciosa).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "According to reports in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the flora in this naturally protected area consists of 621 species of vascular plants, of which 153 are highly endemic to La Hispaniola. The most prominent endemic species of flora that abound in the area are Ebano Verde (green ebony), Magnolia pallescens, a highly endangered hardwood.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Recent in-depth studies of satellite imagery and environmental analysis regarding forest classification conclude that Haiti actually has approximately 30% tree cover; this is, nevertheless, a stark decrease from the country's 60% forest cover in 1925. The country has been significantly deforested over the last 50 years, resulting in the desertification of many portions of Haitian territory. Haiti's poor citizens use cooking fires often, and this is a major culprit behind the nation's loss of trees. Haitians use trees as fuel either by burning the wood directly, or by first turning it into charcoal in ovens. Seventy-one percent of all fuel consumed in Haiti is wood or charcoal. Another significant contributor to deforestation in Haiti is agricultural expansion. Haiti's government began establishing protected areas across the country in 1968. These 26 areas today represent nearly 7 per cent of the country’s land and 1.5 per cent of its waters.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In the Dominican Republic, the forest cover has increased. In 2003, the Dominican Republic's forest cover had been reduced to 32% of its land area, but by 2011, forest cover had increased to nearly 40%. The success of the Dominican forest growth is due to several Dominican government policies and private organizations for the purpose of reforesting, and a strong educational campaign that has resulted in increased awareness by the Dominican people of the importance of forests for their welfare and other forms of life on the island.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Hispaniola is the most populous Caribbean island with a combined population of 23 million inhabitants as of July 2023.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Dominican Republic is a Hispanophone nation of approximately 11.3 million people. Spanish is spoken by essentially all Dominicans as a primary language. Roman Catholicism is the official and dominant religion and some Evangelicalism and Protestant churches and The Church of Jesus Christ and minority religions such as African religions, Afro-American religions-African diaspora religions, Haitian Vodou, Dominican Vodou, Dominican Santeria-Congos Del Espiritu Santo, Dominican Protestants-Pentecostals, Judaism, Islam and Baháʼí Faith, Hinduism, Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalism and others also exist.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Haiti is a Creole-speaking nation of roughly 11.7 million people. Although French is spoken as a primary language by the educated and wealthy minority, virtually the entire population speaks Haitian Creole, one of several French-derived creole languages. Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion, practiced by more than half the population, although in some cases in combination with Haitian Vodou faith. Another 25% of the populace belong to Protestant churches.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The ethnic composition of the Dominican population is 73% mixed ethnicity, 16% white and 11% black. Descendants of early Spanish settlers and of black slaves from West Africa constitute the two main racial strains.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The ethnic composition of Haiti is estimated to be 95% black and 5% white and Mulatto.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In recent times, Dominican and Puerto Rican researchers identified in the current Dominican population the presence of genes belonging to the aborigines of the Canary Islands (commonly called Guanches). These genes also have been detected in Puerto Rico.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The island has the largest economy in the Greater Antilles; however, most of the economic development is found in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican economy being nearly 800% larger than the Haitian economy. As of 2018, the estimated annual per capita income is US$868 in Haiti and US$8,050 in the Dominican Republic.",
"title": "Economics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The divergence between the level of economic development in Haiti and the Dominican Republic makes its border the highest contrast of all western land borders.",
"title": "Economics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The island also has an economic history and current day interest and involvement in precious metals. In 1860, it was observed that the island contained a large supply of gold, which the early Spaniards had hardly developed. By 1919, Condit and Ross noted that much of the island was covered by government granted concessions for mining different types of minerals. Besides gold, these minerals included silver, manganese, copper, magnetite, iron and nickel.",
"title": "Economics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Mining operations in 2016 have taken advantage of the volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits around Maimón. To the northeast, the Pueblo Viejo Gold Mine was operated by state-owned Rosario Dominicana from 1975 until 1991. In 2009, Pueblo Viejo Dominicana Corporation, formed by Barrick Gold and Goldcorp, started open-pit mining operations of the Monte Negro and Moore oxide deposits. The mined ore is processed with gold cyanidation. Pyrite and sphalerite are the main sulfide minerals found in the 120-meter thick volcanic conglomerates and agglomerates, which constitute the world's second largest sulphidation gold deposit.",
"title": "Economics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Between Bonao and Maimón, Falconbridge Dominicana has been mining nickel laterites since 1971. The Cerro de Maimon copper/gold open-pit mine southeast of Maimón has been operated by Perilya since 2006. Copper is extracted from the sulfide ores, while gold and silver are extracted from both the sulfide and the oxide ores. Processing is via froth flotation and cyanidation. The ore is located in the VMS Early Cretaceous Maimón Formation. Goethite enriched with gold and silver is found in the 30-meter thick oxide cap. Below that cap is a supergene zone containing pyrite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. Below the supergene zone is found the unaltered massive sulphide mineralization.",
"title": "Economics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "This is a list of Dominican Republic and Haiti regions by Human Development Index as of 2018.",
"title": "Human development"
}
]
| Hispaniola is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the region's second largest in area, after the island of Cuba. The 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi) island is divided into two separate nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic to the east and the French/Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France and the Netherlands. Hispaniola is the site of one of the first European forts in the Americas, La Navidad (1492–1493), as well as the first settlement and proper town, La Isabela (1493–1500), and the first permanent settlement, the current capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo. These settlements were founded successively during each of Christopher Columbus's first three voyages. The Spanish Empire controlled the entire island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island. The official name was La Española, meaning "The Spanish (Island)". It was also called Santo Domingo, after Saint Dominic. | 2001-09-04T13:35:49Z | 2023-12-27T21:12:56Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispaniola |
13,717 | Halle Berry | Halle Maria Berry (/ˈhæli/ HAL-ee; born Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966) is an American actress. She began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in The Flintstones (1994) and Bulworth (1998) as well as the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Berry established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s. For her performance of a struggling widow in the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), Berry became the only African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the first woman of color. Berry took on high-profile roles such as Storm in four installments of the X-Men film series (2000–2014), the henchwoman of a robber in the thriller Swordfish (2001), Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day (2002), and the title role in the much-derided Catwoman (2004). Nevertheless, she received US$12.5 million (equivalent to $19.37 million in 2022) for the latter.
A varying critical and commercial reception followed in subsequent years, with Perfect Stranger (2007), Cloud Atlas (2012) and The Call (2013) being among her notable film releases in that period. Berry launched a production company, 606 Films, in 2014 and has been involved in the production of a number of projects in which she performed, such as the CBS science fiction series Extant (2014–2015). She appeared in the action films Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama Bruised (2020).
Berry has been a Revlon spokesmodel since 1996. She was formerly married to baseball player David Justice, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, and actor Olivier Martinez. She has two children, one with Martinez and another with model Gabriel Aubry.
Berry was born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 14, 1966, to Judith Ann (née Hawkins), an English immigrant from Liverpool, and Jerome Jesse Berry, an African-American man. Her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry at the age of five. Her parents selected her middle name from Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in Cleveland. Berry's mother worked as a psychiatric nurse, and her father worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward; he later became a bus driver. They divorced when Berry was four years old, and she and her older sister Heidi Berry-Henderson were raised exclusively by their mother. She has been estranged from her father since childhood, noting in 1992 that she did not even know if he was still alive. Her father was abusive to her mother, and Berry has recalled witnessing her mother being beaten daily, kicked down stairs, and hit in the head with a wine bottle.
Berry grew up in Oakwood, Ohio, and graduated from Bedford High School, where she was a cheerleader, honor student, editor of the school newspaper, and prom queen. She worked in the children's department at Higbee's Department store. She then studied at Cuyahoga Community College. In the 1980s, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Teen All American 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986. She was the 1986 Miss USA first runner-up to Christy Fichtner of Texas. In the Miss USA 1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer or to have something to do with the media. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges. She was the first African-American Miss World entrant in 1986, where she finished sixth and Trinidad and Tobago's Giselle Laronde was crowned Miss World.
In 1989, Berry moved to New York City to pursue her acting ambitions. During her early time there, she ran out of money and briefly lived in a homeless shelter and a YMCA. Her situation improved by the end of that year, and she was cast in the role of model Emily Franklin in the short-lived ABC television series Living Dolls, which was shot in New York and was a spin-off of the hit series Who's the Boss?. During the taping of Living Dolls, she lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. After the cancellation of Living Dolls, she moved to Los Angeles.
Berry's film debut was in a small role for Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991), in which she played Vivian, a drug addict. That same year, Berry had her first co-starring role in Strictly Business. In 1992, Berry portrayed a career woman who falls for the lead character played by Eddie Murphy in the romantic comedy Boomerang. The following year, she caught the public's attention as a headstrong biracial slave in the TV adaptation of Queen: The Story of an American Family, based on the book by Alex Haley. Berry was also in the live-action Flintstones film as Sharon Stone, a sultry secretary who attempts to seduce Fred Flintstone.
Berry tackled a more serious role, playing a former drug addict struggling to regain custody of her son in Losing Isaiah (1995), starring opposite Jessica Lange. She portrayed Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun (1996), which was based on a true story, shot in Australia, and co-starred alongside Kurt Russell in Executive Decision. Beginning in 1996, she was a Revlon spokeswoman for seven years and renewed her contract in 2004.
She starred alongside Natalie Deselle Reid in the 1997 comedy film B*A*P*S. In 1998, Berry received praise for her role in Bulworth as an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives a politician (Warren Beatty) a new lease on life. The same year, she played the singer Zola Taylor, one of the three wives of pop singer Frankie Lymon, in the biopic Why Do Fools Fall in Love.
In the 1999 HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, she portrayed Dorthy Dandridge, the first African American woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was to Berry a heartfelt project that she introduced, co-produced and fought intensely for it to come through. Berry won awards including a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award.
Berry portrayed the mutant superhero Storm in the film adaptation of the comic book series X-Men (2000) and its sequels, X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). In 2001, Berry appeared in the film Swordfish, which featured her first topless scene. At first, she was opposed to a sunbathing scene in the film in which she would appear topless, but Berry eventually agreed. Some people attributed her change of heart to a substantial increase in the amount Warner Bros. offered her; she was reportedly paid an additional $500,000 for the short scene. Berry denied these stories, telling one interviewer that they amused her and "made for great publicity for the movie." After turning down numerous roles that required nudity, she said she decided to make Swordfish because her then-husband, Eric Benét, supported her and encouraged her to take risks.
Berry appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the troubled wife of an executed murderer (Sean Combs), in the 2001 feature film Monster's Ball. Her performance was awarded the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. She became the only African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. The NAACP issued the statement: "Congratulations to Halle Berry and Denzel Washington for giving us hope and making us proud. If this is a sign that Hollywood is finally ready to give opportunity and judge performance based on skill and not on skin color then it is a good thing." This role generated controversy. Her graphic nude love scene with a racist character played by co-star Billy Bob Thornton was the subject of much media chatter and discussion among African Americans. Many in the African-American community were critical of Berry for taking the part. Berry responded: "I don't really see a reason to ever go that far again. That was a unique movie. That scene was special and pivotal and needed to be there, and it would be a really special script that would require something like that again."
Berry asked for a higher fee for Revlon advertisements after winning the Oscar. Ron Perelman, the cosmetics firm's chief, congratulated her, saying how happy he was that she modeled for his company. She replied, "Of course, you'll have to pay me more." Perelman stalked off in a rage. In accepting her award, she gave an acceptance speech honoring previous black actresses who had never had the opportunity. She said, "This moment is so much bigger than me. This is for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance tonight because this door has been opened."
As Bond girl Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson in the 2002 blockbuster Die Another Day, Berry recreated a scene from Dr. No, emerging from the surf to be greeted by James Bond as Ursula Andress had 40 years earlier. Lindy Hemming, costume designer on Die Another Day, had insisted that Berry wear a bikini and knife as a homage. Berry has said of the scene: "It's splashy", "exciting", "sexy", "provocative" and "it will keep me still out there after winning an Oscar." According to an ITV news poll, Jinx was voted the fourth toughest girl on screen of all time. Berry was hurt during filming when debris from a smoke grenade flew into her eye. It was removed in a 30-minute operation. After Berry won the Academy Award, rewrites were commissioned to give her more screentime for X2.
She starred in the psychological thriller Gothika opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in November 2003, during which she broke her arm in a scene with Downey, who twisted her arm too hard. Production was halted for eight weeks. It was a moderate hit at the United States box office, taking in $60 million; it earned another $80 million abroad. Berry appeared in the nu metal band Limp Bizkit's music video for "Behind Blue Eyes" for the motion picture soundtrack for the film. The same year, she was named No. 1 in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll.
Berry starred as the title role in the film Catwoman, for which she received US$12.5 million. and is widely regarded by critics as one of the worst films ever made. She was awarded the Worst Actress Razzie Award for her performance; she appeared at the ceremony to accept the award in person (while holding her Oscar from Monster's Ball) with a sense of humor, considering it an experience of the "rock bottom" in order to be "at the top." Holding the Academy Award in one hand and the Razzie in the other she said, "I never in my life thought that I would be up here, winning a Razzie! It's not like I ever aspired to be here, but thank you. When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner."
Her next film appearance was in the Oprah Winfrey-produced ABC television film Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, with Berry portraying a free-spirited woman whose unconventional sexual mores upset her 1920s contemporaries in a small community. She received her second Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her role. Also in 2005, she served as an executive producer in Lackawanna Blues, and landed her voice for the character of Cappy, one of the many mechanical beings in the animated feature Robots.
In the thriller Perfect Stranger (2007), Berry starred with Bruce Willis, playing a reporter who goes undercover to uncover the killer of her childhood friend. The film grossed a modest US$73 million worldwide, and received lukewarm reviews from critics, who felt that despite the presence of Berry and Willis, it is "too convoluted to work, and features a twist ending that's irritating and superfluous." Her next 2007 film release was the drama Things We Lost in the Fire, co-starring Benicio del Toro, where she took on the role of a recent widow befriending the troubled friend of her late husband. The film was the first time in which she worked with a female director, Danish Susanne Bier, giving her a new feeling of "thinking the same way," which she appreciated. While the film made US$8.6 million in its global theatrical run, it garnered positive reviews from writers; The Austin Chronicle found the film to be "an impeccably constructed and perfectly paced drama of domestic and internal volatility" and felt that "Berry is brilliant here, as good as she's ever been."
In April 2007, Berry was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Kodak Theatre at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to the film industry, and by the end of the decade, she established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, earning an estimated $10 million per film.
In the independent drama Frankie and Alice (2010), Berry played the leading role of a young multiracial American woman with dissociative identity disorder struggling against her alter personality to retain her true self. The film received a limited theatrical release, to a mixed critical response. The Hollywood Reporter nevertheless described the film as "a well-wrought psychological drama that delves into the dark side of one woman's psyche" and found Berry to be "spellbinding" in it. She earned the African-American Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama. She next made part of a large ensemble cast in Garry Marshall's romantic comedy New Year's Eve (2011), with Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Biel, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Sofía Vergara, among many others. In the film, she took on the supporting role of a nurse befriending a man in the final stages (De Niro). While the film was panned by critics, it made US$142 million worldwide.
In 2012, Berry starred as an expert diver tutor alongside then-husband Olivier Martinez in the little-seen thriller Dark Tide, and led an ensemble cast opposite Tom Hanks and Jim Broadbent in The Wachowskis's epic science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012), with each of the actors playing six different characters across a period of five centuries. Budgeted at US$128.8 million, Cloud Atlas made US$130.4 million worldwide, and garnered polarized reactions from both critics and audiences.
Berry appeared in a segment of the independent anthology comedy Movie 43 (2013), which the Chicago Sun-Times called "the Citizen Kane of awful." Berry found greater success with her next performance, as a 9-1-1 operator receiving a call from a girl kidnapped by a serial killer, in the crime thriller The Call (2013). Berry was drawn to "the idea of being a part of a movie that was so empowering for women. We don't often get to play roles like this, where ordinary people become heroic and do something extraordinary." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found the film to be "an effectively creepy thriller," while reviewer Dwight Brown felt that "the script gives Berry a blue-collar character she can make accessible, vulnerable and gutsy[...]." The Call was a sleeper hit, grossing US$68.6 million around the globe.
In 2014, Berry signed on to star and serve as a co-executive producer in CBS drama series Extant, where she took on the role of Molly Woods, an astronaut who struggles to reconnect with her husband and android son after spending 13 months in space. The show ran for two seasons until 2015, receiving largely positive reviews from critics. USA Today remarked: "She [Halle Berry] brings a dignity and gravity to Molly, a projected intelligence that allows you to buy her as an astronaut and to see what has happened to her as frightening rather than ridiculous. Berry's all in, and you float along." Also in 2014, Berry launched a new production company, 606 Films, with producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. It is named after the Anti-Paparazzi Bill, SB 606, that the actress pushed for and which was signed into law by California Governor Jerry Brown in the fall of 2013. The new company emerged as part of a deal for Berry to work in Extant.
In the stand-up comedy concert film Kevin Hart: What Now? (2016), Berry appeared as herself, opposite Kevin Hart, attending a poker game event that goes horribly wrong. She provided uncredited vocals to the song, "Calling All My Lovelies" by Bruno Mars from his third studio album, 24K Magic (2016). Kidnap, an abduction thriller Berry filmed in 2014, was released in 2017. In the film, she starred as a diner waitress tailing a vehicle when her son is kidnapped by its occupants. Kidnap grossed US$34 million and garnered mixed reviews from writers, who felt that it "strays into poorly scripted exploitation too often to take advantage of its pulpy premise — or the still-impressive talents of [Berry]." She next played an agent employed by a secret American spy organisation in the action comedy sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), as part of an ensemble cast, consisting of Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Julianne Moore, and Elton John. While critical response towards the film was mixed, it made US$414 million worldwide.
Alongside Daniel Craig, Berry starred as a working-class mother during the 1992 Los Angeles riots in Deniz Gamze Ergüven's drama Kings (2017). The film found a limited theatrical release following its initial screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, and as part of an overall lukewarm reception, Variety noted: "It should be said that Berry has given some of the best and worst performances of the past quarter-century, but this is perhaps the only one that swings to both extremes in the same movie." Berry competed against James Corden in the first rap battle on the first episode of TBS's Drop the Mic, originally aired on October 24, 2017.
She played Sofia, an assassin, in the film John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which was released on May 17, 2019, by Lionsgate. She is, as of February 2019, executive producer of the BET television series Boomerang, based on the film in which she starred. The series premiered February 12, 2019.
Berry made her directorial debut with the feature Bruised in which she plays a disgraced MMA fighter named Jackie Justice, who reconnects with her estranged son. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2020 and was released on Netflix in November 2021. Berry received a positive review from Deadline for her performance.
In January of 2023, Berry signed with Range Media Partners as a producer and director.
Berry was ranked No. 1 on People's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" list in 2003 after making the top ten seven times and appeared No. 1 on FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World" the same year. She was named Esquire magazine's "Sexiest Woman Alive" in October 2008, about which she stated: "I don't know exactly what it means, but being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it." Men's Health ranked her at No. 35 on their "100 Hottest Women of All-Time" list. In 2009, she was voted #23 on Empire's 100 Sexiest Film Stars. The same year, rapper Hurricane Chris released a song titled "Halle Berry (She's Fine)" extolling Berry's beauty and sex appeal. At the age of 42 (in 2008), she was named the "Sexiest Black Woman" by Access Hollywood's "TV One Access" survey. Born to an African-American father and a white mother, Berry has stated that her biracial background was "painful and confusing" when she was a young woman, and she made the decision early on to identify as a black woman because she knew that was how she would be perceived.
Berry dated Chicago dentist John Ronan from March 1989 to October 1991. In November 1993, Ronan sued Berry for $80,000 in what he claimed were unpaid loans to help launch her career. Berry contended that the money was a gift, and a judge dismissed the case because Ronan did not list Berry as a debtor when he filed for bankruptcy in 1992.
According to Berry, a beating from a former abusive boyfriend during the filming of The Last Boy Scout in 1991 punctured her eardrum and caused her to lose 80% of her hearing in her left ear. She has never named the abuser, but said that he was someone "well known in Hollywood". In 2004, her former boyfriend Christopher Williams accused Wesley Snipes of being responsible for the incident, saying, "I'm so tired of people thinking I'm the guy [who did it]. Wesley Snipes busted her eardrum, not me."
Berry first saw baseball player David Justice on TV playing in an MTV celebrity baseball game in February 1992. When a reporter from Justice's hometown of Cincinnati told her that Justice was a fan, Berry gave her phone number to the reporter to give to Justice. Berry married Justice shortly after midnight on January 1, 1993. Following their separation in February 1996, Berry stated publicly that she was so depressed that she had considered taking her own life. Berry and Justice were divorced on June 20, 1997.
In May 2000, Berry pleaded no contest to a charge of leaving the scene of a car accident; she was sentenced to three years’ probation, fined $13,500, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
Berry married her second husband, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, on January 24, 2001, following a two-year courtship. Benét underwent treatment for sex addiction in 2002; by early October 2003 they had separated, and their divorce was finalized on January 3, 2005.
In November 2005, Berry began dating French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, whom she had met at a Versace photoshoot. Berry gave birth to their daughter in March 2008. On April 30, 2010, Berry and Aubry announced that their relationship had ended some months earlier. In January 2011, Berry and Aubry became involved in a highly publicized custody battle, centered primarily on Berry's desire to move with their daughter from Los Angeles, where Berry and Aubry resided, to France, the home of French actor Olivier Martinez, whom Berry had started dating in 2010, having met him while filming Dark Tide in South Africa. Aubry objected to the move on the ground that it would interfere with their joint custody arrangement. In November 2012, a judge denied Berry's request to move the couple's daughter to France. Less than two weeks later, on November 22, 2012, Aubry and Martinez were both treated at a hospital for injuries after engaging in a physical altercation at Berry's residence. Martinez performed a citizen's arrest on Aubry, and because it was considered a domestic violence incident, was granted a temporary emergency protective order preventing Aubry from coming within 100 yards of Berry, Martinez, and the child with whom he shares custody with Berry, until November 29, 2012. In turn, Aubry obtained a temporary restraining order against Martinez on November 26, 2012, asserting that the fight had begun when Martinez had threatened to kill Aubry if he did not allow the couple to move to France. Leaked court documents included photos showing significant injuries to Aubry's face, which were widely displayed in the media. On November 29, 2012, Berry's lawyer announced that Berry and Aubry had reached an amicable custody agreement in court. In June 2014, a Superior Court ruling called for Berry to pay Aubry $16,000 a month in child support as well as a retroactive payment of $115,000 and $300,000 for Aubry's attorney fees.
Berry and Martinez confirmed their engagement in March 2012, and married in France on July 13, 2013. In October 2013, Berry gave birth to their son. In 2015, after two years of marriage, the couple announced they were divorcing. The divorce was finalized in December 2016. In August 2023, issues dealing with custody and child support were settled.
Berry started dating American musician Van Hunt in 2020, which was revealed through her Instagram.
Along with Pierce Brosnan, Cindy Crawford, Jane Seymour, Dick Van Dyke, Téa Leoni, and Daryl Hannah, Berry successfully fought in 2006 against the Cabrillo Port Liquefied Natural Gas facility that was proposed off the coast of Malibu. Berry said, "I care about the air we breathe, I care about the marine life and the ecosystem of the ocean." In May 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the facility. Hasty Pudding Theatricals gave her its 2006 Woman of The Year award. Berry took part in a nearly 2,000-house cellphone-bank campaign for Barack Obama in February 2008. In April 2013, she appeared in a video clip for Gucci's "Chime for Change" campaign that aims to raise funds and awareness of women's issues in terms of education, health, and justice. In August 2013, Berry testified alongside Jennifer Garner before the California State Assembly's Judiciary Committee in support of a bill that would protect celebrities' children from harassment by photographers. The bill passed in September. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Halle Maria Berry (/ˈhæli/ HAL-ee; born Maria Halle Berry; August 14, 1966) is an American actress. She began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in The Flintstones (1994) and Bulworth (1998) as well as the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Berry established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s. For her performance of a struggling widow in the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), Berry became the only African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the first woman of color. Berry took on high-profile roles such as Storm in four installments of the X-Men film series (2000–2014), the henchwoman of a robber in the thriller Swordfish (2001), Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day (2002), and the title role in the much-derided Catwoman (2004). Nevertheless, she received US$12.5 million (equivalent to $19.37 million in 2022) for the latter.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A varying critical and commercial reception followed in subsequent years, with Perfect Stranger (2007), Cloud Atlas (2012) and The Call (2013) being among her notable film releases in that period. Berry launched a production company, 606 Films, in 2014 and has been involved in the production of a number of projects in which she performed, such as the CBS science fiction series Extant (2014–2015). She appeared in the action films Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama Bruised (2020).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Berry has been a Revlon spokesmodel since 1996. She was formerly married to baseball player David Justice, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, and actor Olivier Martinez. She has two children, one with Martinez and another with model Gabriel Aubry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Berry was born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 14, 1966, to Judith Ann (née Hawkins), an English immigrant from Liverpool, and Jerome Jesse Berry, an African-American man. Her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry at the age of five. Her parents selected her middle name from Halle's Department Store, which was then a local landmark in Cleveland. Berry's mother worked as a psychiatric nurse, and her father worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward; he later became a bus driver. They divorced when Berry was four years old, and she and her older sister Heidi Berry-Henderson were raised exclusively by their mother. She has been estranged from her father since childhood, noting in 1992 that she did not even know if he was still alive. Her father was abusive to her mother, and Berry has recalled witnessing her mother being beaten daily, kicked down stairs, and hit in the head with a wine bottle.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Berry grew up in Oakwood, Ohio, and graduated from Bedford High School, where she was a cheerleader, honor student, editor of the school newspaper, and prom queen. She worked in the children's department at Higbee's Department store. She then studied at Cuyahoga Community College. In the 1980s, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Teen All American 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986. She was the 1986 Miss USA first runner-up to Christy Fichtner of Texas. In the Miss USA 1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer or to have something to do with the media. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges. She was the first African-American Miss World entrant in 1986, where she finished sixth and Trinidad and Tobago's Giselle Laronde was crowned Miss World.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1989, Berry moved to New York City to pursue her acting ambitions. During her early time there, she ran out of money and briefly lived in a homeless shelter and a YMCA. Her situation improved by the end of that year, and she was cast in the role of model Emily Franklin in the short-lived ABC television series Living Dolls, which was shot in New York and was a spin-off of the hit series Who's the Boss?. During the taping of Living Dolls, she lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. After the cancellation of Living Dolls, she moved to Los Angeles.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Berry's film debut was in a small role for Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991), in which she played Vivian, a drug addict. That same year, Berry had her first co-starring role in Strictly Business. In 1992, Berry portrayed a career woman who falls for the lead character played by Eddie Murphy in the romantic comedy Boomerang. The following year, she caught the public's attention as a headstrong biracial slave in the TV adaptation of Queen: The Story of an American Family, based on the book by Alex Haley. Berry was also in the live-action Flintstones film as Sharon Stone, a sultry secretary who attempts to seduce Fred Flintstone.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Berry tackled a more serious role, playing a former drug addict struggling to regain custody of her son in Losing Isaiah (1995), starring opposite Jessica Lange. She portrayed Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun (1996), which was based on a true story, shot in Australia, and co-starred alongside Kurt Russell in Executive Decision. Beginning in 1996, she was a Revlon spokeswoman for seven years and renewed her contract in 2004.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "She starred alongside Natalie Deselle Reid in the 1997 comedy film B*A*P*S. In 1998, Berry received praise for her role in Bulworth as an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives a politician (Warren Beatty) a new lease on life. The same year, she played the singer Zola Taylor, one of the three wives of pop singer Frankie Lymon, in the biopic Why Do Fools Fall in Love.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the 1999 HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, she portrayed Dorthy Dandridge, the first African American woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was to Berry a heartfelt project that she introduced, co-produced and fought intensely for it to come through. Berry won awards including a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Berry portrayed the mutant superhero Storm in the film adaptation of the comic book series X-Men (2000) and its sequels, X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). In 2001, Berry appeared in the film Swordfish, which featured her first topless scene. At first, she was opposed to a sunbathing scene in the film in which she would appear topless, but Berry eventually agreed. Some people attributed her change of heart to a substantial increase in the amount Warner Bros. offered her; she was reportedly paid an additional $500,000 for the short scene. Berry denied these stories, telling one interviewer that they amused her and \"made for great publicity for the movie.\" After turning down numerous roles that required nudity, she said she decided to make Swordfish because her then-husband, Eric Benét, supported her and encouraged her to take risks.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Berry appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the troubled wife of an executed murderer (Sean Combs), in the 2001 feature film Monster's Ball. Her performance was awarded the National Board of Review and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. She became the only African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. The NAACP issued the statement: \"Congratulations to Halle Berry and Denzel Washington for giving us hope and making us proud. If this is a sign that Hollywood is finally ready to give opportunity and judge performance based on skill and not on skin color then it is a good thing.\" This role generated controversy. Her graphic nude love scene with a racist character played by co-star Billy Bob Thornton was the subject of much media chatter and discussion among African Americans. Many in the African-American community were critical of Berry for taking the part. Berry responded: \"I don't really see a reason to ever go that far again. That was a unique movie. That scene was special and pivotal and needed to be there, and it would be a really special script that would require something like that again.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Berry asked for a higher fee for Revlon advertisements after winning the Oscar. Ron Perelman, the cosmetics firm's chief, congratulated her, saying how happy he was that she modeled for his company. She replied, \"Of course, you'll have to pay me more.\" Perelman stalked off in a rage. In accepting her award, she gave an acceptance speech honoring previous black actresses who had never had the opportunity. She said, \"This moment is so much bigger than me. This is for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance tonight because this door has been opened.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "As Bond girl Giacinta 'Jinx' Johnson in the 2002 blockbuster Die Another Day, Berry recreated a scene from Dr. No, emerging from the surf to be greeted by James Bond as Ursula Andress had 40 years earlier. Lindy Hemming, costume designer on Die Another Day, had insisted that Berry wear a bikini and knife as a homage. Berry has said of the scene: \"It's splashy\", \"exciting\", \"sexy\", \"provocative\" and \"it will keep me still out there after winning an Oscar.\" According to an ITV news poll, Jinx was voted the fourth toughest girl on screen of all time. Berry was hurt during filming when debris from a smoke grenade flew into her eye. It was removed in a 30-minute operation. After Berry won the Academy Award, rewrites were commissioned to give her more screentime for X2.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "She starred in the psychological thriller Gothika opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in November 2003, during which she broke her arm in a scene with Downey, who twisted her arm too hard. Production was halted for eight weeks. It was a moderate hit at the United States box office, taking in $60 million; it earned another $80 million abroad. Berry appeared in the nu metal band Limp Bizkit's music video for \"Behind Blue Eyes\" for the motion picture soundtrack for the film. The same year, she was named No. 1 in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Berry starred as the title role in the film Catwoman, for which she received US$12.5 million. and is widely regarded by critics as one of the worst films ever made. She was awarded the Worst Actress Razzie Award for her performance; she appeared at the ceremony to accept the award in person (while holding her Oscar from Monster's Ball) with a sense of humor, considering it an experience of the \"rock bottom\" in order to be \"at the top.\" Holding the Academy Award in one hand and the Razzie in the other she said, \"I never in my life thought that I would be up here, winning a Razzie! It's not like I ever aspired to be here, but thank you. When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there's no way you could be a good winner.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Her next film appearance was in the Oprah Winfrey-produced ABC television film Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, with Berry portraying a free-spirited woman whose unconventional sexual mores upset her 1920s contemporaries in a small community. She received her second Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her role. Also in 2005, she served as an executive producer in Lackawanna Blues, and landed her voice for the character of Cappy, one of the many mechanical beings in the animated feature Robots.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In the thriller Perfect Stranger (2007), Berry starred with Bruce Willis, playing a reporter who goes undercover to uncover the killer of her childhood friend. The film grossed a modest US$73 million worldwide, and received lukewarm reviews from critics, who felt that despite the presence of Berry and Willis, it is \"too convoluted to work, and features a twist ending that's irritating and superfluous.\" Her next 2007 film release was the drama Things We Lost in the Fire, co-starring Benicio del Toro, where she took on the role of a recent widow befriending the troubled friend of her late husband. The film was the first time in which she worked with a female director, Danish Susanne Bier, giving her a new feeling of \"thinking the same way,\" which she appreciated. While the film made US$8.6 million in its global theatrical run, it garnered positive reviews from writers; The Austin Chronicle found the film to be \"an impeccably constructed and perfectly paced drama of domestic and internal volatility\" and felt that \"Berry is brilliant here, as good as she's ever been.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In April 2007, Berry was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Kodak Theatre at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to the film industry, and by the end of the decade, she established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, earning an estimated $10 million per film.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the independent drama Frankie and Alice (2010), Berry played the leading role of a young multiracial American woman with dissociative identity disorder struggling against her alter personality to retain her true self. The film received a limited theatrical release, to a mixed critical response. The Hollywood Reporter nevertheless described the film as \"a well-wrought psychological drama that delves into the dark side of one woman's psyche\" and found Berry to be \"spellbinding\" in it. She earned the African-American Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama. She next made part of a large ensemble cast in Garry Marshall's romantic comedy New Year's Eve (2011), with Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Biel, Robert De Niro, Josh Duhamel, Zac Efron, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Sofía Vergara, among many others. In the film, she took on the supporting role of a nurse befriending a man in the final stages (De Niro). While the film was panned by critics, it made US$142 million worldwide.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 2012, Berry starred as an expert diver tutor alongside then-husband Olivier Martinez in the little-seen thriller Dark Tide, and led an ensemble cast opposite Tom Hanks and Jim Broadbent in The Wachowskis's epic science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012), with each of the actors playing six different characters across a period of five centuries. Budgeted at US$128.8 million, Cloud Atlas made US$130.4 million worldwide, and garnered polarized reactions from both critics and audiences.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Berry appeared in a segment of the independent anthology comedy Movie 43 (2013), which the Chicago Sun-Times called \"the Citizen Kane of awful.\" Berry found greater success with her next performance, as a 9-1-1 operator receiving a call from a girl kidnapped by a serial killer, in the crime thriller The Call (2013). Berry was drawn to \"the idea of being a part of a movie that was so empowering for women. We don't often get to play roles like this, where ordinary people become heroic and do something extraordinary.\" Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found the film to be \"an effectively creepy thriller,\" while reviewer Dwight Brown felt that \"the script gives Berry a blue-collar character she can make accessible, vulnerable and gutsy[...].\" The Call was a sleeper hit, grossing US$68.6 million around the globe.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2014, Berry signed on to star and serve as a co-executive producer in CBS drama series Extant, where she took on the role of Molly Woods, an astronaut who struggles to reconnect with her husband and android son after spending 13 months in space. The show ran for two seasons until 2015, receiving largely positive reviews from critics. USA Today remarked: \"She [Halle Berry] brings a dignity and gravity to Molly, a projected intelligence that allows you to buy her as an astronaut and to see what has happened to her as frightening rather than ridiculous. Berry's all in, and you float along.\" Also in 2014, Berry launched a new production company, 606 Films, with producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. It is named after the Anti-Paparazzi Bill, SB 606, that the actress pushed for and which was signed into law by California Governor Jerry Brown in the fall of 2013. The new company emerged as part of a deal for Berry to work in Extant.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the stand-up comedy concert film Kevin Hart: What Now? (2016), Berry appeared as herself, opposite Kevin Hart, attending a poker game event that goes horribly wrong. She provided uncredited vocals to the song, \"Calling All My Lovelies\" by Bruno Mars from his third studio album, 24K Magic (2016). Kidnap, an abduction thriller Berry filmed in 2014, was released in 2017. In the film, she starred as a diner waitress tailing a vehicle when her son is kidnapped by its occupants. Kidnap grossed US$34 million and garnered mixed reviews from writers, who felt that it \"strays into poorly scripted exploitation too often to take advantage of its pulpy premise — or the still-impressive talents of [Berry].\" She next played an agent employed by a secret American spy organisation in the action comedy sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), as part of an ensemble cast, consisting of Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Julianne Moore, and Elton John. While critical response towards the film was mixed, it made US$414 million worldwide.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Alongside Daniel Craig, Berry starred as a working-class mother during the 1992 Los Angeles riots in Deniz Gamze Ergüven's drama Kings (2017). The film found a limited theatrical release following its initial screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, and as part of an overall lukewarm reception, Variety noted: \"It should be said that Berry has given some of the best and worst performances of the past quarter-century, but this is perhaps the only one that swings to both extremes in the same movie.\" Berry competed against James Corden in the first rap battle on the first episode of TBS's Drop the Mic, originally aired on October 24, 2017.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "She played Sofia, an assassin, in the film John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which was released on May 17, 2019, by Lionsgate. She is, as of February 2019, executive producer of the BET television series Boomerang, based on the film in which she starred. The series premiered February 12, 2019.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Berry made her directorial debut with the feature Bruised in which she plays a disgraced MMA fighter named Jackie Justice, who reconnects with her estranged son. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2020 and was released on Netflix in November 2021. Berry received a positive review from Deadline for her performance.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In January of 2023, Berry signed with Range Media Partners as a producer and director.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Berry was ranked No. 1 on People's \"50 Most Beautiful People in the World\" list in 2003 after making the top ten seven times and appeared No. 1 on FHM's \"100 Sexiest Women in the World\" the same year. She was named Esquire magazine's \"Sexiest Woman Alive\" in October 2008, about which she stated: \"I don't know exactly what it means, but being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it.\" Men's Health ranked her at No. 35 on their \"100 Hottest Women of All-Time\" list. In 2009, she was voted #23 on Empire's 100 Sexiest Film Stars. The same year, rapper Hurricane Chris released a song titled \"Halle Berry (She's Fine)\" extolling Berry's beauty and sex appeal. At the age of 42 (in 2008), she was named the \"Sexiest Black Woman\" by Access Hollywood's \"TV One Access\" survey. Born to an African-American father and a white mother, Berry has stated that her biracial background was \"painful and confusing\" when she was a young woman, and she made the decision early on to identify as a black woman because she knew that was how she would be perceived.",
"title": "Media image"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Berry dated Chicago dentist John Ronan from March 1989 to October 1991. In November 1993, Ronan sued Berry for $80,000 in what he claimed were unpaid loans to help launch her career. Berry contended that the money was a gift, and a judge dismissed the case because Ronan did not list Berry as a debtor when he filed for bankruptcy in 1992.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "According to Berry, a beating from a former abusive boyfriend during the filming of The Last Boy Scout in 1991 punctured her eardrum and caused her to lose 80% of her hearing in her left ear. She has never named the abuser, but said that he was someone \"well known in Hollywood\". In 2004, her former boyfriend Christopher Williams accused Wesley Snipes of being responsible for the incident, saying, \"I'm so tired of people thinking I'm the guy [who did it]. Wesley Snipes busted her eardrum, not me.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Berry first saw baseball player David Justice on TV playing in an MTV celebrity baseball game in February 1992. When a reporter from Justice's hometown of Cincinnati told her that Justice was a fan, Berry gave her phone number to the reporter to give to Justice. Berry married Justice shortly after midnight on January 1, 1993. Following their separation in February 1996, Berry stated publicly that she was so depressed that she had considered taking her own life. Berry and Justice were divorced on June 20, 1997.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In May 2000, Berry pleaded no contest to a charge of leaving the scene of a car accident; she was sentenced to three years’ probation, fined $13,500, and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Berry married her second husband, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, on January 24, 2001, following a two-year courtship. Benét underwent treatment for sex addiction in 2002; by early October 2003 they had separated, and their divorce was finalized on January 3, 2005.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In November 2005, Berry began dating French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, whom she had met at a Versace photoshoot. Berry gave birth to their daughter in March 2008. On April 30, 2010, Berry and Aubry announced that their relationship had ended some months earlier. In January 2011, Berry and Aubry became involved in a highly publicized custody battle, centered primarily on Berry's desire to move with their daughter from Los Angeles, where Berry and Aubry resided, to France, the home of French actor Olivier Martinez, whom Berry had started dating in 2010, having met him while filming Dark Tide in South Africa. Aubry objected to the move on the ground that it would interfere with their joint custody arrangement. In November 2012, a judge denied Berry's request to move the couple's daughter to France. Less than two weeks later, on November 22, 2012, Aubry and Martinez were both treated at a hospital for injuries after engaging in a physical altercation at Berry's residence. Martinez performed a citizen's arrest on Aubry, and because it was considered a domestic violence incident, was granted a temporary emergency protective order preventing Aubry from coming within 100 yards of Berry, Martinez, and the child with whom he shares custody with Berry, until November 29, 2012. In turn, Aubry obtained a temporary restraining order against Martinez on November 26, 2012, asserting that the fight had begun when Martinez had threatened to kill Aubry if he did not allow the couple to move to France. Leaked court documents included photos showing significant injuries to Aubry's face, which were widely displayed in the media. On November 29, 2012, Berry's lawyer announced that Berry and Aubry had reached an amicable custody agreement in court. In June 2014, a Superior Court ruling called for Berry to pay Aubry $16,000 a month in child support as well as a retroactive payment of $115,000 and $300,000 for Aubry's attorney fees.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Berry and Martinez confirmed their engagement in March 2012, and married in France on July 13, 2013. In October 2013, Berry gave birth to their son. In 2015, after two years of marriage, the couple announced they were divorcing. The divorce was finalized in December 2016. In August 2023, issues dealing with custody and child support were settled.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Berry started dating American musician Van Hunt in 2020, which was revealed through her Instagram.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Along with Pierce Brosnan, Cindy Crawford, Jane Seymour, Dick Van Dyke, Téa Leoni, and Daryl Hannah, Berry successfully fought in 2006 against the Cabrillo Port Liquefied Natural Gas facility that was proposed off the coast of Malibu. Berry said, \"I care about the air we breathe, I care about the marine life and the ecosystem of the ocean.\" In May 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the facility. Hasty Pudding Theatricals gave her its 2006 Woman of The Year award. Berry took part in a nearly 2,000-house cellphone-bank campaign for Barack Obama in February 2008. In April 2013, she appeared in a video clip for Gucci's \"Chime for Change\" campaign that aims to raise funds and awareness of women's issues in terms of education, health, and justice. In August 2013, Berry testified alongside Jennifer Garner before the California State Assembly's Judiciary Committee in support of a bill that would protect celebrities' children from harassment by photographers. The bill passed in September.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Halle Maria Berry is an American actress. She began her career as a model and entered several beauty contests, finishing as the first runner-up in the Miss USA pageant and coming in sixth in the Miss World 1986. Her breakthrough film role was in the romantic comedy Boomerang (1992), alongside Eddie Murphy, which led to roles in The Flintstones (1994) and Bulworth (1998) as well as the television film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. Berry established herself as one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 2000s. For her performance of a struggling widow in the romantic drama Monster's Ball (2001), Berry became the only African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the first woman of color. Berry took on high-profile roles such as Storm in four installments of the X-Men film series (2000–2014), the henchwoman of a robber in the thriller Swordfish (2001), Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day (2002), and the title role in the much-derided Catwoman (2004). Nevertheless, she received US$12.5 million for the latter. A varying critical and commercial reception followed in subsequent years, with Perfect Stranger (2007), Cloud Atlas (2012) and The Call (2013) being among her notable film releases in that period. Berry launched a production company, 606 Films, in 2014 and has been involved in the production of a number of projects in which she performed, such as the CBS science fiction series Extant (2014–2015). She appeared in the action films Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and made her directorial debut with the Netflix drama Bruised (2020). Berry has been a Revlon spokesmodel since 1996. She was formerly married to baseball player David Justice, singer-songwriter Eric Benét, and actor Olivier Martinez. She has two children, one with Martinez and another with model Gabriel Aubry. | 2001-09-04T17:30:28Z | 2023-12-27T02:50:49Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halle_Berry |
13,722 | Robert Koch | Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (English: /kɒx/ KOKH, German: [ˈʁoːbɛʁt ˈkɔx] ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he is regarded as one of the main founders of modern bacteriology. As such he is popularly nicknamed the father of microbiology (with Louis Pasteur), and as the father of medical bacteriology. His discovery of the anthrax bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) in 1876 is considered as the birth of modern bacteriology. Koch used his discoveries to establish that germs "could cause a specific disease" and directly provided proofs for that germ theory of diseases, therefore creating the scientific basis of public health, saving millions of lives. For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine.
While working as a private physician, Koch developed many innovative techniques in microbiology. He was the first to use the oil immersion lens, condenser, and microphotography in microscopy. His invention of the bacterial culture method using agar and glass plates (later developed as the Petri dish by his assistant Julius Richard Petri) made him the first to grow bacteria in the laboratory. In appreciation of his work, he was appointed to government advisor at the Imperial Health Office in 1880, promoted to a senior executive position (Geheimer Regierungsrat) in 1882, Director of Hygienic Institute and Chair (Professor of hygiene) of the Faculty of Medicine at Berlin University in 1885, and the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases (later renamed Robert Koch Institute after his death) in 1891.
The methods Koch used in bacteriology led to establishment of a medical concept known as Koch's postulates, four generalized medical principles to ascertain the relationship of pathogens with specific diseases. The concept is still in use in most situations and influences subsequent epidemiological principles such as the Bradford Hill criteria. A major controversy followed when Koch discovered tuberculin as a medication for tuberculosis which was proven to be ineffective, but developed for diagnosis of tuberculosis after his death. For his research on tuberculosis, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905. The day he announced the discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, 24 March 1882, has been observed by the World Health Organization as "World Tuberculosis Day" every year since 1982.
Koch was born in Clausthal, Germany, on 11 December 1843, to Hermann Koch (1814–1877) and Mathilde Julie Henriette (née Biewend; 1818–1871). His father was a mining engineer. He was the third of thirteen siblings. He excelled academically from an early age. Before entering school in 1848, he had taught himself how to read and write. He completed secondary education in 1862, having excelled in science and math.
At the age of 19, in 1862, Koch entered the University of Göttingen to study natural science. He took up mathematics, physics and botany. He was appointed assistant in the university's Pathological Museum. After three semesters, he decided to change his area of study to medicine, as he aspired to be a physician. During his fifth semester at the medical school, Jacob Henle, an anatomist who had published a theory of contagion in 1840, asked him to participate in his research project on uterine nerve structure. This research won him a research prize from the university and enabled him to briefly study under Rudolf Virchow, who was at the time considered as "Germany's most renowned physician." In his sixth semester, Koch began to research at the Physiological Institute, where he studied the secretion of succinic acid, which is a signaling molecule that is also involved in the metabolism of the mitochondria. This would eventually form the basis of his dissertation. In January 1866, he graduated from the medical school, earning honours of the highest distinction, maxima cum laude.
After graduation in 1866, Koch briefly worked as an assistant in the General Hospital of Hamburg. In October that year he moved to Idiot's Hospital of Langenhagen, near Hanover, as a general physician. In 1868, he moved to Neimegk and then to Rakwitz in 1869. As the Franco-Prussian War started in 1870, he enlisted in the German army as a volunteer surgeon in 1871 to support the war effort. He was discharged a year later and was appointed as a district physician (Kreisphysikus) in Wollstein in Prussian Posen (now Wolsztyn, Poland). As his family settled there, his wife gave him a microscope as a birthday gift. With the microscope, he set up a private laboratory and started his career in microbiology.
Koch began conducting research on microorganisms in a laboratory connected to his patient examination room. His early research in this laboratory yielded one of his major contributions to the field of microbiology, as he developed the technique of growing bacteria. Furthermore, he managed to isolate and grow selected pathogens in a pure laboratory culture. His discovery of the anthrax bacillus (later named Bacillus anthracis) hugely impressed Ferdinand Julius Cohn, professor at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław), who helped him publish the discovery in 1876. Cohn had established the Institute of Plant Physiology and invited Koch to demonstrate his new bacterium there in 1877. Koch was transferred to Breslau as district physician in 1879. A year after, he left for Berlin when he was appointed a government advisor at the Imperial Health Office, where he worked from 1880 to 1885. Following his discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, he was promoted to Geheimer Regierungsrat, a senior executive position, in June 1882.
In 1885, Koch received two appointments as an administrator and professor at Berlin University. He became Director of Hygienic Institute and Chair (Professor of hygiene) of the Faculty of Medicine. In 1891, he relinquished his professorship and became a director of the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases (now the Robert Koch Institute) which consisted of a clinical division and beds for the division of clinical research. For this he accepted harsh conditions. The Prussian Ministry of Health insisted after the 1890 scandal with tuberculin, which Koch had discovered and intended as a remedy for tuberculosis, that any of Koch's inventions would unconditionally belong to the government and he would not be compensated. Koch lost the right to apply for patent protection. In 1906, he moved to East Africa to research a cure for trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). He established the Bugula research camp where up to 1000 people a day were treated with the experimental drug Atoxyl.
Robert Koch made two important developments in microscopy; he was the first to use an oil immersion lens and a condenser that enabled smaller objects to be seen. In addition, he was also the first to effectively use photography (microphotography) for microscopic observation. He introduced the "bedrock methods" of bacterial staining using methylene blue and Bismarck (Vesuvin) brown dye. In an attempt to grow bacteria, Koch began to use solid nutrients such as potato slices. Through these initial experiments, Koch observed individual colonies of identical, pure cells. He found that potato slices were not suitable media for all organisms, and later began to use nutrient solutions with gelatin. However, he soon realized that gelatin, like potato slices, was not the optimal medium for bacterial growth, as it did not remain solid at 37 °C, the ideal temperature for growth of most human pathogens. And also many bacteria can hydrolyze gelatin making it a liquid. As suggested to him by his post-doctoral assistant Walther Hesse, who got the idea from his wife Fanny Hesse, in 1881, Koch started using agar to grow and isolate pure cultures. Agar is a polysaccharide that remains solid at 37 °C, is not degraded by most bacteria, and results in a stable transparent medium.
Koch's booklet published in 1881 titled "Zur Untersuchung von Pathogenen Organismen" (Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms) has been known as the "Bible of Bacteriology." In it he described a novel method of using glass slide with agar to grow bacteria. The method involved pouring a liquid agar on to the glass slide and then spreading a thin layer of gelatin over. The gelatin made the culture medium solidify, in which bacterial samples could be spread uniformly. The whole bacterial culture was then put in a glass plate together with a small wet paper. Koch named this container as feuchte Kammer (moist chamber). The typical chamber was a circular glass dish 20 cm in diameter and 5 cm in height and had a lid to prevent contamination. The glass plate and the transparent culture media made observation of the bacterial growth easy.
Koch publicly demonstrated his plating method at the Seventh International Medical Congress in London in August 1881. There, Louis Pasteur exclaimed, "C'est un grand progrès, Monsieur!" ("What a great progress, Sir!") It was using Koch's microscopy and agar-plate culture method that his students discovered new bacteria. Friedrich Loeffler discovered the bacteria of glanders (Burkholderia mallei) in 1882 and diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae) in 1884; and Georg Theodor August Gaffky, the bacterium of typhoid (Salmonella enterica) in 1884. Koch's assistant Julius Richard Petri developed an improved method and published it in 1887 as "Eine kleine Modification des Koch’schen Plattenverfahrens" (A minor modification of the plating technique of Koch). The culture plate was given an eponymous name Petri dish. It is often asserted that Petri developed a new culture plate, but this was not so. He simply discarded the use of glass plate and instead used the circular glass dish directly, not just as moist chamber, but as the main culture container. This further reduced chances of contaminations. It would also have been appropriate if the name "Koch dish" had been given.
Robert Koch is widely known for his work with anthrax, discovering the causative agent of the fatal disease to be Bacillus anthracis. He published the discovery in a booklet as "Die Ätiologie der Milzbrand-Krankheit, Begründet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus Anthracis" (The Etiology of Anthrax Disease, Based on the Developmental History of Bacillus Anthracis) in 1876 while working at in Wöllstein. His publication in 1877 on the structure of anthrax bacterium marked the first photography of a bacterium. He discovered the formation of spores in anthrax bacteria, which could remain dormant under specific conditions. However, under optimal conditions, the spores were activated and caused disease. To determine this causative agent, he dry-fixed bacterial cultures onto glass slides, used dyes to stain the cultures, and observed them through a microscope. His work with anthrax is notable in that he was the first to link a specific microorganism with a specific disease, rejecting the idea of spontaneous generation and supporting the germ theory of disease.
During his time as the government advisor with the Imperial Health Agency in Berlin in the 1880s, Koch became interested in tuberculosis research. At the time, it was widely believed that tuberculosis was an inherited disease. However Koch was convinced that the disease was caused by a bacterium and was infectious. In 1882, he published his findings on tuberculosis, in which he reported the causative agent of the disease to be the slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis. He published the discovery as "Die Ätiologie der Tuberkulose" (The Etiology of Tuberculosis), and presented before the German Physiological Society at Berlin on 24 March 1882. Koch said,
When the cover-glasses were exposed to this staining fluid [methylene blue mixed with potassium hydroxide] for 24 hours, very fine rod-like forms became apparent in the tubercular mass for the first time, having, as further observations showed, the power of multiplication and of spore formation and hence belonging to the same group of organisms as the anthrax bacillus... Microscopic examination then showed that only the previously blue-stained cell nuclei and detritus became brown, while the tubercle bacilli remained a beautiful blue.
There was no particular reaction to this announcement. Eminent scientists such as Rudolf Virchow remained skeptical. Virchow clung to his theory that all diseases are due to faulty cellular activities. On the other hand, Paul Ehrlich later recollected that this moment was his "single greatest scientific experience." Koch expanded the report and published under the same title as a booklet in 1884, in which he concluded that the discovery of tuberculosis bacterium fulfilled the three principles, eventually known as Koch's postulates, which were formulated by his assistant Friedrich Loeffler in 1883, saying:
All these factors together allow me to conclude that the bacilli present in the tuberculous lesions do not only accompany tuberculosis, but rather cause it. These bacilli are the true agents of tuberculosis.
In August 1883, the German government sent a medical team led by Koch to Alexandria, Egypt, to investigate a cholera epidemic there. Koch soon found that the intestinal mucosa of people who died of cholera always had bacterial infection, yet could not confirm whether the bacteria were the causative pathogens. As the outbreak in Egypt declined, he was transferred to Calcutta (now Kolkata) India, where there was a more severe outbreak. He soon found that the river Ganges was the source of cholera. He performed autopsies of almost 100 bodies, and found in each bacterial infection. He identified the same bacteria from water tanks, linking the source of the infection. He isolated the bacterium in pure culture on 7 January 1884. He subsequently confirmed that the bacterium was a new species, and described as "a little bent, like a comma." His experiment using fresh blood samples indicated that the bacterium could kill red blood cells, and he hypothesized that some sort of poison was used by the bacterium to cause the disease. In 1959, Indian scientist Sambhu Nath De discovered this poison, the cholera toxin. Koch reported his discovery to the German Secretary of State for the Interior on 2 February, and published it in the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift (German Medical Weekly) the following month.
Although Koch was convinced that the bacterium was the cholera pathogen, he could not entirely establish a critical evidence the bacterium produced the symptoms in healthy subjects (following Koch's postulates). His experiment on animals using his pure bacteria culture did not cause the disease, and correctly explained that animals are immune to human pathogen. The bacterium was then known as "the comma bacillus", and scientifically as Bacillus comma. It was later realised that the bacterium was already described by an Italian physician Filippo Pacini in 1854, and was also observed by the Catalan physician Joaquim Balcells i Pascual around the same time. But they failed to identify the bacterium as the causative agent of cholera. Koch's colleague Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer correctly identified the comma bacillus as Pacini's vibrioni and renamed it as Vibrio cholera in 1896.
Koch gave much of his research attention on tuberculosis throughout his career. After medical expeditions to various parts of the world, he again focussed on tuberculosis from the mid-1880s. By that time the Imperial Health Office was carrying out a project for disinfection of sputum of tuberculosis patients. Koch experimented with arsenic and creosote as possible disinfectants. These chemicals and other available drugs did not work. His report in 1883 also mentioned a failed experiment on an attempt to make tuberculosis vaccine. By 1888, Koch turned his attention to synthetic dyes as antibacterial chemicals. He developed a method for examining antibacterial activity by mixing the gelatin-based culture media with a yellow dye, auramin. His notebook indicates that by February 1890, he tested hundreds of compounds. In one of such tests, he found that an extract from the tuberculosis bacterium culture dissolved in glycerine could cure tuberculosis in guinea pigs. Based on a series of experiments from April to July 1891, he could conclude that the extract did not kill the tuberculosis bacterium, but destroyed (by necrosis) the infected tissues, thereby depriving bacterial growth. He made a vague announcement in August 1890 at the Tenth International Medical Congress in Berlin, saying,
In a communication which I made a few months ago to the International Medical Congress [in London in 1881], I described a substance of which the result is to make laboratory animals insensitive to inoculation of tubercle bacilli, and in the case of already infected animals, to bring the tuberculous process to a halt. I can tell […] that much, that guinea pigs, which are highly susceptible to the disease [tuberculosis], no longer react upon inoculation with tubercle virus [bacterium] when treated with that substance and that in guinea pigs, which are sick (with tuberculosis), the pathological process can be brought to a complete standstill.
By November 1890, Koch was able to show that the extract was effective in humans as well. Many patients and doctors went to Berlin to get Koch's remedy. But his experiments showed that tuberculosis infected guinea pigs developed severe symptoms when the substance was inoculated. The severity was more so in humans. This development of severe immune response, which is now known to be due to hypersensitivity, is known as the "Koch phenomenon." The chemical nature was not known, and among several independent experiments done by the next year, only his son-in-law, Eduard Pfuhl, was able to reproduce similar results. It nevertheless became a medical sensation, and the unknown substance was referred to as "Koch's Lymph." Koch published his experiments in the 15 January 1891 issue of Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, and The British Medical Journal immediately published the English version simultaneously. The English version was also reproduced in Nature, and The Lancet in the same month. The Lancet presented it as "glad tidings of great joy." Koch simply referred to the medication as "brownish, transparent fluid." Josephs Pohl-Pincus had used the name tuberculin in 1844 for tuberculosis culture media, and Koch subsequently adopted as "tuberkulin."
The first report on the clinical trial in 1891 was disappointing. By then 1061 patients with tuberculosis of internal organs and of 708 patients with tuberculosis of external tissues were given the treatment. An attempt to use tuberculin as a therapeutic drug is regarded as Koch's "greatest failure." With it his reputation greatly waned. But he devoted the rest of his life trying to make tuberculin as a usable medication. His discovery was not a total failure, the substance is today used for hypersensitivity test for tuberculosis patients.
Koch observed the phenomenon of acquired immunity. On 26 December 1900, he arrived as part of an expedition to German New Guinea, which was then a protectorate of the German Reich. Koch serially examined the Papuan people, the indigenous inhabitants, and their blood samples and noticed they contained Plasmodium parasites, the cause of malaria, but their bouts of malaria were mild or could not even be noticed, i.e. were subclinical. On the contrary, German settlers and Chinese workers, who had been brought to New Guinea, fell sick immediately. The longer they had stayed in the country, however, the more they too seemed to develop a resistance against it.
During his time as government advisor, Koch published a report on how he discovered and experimentally showed tuberculosis bacterium as the pathogen of tuberculosis. He described the importance of pure cultures in isolating disease-causing organisms and explained the necessary steps to obtain these cultures, methods which are summarized in Koch's four postulates. Koch's discovery of the causative agent of anthrax led to the formation of a generic set of postulates which can be used in the determination of the cause of most infectious diseases. These postulates, which not only outlined a method for linking cause and effect of an infectious disease but also established the significance of laboratory culture of infectious agents, became the "gold standard" in infectious diseases.
Although Koch worked out the principles, he did not formulate the postulates, which were introduced by his assistant Friedrich Loeffler. Loeffler, reporting his discovery of diphtheria bacillus in 1883, stated three postulates as follows:
The fourth postulate was added by an American plant pathologist Erwin Frink Smith in 1905, and is stated as:
In July 1867, Koch married Emma (Emmy) Adolfine Josephine Fraatz, and the two had a daughter, Gertrude, in 1868. Their marriage ended after 26 years in 1893, and later that same year, he married actress Hedwig Freiberg (1872–1945).
On 9 April 1910, Koch suffered a heart attack and never made a complete recovery. On 27 May, three days after giving a lecture on his tuberculosis research at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Koch died in Baden-Baden at the age of 66. Following his death, the Institute named its establishment after him in his honour. He was irreligious.
Koch was made a Knight Grand Cross in the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle on 19 November 1890, and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1897. In 1905, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis." In 1906, research on tuberculosis and tropical diseases won him the Order Pour le Merite and in 1908, the Robert Koch Medal, established to honour the greatest living physicians. Emperor Wilhelm I awarded him the Order of the Crown, 100,000 marks and appointment as Privy Imperial Councillor, Surgeon-General of Health Service, and Fellow of the Science Senate of Kaiser Wilhelm Society.
Koch established the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin 1891. After his death it was renamed Robert Koch Institute in his honour.
The World Health Organization observes "World Tuberculosis Day" every 24 March since 1982 to commemorate the day Koch discovered tuberculosis bacterium.
Koch's name is one of 23 from the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine featured on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine building in Keppel Street, Bloomsbury.
A large marble statue of Koch stands in a small park known as Robert Koch Platz, just north of the Charity Hospital, in the Mitte section of Berlin. His life was the subject of a 1939 German produced motion picture that featured Oscar winning actor Emil Jannings in the title role. On 10 December 2017, Google showed a Doodle in celebration of Koch's birthday.
Koch and his relationship to Paul Ehrlich, who developed a mechanism to diagnose TB, were portrayed in the 1940 movie Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet.
At their first meeting at the Seventh International Medical Congress in London in August 1881, Koch and Pasteur were friendly towards each other. But the rest of their careers followed with scientific disputes. The conflict started when Koch interpreted his discovery of anthrax bacillus in 1876 as causality, that is, the germ caused the anthrax infections. Although his postulates were not yet formulated, he did not establish the bacterium as the cause of the disease: it was an inference. Pasteur therefore argued that Koch's discovery was not the full proof of causality, but Pasteur's anthrax vaccine developed in 1881 was. Koch published his conclusion in 1881 with a statement: "anthrax never occurs without viable anthrax bacilli or spores. In my opinion no more conclusive proof can be given that anthrax bacilli are the true and only cause of anthrax," and that vaccination such as claimed by Pasteur would be impossible. To prove his vaccine, Pasteur sent his assistant Louis Thuillier to Germany for demonstration and disproved Koch's idea. They had a heated public debate at the International Congress for Hygiene in Geneva in 1882, where Koch criticised Pasteur's methods as "unreliable," and claimed they "are false and [as such ] they inevitably lead to false conclusions." Koch later continued to attack Pasteur, saying, "Pasteur is not a physician, and one cannot expect him to make sound judgments about pathological processes and the symptoms of disease."
When Koch discovered tuberculin in 1890 as a medication for tuberculosis, he kept the experiment secret and avoided disclosing the source. It was only after a year under public pressure that he publicly announced the experiment and the source. Clinical trials with tuberculin were disastrous and complete failures. Rudolf Virchow's autopsy report of 21 subjects treated with tuberculin to the Berlin Medical Society on 7 January 1891 revealed that instead of healing tuberculosis, the subjects died because of the treatment. One week later, Koch publicised that the drug was a glycerine extract of a pure cultivation of the tuberculosis bacilli. The German official report in late 1891 declared that tuberculosis was not cured with tuberculin. From this moment onwards, Koch's prestige fell apart. The reason for his initial secrecy was due to an ambition for monetary benefits for the new drug, and with that establishment of his own research institute. Since 1885, he had tried to leave government service and create an independent state-run institute of his own. Following the disappointment, he was released from the University of Berlin and forced to work as Director of the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases, a newly established institute, in 1891. He was prohibited from working on tuberculin and from claim for patent rights in any of his subsequent works.
Koch initially believed that human (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and cattle tuberculosis bacilli (now called Mycobacterium bovis) were different pathogens when he made the discovery in 1882. Two years later, he revoked that position and asserted that the two bacilli were the same type. This later assumption was taken as a fact in veterinary practice. Based on it, legislations were made in US for inspection of meat and milk. In 1898, an American veterinarian Theobald Smith published a detailed comparative study and found that the tuberculosis bacteria are different based on their structure, growth patterns, and pathogenicity. In addition he also discovered that there were variations in each type. In his conclusion, he made two important points:
By that time, there was evidence that cattle tuberculosis was transmitted to humans through meat and milk. Upon these reports, Koch conceded that the two bacilli were different but still advocated that cattle tuberculosis was of no health concern. Speaking at the Third International Congress on Tuberculosis, held in London in July 1901, he said that cattle tuberculosis is not dangerous to humans and there is no need for medical attention. He said, "I therefore consider it unnecessary to take any measures against this form of TB. The fight against TB clearly has to concentrate on the human bacillus." Chair of the congress, Joseph Lister reprimanded Koch and explained the medical evidences of cattle tuberculosis in humans.
The Nobel Committee selected the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to be awarded for the discovery of the transmission of malaria. But it could not make the final decision on whom to give it to — the British surgeon Ronald Ross or the Italian biologist Giovanni Battista Grassi. Ross had discovered that the human malarial parasite was carried by certain mosquitoes in 1897, and the next year that bird malaria could be transmitted from infected to healthy birds by the bite of a mosquito. Grassi had discovered Plasmodium vivax and the bird malaria parasite, and towards the end of 1898 the transmission of Plasmodium falciparum between humans through mosquitoes Anopheles claviger. To the surprise of the Nobel Committee, the two nominees exchanged polemic arguments against each other publicly justifying the importance of their own works. Robert Koch was then appointed as a "neutral arbitrator" to make the final decision. To his disadvantage, Grassi had criticised Koch on his malaria research in 1898 during an investigation of the epidemic, while Ross had established a cordial relationship with Koch. Ross was selected for the award, as Koch "threw the full weight of his considerable authority in insisting that Grassi did not deserve the honor." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch (English: /kɒx/ KOKH, German: [ˈʁoːbɛʁt ˈkɔx] ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he is regarded as one of the main founders of modern bacteriology. As such he is popularly nicknamed the father of microbiology (with Louis Pasteur), and as the father of medical bacteriology. His discovery of the anthrax bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) in 1876 is considered as the birth of modern bacteriology. Koch used his discoveries to establish that germs \"could cause a specific disease\" and directly provided proofs for that germ theory of diseases, therefore creating the scientific basis of public health, saving millions of lives. For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "While working as a private physician, Koch developed many innovative techniques in microbiology. He was the first to use the oil immersion lens, condenser, and microphotography in microscopy. His invention of the bacterial culture method using agar and glass plates (later developed as the Petri dish by his assistant Julius Richard Petri) made him the first to grow bacteria in the laboratory. In appreciation of his work, he was appointed to government advisor at the Imperial Health Office in 1880, promoted to a senior executive position (Geheimer Regierungsrat) in 1882, Director of Hygienic Institute and Chair (Professor of hygiene) of the Faculty of Medicine at Berlin University in 1885, and the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases (later renamed Robert Koch Institute after his death) in 1891.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The methods Koch used in bacteriology led to establishment of a medical concept known as Koch's postulates, four generalized medical principles to ascertain the relationship of pathogens with specific diseases. The concept is still in use in most situations and influences subsequent epidemiological principles such as the Bradford Hill criteria. A major controversy followed when Koch discovered tuberculin as a medication for tuberculosis which was proven to be ineffective, but developed for diagnosis of tuberculosis after his death. For his research on tuberculosis, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905. The day he announced the discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, 24 March 1882, has been observed by the World Health Organization as \"World Tuberculosis Day\" every year since 1982.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Koch was born in Clausthal, Germany, on 11 December 1843, to Hermann Koch (1814–1877) and Mathilde Julie Henriette (née Biewend; 1818–1871). His father was a mining engineer. He was the third of thirteen siblings. He excelled academically from an early age. Before entering school in 1848, he had taught himself how to read and write. He completed secondary education in 1862, having excelled in science and math.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "At the age of 19, in 1862, Koch entered the University of Göttingen to study natural science. He took up mathematics, physics and botany. He was appointed assistant in the university's Pathological Museum. After three semesters, he decided to change his area of study to medicine, as he aspired to be a physician. During his fifth semester at the medical school, Jacob Henle, an anatomist who had published a theory of contagion in 1840, asked him to participate in his research project on uterine nerve structure. This research won him a research prize from the university and enabled him to briefly study under Rudolf Virchow, who was at the time considered as \"Germany's most renowned physician.\" In his sixth semester, Koch began to research at the Physiological Institute, where he studied the secretion of succinic acid, which is a signaling molecule that is also involved in the metabolism of the mitochondria. This would eventually form the basis of his dissertation. In January 1866, he graduated from the medical school, earning honours of the highest distinction, maxima cum laude.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After graduation in 1866, Koch briefly worked as an assistant in the General Hospital of Hamburg. In October that year he moved to Idiot's Hospital of Langenhagen, near Hanover, as a general physician. In 1868, he moved to Neimegk and then to Rakwitz in 1869. As the Franco-Prussian War started in 1870, he enlisted in the German army as a volunteer surgeon in 1871 to support the war effort. He was discharged a year later and was appointed as a district physician (Kreisphysikus) in Wollstein in Prussian Posen (now Wolsztyn, Poland). As his family settled there, his wife gave him a microscope as a birthday gift. With the microscope, he set up a private laboratory and started his career in microbiology.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Koch began conducting research on microorganisms in a laboratory connected to his patient examination room. His early research in this laboratory yielded one of his major contributions to the field of microbiology, as he developed the technique of growing bacteria. Furthermore, he managed to isolate and grow selected pathogens in a pure laboratory culture. His discovery of the anthrax bacillus (later named Bacillus anthracis) hugely impressed Ferdinand Julius Cohn, professor at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław), who helped him publish the discovery in 1876. Cohn had established the Institute of Plant Physiology and invited Koch to demonstrate his new bacterium there in 1877. Koch was transferred to Breslau as district physician in 1879. A year after, he left for Berlin when he was appointed a government advisor at the Imperial Health Office, where he worked from 1880 to 1885. Following his discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, he was promoted to Geheimer Regierungsrat, a senior executive position, in June 1882.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1885, Koch received two appointments as an administrator and professor at Berlin University. He became Director of Hygienic Institute and Chair (Professor of hygiene) of the Faculty of Medicine. In 1891, he relinquished his professorship and became a director of the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases (now the Robert Koch Institute) which consisted of a clinical division and beds for the division of clinical research. For this he accepted harsh conditions. The Prussian Ministry of Health insisted after the 1890 scandal with tuberculin, which Koch had discovered and intended as a remedy for tuberculosis, that any of Koch's inventions would unconditionally belong to the government and he would not be compensated. Koch lost the right to apply for patent protection. In 1906, he moved to East Africa to research a cure for trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). He established the Bugula research camp where up to 1000 people a day were treated with the experimental drug Atoxyl.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Robert Koch made two important developments in microscopy; he was the first to use an oil immersion lens and a condenser that enabled smaller objects to be seen. In addition, he was also the first to effectively use photography (microphotography) for microscopic observation. He introduced the \"bedrock methods\" of bacterial staining using methylene blue and Bismarck (Vesuvin) brown dye. In an attempt to grow bacteria, Koch began to use solid nutrients such as potato slices. Through these initial experiments, Koch observed individual colonies of identical, pure cells. He found that potato slices were not suitable media for all organisms, and later began to use nutrient solutions with gelatin. However, he soon realized that gelatin, like potato slices, was not the optimal medium for bacterial growth, as it did not remain solid at 37 °C, the ideal temperature for growth of most human pathogens. And also many bacteria can hydrolyze gelatin making it a liquid. As suggested to him by his post-doctoral assistant Walther Hesse, who got the idea from his wife Fanny Hesse, in 1881, Koch started using agar to grow and isolate pure cultures. Agar is a polysaccharide that remains solid at 37 °C, is not degraded by most bacteria, and results in a stable transparent medium.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Koch's booklet published in 1881 titled \"Zur Untersuchung von Pathogenen Organismen\" (Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms) has been known as the \"Bible of Bacteriology.\" In it he described a novel method of using glass slide with agar to grow bacteria. The method involved pouring a liquid agar on to the glass slide and then spreading a thin layer of gelatin over. The gelatin made the culture medium solidify, in which bacterial samples could be spread uniformly. The whole bacterial culture was then put in a glass plate together with a small wet paper. Koch named this container as feuchte Kammer (moist chamber). The typical chamber was a circular glass dish 20 cm in diameter and 5 cm in height and had a lid to prevent contamination. The glass plate and the transparent culture media made observation of the bacterial growth easy.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Koch publicly demonstrated his plating method at the Seventh International Medical Congress in London in August 1881. There, Louis Pasteur exclaimed, \"C'est un grand progrès, Monsieur!\" (\"What a great progress, Sir!\") It was using Koch's microscopy and agar-plate culture method that his students discovered new bacteria. Friedrich Loeffler discovered the bacteria of glanders (Burkholderia mallei) in 1882 and diphtheria (Corynebacterium diphtheriae) in 1884; and Georg Theodor August Gaffky, the bacterium of typhoid (Salmonella enterica) in 1884. Koch's assistant Julius Richard Petri developed an improved method and published it in 1887 as \"Eine kleine Modification des Koch’schen Plattenverfahrens\" (A minor modification of the plating technique of Koch). The culture plate was given an eponymous name Petri dish. It is often asserted that Petri developed a new culture plate, but this was not so. He simply discarded the use of glass plate and instead used the circular glass dish directly, not just as moist chamber, but as the main culture container. This further reduced chances of contaminations. It would also have been appropriate if the name \"Koch dish\" had been given.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Robert Koch is widely known for his work with anthrax, discovering the causative agent of the fatal disease to be Bacillus anthracis. He published the discovery in a booklet as \"Die Ätiologie der Milzbrand-Krankheit, Begründet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus Anthracis\" (The Etiology of Anthrax Disease, Based on the Developmental History of Bacillus Anthracis) in 1876 while working at in Wöllstein. His publication in 1877 on the structure of anthrax bacterium marked the first photography of a bacterium. He discovered the formation of spores in anthrax bacteria, which could remain dormant under specific conditions. However, under optimal conditions, the spores were activated and caused disease. To determine this causative agent, he dry-fixed bacterial cultures onto glass slides, used dyes to stain the cultures, and observed them through a microscope. His work with anthrax is notable in that he was the first to link a specific microorganism with a specific disease, rejecting the idea of spontaneous generation and supporting the germ theory of disease.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During his time as the government advisor with the Imperial Health Agency in Berlin in the 1880s, Koch became interested in tuberculosis research. At the time, it was widely believed that tuberculosis was an inherited disease. However Koch was convinced that the disease was caused by a bacterium and was infectious. In 1882, he published his findings on tuberculosis, in which he reported the causative agent of the disease to be the slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis. He published the discovery as \"Die Ätiologie der Tuberkulose\" (The Etiology of Tuberculosis), and presented before the German Physiological Society at Berlin on 24 March 1882. Koch said,",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When the cover-glasses were exposed to this staining fluid [methylene blue mixed with potassium hydroxide] for 24 hours, very fine rod-like forms became apparent in the tubercular mass for the first time, having, as further observations showed, the power of multiplication and of spore formation and hence belonging to the same group of organisms as the anthrax bacillus... Microscopic examination then showed that only the previously blue-stained cell nuclei and detritus became brown, while the tubercle bacilli remained a beautiful blue.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "There was no particular reaction to this announcement. Eminent scientists such as Rudolf Virchow remained skeptical. Virchow clung to his theory that all diseases are due to faulty cellular activities. On the other hand, Paul Ehrlich later recollected that this moment was his \"single greatest scientific experience.\" Koch expanded the report and published under the same title as a booklet in 1884, in which he concluded that the discovery of tuberculosis bacterium fulfilled the three principles, eventually known as Koch's postulates, which were formulated by his assistant Friedrich Loeffler in 1883, saying:",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "All these factors together allow me to conclude that the bacilli present in the tuberculous lesions do not only accompany tuberculosis, but rather cause it. These bacilli are the true agents of tuberculosis.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In August 1883, the German government sent a medical team led by Koch to Alexandria, Egypt, to investigate a cholera epidemic there. Koch soon found that the intestinal mucosa of people who died of cholera always had bacterial infection, yet could not confirm whether the bacteria were the causative pathogens. As the outbreak in Egypt declined, he was transferred to Calcutta (now Kolkata) India, where there was a more severe outbreak. He soon found that the river Ganges was the source of cholera. He performed autopsies of almost 100 bodies, and found in each bacterial infection. He identified the same bacteria from water tanks, linking the source of the infection. He isolated the bacterium in pure culture on 7 January 1884. He subsequently confirmed that the bacterium was a new species, and described as \"a little bent, like a comma.\" His experiment using fresh blood samples indicated that the bacterium could kill red blood cells, and he hypothesized that some sort of poison was used by the bacterium to cause the disease. In 1959, Indian scientist Sambhu Nath De discovered this poison, the cholera toxin. Koch reported his discovery to the German Secretary of State for the Interior on 2 February, and published it in the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift (German Medical Weekly) the following month.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Although Koch was convinced that the bacterium was the cholera pathogen, he could not entirely establish a critical evidence the bacterium produced the symptoms in healthy subjects (following Koch's postulates). His experiment on animals using his pure bacteria culture did not cause the disease, and correctly explained that animals are immune to human pathogen. The bacterium was then known as \"the comma bacillus\", and scientifically as Bacillus comma. It was later realised that the bacterium was already described by an Italian physician Filippo Pacini in 1854, and was also observed by the Catalan physician Joaquim Balcells i Pascual around the same time. But they failed to identify the bacterium as the causative agent of cholera. Koch's colleague Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer correctly identified the comma bacillus as Pacini's vibrioni and renamed it as Vibrio cholera in 1896.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Koch gave much of his research attention on tuberculosis throughout his career. After medical expeditions to various parts of the world, he again focussed on tuberculosis from the mid-1880s. By that time the Imperial Health Office was carrying out a project for disinfection of sputum of tuberculosis patients. Koch experimented with arsenic and creosote as possible disinfectants. These chemicals and other available drugs did not work. His report in 1883 also mentioned a failed experiment on an attempt to make tuberculosis vaccine. By 1888, Koch turned his attention to synthetic dyes as antibacterial chemicals. He developed a method for examining antibacterial activity by mixing the gelatin-based culture media with a yellow dye, auramin. His notebook indicates that by February 1890, he tested hundreds of compounds. In one of such tests, he found that an extract from the tuberculosis bacterium culture dissolved in glycerine could cure tuberculosis in guinea pigs. Based on a series of experiments from April to July 1891, he could conclude that the extract did not kill the tuberculosis bacterium, but destroyed (by necrosis) the infected tissues, thereby depriving bacterial growth. He made a vague announcement in August 1890 at the Tenth International Medical Congress in Berlin, saying,",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In a communication which I made a few months ago to the International Medical Congress [in London in 1881], I described a substance of which the result is to make laboratory animals insensitive to inoculation of tubercle bacilli, and in the case of already infected animals, to bring the tuberculous process to a halt. I can tell […] that much, that guinea pigs, which are highly susceptible to the disease [tuberculosis], no longer react upon inoculation with tubercle virus [bacterium] when treated with that substance and that in guinea pigs, which are sick (with tuberculosis), the pathological process can be brought to a complete standstill.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "By November 1890, Koch was able to show that the extract was effective in humans as well. Many patients and doctors went to Berlin to get Koch's remedy. But his experiments showed that tuberculosis infected guinea pigs developed severe symptoms when the substance was inoculated. The severity was more so in humans. This development of severe immune response, which is now known to be due to hypersensitivity, is known as the \"Koch phenomenon.\" The chemical nature was not known, and among several independent experiments done by the next year, only his son-in-law, Eduard Pfuhl, was able to reproduce similar results. It nevertheless became a medical sensation, and the unknown substance was referred to as \"Koch's Lymph.\" Koch published his experiments in the 15 January 1891 issue of Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, and The British Medical Journal immediately published the English version simultaneously. The English version was also reproduced in Nature, and The Lancet in the same month. The Lancet presented it as \"glad tidings of great joy.\" Koch simply referred to the medication as \"brownish, transparent fluid.\" Josephs Pohl-Pincus had used the name tuberculin in 1844 for tuberculosis culture media, and Koch subsequently adopted as \"tuberkulin.\"",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The first report on the clinical trial in 1891 was disappointing. By then 1061 patients with tuberculosis of internal organs and of 708 patients with tuberculosis of external tissues were given the treatment. An attempt to use tuberculin as a therapeutic drug is regarded as Koch's \"greatest failure.\" With it his reputation greatly waned. But he devoted the rest of his life trying to make tuberculin as a usable medication. His discovery was not a total failure, the substance is today used for hypersensitivity test for tuberculosis patients.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Koch observed the phenomenon of acquired immunity. On 26 December 1900, he arrived as part of an expedition to German New Guinea, which was then a protectorate of the German Reich. Koch serially examined the Papuan people, the indigenous inhabitants, and their blood samples and noticed they contained Plasmodium parasites, the cause of malaria, but their bouts of malaria were mild or could not even be noticed, i.e. were subclinical. On the contrary, German settlers and Chinese workers, who had been brought to New Guinea, fell sick immediately. The longer they had stayed in the country, however, the more they too seemed to develop a resistance against it.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During his time as government advisor, Koch published a report on how he discovered and experimentally showed tuberculosis bacterium as the pathogen of tuberculosis. He described the importance of pure cultures in isolating disease-causing organisms and explained the necessary steps to obtain these cultures, methods which are summarized in Koch's four postulates. Koch's discovery of the causative agent of anthrax led to the formation of a generic set of postulates which can be used in the determination of the cause of most infectious diseases. These postulates, which not only outlined a method for linking cause and effect of an infectious disease but also established the significance of laboratory culture of infectious agents, became the \"gold standard\" in infectious diseases.",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Although Koch worked out the principles, he did not formulate the postulates, which were introduced by his assistant Friedrich Loeffler. Loeffler, reporting his discovery of diphtheria bacillus in 1883, stated three postulates as follows:",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The fourth postulate was added by an American plant pathologist Erwin Frink Smith in 1905, and is stated as:",
"title": "Scientific contributions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In July 1867, Koch married Emma (Emmy) Adolfine Josephine Fraatz, and the two had a daughter, Gertrude, in 1868. Their marriage ended after 26 years in 1893, and later that same year, he married actress Hedwig Freiberg (1872–1945).",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On 9 April 1910, Koch suffered a heart attack and never made a complete recovery. On 27 May, three days after giving a lecture on his tuberculosis research at the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Koch died in Baden-Baden at the age of 66. Following his death, the Institute named its establishment after him in his honour. He was irreligious.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Koch was made a Knight Grand Cross in the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle on 19 November 1890, and was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1897. In 1905, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine \"for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis.\" In 1906, research on tuberculosis and tropical diseases won him the Order Pour le Merite and in 1908, the Robert Koch Medal, established to honour the greatest living physicians. Emperor Wilhelm I awarded him the Order of the Crown, 100,000 marks and appointment as Privy Imperial Councillor, Surgeon-General of Health Service, and Fellow of the Science Senate of Kaiser Wilhelm Society.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Koch established the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin 1891. After his death it was renamed Robert Koch Institute in his honour.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The World Health Organization observes \"World Tuberculosis Day\" every 24 March since 1982 to commemorate the day Koch discovered tuberculosis bacterium.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Koch's name is one of 23 from the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine featured on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine building in Keppel Street, Bloomsbury.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "A large marble statue of Koch stands in a small park known as Robert Koch Platz, just north of the Charity Hospital, in the Mitte section of Berlin. His life was the subject of a 1939 German produced motion picture that featured Oscar winning actor Emil Jannings in the title role. On 10 December 2017, Google showed a Doodle in celebration of Koch's birthday.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Koch and his relationship to Paul Ehrlich, who developed a mechanism to diagnose TB, were portrayed in the 1940 movie Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "At their first meeting at the Seventh International Medical Congress in London in August 1881, Koch and Pasteur were friendly towards each other. But the rest of their careers followed with scientific disputes. The conflict started when Koch interpreted his discovery of anthrax bacillus in 1876 as causality, that is, the germ caused the anthrax infections. Although his postulates were not yet formulated, he did not establish the bacterium as the cause of the disease: it was an inference. Pasteur therefore argued that Koch's discovery was not the full proof of causality, but Pasteur's anthrax vaccine developed in 1881 was. Koch published his conclusion in 1881 with a statement: \"anthrax never occurs without viable anthrax bacilli or spores. In my opinion no more conclusive proof can be given that anthrax bacilli are the true and only cause of anthrax,\" and that vaccination such as claimed by Pasteur would be impossible. To prove his vaccine, Pasteur sent his assistant Louis Thuillier to Germany for demonstration and disproved Koch's idea. They had a heated public debate at the International Congress for Hygiene in Geneva in 1882, where Koch criticised Pasteur's methods as \"unreliable,\" and claimed they \"are false and [as such ] they inevitably lead to false conclusions.\" Koch later continued to attack Pasteur, saying, \"Pasteur is not a physician, and one cannot expect him to make sound judgments about pathological processes and the symptoms of disease.\"",
"title": "Controversies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "When Koch discovered tuberculin in 1890 as a medication for tuberculosis, he kept the experiment secret and avoided disclosing the source. It was only after a year under public pressure that he publicly announced the experiment and the source. Clinical trials with tuberculin were disastrous and complete failures. Rudolf Virchow's autopsy report of 21 subjects treated with tuberculin to the Berlin Medical Society on 7 January 1891 revealed that instead of healing tuberculosis, the subjects died because of the treatment. One week later, Koch publicised that the drug was a glycerine extract of a pure cultivation of the tuberculosis bacilli. The German official report in late 1891 declared that tuberculosis was not cured with tuberculin. From this moment onwards, Koch's prestige fell apart. The reason for his initial secrecy was due to an ambition for monetary benefits for the new drug, and with that establishment of his own research institute. Since 1885, he had tried to leave government service and create an independent state-run institute of his own. Following the disappointment, he was released from the University of Berlin and forced to work as Director of the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases, a newly established institute, in 1891. He was prohibited from working on tuberculin and from claim for patent rights in any of his subsequent works.",
"title": "Controversies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Koch initially believed that human (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and cattle tuberculosis bacilli (now called Mycobacterium bovis) were different pathogens when he made the discovery in 1882. Two years later, he revoked that position and asserted that the two bacilli were the same type. This later assumption was taken as a fact in veterinary practice. Based on it, legislations were made in US for inspection of meat and milk. In 1898, an American veterinarian Theobald Smith published a detailed comparative study and found that the tuberculosis bacteria are different based on their structure, growth patterns, and pathogenicity. In addition he also discovered that there were variations in each type. In his conclusion, he made two important points:",
"title": "Controversies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "By that time, there was evidence that cattle tuberculosis was transmitted to humans through meat and milk. Upon these reports, Koch conceded that the two bacilli were different but still advocated that cattle tuberculosis was of no health concern. Speaking at the Third International Congress on Tuberculosis, held in London in July 1901, he said that cattle tuberculosis is not dangerous to humans and there is no need for medical attention. He said, \"I therefore consider it unnecessary to take any measures against this form of TB. The fight against TB clearly has to concentrate on the human bacillus.\" Chair of the congress, Joseph Lister reprimanded Koch and explained the medical evidences of cattle tuberculosis in humans.",
"title": "Controversies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Nobel Committee selected the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to be awarded for the discovery of the transmission of malaria. But it could not make the final decision on whom to give it to — the British surgeon Ronald Ross or the Italian biologist Giovanni Battista Grassi. Ross had discovered that the human malarial parasite was carried by certain mosquitoes in 1897, and the next year that bird malaria could be transmitted from infected to healthy birds by the bite of a mosquito. Grassi had discovered Plasmodium vivax and the bird malaria parasite, and towards the end of 1898 the transmission of Plasmodium falciparum between humans through mosquitoes Anopheles claviger. To the surprise of the Nobel Committee, the two nominees exchanged polemic arguments against each other publicly justifying the importance of their own works. Robert Koch was then appointed as a \"neutral arbitrator\" to make the final decision. To his disadvantage, Grassi had criticised Koch on his malaria research in 1898 during an investigation of the epidemic, while Ross had established a cordial relationship with Koch. Ross was selected for the award, as Koch \"threw the full weight of his considerable authority in insisting that Grassi did not deserve the honor.\"",
"title": "Controversies"
}
]
| Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he is regarded as one of the main founders of modern bacteriology. As such he is popularly nicknamed the father of microbiology, and as the father of medical bacteriology. His discovery of the anthrax bacterium in 1876 is considered as the birth of modern bacteriology. Koch used his discoveries to establish that germs "could cause a specific disease" and directly provided proofs for that germ theory of diseases, therefore creating the scientific basis of public health, saving millions of lives. For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine. While working as a private physician, Koch developed many innovative techniques in microbiology. He was the first to use the oil immersion lens, condenser, and microphotography in microscopy. His invention of the bacterial culture method using agar and glass plates made him the first to grow bacteria in the laboratory. In appreciation of his work, he was appointed to government advisor at the Imperial Health Office in 1880, promoted to a senior executive position in 1882, Director of Hygienic Institute and Chair of the Faculty of Medicine at Berlin University in 1885, and the Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases in 1891. The methods Koch used in bacteriology led to establishment of a medical concept known as Koch's postulates, four generalized medical principles to ascertain the relationship of pathogens with specific diseases. The concept is still in use in most situations and influences subsequent epidemiological principles such as the Bradford Hill criteria. A major controversy followed when Koch discovered tuberculin as a medication for tuberculosis which was proven to be ineffective, but developed for diagnosis of tuberculosis after his death. For his research on tuberculosis, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905. The day he announced the discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium, 24 March 1882, has been observed by the World Health Organization as "World Tuberculosis Day" every year since 1982. | 2001-09-14T21:41:40Z | 2023-12-20T09:57:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Koch |
13,726 | Hogshead | A hogshead (abbreviated "hhd", plural "hhds") is a large cask of liquid (or, less often, of a food commodity). More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either imperial or US customary measures, primarily applied to alcoholic beverages, such as wine, ale, or cider.
English philologist Walter William Skeat (1835–1912) noted the origin is to be found in the name for a cask or liquid measure appearing in various forms in Germanic languages, in Dutch oxhooft (modern okshoofd), Danish oxehoved, Old Swedish oxhuvud, etc. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 conjectured that the word should therefore be "oxhead", "hogshead" being a mere corruption.
A tobacco hogshead was used in British and American colonial times to transport and store tobacco. It was a very large wooden barrel. A standardized hogshead measured 48 inches (1.22 m) long and 30 inches (76.20 cm) in diameter at the head (at least 550 L or 121 imp gal or 145 US gal, depending on the width in the middle). Fully packed with tobacco, it weighed about 1,000 pounds (454 kg).
A hogshead in Britain contains about 300 L (66 imp gal; 79 US gal).
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that the hogshead was first standardized by an act of Parliament (2 Hen. 6. c. 14) in 1423, though the standards continued to vary by locality and content. For example, the OED cites an 1897 edition of Whitaker's Almanack, which specified the gallons of wine in a hogshead varying most particularly across fortified wines: claret/Madeira 46 imperial gallons (55 US gal; 209 L), port 57 imperial gallons (68 US gal; 259 L), sherry 54 imperial gallons (65 US gal; 245 L). The American Heritage Dictionary claims that a hogshead can consist of anything from (presumably) 62.5 to 140 US gallons (52 to 117 imp gal; 237 to 530 L). A hogshead of Madeira wine was approximately equal to 45–48 gallons (0.205–0.218 m). A hogshead of brandy was approximately equal to 56–61 gallons (0.255–0.277) m.
Eventually, a hogshead of wine came to be 63 US gallons (52.5 imp gal; 238.5 L), while a hogshead of beer or ale is 54 gallons (250 L if old beer/ale gallons, 245 L if imperial).
A hogshead was also used as unit of measurement for sugar in Louisiana for most of the 19th century. Plantations were listed in sugar schedules by the number of hogsheads of sugar or molasses produced. Used for sugar in the 18th & 19th centuries in the British West Indies, a hogshead weighed on average 16 cwt / 812kg. A hogshead was also used for the measurement of herring fished for sardines in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick and Cornwall. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hogshead (abbreviated \"hhd\", plural \"hhds\") is a large cask of liquid (or, less often, of a food commodity). More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either imperial or US customary measures, primarily applied to alcoholic beverages, such as wine, ale, or cider.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "English philologist Walter William Skeat (1835–1912) noted the origin is to be found in the name for a cask or liquid measure appearing in various forms in Germanic languages, in Dutch oxhooft (modern okshoofd), Danish oxehoved, Old Swedish oxhuvud, etc. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 conjectured that the word should therefore be \"oxhead\", \"hogshead\" being a mere corruption.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A tobacco hogshead was used in British and American colonial times to transport and store tobacco. It was a very large wooden barrel. A standardized hogshead measured 48 inches (1.22 m) long and 30 inches (76.20 cm) in diameter at the head (at least 550 L or 121 imp gal or 145 US gal, depending on the width in the middle). Fully packed with tobacco, it weighed about 1,000 pounds (454 kg).",
"title": "Varieties and standardisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "A hogshead in Britain contains about 300 L (66 imp gal; 79 US gal).",
"title": "Varieties and standardisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that the hogshead was first standardized by an act of Parliament (2 Hen. 6. c. 14) in 1423, though the standards continued to vary by locality and content. For example, the OED cites an 1897 edition of Whitaker's Almanack, which specified the gallons of wine in a hogshead varying most particularly across fortified wines: claret/Madeira 46 imperial gallons (55 US gal; 209 L), port 57 imperial gallons (68 US gal; 259 L), sherry 54 imperial gallons (65 US gal; 245 L). The American Heritage Dictionary claims that a hogshead can consist of anything from (presumably) 62.5 to 140 US gallons (52 to 117 imp gal; 237 to 530 L). A hogshead of Madeira wine was approximately equal to 45–48 gallons (0.205–0.218 m). A hogshead of brandy was approximately equal to 56–61 gallons (0.255–0.277) m.",
"title": "Varieties and standardisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Eventually, a hogshead of wine came to be 63 US gallons (52.5 imp gal; 238.5 L), while a hogshead of beer or ale is 54 gallons (250 L if old beer/ale gallons, 245 L if imperial).",
"title": "Varieties and standardisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A hogshead was also used as unit of measurement for sugar in Louisiana for most of the 19th century. Plantations were listed in sugar schedules by the number of hogsheads of sugar or molasses produced. Used for sugar in the 18th & 19th centuries in the British West Indies, a hogshead weighed on average 16 cwt / 812kg. A hogshead was also used for the measurement of herring fished for sardines in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick and Cornwall.",
"title": "Varieties and standardisation"
}
]
| A hogshead is a large cask of liquid. More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either imperial or US customary measures, primarily applied to alcoholic beverages, such as wine, ale, or cider. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-11-13T10:52:00Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead |
13,727 | Huallaga | Huallaga may refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Huallaga may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Huallaga may refer to: Locations in Peru:
Huallaga Province
Huallaga River
Huallaga Valley | 2019-12-28T19:24:54Z | [
"Template:Disambiguation"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huallaga |
|
13,729 | Honda | Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (本田技研工業株式会社, Honda Giken Kōgyō Kabushiki gaisha, lit. 'Honda Institute of Technology and Industry Company', IPA: [honda] ; /ˈhɒndə/) is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a production of 400 million by the end of 2019. It is also the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda became the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001. In 2015, Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world.
Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft, power generators, and other products. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 HondaJet, which began production in 2012. Honda has two joint-ventures in China: Dongfeng Honda and GAC Honda.
In 2013, Honda invested about 5.7% (US$6.8 billion) of its revenues into research and development. Also in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States, exporting 108,705 Honda and Acura models, while importing only 88,357.
Throughout his life, Honda's founder, Soichiro Honda (1906–1991), had an interest in automobiles. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, where he tuned cars and entered them in races. In 1937, with financing from his acquaintance Kato Shichirō, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki (Eastern Sea Precision Machine Company) to make piston rings working out of the Art Shokai garage. After initial failures, Tōkai Seiki won a contract to supply piston rings to Toyota, but lost the contract due to the poor quality of their products. After attending engineering school without graduating, and visiting factories around Japan to better understand Toyota's quality control processes known as "Five whys", by 1941 Honda was able to mass-produce piston rings acceptable to Toyota, using an automated process that could employ even unskilled wartime laborers.
Tōkai Seiki was placed under the control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (called the Ministry of Munitions after 1943) at the start of World War II, and Soichiro Honda was demoted from president to senior managing director after Toyota took a 40% stake in the company. Honda also aided the war effort by assisting other companies in automating the production of military aircraft propellers. The relationships Honda cultivated with personnel at Toyota, Nakajima Aircraft Company and the Imperial Japanese Navy would be instrumental in the postwar period. A US B-29 bomber attack destroyed Tōkai Seiki's Yamashita plant in 1944, and the Itawa plant collapsed on 13 January 1945 Mikawa earthquake. Soichiro Honda sold the salvageable remains of the company to Toyota after the war for ¥450,000 and used the proceeds to found the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946.
With a staff of 12 men working in a 16 m (170 sq ft) shack, they built and sold improvised motorized bicycles, using a supply of 500 two-stroke 50 cc Tohatsu war surplus radio generator engines. When the engines ran out, Honda began building their own copy of the Tohatsu engine, and supplying these to customers to attach to their bicycles. This was the Honda A-Type, nicknamed the Bata Bata for the sound the engine made. In 1949, the Honda Technical Research Institute was liquidated for ¥1,000,000, or about US$5,000 today; these funds were used to incorporate Honda Motor Co., Ltd. At about the same time Honda hired engineer Kihachiro Kawashima, and Takeo Fujisawa who provided indispensable business and marketing expertise to complement Soichiro Honda's technical bent. The close partnership between Soichiro Honda and Fujisawa lasted until they stepped down together in October 1973.
The first complete motorcycle with both the frame and engine made by Honda was the 1949 D-Type, the first Honda to go by the name Dream. In 1961, Honda achieved its first Grand Prix victories and World Championships in the 125 cc and 250 cc categories. Honda Motor Company grew in a short time to become the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles by 1964. The first production automobile from Honda was the T360 mini pick-up truck, which went on sale in August 1963. Powered by a small 356 cc straight-4 gasoline engine, it was classified under the cheaper Kei car tax bracket. The second production car from Honda was the S500 sports car, which followed the T360 into production in October 1963. Its chain-driven rear wheels pointed to Honda's motorcycle origins.
Over the next few decades, Honda worked to expand its product line, operations and exports to numerous countries around the world. In 1986, Honda introduced the successful Acura brand to the American market in an attempt to gain ground in the luxury vehicle market. The year 1991 saw the introduction of the Honda NSX supercar, the first all-aluminum monocoque vehicle that incorporated a mid-engine V6 with variable-valve timing.
In 1990, CEO Tadashi Kume was succeeded by Nobuhiko Kawamoto. Kawamoto was selected over Shoichiro Irimajiri, who oversaw the successful establishment of Honda of America Manufacturing, Inc. in Marysville, Ohio. Irimajiri and Kawamoto shared a friendly rivalry within Honda; owing to health issues, Irimajiri would resign in 1992.
Following the death of Soichiro Honda and the departure of Irimajiri, Honda found itself quickly being outpaced in product development by other Japanese automakers and was caught off-guard by the truck and sport utility vehicle boom of the 1990s, all which took a toll on the profitability of the company. Japanese media reported in 1992 and 1993 that Honda was at serious risk of an unwanted and hostile takeover by Mitsubishi Motors, which at the time was a larger automaker by volume and was flush with profits from its successful Pajero and Diamante models.
Kawamoto acted quickly to change Honda's corporate culture, rushing through market-driven product development that resulted in recreational vehicles such as the first-generation Odyssey and the CR-V, and a refocusing away from some of the numerous sedans and coupes that were popular with the company's engineers but not with the buying public. The most shocking change to Honda came when Kawamoto ended the company's successful participation in Formula One after the 1992 season, citing costs in light of the takeover threat from Mitsubishi as well as the desire to create a more environmentally friendly company image.
The Honda Aircraft Company as established in 2006 as a wholly owned subsidiary to manufacture and sell the HondaJet family of aircraft. The first deliveries to customers began in December 2015.
On February 23, 2015, Honda announced that CEO and President Takanobu Ito would step down and be replaced by Takahiro Hachigo in June of that year; additional retirements by senior managers and directors were expected.
In October 2019, Honda was reported to be in talks with Hitachi to merge the two companies' car parts businesses, creating a components supplier with almost $17 billion in annual sales.
In January 2020, Honda announced that it would be withdrawing employees working in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 23, 2020 due to the global spread of the virus, Honda became the first major automaker with operations in the US to suspend production in its factories. It resumed automobile, engine and transmission production at its US plants on May 11, 2020.
Honda and General Motors announced in September 2020 a North American alliance to begin in 2021. According to The Detroit Free Press, "The proposed alliance will include sharing a range of vehicles, to be sold under each company’s distinct brands, as well as cooperation in purchasing, research and development, and connected services."
In 2021, Honda announced its intention to become the world's first carmaker to sell a vehicle with level 3 self-driving technology.
In March 2022, Honda announced it would develop and build electric vehicles in a joint venture with Sony. The latter is set to provide its imaging, sensing, network and other technologies while Honda would be responsible for the car manufacturing processes. The venture is set to fully launch later in 2022 with the release of first cars scheduled for 2025.
In 2023, Honda announced a deal with American car company General Motors to produce cars using a new hydrogen fuel system. The aim is to ramp up the hydrogen powered cells in their Electric vehicles as well as trucks, construction machinery, and power stations.
In 2023, Honda recalled 500,000 vehicles in the United States and Canada due to an issue with seat belts in the car not latching correctly. Among the models recalled were the 2017-2020 CR-V, the 2018 and 2019 Accord, the 2018-2020 Odyssey, the 2019 Insight, and the Acura RDX from 2019 and 2020. According to the recall, the seat belts in the front seats would break open on impact increasing the risk of injury in a crash.
On December 21, 2023, Honda announced a global recall of about 4.5 million vehicles, including 2.54 million in the U.S., over fuel pump failures, following earlier recalls in 2021 and 2020 for the same issue.
Honda is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Their shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, as well as exchanges in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, London, Paris, and Switzerland.
The company has assembly plants around the globe. These plants are located in China, the United States, Pakistan, Canada, England, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, México, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Taiwan, Perú and Argentina. As of July 2010, 89% of Honda and Acura vehicles sold in the United States were built in North American plants, up from 82.2% a year earlier. This shields profits from the yen's advance to a 15-year high against the dollar.
American Honda Motor Company is based in Torrance, California. Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) is Honda's motorsport division. Honda Canada Inc. is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, it was originally planned to be located in Richmond Hill, Ontario, but delays led them to look elsewhere. Their manufacturing division, Honda of Canada Manufacturing, is based in Alliston, Ontario. Honda has also created joint ventures around the world, such as Honda Siel Cars and Hero Honda Motorcycles in India, Guangzhou Honda and Dongfeng Honda in China, Boon Siew Honda in Malaysia and Honda Atlas in Pakistan. The company also runs a business innovation initiative called Honda Xcelerator, in order to build relationships with innovators, partner with Silicon Valley startups and entrepreneurs, and help other companies work on prototypes. Xcelerator had worked with reportedly 40 companies as of January 2019. Xcelerator and a developer studio are part of the Honda Innovations group, formed in Spring 2017 and based in Mountain View, California. Through Honda Mobilityland, Honda also operate the Suzuka Circuit and Twin Ring Motegi racing tracks.
Following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Honda announced plans to halve production at its UK plants. The decision was made to put staff at the Swindon plant on a 2-day week until the end of May as the manufacturer struggled to source supplies from Japan. It's thought around 22,500 cars were produced during this period.
For the fiscal year 2018, Honda reported earnings of US$9.534 billion, with an annual revenue of US$138.250 billion, an increase of 6.2% over the previous fiscal cycle. Honda's shares traded at over $32 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at US$50.4 billion in October 2018.
Honda's automotive manufacturing ambitions can be traced back to 1963, with the Honda T360, a Kei truck built for the Japanese market. This was followed by the two-door roadster, the Honda S500 also introduced in 1963. In 1965, Honda built a two-door commercial delivery van, named the Honda L700. Honda's first four-door sedan was not the Honda Accord, but the air-cooled, four-cylinder, gasoline-powered Honda 1300 which was introduced in 1969. The Civic was a hatchback that gained wide popularity internationally, but it wasn't the first two-door hatchback built by Honda. That was the Honda N360, a Kei car that was adapted for international sale as the N600. The Civic, which appeared in 1972 and replaced the N600 also had a smaller sibling that replaced the air-cooled N360, called the Honda Life, which was water-cooled.
The Honda Life represented Honda's efforts in competing in the kei car segment, offering sedan, delivery van and small pick-up platforms on a shared chassis. The Life Step Van had a novel approach that, while not initially a commercial success, appeared to be an influence to vehicles with the front passengers sitting behind the engine, a large cargo area with a flat roof and a liftgate installed in back, and utilizing a transversely installed engine with a front-wheel-drive powertrain.
As Honda entered into automobile manufacturing in the late 1960s where Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota and Nissan had been making cars since before WWII, Honda instilled a sense of doing things a little differently than its Japanese competitors. Its mainstay products like the Accord and Civic (with the exception of its USA-market 1993–97 Passport which was part of a vehicle exchange program with Isuzu (part of the Subaru-Isuzu joint venture)) have always employed Front-wheel drive powertrain implementation, which is currently a long-held Honda tradition. Honda also installed new technologies into their products, first as optional equipment, then later standard, like anti-lock brakes, speed-sensitive power steering, and multi-port fuel injection in the early 1980s. This desire to be the first to try new approaches is evident with the creation of the first Japanese luxury chain Acura, and was also evident with the all-aluminum, mid-engined sports car, the Honda NSX, which also introduced variable valve timing technology, which Honda calls VTEC.
The Civic family is a line of compact cars developed and manufactured by Honda. In North America, the Civic is the second-longest continuously running nameplate from a Japanese manufacturer; only its perennial rival, the Toyota Corolla, introduced in 1966, has been in production longer. The Civic, along with the Accord and Prelude, comprised Honda's vehicles sold in North America until the 1990s, when the model lineup was expanded. Having gone through several generational changes, the Civic has become larger and more upmarket, and it currently slots between the Fit and Accord.
Honda's first hybrid electric vehicle was the 1999 Insight. The Civic was first offered as a hybrid in 2001, and the Accord followed in 2004. In 2008, the company launched the Clarity, a fuel cell car.
In 2008, Honda increased global production to meet the demand for small cars and hybrids in the U.S. and emerging markets. The company shuffled U.S. production to keep factories busy and boost car output while building fewer minivans and sport utility vehicles as light truck sales fell.
Its first entrance into the pickup segment, the light-duty Ridgeline, won Truck of the Year from Motor Trend magazine in 2006. Also in 2006, the redesigned Civic won Car of the Year from the magazine, giving Honda a rare double win of Motor Trend honors.
It is reported that Honda plans to increase hybrid sales in Japan to more than 20% of its total sales in the fiscal year 2011, from 14.8% in the previous year.
Five of United States Environmental Protection Agency's top ten most fuel-efficient cars from 1984 to 2010 come from Honda, more than any other automakers. The five models are: 2000–2006 Honda Insight (53 mpg‑US or 4.4 L/100 km or 64 mpg‑imp combined), 1986–1987 Honda Civic Coupe HF (46 mpg‑US or 5.1 L/100 km or 55 mpg‑imp combined), 1994–1995 Honda Civic hatchback VX (43 mpg‑US or 5.5 L/100 km or 52 mpg‑imp combined), 2006– Honda Civic Hybrid (42 mpg‑US or 5.6 L/100 km or 50 mpg‑imp combined), and 2010– Honda Insight (41 mpg‑US or 5.7 L/100 km or 49 mpg‑imp combined). The ACEEE has also rated the Civic GX as the greenest car in America for seven consecutive years.
Honda currently builds vehicles in factories located in Japan, the United States of America, Canada, China, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Honda is the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan and has been since it started production in 1955. At its peak in 1982, Honda manufactured almost three million motorcycles annually. By 2006, this figure had been reduced to around 550,000 but was still higher than its three domestic competitors.
In 2017, India became the largest motorcycle market for Honda. In India, Honda is leading in the scooters segment, with 59% market share.
During the 1960s when it was a small manufacturer, Honda broke out of the Japanese motorcycle market and began exporting to the United States. Working with the advertising agency Grey Advertising, Honda created an innovative marketing campaign, using the slogan "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." In contrast to the prevailing negative stereotypes of motorcyclists in America as tough, antisocial rebels, this campaign suggested that Honda motorcycles were made for the everyman. The campaign was hugely successful; the ads ran for three years, and by the end of 1963 alone, Honda had sold 90,000 motorcycles.
Taking Honda's story as an archetype of the smaller manufacturer entering a new market already occupied by highly dominant competitors, the story of their market entry, and their subsequent huge success in the U.S. and around the world has been the subject of some academic controversy. Competing explanations have been advanced to explain Honda's strategy and the reasons for their success.
The first of these explanations was put forward when, in 1975, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was commissioned by the UK government to write a report explaining why and how the British motorcycle industry had been out-competed by its Japanese competitors. The report concluded that the Japanese firms, including Honda, had sought a very high scale of production (they had made a large number of motorbikes) in order to benefit from economies of scale and learning curve effects. It blamed the decline of the British motorcycle industry on the failure of British managers to invest enough in their businesses to profit from economies of scale and scope.
The second explanation was offered in 1984 by Richard Pascale, who had interviewed the Honda executives responsible for the firm's entry into the U.S. market. As opposed to the tightly focused strategy of low cost and high scale that BCG accredited to Honda, Pascale found that their entry into the U.S. market was a story of "miscalculation, serendipity, and organizational learning" – in other words, Honda's success was due to the adaptability and hard work of its staff, rather than any long-term strategy. For example, Honda's initial plan on entering the US market was to compete in large motorcycles, around 300 cc. Honda's motorcycles in this class suffered performance and reliability problems when ridden the relatively long distances of the US highways. When the team found that the scooters they were using to get themselves around their U.S. base of San Francisco attracted positive interest from consumers they fell back on selling the Super Cub instead.
The most recent school of thought on Honda's strategy was put forward by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad in 1989. Creating the concept of core competencies with Honda as an example, they argued that Honda's success was due to its focus on leadership in the technology of internal combustion engines. For example, the high power-to-weight ratio engines Honda produced for its racing bikes provided technology and expertise which was transferable into mopeds. Honda's entry into the U.S. motorcycle market during the 1960s is used as a case study for teaching introductory strategy at business schools worldwide.
Honda builds utility ATVs under models Recon, Rubicon, Rancher, Foreman and Rincon. Honda also builds sports ATVs under the models TRX 90X, TRX 250X, TRX 400x, TRX 450R and TRX 700.
Power equipment production started in 1953 with H-type engine (prior to motorcycles).
Honda power equipment reached record sales in 2007 with 6.4 million units sold annually. By 2010 (Fiscal year ended 31 March) this figure had decreased to 4.7 million units. Cumulative production of power products has exceeded 85 million units annually (as of September 2008).
Honda power equipment includes:
Honda engines powered the entire 33-car starting field of the 2010 Indianapolis 500 and for the fifth consecutive race, there were no engine-related retirements during the running of the Memorial Day Classic.
In the 1980s Honda developed the GY6 engine for use in motor scooters. Although no longer manufactured by Honda, it's still commonly used in many Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese light vehicles.
Honda, despite being known as an engine company, has never built a V8 engine for passenger vehicles. In the late 1990s, the company resisted considerable pressure from its American dealers for a V8 engine (which would have seen use in top-of-the-line Honda SUVs and Acuras), with American Honda reportedly sending one dealer a shipment of V8 beverages to silence them. Honda considered starting V8 production in the mid-2000s for larger Acura sedans, a new version of the high-end NSX sports car (which previously used DOHC V6 engines with VTEC to achieve its high power output) and possible future ventures into the American full-size truck and SUV segment for both the Acura and Honda brands, but this was canceled in late 2008, with Honda citing environmental and worldwide economic conditions as reasons for the termination of this project.
ASIMO is part of Honda's Research & Development robotics program. It's the eleventh in a line of successive builds starting in 1986 with Honda E0 moving through the ensuing Honda E series and the Honda P series. Weighing 54 kilograms and standing 130 centimeters tall, ASIMO resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack, and can walk on two feet in a manner resembling human locomotion, at up to 6 km/h (3.7 mph). ASIMO is the world's only humanoid robot able to ascend and descend stairs independently. However, human motions such as climbing stairs are difficult to mimic with a machine, which ASIMO has demonstrated by taking two plunges off a staircase.
Honda's robot ASIMO (see below) as an R&D project brings together expertise to create a robot that walks, dances and navigates steps. 2010 marks the year Honda developed a machine capable of reading a user's brainwaves to move ASIMO. The system uses a helmet covered with electroencephalography and near-infrared spectroscopy sensors that monitor electrical brainwaves and cerebral blood flow signals that alter slightly during the human thought process. The user thinks of one of the limited number of gestures it wants from the robot, which has been fitted with a Brain-Machine Interface.
Honda has also pioneered new technology in its HA-420 HondaJet, manufactured by its subsidiary Honda Aircraft Company, which allows new levels of reduced drag, increased aerodynamics and fuel efficiency thus reducing operating costs.
Honda has also built a downhill racing bicycle known as the Honda RN-01. It is not available for sale to the public. The bike has a gearbox, which replaces the standard derailleur found on most bikes.
Honda has hired several people to pilot the bike, among them Greg Minnaar. The team is known as Team G Cross Honda.
Honda's solar cell subsidiary company Honda Soltec (Headquarters: Kikuchi-gun, Kumamoto; President and CEO: Akio Kazusa) started sales throughout Japan of thin-film solar cells for public and industrial use on October 24, 2008, after selling solar cells for residential use in October 2007. Honda announced in the end of October 2013 that Honda Soltec would cease business operations in the Spring of 2014 except for support for existing customers and the subsidiary would be dissolved.
Honda has been active in motorsports, like Formula One, MotoGP and others. Since 2022, all of Honda's motorsport activities are managed by Honda Racing Corporation (HRC); prior to that time, Honda was separately oversaw the motorbikes racing under the HRC banner while automobile racing under the Honda Racing banner.
Honda entered Formula One for the first time in 1964, just one year after starting the production of road cars, making both engine and chassis. Honda achieved their first victory at the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix, and another win at the 1967 Italian Grand Prix, before they withdrew after the 1968 season. They returned to the sport in 1983 as an engine manufacturer, remaining until 1992. This period saw Honda dominate Grand Prix racing, as between 1986 and 1991 they won five consecutive Drivers' Championships with Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and six Constructors' titles with Williams and McLaren. A third stint from 2000 to 2008, initially as engine maker and later also as team owner, yielded 17 podiums, including one win, and second place in the 2004 constructors' standings. They returned as a power unit supplier for the second year of the hybrid era in 2015 and initially struggled, but intense development saw them become race winners again by 2019, and in 2021 they won the World Drivers' Championship with Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. Honda formally left Formula One after 2021 to focus its resources on carbon neutral technologies, but an arrangement was made for it to extend power unit supply for Red Bull until 2025. As the series introduced more sustainable regulations, Honda announced it will formally rejoin in 2026 to provide power units to Aston Martin as a works team.
Honda debuted in the CART IndyCar World Series as an engine supplier in 1994, and the company won six consecutive Drivers' Championships and four Manufacturers' Championships between 1996 and 2001. In 2003, Honda transferred its effort to the IRL IndyCar Series. In 2004, Honda won the Indianapolis 500 for the first time and claimed the Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championships, a feat which it repeated in 2005. From 2006 to 2011, Honda was the series' lone manufacturer, before manufacturer competition returned for 2012. Since 2012, Honda's turbocharged V6 engines have won the Indianapolis 500 several times as well as claimed multiple Drivers' and Manufacturers' titles. In the Japanese Super Formula Championship, Honda-powered cars have won the championship numerous times since 1981, with their title tally in the double digits. In Formula Two, Honda engines dominated the premier series in 1966 and scored multiple titles in the early 1980s.
In sports car racing, Honda won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1995 in the GT2 class, and in 2010 and 2012 they won in the LMP2 category. Honda made their factory debut in the Super GT Series (previously known as the All-Japan GT Championship) in 1997, and in 2000 they won their first championships. Since then, they have won several further titles, uniquely with both mid- and front-engined cars. Through their Acura and HPD divisions, Honda has also competed in sports prototype racing, beginning with the Spice-Acura prototypes that won the IMSA GT Lights championship in 1991, 1992 and 1993. Acura joined the American Le Mans Series in 2007 and won the 12 Hours of Sebring in class on their debut, before winning the championship in both the LMP1 and LMP2 classes in 2009. The cars were rebranded as HPDs for 2010, after which they won multiple titles in the ALMS and also won the FIA World Endurance Championship in the LMP2 class. Acura returned to prototype racing in 2018 in the DPi class of the IMSA SportsCar Championship, winning championship titles in 2019, 2020 and 2022 as well as the 24 Hours of Daytona overall in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Honda's GT3 car won both the IMSA GTD and Super GT GT300 titles.
During the Group A era of the Japanese Touring Car Championship, Honda won seven manufacturers' titles and six drivers' titles in the sub-1,600 cc division between 1986 and 1993. The following Super Touring era of touring car racing saw Honda win the Japanese and North American championships in 1996 and 1997, while in Europe Honda's Super Touring cars claimed over 40 wins across the British, German and European series. After the collapse of the Super Touring regulations in the early 2000s, Honda remained involved in the British Touring Car Championship, where their cars would win multiple championships in the mid-2000s and throughout the 2010s. Honda entered the World Touring Car Championship in late 2012, and in 2013 they won the Manufacturers' World Championship. Honda's TCR car won the global TCR Model of the Year award in 2019 and 2020.
Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) was formed in 1982. The company combines participation in motorcycle races throughout the world with the development of high-potential racing machines. Its racing activities are an important source for the creation of leading-edge technologies used in the development of Honda motorcycles. HRC also contributes to the advancement of motorcycle sports through a range of activities that include sales of production racing motorcycles, support for satellite teams, and rider education programs.
Soichiro Honda, being a race driver himself, could not stay out of international motorsport. In 1959, Honda entered five motorcycles into the Isle of Man TT race, the most prestigious motorcycle race in the world. While always having powerful engines, it took until 1961 for Honda to tune their chassis well enough to allow Mike Hailwood to claim their first Grand Prix victories in the 125 and 250 cc classes. Hailwood would later pick up their first Senior TT wins in 1966 and 1967. Honda's race bikes were known for their "sleek & stylish design" and exotic engine configurations, such as the 5-cylinder, 22,000 rpm, 125 cc bike and their 6-cylinder 250 cc and 297 cc bikes.
In 1979, Honda returned to Grand Prix motorcycle racing with the monocoque-framed, four-stroke NR500. The FIM rules limited engines to four cylinders, so the NR500 had non-circular, 'race-track', cylinders, each with 8 valves and two connecting rods, in order to provide sufficient valve area to compete with the dominant two-stroke racers. Unfortunately, it seemed Honda tried to accomplish too much at one time and the experiment failed. For the 1982 season, Honda debuted its first two-stroke race bike, the NS500 and in 1983, Honda won their first 500 cc Grand Prix World Championship with Freddie Spencer. Since then, Honda has become a dominant marque in motorcycle Grand Prix racing, winning a plethora of top-level titles with riders such as Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi. Honda also head the number of wins at the Isle of Man TT having notched up 227 victories in the solo classes and Sidecar TT, including Ian Hutchinson's clean sweep at the 2010 races.
The outright lap record on the Snaefell Mountain Course was held by Honda, set at the 2015 TT by John McGuinness at an average speed of 132.701 mph (213.562 km/h) on a Honda CBR1000RR, bettered the next year by Michael Dunlop on a BMW S1000RR at 133.962 mph (215.591 km/h).
In the Motocross World Championship, Honda has claimed seventeen world championships. In the World Enduro Championship, Honda has captured eight titles, most recently with Stefan Merriman in 2003 and with Mika Ahola from 2007 to 2010. In motorcycle trials, Honda has claimed three world championships with Belgian rider Eddy Lejeune.
The Honda Civic GX was for a long time the only purpose-built natural gas vehicle (NGV) commercially available in some parts of the U.S. The Honda Civic GX first appeared in 1998 as a factory-modified Civic LX that had been designed to run exclusively on compressed natural gas. The car looks and drives just like a contemporary Honda Civic LX, but does not run on gasoline. In 2001, the Civic GX was rated the cleanest-burning internal combustion engine in the world by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
First leased to the City of Los Angeles, in 2005, Honda started offering the GX directly to the public through factory trained dealers certified to service the GX. Before that, only fleets were eligible to purchase a new Civic GX. In 2006, the Civic GX was released in New York, making it the second state where the consumer is able to buy the car.
In June 2015, Honda announced its decision to phase out the commercialization of natural-gas powered vehicles to focus on the development of a new generation of electrified vehicles such as hybrids, plug-in electric cars and hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. Since 2008, Honda has sold about 16,000 natural-gas vehicles, mainly to taxi and commercial fleets.
Honda's Brazilian subsidiary launched flexible-fuel versions for the Honda Civic and Honda Fit in late 2006. As other Brazilian flex-fuel vehicles, these models run on any blend of hydrous ethanol (E100) and E20-E25 gasoline. Initially, and in order to test the market preferences, the carmaker decided to produce a limited share of the vehicles with flex-fuel engines, 33 percent of the Civic production and 28 percent of the Fit models. Also, the sale price for the flex-fuel version was higher than the respective gasoline versions, around US$1,000 premium for the Civic, and US$650 for the Fit, despite the fact that all other flex-fuel vehicles sold in Brazil had the same tag price as their gasoline versions. In July 2009, Honda launched in the Brazilian market its third flexible-fuel car, the Honda City.
During the last two months of 2006, both flex-fuel models sold 2,427 cars against 8,546 gasoline-powered automobiles, jumping to 41,990 flex-fuel cars in 2007, and reaching 93,361 in 2008. Due to the success of the flex versions, by early 2009 a hundred percent of Honda's automobile production for the Brazilian market is now flexible-fuel, and only a small percentage of gasoline version is produced in Brazil for exports.
In March 2009, Honda launched in the Brazilian market the first flex-fuel motorcycle in the world. Produced by its Brazilian subsidiary Moto Honda da Amazônia, the CG 150 Titan Mix is sold for around US$2,700.
In late 1999, Honda launched the first commercial hybrid electric car sold in the U.S. market, the Honda Insight, just one month before the introduction of the Toyota Prius, and initially sold for US$20,000. The first-generation Insight was produced from 2000 to 2006 and had a fuel economy of 70 miles per US gallon (3.4 L/100 km; 84 mpg‑imp) for the EPA's highway rating, the most fuel-efficient mass-produced car at the time. Total global sales for the Insight amounted to only around 18,000 vehicles. Cumulative global sales reached 100,000 hybrids in 2005 and 200,000 in 2007.
Honda introduced the second-generation Insight in Japan in February 2009, and released it in other markets through 2009 and in the U.S. market in April 2009. At $19,800 as a five-door hatchback it will be the least expensive hybrid available in the U.S.
Since 2002, Honda has also been selling the Honda Civic Hybrid (2003 model) in the U.S. market. It was followed by the Honda Accord Hybrid, offered in model years 2005 through 2007. Sales of the Honda CR-Z began in Japan in February 2010, becoming Honda's third hybrid electric car in the market. As of February 2011, Honda was producing around 200,000 hybrids a year in Japan.
Sales of the Fit Hybrid began in Japan in October 2010, at the time, the lowest price for a gasoline-hybrid electric vehicle sold in the country. The European version, called Honda Jazz Hybrid, was released in early 2011. During 2011 Honda launched three hybrid models available only in Japan, the Fit Shuttle Hybrid, Freed Hybrid and Freed Spike Hybrid.
Honda's cumulative global hybrid sales passed the 1 million unit milestone at the end of September 2012, 12 years and 11 months after sales of the first generation Insight began in Japan November 1999. A total of 187,851 hybrids were sold worldwide in 2013, and 158,696 hybrids during the first six months of 2014. As of June 2014, Honda has sold more than 1.35 million hybrids worldwide.
In Takanezawa, Japan, on 16 June 2008, Honda Motors produced the first assembly-line FCX Clarity, a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. More efficient than a gas-electric hybrid vehicle, the FCX Clarity combines hydrogen and oxygen from ordinary air to generate electricity for an electric motor. In July 2014 Honda announced the end of production of the Honda FCX Clarity for the 2015 model.
The vehicle itself does not emit any pollutants and its only by-products are heat and water. The FCX Clarity also has an advantage over gas-electric hybrids in that it does not use an internal combustion engine to propel itself. Like a gas-electric hybrid, it uses a lithium ion battery to assist the fuel cell during acceleration and capture energy through regenerative braking, thus improving fuel efficiency. The lack of hydrogen filling stations throughout developed countries will keep production volumes low. Honda will release the vehicle in groups of 150. California is the only U.S. market with infrastructure for fueling such a vehicle, though the number of stations is still limited. Building more stations is expensive, as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) granted $6.8 million for four H2 fueling stations, costing US$1.7 million each.
Honda views hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as the long-term replacement of piston cars, not battery cars.
The all-electric Honda EV Plus was introduced in 1997 as a result of CARB's zero-emissions vehicle mandate and was available only for leasing in California. The EV plus was the first battery electric vehicle from a major automaker with non-lead–acid batteries The EV Plus had an all-electric range of 100 mi (160 km). Around 276 units were sold in the U.S. and production ended in 1999.
The all-electric Honda Fit EV was introduced in 2012 and has a range of 82 mi (132 km). The all-electric car was launched in the U.S. to retail customers in July 2012 with initial availability limited to California and Oregon. Production is limited to only 1,100 units over the first three years. A total of 1,007 units have been leased in the U.S. through September 2014. The Fit EV was released in Japan through leasing to local government and corporate customers in August 2012. Availability in the Japanese market is limited to 200 units during its first two years. In July 2014 Honda announced the end of production of the Fit EV for the 2015 model.
The Honda Accord Plug-in Hybrid was introduced in 2013 and has an all-electric range of 13 mi (21 km) Sales began in the U.S. in January 2013 and the plug-in hybrid is available only in California and New York. A total of 835 units have been sold in the U.S. through September 2014. The Accord PHEV was introduced in Japan in June 2013 and is available only for leasing, primarily to corporations and government agencies.
The Honda e was launched in 2020 and has an electric range of 137 mi (220 km). It is an electric supermini that is retro styled, similar to the first-generation Honda Civic. Following this, the Honda e:Ny1 was launched in 2023, with an electric range of 256 mi (412 km) on the top spec model. It is Honda's first electric SUV.
In April 2022, Honda and General Motors announced a joint venture to develop low-cost electric vehicles based on GM's Ultium architecture in order to beat Tesla vehicles in sales.
In October 2023, the two companies announced that the joint venture has been cancelled due to slower-than-expected demand of electric vehicles and changing market conditions. Although the upcoming Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX will use the Ultium architecture and will be manufactured by General Motors, future Honda electric vehicles will be designed solely by Honda and will be manufactured in Honda assembly plants.
In August 2022, Honda and LG Energy Solution announced a joint venture to build a new lithium-ion battery factory in the US for Honda and Acura electric vehicles. At the time of the announcement, the goal was for 40 gigawatt hours.
Starting in 1978, Honda in Japan decided to diversify its sales distribution channels and created Honda Verno, which sold established products with a higher content of standard equipment and more sporting nature. The establishment of Honda Verno coincided with its new sports compact, the Honda Prelude. Later, the Honda Vigor, Honda Ballade, and Honda Quint were added to Honda Verno stores. This approach was implemented due to efforts in place by rival Japanese automakers Toyota and Nissan.
As sales progressed, Honda created two more sales channels, called Honda Clio in 1984, and Honda Primo in 1985. The Honda Clio chain sold products that were traditionally associated with Honda dealerships before 1978, like the Honda Accord, and Honda Primo sold the Honda Civic, kei cars such as the Honda Today, superminis like the Honda Capa, along with other Honda products, such as farm equipment, lawnmowers, portable generators, and marine equipment, plus motorcycles and scooters like the Honda Super Cub. A styling tradition was established when Honda Primo and Clio began operations in that all Verno products had the rear license plate installed in the rear bumper, while Primo and Clio products had the rear license plate installed on the trunk lid or rear door for minivans. The Renault Clio was sold in Japan at Nissan dealerships, but was renamed the Renault Lutecia. Lutecia is derived from the name of Lutetia, an ancient Roman city that was the predecessor of Paris.
As time progressed and sales began to diminish partly due to the collapse of the Japanese "bubble economy", "supermini" and "kei" vehicles that were specific to Honda Primo were "badge engineered" and sold at the other two sales channels, thereby providing smaller vehicles that sold better at both Honda Verno and Honda Clio locations. As of March 2006, the three sales chains were discontinued, with the establishment of Honda Cars dealerships. While the network was disbanded, some Japanese Honda dealerships still use the network names, offering all Japanese market Honda cars at all locations.
Honda sells genuine accessories through a separate retail chain called Honda Access for both their motorcycle, scooter, and automobile products. In cooperation with corporate group partner Pioneer, Honda sells an aftermarket line of audio and in-car navigation equipment that can be installed in any vehicle under the brand name Gathers, which is available at Honda Access locations as well as Japanese auto parts retailers, such as Autobacs. Buyers of used vehicles are directed to a specific Honda retail chain that sells only used vehicles called Honda Auto Terrace.
In the spring of 2012, Honda in Japan introduced Honda Cars Small Store which is devoted to compact cars like the Honda Fit, and kei vehicles like the Honda N-One and Honda S660 roadster.
Prelude, Integra, CR-X, Vigor, Saber, Ballade, Quint, Crossroad, Element, NSX, HR-V, Mobilio Spike, S2000, CR-V, That's, MDX, Rafaga, Capa, and the Torneo
Accord, Legend, Inspire, Avancier, S-MX, Lagreat, Stepwgn, Elysion, Stream, Odyssey (int'l), Domani, Concerto, Accord Tourer, Logo, Fit, Insight, That's, Mobilio, and the City
Civic, Life, Acty, Vamos, Hobio, Ascot, Ascot Innova, Torneo, Civic Ferio, Freed, Mobilio, Orthia, Capa, Today, Z, and the Beat
In 2003, Honda released its Cog advertisement in the UK and on the Internet. To make the ad, the engineers at Honda constructed a Rube Goldberg Machine made entirely out of car parts from a Honda Accord Touring. To the chagrin of the engineers at Honda, all the parts were taken from two of only six hand-assembled pre-production models of the Accord. The advertisement depicted a single cog which sets off a chain of events that ends with the Honda Accord moving and Garrison Keillor speaking the tagline, "Isn't it nice when things just... work?" It took 606 takes to get it perfect.
Honda has done humor marketing such as its 1985 four-page "How to fit six Hondas in a two-car garage" print ad or "descending so low in a parking garage, they pass stalagmites and a Gollum-like figure."
In 2004, they produced the Grrr advert, usually immediately followed by a shortened version of the 2005 Impossible Dream advert. In December 2005, Honda released The Impossible Dream a two-minute panoramic advertisement filmed in New Zealand, Japan, and Argentina which illustrates the founder's dream to build performance vehicles. While singing the song "Impossible Dream", a man reaches for his racing helmet, leaves his trailer on a minibike, then rides a succession of vintage Honda vehicles: a motorcycle, then a car, then a powerboat, then goes over a waterfall only to reappear piloting a hot air balloon, with Garrison Keillor saying "I couldn't have put it better myself" as the song ends. The song is from the 1960s musical Man of La Mancha, sung by Andy Williams.
In 2006, Honda released its Choir advertisement, for the UK and the internet. This had a 60-person choir who sang the car noises as the film of the Honda Civic is shown.
In the mid to late 2000s in the United States, during model close-out sales for the current year before the start of the new model year, Honda's advertising has had an animated character known simply as Mr. Opportunity, voiced by Rob Paulsen. The casual-looking man talked about various deals offered by Honda and ended with the phrase "I'm Mr. Opportunity, and I'm knockin'", followed by him "knocking" on the television screen or "thumping" the speaker at the end of radio ads. In addition, commercials for Honda's international hatchback, the Jazz, are parodies of well-known pop culture images such as Tetris and Thomas the Tank Engine.
In late 2006, Honda released an ad with ASIMO exploring a museum, looking at the exhibits with almost childlike wonderment (spreading out its arms in the aerospace exhibit, waving hello to an astronaut suit that resembles him, etc.), while Garrison Keillor ruminates on progress. It concludes with the tagline: "More forwards please". Honda also sponsored ITV's coverage of Formula One in the UK for 2007. However, they had announced that they would not continue in 2008 due to the sponsorship price requested by ITV being too high.
In May 2007, focuses on their strengths in racing and the use of the Red H badge – a symbol of what is termed as "Hondamentalism". The campaign highlights the lengths that Honda engineers go to in order to get the most out of an engine, whether it is for bikes, cars, powerboats – even lawnmowers. Honda released its Hondamentalism campaign. In the TV spot, Garrison Keillor says, "An engineer once said to build something great is like swimming in honey", while Honda engineers in white suits walk and run towards a great light, battling strong winds and flying debris, holding on to anything that will keep them from being blown away. Finally one of the engineers walks towards a red light, his hand outstretched. A web address is shown for the Hondamentalism website. The digital campaign aims to show how visitors to the site share many of the Hondamentalist characteristics.
At the beginning of 2008, Honda released – the Problem Playground. The advert outlines Honda's environmental responsibility, demonstrating a hybrid engine, more efficient solar panels, and the FCX Clarity, a hydrogen-powered car. The 90-second advert has large-scale puzzles, involving Rubik's Cubes, large shapes, and a 3-dimensional puzzle. On 29 May 2008, Honda, in partnership with Channel 4, broadcast a live advertisement. It showed skydivers jumping from an airplane over Spain and forming the letters H, O, N, D, and A in mid-air. This live advertisement is generally agreed to be the first of its kind on British television. The ad lasted three minutes.
In 2009, American Honda released the Dream the Impossible documentary series, a collection of 5- to 8-minute web vignettes that focus on the core philosophies of Honda. Current short films include Failure: The Secret to Success, Kick Out the Ladder and Mobility 2088. They have Honda employees as well as Danica Patrick, Christopher Guest, Ben Bova, Chee Pearlman, Joe Johnston and Orson Scott Card. The film series plays at dreams.honda.com. In the UK, national television ads feature voice-overs from American radio host Garrison Keillor, while in the US the voice of Honda commercials is actor and wrestler John Cena
In the North American market, Honda starts all of its commercials with a two-tone jingle since the mid-2010s.
The late F1 driver Ayrton Senna stated that Honda probably played the most significant role in his three world championships. He had immense respect for founder, Soichiro Honda, and had a good relationship with Nobuhiko Kawamoto, the chairman of Honda at that time. Senna once called Honda "the greatest company in the world".
As part of its marketing campaign, Honda is an official partner and sponsor of the National Hockey League, the Anaheim Ducks of the NHL, and the arena named after it: Honda Center. Honda also sponsors The Honda Classic golf tournament and is a sponsor of Major League Soccer. The "Honda Player of the Year" award is presented in United States soccer. The "Honda Sports Award" is given to the best female athlete in each of twelve college sports in the United States. One of the twelve Honda Sports Award winners is chosen to receive the Honda-Broderick Cup, as "Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year."
Honda sponsored La Liga club Valencia CF starting from 2014–15 season.
Honda has been a presenting sponsor of the Los Angeles Marathon since 2010 in a three-year sponsorship deal, with winners of the LA Marathon receiving a free Honda Accord. Since 1989, the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge has been a quiz bowl tournament for Historically black colleges and universities. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (本田技研工業株式会社, Honda Giken Kōgyō Kabushiki gaisha, lit. 'Honda Institute of Technology and Industry Company', IPA: [honda] ; /ˈhɒndə/) is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a production of 400 million by the end of 2019. It is also the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda became the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001. In 2015, Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft, power generators, and other products. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 HondaJet, which began production in 2012. Honda has two joint-ventures in China: Dongfeng Honda and GAC Honda.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 2013, Honda invested about 5.7% (US$6.8 billion) of its revenues into research and development. Also in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States, exporting 108,705 Honda and Acura models, while importing only 88,357.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Throughout his life, Honda's founder, Soichiro Honda (1906–1991), had an interest in automobiles. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, where he tuned cars and entered them in races. In 1937, with financing from his acquaintance Kato Shichirō, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki (Eastern Sea Precision Machine Company) to make piston rings working out of the Art Shokai garage. After initial failures, Tōkai Seiki won a contract to supply piston rings to Toyota, but lost the contract due to the poor quality of their products. After attending engineering school without graduating, and visiting factories around Japan to better understand Toyota's quality control processes known as \"Five whys\", by 1941 Honda was able to mass-produce piston rings acceptable to Toyota, using an automated process that could employ even unskilled wartime laborers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Tōkai Seiki was placed under the control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (called the Ministry of Munitions after 1943) at the start of World War II, and Soichiro Honda was demoted from president to senior managing director after Toyota took a 40% stake in the company. Honda also aided the war effort by assisting other companies in automating the production of military aircraft propellers. The relationships Honda cultivated with personnel at Toyota, Nakajima Aircraft Company and the Imperial Japanese Navy would be instrumental in the postwar period. A US B-29 bomber attack destroyed Tōkai Seiki's Yamashita plant in 1944, and the Itawa plant collapsed on 13 January 1945 Mikawa earthquake. Soichiro Honda sold the salvageable remains of the company to Toyota after the war for ¥450,000 and used the proceeds to found the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "With a staff of 12 men working in a 16 m (170 sq ft) shack, they built and sold improvised motorized bicycles, using a supply of 500 two-stroke 50 cc Tohatsu war surplus radio generator engines. When the engines ran out, Honda began building their own copy of the Tohatsu engine, and supplying these to customers to attach to their bicycles. This was the Honda A-Type, nicknamed the Bata Bata for the sound the engine made. In 1949, the Honda Technical Research Institute was liquidated for ¥1,000,000, or about US$5,000 today; these funds were used to incorporate Honda Motor Co., Ltd. At about the same time Honda hired engineer Kihachiro Kawashima, and Takeo Fujisawa who provided indispensable business and marketing expertise to complement Soichiro Honda's technical bent. The close partnership between Soichiro Honda and Fujisawa lasted until they stepped down together in October 1973.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The first complete motorcycle with both the frame and engine made by Honda was the 1949 D-Type, the first Honda to go by the name Dream. In 1961, Honda achieved its first Grand Prix victories and World Championships in the 125 cc and 250 cc categories. Honda Motor Company grew in a short time to become the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles by 1964. The first production automobile from Honda was the T360 mini pick-up truck, which went on sale in August 1963. Powered by a small 356 cc straight-4 gasoline engine, it was classified under the cheaper Kei car tax bracket. The second production car from Honda was the S500 sports car, which followed the T360 into production in October 1963. Its chain-driven rear wheels pointed to Honda's motorcycle origins.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Over the next few decades, Honda worked to expand its product line, operations and exports to numerous countries around the world. In 1986, Honda introduced the successful Acura brand to the American market in an attempt to gain ground in the luxury vehicle market. The year 1991 saw the introduction of the Honda NSX supercar, the first all-aluminum monocoque vehicle that incorporated a mid-engine V6 with variable-valve timing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1990, CEO Tadashi Kume was succeeded by Nobuhiko Kawamoto. Kawamoto was selected over Shoichiro Irimajiri, who oversaw the successful establishment of Honda of America Manufacturing, Inc. in Marysville, Ohio. Irimajiri and Kawamoto shared a friendly rivalry within Honda; owing to health issues, Irimajiri would resign in 1992.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Following the death of Soichiro Honda and the departure of Irimajiri, Honda found itself quickly being outpaced in product development by other Japanese automakers and was caught off-guard by the truck and sport utility vehicle boom of the 1990s, all which took a toll on the profitability of the company. Japanese media reported in 1992 and 1993 that Honda was at serious risk of an unwanted and hostile takeover by Mitsubishi Motors, which at the time was a larger automaker by volume and was flush with profits from its successful Pajero and Diamante models.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Kawamoto acted quickly to change Honda's corporate culture, rushing through market-driven product development that resulted in recreational vehicles such as the first-generation Odyssey and the CR-V, and a refocusing away from some of the numerous sedans and coupes that were popular with the company's engineers but not with the buying public. The most shocking change to Honda came when Kawamoto ended the company's successful participation in Formula One after the 1992 season, citing costs in light of the takeover threat from Mitsubishi as well as the desire to create a more environmentally friendly company image.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Honda Aircraft Company as established in 2006 as a wholly owned subsidiary to manufacture and sell the HondaJet family of aircraft. The first deliveries to customers began in December 2015.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On February 23, 2015, Honda announced that CEO and President Takanobu Ito would step down and be replaced by Takahiro Hachigo in June of that year; additional retirements by senior managers and directors were expected.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In October 2019, Honda was reported to be in talks with Hitachi to merge the two companies' car parts businesses, creating a components supplier with almost $17 billion in annual sales.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In January 2020, Honda announced that it would be withdrawing employees working in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 23, 2020 due to the global spread of the virus, Honda became the first major automaker with operations in the US to suspend production in its factories. It resumed automobile, engine and transmission production at its US plants on May 11, 2020.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Honda and General Motors announced in September 2020 a North American alliance to begin in 2021. According to The Detroit Free Press, \"The proposed alliance will include sharing a range of vehicles, to be sold under each company’s distinct brands, as well as cooperation in purchasing, research and development, and connected services.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 2021, Honda announced its intention to become the world's first carmaker to sell a vehicle with level 3 self-driving technology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In March 2022, Honda announced it would develop and build electric vehicles in a joint venture with Sony. The latter is set to provide its imaging, sensing, network and other technologies while Honda would be responsible for the car manufacturing processes. The venture is set to fully launch later in 2022 with the release of first cars scheduled for 2025.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2023, Honda announced a deal with American car company General Motors to produce cars using a new hydrogen fuel system. The aim is to ramp up the hydrogen powered cells in their Electric vehicles as well as trucks, construction machinery, and power stations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 2023, Honda recalled 500,000 vehicles in the United States and Canada due to an issue with seat belts in the car not latching correctly. Among the models recalled were the 2017-2020 CR-V, the 2018 and 2019 Accord, the 2018-2020 Odyssey, the 2019 Insight, and the Acura RDX from 2019 and 2020. According to the recall, the seat belts in the front seats would break open on impact increasing the risk of injury in a crash.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On December 21, 2023, Honda announced a global recall of about 4.5 million vehicles, including 2.54 million in the U.S., over fuel pump failures, following earlier recalls in 2021 and 2020 for the same issue.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Honda is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Their shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, as well as exchanges in Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, London, Paris, and Switzerland.",
"title": "Corporate profile and divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The company has assembly plants around the globe. These plants are located in China, the United States, Pakistan, Canada, England, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, México, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Taiwan, Perú and Argentina. As of July 2010, 89% of Honda and Acura vehicles sold in the United States were built in North American plants, up from 82.2% a year earlier. This shields profits from the yen's advance to a 15-year high against the dollar.",
"title": "Corporate profile and divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "American Honda Motor Company is based in Torrance, California. Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) is Honda's motorsport division. Honda Canada Inc. is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, it was originally planned to be located in Richmond Hill, Ontario, but delays led them to look elsewhere. Their manufacturing division, Honda of Canada Manufacturing, is based in Alliston, Ontario. Honda has also created joint ventures around the world, such as Honda Siel Cars and Hero Honda Motorcycles in India, Guangzhou Honda and Dongfeng Honda in China, Boon Siew Honda in Malaysia and Honda Atlas in Pakistan. The company also runs a business innovation initiative called Honda Xcelerator, in order to build relationships with innovators, partner with Silicon Valley startups and entrepreneurs, and help other companies work on prototypes. Xcelerator had worked with reportedly 40 companies as of January 2019. Xcelerator and a developer studio are part of the Honda Innovations group, formed in Spring 2017 and based in Mountain View, California. Through Honda Mobilityland, Honda also operate the Suzuka Circuit and Twin Ring Motegi racing tracks.",
"title": "Corporate profile and divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Honda announced plans to halve production at its UK plants. The decision was made to put staff at the Swindon plant on a 2-day week until the end of May as the manufacturer struggled to source supplies from Japan. It's thought around 22,500 cars were produced during this period.",
"title": "Corporate profile and divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "For the fiscal year 2018, Honda reported earnings of US$9.534 billion, with an annual revenue of US$138.250 billion, an increase of 6.2% over the previous fiscal cycle. Honda's shares traded at over $32 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at US$50.4 billion in October 2018.",
"title": "Corporate profile and divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Honda's automotive manufacturing ambitions can be traced back to 1963, with the Honda T360, a Kei truck built for the Japanese market. This was followed by the two-door roadster, the Honda S500 also introduced in 1963. In 1965, Honda built a two-door commercial delivery van, named the Honda L700. Honda's first four-door sedan was not the Honda Accord, but the air-cooled, four-cylinder, gasoline-powered Honda 1300 which was introduced in 1969. The Civic was a hatchback that gained wide popularity internationally, but it wasn't the first two-door hatchback built by Honda. That was the Honda N360, a Kei car that was adapted for international sale as the N600. The Civic, which appeared in 1972 and replaced the N600 also had a smaller sibling that replaced the air-cooled N360, called the Honda Life, which was water-cooled.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Honda Life represented Honda's efforts in competing in the kei car segment, offering sedan, delivery van and small pick-up platforms on a shared chassis. The Life Step Van had a novel approach that, while not initially a commercial success, appeared to be an influence to vehicles with the front passengers sitting behind the engine, a large cargo area with a flat roof and a liftgate installed in back, and utilizing a transversely installed engine with a front-wheel-drive powertrain.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "As Honda entered into automobile manufacturing in the late 1960s where Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota and Nissan had been making cars since before WWII, Honda instilled a sense of doing things a little differently than its Japanese competitors. Its mainstay products like the Accord and Civic (with the exception of its USA-market 1993–97 Passport which was part of a vehicle exchange program with Isuzu (part of the Subaru-Isuzu joint venture)) have always employed Front-wheel drive powertrain implementation, which is currently a long-held Honda tradition. Honda also installed new technologies into their products, first as optional equipment, then later standard, like anti-lock brakes, speed-sensitive power steering, and multi-port fuel injection in the early 1980s. This desire to be the first to try new approaches is evident with the creation of the first Japanese luxury chain Acura, and was also evident with the all-aluminum, mid-engined sports car, the Honda NSX, which also introduced variable valve timing technology, which Honda calls VTEC.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Civic family is a line of compact cars developed and manufactured by Honda. In North America, the Civic is the second-longest continuously running nameplate from a Japanese manufacturer; only its perennial rival, the Toyota Corolla, introduced in 1966, has been in production longer. The Civic, along with the Accord and Prelude, comprised Honda's vehicles sold in North America until the 1990s, when the model lineup was expanded. Having gone through several generational changes, the Civic has become larger and more upmarket, and it currently slots between the Fit and Accord.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Honda's first hybrid electric vehicle was the 1999 Insight. The Civic was first offered as a hybrid in 2001, and the Accord followed in 2004. In 2008, the company launched the Clarity, a fuel cell car.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 2008, Honda increased global production to meet the demand for small cars and hybrids in the U.S. and emerging markets. The company shuffled U.S. production to keep factories busy and boost car output while building fewer minivans and sport utility vehicles as light truck sales fell.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Its first entrance into the pickup segment, the light-duty Ridgeline, won Truck of the Year from Motor Trend magazine in 2006. Also in 2006, the redesigned Civic won Car of the Year from the magazine, giving Honda a rare double win of Motor Trend honors.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "It is reported that Honda plans to increase hybrid sales in Japan to more than 20% of its total sales in the fiscal year 2011, from 14.8% in the previous year.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Five of United States Environmental Protection Agency's top ten most fuel-efficient cars from 1984 to 2010 come from Honda, more than any other automakers. The five models are: 2000–2006 Honda Insight (53 mpg‑US or 4.4 L/100 km or 64 mpg‑imp combined), 1986–1987 Honda Civic Coupe HF (46 mpg‑US or 5.1 L/100 km or 55 mpg‑imp combined), 1994–1995 Honda Civic hatchback VX (43 mpg‑US or 5.5 L/100 km or 52 mpg‑imp combined), 2006– Honda Civic Hybrid (42 mpg‑US or 5.6 L/100 km or 50 mpg‑imp combined), and 2010– Honda Insight (41 mpg‑US or 5.7 L/100 km or 49 mpg‑imp combined). The ACEEE has also rated the Civic GX as the greenest car in America for seven consecutive years.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Honda currently builds vehicles in factories located in Japan, the United States of America, Canada, China, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Honda is the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan and has been since it started production in 1955. At its peak in 1982, Honda manufactured almost three million motorcycles annually. By 2006, this figure had been reduced to around 550,000 but was still higher than its three domestic competitors.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2017, India became the largest motorcycle market for Honda. In India, Honda is leading in the scooters segment, with 59% market share.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the 1960s when it was a small manufacturer, Honda broke out of the Japanese motorcycle market and began exporting to the United States. Working with the advertising agency Grey Advertising, Honda created an innovative marketing campaign, using the slogan \"You meet the nicest people on a Honda.\" In contrast to the prevailing negative stereotypes of motorcyclists in America as tough, antisocial rebels, this campaign suggested that Honda motorcycles were made for the everyman. The campaign was hugely successful; the ads ran for three years, and by the end of 1963 alone, Honda had sold 90,000 motorcycles.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Taking Honda's story as an archetype of the smaller manufacturer entering a new market already occupied by highly dominant competitors, the story of their market entry, and their subsequent huge success in the U.S. and around the world has been the subject of some academic controversy. Competing explanations have been advanced to explain Honda's strategy and the reasons for their success.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The first of these explanations was put forward when, in 1975, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was commissioned by the UK government to write a report explaining why and how the British motorcycle industry had been out-competed by its Japanese competitors. The report concluded that the Japanese firms, including Honda, had sought a very high scale of production (they had made a large number of motorbikes) in order to benefit from economies of scale and learning curve effects. It blamed the decline of the British motorcycle industry on the failure of British managers to invest enough in their businesses to profit from economies of scale and scope.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The second explanation was offered in 1984 by Richard Pascale, who had interviewed the Honda executives responsible for the firm's entry into the U.S. market. As opposed to the tightly focused strategy of low cost and high scale that BCG accredited to Honda, Pascale found that their entry into the U.S. market was a story of \"miscalculation, serendipity, and organizational learning\" – in other words, Honda's success was due to the adaptability and hard work of its staff, rather than any long-term strategy. For example, Honda's initial plan on entering the US market was to compete in large motorcycles, around 300 cc. Honda's motorcycles in this class suffered performance and reliability problems when ridden the relatively long distances of the US highways. When the team found that the scooters they were using to get themselves around their U.S. base of San Francisco attracted positive interest from consumers they fell back on selling the Super Cub instead.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The most recent school of thought on Honda's strategy was put forward by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad in 1989. Creating the concept of core competencies with Honda as an example, they argued that Honda's success was due to its focus on leadership in the technology of internal combustion engines. For example, the high power-to-weight ratio engines Honda produced for its racing bikes provided technology and expertise which was transferable into mopeds. Honda's entry into the U.S. motorcycle market during the 1960s is used as a case study for teaching introductory strategy at business schools worldwide.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Honda builds utility ATVs under models Recon, Rubicon, Rancher, Foreman and Rincon. Honda also builds sports ATVs under the models TRX 90X, TRX 250X, TRX 400x, TRX 450R and TRX 700.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Power equipment production started in 1953 with H-type engine (prior to motorcycles).",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Honda power equipment reached record sales in 2007 with 6.4 million units sold annually. By 2010 (Fiscal year ended 31 March) this figure had decreased to 4.7 million units. Cumulative production of power products has exceeded 85 million units annually (as of September 2008).",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Honda power equipment includes:",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Honda engines powered the entire 33-car starting field of the 2010 Indianapolis 500 and for the fifth consecutive race, there were no engine-related retirements during the running of the Memorial Day Classic.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In the 1980s Honda developed the GY6 engine for use in motor scooters. Although no longer manufactured by Honda, it's still commonly used in many Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese light vehicles.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Honda, despite being known as an engine company, has never built a V8 engine for passenger vehicles. In the late 1990s, the company resisted considerable pressure from its American dealers for a V8 engine (which would have seen use in top-of-the-line Honda SUVs and Acuras), with American Honda reportedly sending one dealer a shipment of V8 beverages to silence them. Honda considered starting V8 production in the mid-2000s for larger Acura sedans, a new version of the high-end NSX sports car (which previously used DOHC V6 engines with VTEC to achieve its high power output) and possible future ventures into the American full-size truck and SUV segment for both the Acura and Honda brands, but this was canceled in late 2008, with Honda citing environmental and worldwide economic conditions as reasons for the termination of this project.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "ASIMO is part of Honda's Research & Development robotics program. It's the eleventh in a line of successive builds starting in 1986 with Honda E0 moving through the ensuing Honda E series and the Honda P series. Weighing 54 kilograms and standing 130 centimeters tall, ASIMO resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack, and can walk on two feet in a manner resembling human locomotion, at up to 6 km/h (3.7 mph). ASIMO is the world's only humanoid robot able to ascend and descend stairs independently. However, human motions such as climbing stairs are difficult to mimic with a machine, which ASIMO has demonstrated by taking two plunges off a staircase.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Honda's robot ASIMO (see below) as an R&D project brings together expertise to create a robot that walks, dances and navigates steps. 2010 marks the year Honda developed a machine capable of reading a user's brainwaves to move ASIMO. The system uses a helmet covered with electroencephalography and near-infrared spectroscopy sensors that monitor electrical brainwaves and cerebral blood flow signals that alter slightly during the human thought process. The user thinks of one of the limited number of gestures it wants from the robot, which has been fitted with a Brain-Machine Interface.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Honda has also pioneered new technology in its HA-420 HondaJet, manufactured by its subsidiary Honda Aircraft Company, which allows new levels of reduced drag, increased aerodynamics and fuel efficiency thus reducing operating costs.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Honda has also built a downhill racing bicycle known as the Honda RN-01. It is not available for sale to the public. The bike has a gearbox, which replaces the standard derailleur found on most bikes.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Honda has hired several people to pilot the bike, among them Greg Minnaar. The team is known as Team G Cross Honda.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Honda's solar cell subsidiary company Honda Soltec (Headquarters: Kikuchi-gun, Kumamoto; President and CEO: Akio Kazusa) started sales throughout Japan of thin-film solar cells for public and industrial use on October 24, 2008, after selling solar cells for residential use in October 2007. Honda announced in the end of October 2013 that Honda Soltec would cease business operations in the Spring of 2014 except for support for existing customers and the subsidiary would be dissolved.",
"title": "Former products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Honda has been active in motorsports, like Formula One, MotoGP and others. Since 2022, all of Honda's motorsport activities are managed by Honda Racing Corporation (HRC); prior to that time, Honda was separately oversaw the motorbikes racing under the HRC banner while automobile racing under the Honda Racing banner.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Honda entered Formula One for the first time in 1964, just one year after starting the production of road cars, making both engine and chassis. Honda achieved their first victory at the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix, and another win at the 1967 Italian Grand Prix, before they withdrew after the 1968 season. They returned to the sport in 1983 as an engine manufacturer, remaining until 1992. This period saw Honda dominate Grand Prix racing, as between 1986 and 1991 they won five consecutive Drivers' Championships with Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and six Constructors' titles with Williams and McLaren. A third stint from 2000 to 2008, initially as engine maker and later also as team owner, yielded 17 podiums, including one win, and second place in the 2004 constructors' standings. They returned as a power unit supplier for the second year of the hybrid era in 2015 and initially struggled, but intense development saw them become race winners again by 2019, and in 2021 they won the World Drivers' Championship with Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. Honda formally left Formula One after 2021 to focus its resources on carbon neutral technologies, but an arrangement was made for it to extend power unit supply for Red Bull until 2025. As the series introduced more sustainable regulations, Honda announced it will formally rejoin in 2026 to provide power units to Aston Martin as a works team.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Honda debuted in the CART IndyCar World Series as an engine supplier in 1994, and the company won six consecutive Drivers' Championships and four Manufacturers' Championships between 1996 and 2001. In 2003, Honda transferred its effort to the IRL IndyCar Series. In 2004, Honda won the Indianapolis 500 for the first time and claimed the Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championships, a feat which it repeated in 2005. From 2006 to 2011, Honda was the series' lone manufacturer, before manufacturer competition returned for 2012. Since 2012, Honda's turbocharged V6 engines have won the Indianapolis 500 several times as well as claimed multiple Drivers' and Manufacturers' titles. In the Japanese Super Formula Championship, Honda-powered cars have won the championship numerous times since 1981, with their title tally in the double digits. In Formula Two, Honda engines dominated the premier series in 1966 and scored multiple titles in the early 1980s.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In sports car racing, Honda won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1995 in the GT2 class, and in 2010 and 2012 they won in the LMP2 category. Honda made their factory debut in the Super GT Series (previously known as the All-Japan GT Championship) in 1997, and in 2000 they won their first championships. Since then, they have won several further titles, uniquely with both mid- and front-engined cars. Through their Acura and HPD divisions, Honda has also competed in sports prototype racing, beginning with the Spice-Acura prototypes that won the IMSA GT Lights championship in 1991, 1992 and 1993. Acura joined the American Le Mans Series in 2007 and won the 12 Hours of Sebring in class on their debut, before winning the championship in both the LMP1 and LMP2 classes in 2009. The cars were rebranded as HPDs for 2010, after which they won multiple titles in the ALMS and also won the FIA World Endurance Championship in the LMP2 class. Acura returned to prototype racing in 2018 in the DPi class of the IMSA SportsCar Championship, winning championship titles in 2019, 2020 and 2022 as well as the 24 Hours of Daytona overall in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Honda's GT3 car won both the IMSA GTD and Super GT GT300 titles.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "During the Group A era of the Japanese Touring Car Championship, Honda won seven manufacturers' titles and six drivers' titles in the sub-1,600 cc division between 1986 and 1993. The following Super Touring era of touring car racing saw Honda win the Japanese and North American championships in 1996 and 1997, while in Europe Honda's Super Touring cars claimed over 40 wins across the British, German and European series. After the collapse of the Super Touring regulations in the early 2000s, Honda remained involved in the British Touring Car Championship, where their cars would win multiple championships in the mid-2000s and throughout the 2010s. Honda entered the World Touring Car Championship in late 2012, and in 2013 they won the Manufacturers' World Championship. Honda's TCR car won the global TCR Model of the Year award in 2019 and 2020.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) was formed in 1982. The company combines participation in motorcycle races throughout the world with the development of high-potential racing machines. Its racing activities are an important source for the creation of leading-edge technologies used in the development of Honda motorcycles. HRC also contributes to the advancement of motorcycle sports through a range of activities that include sales of production racing motorcycles, support for satellite teams, and rider education programs.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Soichiro Honda, being a race driver himself, could not stay out of international motorsport. In 1959, Honda entered five motorcycles into the Isle of Man TT race, the most prestigious motorcycle race in the world. While always having powerful engines, it took until 1961 for Honda to tune their chassis well enough to allow Mike Hailwood to claim their first Grand Prix victories in the 125 and 250 cc classes. Hailwood would later pick up their first Senior TT wins in 1966 and 1967. Honda's race bikes were known for their \"sleek & stylish design\" and exotic engine configurations, such as the 5-cylinder, 22,000 rpm, 125 cc bike and their 6-cylinder 250 cc and 297 cc bikes.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1979, Honda returned to Grand Prix motorcycle racing with the monocoque-framed, four-stroke NR500. The FIM rules limited engines to four cylinders, so the NR500 had non-circular, 'race-track', cylinders, each with 8 valves and two connecting rods, in order to provide sufficient valve area to compete with the dominant two-stroke racers. Unfortunately, it seemed Honda tried to accomplish too much at one time and the experiment failed. For the 1982 season, Honda debuted its first two-stroke race bike, the NS500 and in 1983, Honda won their first 500 cc Grand Prix World Championship with Freddie Spencer. Since then, Honda has become a dominant marque in motorcycle Grand Prix racing, winning a plethora of top-level titles with riders such as Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi. Honda also head the number of wins at the Isle of Man TT having notched up 227 victories in the solo classes and Sidecar TT, including Ian Hutchinson's clean sweep at the 2010 races.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The outright lap record on the Snaefell Mountain Course was held by Honda, set at the 2015 TT by John McGuinness at an average speed of 132.701 mph (213.562 km/h) on a Honda CBR1000RR, bettered the next year by Michael Dunlop on a BMW S1000RR at 133.962 mph (215.591 km/h).",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In the Motocross World Championship, Honda has claimed seventeen world championships. In the World Enduro Championship, Honda has captured eight titles, most recently with Stefan Merriman in 2003 and with Mika Ahola from 2007 to 2010. In motorcycle trials, Honda has claimed three world championships with Belgian rider Eddy Lejeune.",
"title": "Motorsports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Honda Civic GX was for a long time the only purpose-built natural gas vehicle (NGV) commercially available in some parts of the U.S. The Honda Civic GX first appeared in 1998 as a factory-modified Civic LX that had been designed to run exclusively on compressed natural gas. The car looks and drives just like a contemporary Honda Civic LX, but does not run on gasoline. In 2001, the Civic GX was rated the cleanest-burning internal combustion engine in the world by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "First leased to the City of Los Angeles, in 2005, Honda started offering the GX directly to the public through factory trained dealers certified to service the GX. Before that, only fleets were eligible to purchase a new Civic GX. In 2006, the Civic GX was released in New York, making it the second state where the consumer is able to buy the car.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In June 2015, Honda announced its decision to phase out the commercialization of natural-gas powered vehicles to focus on the development of a new generation of electrified vehicles such as hybrids, plug-in electric cars and hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. Since 2008, Honda has sold about 16,000 natural-gas vehicles, mainly to taxi and commercial fleets.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Honda's Brazilian subsidiary launched flexible-fuel versions for the Honda Civic and Honda Fit in late 2006. As other Brazilian flex-fuel vehicles, these models run on any blend of hydrous ethanol (E100) and E20-E25 gasoline. Initially, and in order to test the market preferences, the carmaker decided to produce a limited share of the vehicles with flex-fuel engines, 33 percent of the Civic production and 28 percent of the Fit models. Also, the sale price for the flex-fuel version was higher than the respective gasoline versions, around US$1,000 premium for the Civic, and US$650 for the Fit, despite the fact that all other flex-fuel vehicles sold in Brazil had the same tag price as their gasoline versions. In July 2009, Honda launched in the Brazilian market its third flexible-fuel car, the Honda City.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "During the last two months of 2006, both flex-fuel models sold 2,427 cars against 8,546 gasoline-powered automobiles, jumping to 41,990 flex-fuel cars in 2007, and reaching 93,361 in 2008. Due to the success of the flex versions, by early 2009 a hundred percent of Honda's automobile production for the Brazilian market is now flexible-fuel, and only a small percentage of gasoline version is produced in Brazil for exports.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In March 2009, Honda launched in the Brazilian market the first flex-fuel motorcycle in the world. Produced by its Brazilian subsidiary Moto Honda da Amazônia, the CG 150 Titan Mix is sold for around US$2,700.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In late 1999, Honda launched the first commercial hybrid electric car sold in the U.S. market, the Honda Insight, just one month before the introduction of the Toyota Prius, and initially sold for US$20,000. The first-generation Insight was produced from 2000 to 2006 and had a fuel economy of 70 miles per US gallon (3.4 L/100 km; 84 mpg‑imp) for the EPA's highway rating, the most fuel-efficient mass-produced car at the time. Total global sales for the Insight amounted to only around 18,000 vehicles. Cumulative global sales reached 100,000 hybrids in 2005 and 200,000 in 2007.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Honda introduced the second-generation Insight in Japan in February 2009, and released it in other markets through 2009 and in the U.S. market in April 2009. At $19,800 as a five-door hatchback it will be the least expensive hybrid available in the U.S.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Since 2002, Honda has also been selling the Honda Civic Hybrid (2003 model) in the U.S. market. It was followed by the Honda Accord Hybrid, offered in model years 2005 through 2007. Sales of the Honda CR-Z began in Japan in February 2010, becoming Honda's third hybrid electric car in the market. As of February 2011, Honda was producing around 200,000 hybrids a year in Japan.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Sales of the Fit Hybrid began in Japan in October 2010, at the time, the lowest price for a gasoline-hybrid electric vehicle sold in the country. The European version, called Honda Jazz Hybrid, was released in early 2011. During 2011 Honda launched three hybrid models available only in Japan, the Fit Shuttle Hybrid, Freed Hybrid and Freed Spike Hybrid.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Honda's cumulative global hybrid sales passed the 1 million unit milestone at the end of September 2012, 12 years and 11 months after sales of the first generation Insight began in Japan November 1999. A total of 187,851 hybrids were sold worldwide in 2013, and 158,696 hybrids during the first six months of 2014. As of June 2014, Honda has sold more than 1.35 million hybrids worldwide.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In Takanezawa, Japan, on 16 June 2008, Honda Motors produced the first assembly-line FCX Clarity, a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. More efficient than a gas-electric hybrid vehicle, the FCX Clarity combines hydrogen and oxygen from ordinary air to generate electricity for an electric motor. In July 2014 Honda announced the end of production of the Honda FCX Clarity for the 2015 model.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The vehicle itself does not emit any pollutants and its only by-products are heat and water. The FCX Clarity also has an advantage over gas-electric hybrids in that it does not use an internal combustion engine to propel itself. Like a gas-electric hybrid, it uses a lithium ion battery to assist the fuel cell during acceleration and capture energy through regenerative braking, thus improving fuel efficiency. The lack of hydrogen filling stations throughout developed countries will keep production volumes low. Honda will release the vehicle in groups of 150. California is the only U.S. market with infrastructure for fueling such a vehicle, though the number of stations is still limited. Building more stations is expensive, as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) granted $6.8 million for four H2 fueling stations, costing US$1.7 million each.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Honda views hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as the long-term replacement of piston cars, not battery cars.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The all-electric Honda EV Plus was introduced in 1997 as a result of CARB's zero-emissions vehicle mandate and was available only for leasing in California. The EV plus was the first battery electric vehicle from a major automaker with non-lead–acid batteries The EV Plus had an all-electric range of 100 mi (160 km). Around 276 units were sold in the U.S. and production ended in 1999.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The all-electric Honda Fit EV was introduced in 2012 and has a range of 82 mi (132 km). The all-electric car was launched in the U.S. to retail customers in July 2012 with initial availability limited to California and Oregon. Production is limited to only 1,100 units over the first three years. A total of 1,007 units have been leased in the U.S. through September 2014. The Fit EV was released in Japan through leasing to local government and corporate customers in August 2012. Availability in the Japanese market is limited to 200 units during its first two years. In July 2014 Honda announced the end of production of the Fit EV for the 2015 model.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The Honda Accord Plug-in Hybrid was introduced in 2013 and has an all-electric range of 13 mi (21 km) Sales began in the U.S. in January 2013 and the plug-in hybrid is available only in California and New York. A total of 835 units have been sold in the U.S. through September 2014. The Accord PHEV was introduced in Japan in June 2013 and is available only for leasing, primarily to corporations and government agencies.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Honda e was launched in 2020 and has an electric range of 137 mi (220 km). It is an electric supermini that is retro styled, similar to the first-generation Honda Civic. Following this, the Honda e:Ny1 was launched in 2023, with an electric range of 256 mi (412 km) on the top spec model. It is Honda's first electric SUV.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In April 2022, Honda and General Motors announced a joint venture to develop low-cost electric vehicles based on GM's Ultium architecture in order to beat Tesla vehicles in sales.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In October 2023, the two companies announced that the joint venture has been cancelled due to slower-than-expected demand of electric vehicles and changing market conditions. Although the upcoming Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX will use the Ultium architecture and will be manufactured by General Motors, future Honda electric vehicles will be designed solely by Honda and will be manufactured in Honda assembly plants.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In August 2022, Honda and LG Energy Solution announced a joint venture to build a new lithium-ion battery factory in the US for Honda and Acura electric vehicles. At the time of the announcement, the goal was for 40 gigawatt hours.",
"title": "Electric and alternative fuel vehicles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Starting in 1978, Honda in Japan decided to diversify its sales distribution channels and created Honda Verno, which sold established products with a higher content of standard equipment and more sporting nature. The establishment of Honda Verno coincided with its new sports compact, the Honda Prelude. Later, the Honda Vigor, Honda Ballade, and Honda Quint were added to Honda Verno stores. This approach was implemented due to efforts in place by rival Japanese automakers Toyota and Nissan.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "As sales progressed, Honda created two more sales channels, called Honda Clio in 1984, and Honda Primo in 1985. The Honda Clio chain sold products that were traditionally associated with Honda dealerships before 1978, like the Honda Accord, and Honda Primo sold the Honda Civic, kei cars such as the Honda Today, superminis like the Honda Capa, along with other Honda products, such as farm equipment, lawnmowers, portable generators, and marine equipment, plus motorcycles and scooters like the Honda Super Cub. A styling tradition was established when Honda Primo and Clio began operations in that all Verno products had the rear license plate installed in the rear bumper, while Primo and Clio products had the rear license plate installed on the trunk lid or rear door for minivans. The Renault Clio was sold in Japan at Nissan dealerships, but was renamed the Renault Lutecia. Lutecia is derived from the name of Lutetia, an ancient Roman city that was the predecessor of Paris.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "As time progressed and sales began to diminish partly due to the collapse of the Japanese \"bubble economy\", \"supermini\" and \"kei\" vehicles that were specific to Honda Primo were \"badge engineered\" and sold at the other two sales channels, thereby providing smaller vehicles that sold better at both Honda Verno and Honda Clio locations. As of March 2006, the three sales chains were discontinued, with the establishment of Honda Cars dealerships. While the network was disbanded, some Japanese Honda dealerships still use the network names, offering all Japanese market Honda cars at all locations.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Honda sells genuine accessories through a separate retail chain called Honda Access for both their motorcycle, scooter, and automobile products. In cooperation with corporate group partner Pioneer, Honda sells an aftermarket line of audio and in-car navigation equipment that can be installed in any vehicle under the brand name Gathers, which is available at Honda Access locations as well as Japanese auto parts retailers, such as Autobacs. Buyers of used vehicles are directed to a specific Honda retail chain that sells only used vehicles called Honda Auto Terrace.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In the spring of 2012, Honda in Japan introduced Honda Cars Small Store which is devoted to compact cars like the Honda Fit, and kei vehicles like the Honda N-One and Honda S660 roadster.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Prelude, Integra, CR-X, Vigor, Saber, Ballade, Quint, Crossroad, Element, NSX, HR-V, Mobilio Spike, S2000, CR-V, That's, MDX, Rafaga, Capa, and the Torneo",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Accord, Legend, Inspire, Avancier, S-MX, Lagreat, Stepwgn, Elysion, Stream, Odyssey (int'l), Domani, Concerto, Accord Tourer, Logo, Fit, Insight, That's, Mobilio, and the City",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Civic, Life, Acty, Vamos, Hobio, Ascot, Ascot Innova, Torneo, Civic Ferio, Freed, Mobilio, Orthia, Capa, Today, Z, and the Beat",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In 2003, Honda released its Cog advertisement in the UK and on the Internet. To make the ad, the engineers at Honda constructed a Rube Goldberg Machine made entirely out of car parts from a Honda Accord Touring. To the chagrin of the engineers at Honda, all the parts were taken from two of only six hand-assembled pre-production models of the Accord. The advertisement depicted a single cog which sets off a chain of events that ends with the Honda Accord moving and Garrison Keillor speaking the tagline, \"Isn't it nice when things just... work?\" It took 606 takes to get it perfect.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Honda has done humor marketing such as its 1985 four-page \"How to fit six Hondas in a two-car garage\" print ad or \"descending so low in a parking garage, they pass stalagmites and a Gollum-like figure.\"",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In 2004, they produced the Grrr advert, usually immediately followed by a shortened version of the 2005 Impossible Dream advert. In December 2005, Honda released The Impossible Dream a two-minute panoramic advertisement filmed in New Zealand, Japan, and Argentina which illustrates the founder's dream to build performance vehicles. While singing the song \"Impossible Dream\", a man reaches for his racing helmet, leaves his trailer on a minibike, then rides a succession of vintage Honda vehicles: a motorcycle, then a car, then a powerboat, then goes over a waterfall only to reappear piloting a hot air balloon, with Garrison Keillor saying \"I couldn't have put it better myself\" as the song ends. The song is from the 1960s musical Man of La Mancha, sung by Andy Williams.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In 2006, Honda released its Choir advertisement, for the UK and the internet. This had a 60-person choir who sang the car noises as the film of the Honda Civic is shown.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In the mid to late 2000s in the United States, during model close-out sales for the current year before the start of the new model year, Honda's advertising has had an animated character known simply as Mr. Opportunity, voiced by Rob Paulsen. The casual-looking man talked about various deals offered by Honda and ended with the phrase \"I'm Mr. Opportunity, and I'm knockin'\", followed by him \"knocking\" on the television screen or \"thumping\" the speaker at the end of radio ads. In addition, commercials for Honda's international hatchback, the Jazz, are parodies of well-known pop culture images such as Tetris and Thomas the Tank Engine.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In late 2006, Honda released an ad with ASIMO exploring a museum, looking at the exhibits with almost childlike wonderment (spreading out its arms in the aerospace exhibit, waving hello to an astronaut suit that resembles him, etc.), while Garrison Keillor ruminates on progress. It concludes with the tagline: \"More forwards please\". Honda also sponsored ITV's coverage of Formula One in the UK for 2007. However, they had announced that they would not continue in 2008 due to the sponsorship price requested by ITV being too high.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "In May 2007, focuses on their strengths in racing and the use of the Red H badge – a symbol of what is termed as \"Hondamentalism\". The campaign highlights the lengths that Honda engineers go to in order to get the most out of an engine, whether it is for bikes, cars, powerboats – even lawnmowers. Honda released its Hondamentalism campaign. In the TV spot, Garrison Keillor says, \"An engineer once said to build something great is like swimming in honey\", while Honda engineers in white suits walk and run towards a great light, battling strong winds and flying debris, holding on to anything that will keep them from being blown away. Finally one of the engineers walks towards a red light, his hand outstretched. A web address is shown for the Hondamentalism website. The digital campaign aims to show how visitors to the site share many of the Hondamentalist characteristics.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "At the beginning of 2008, Honda released – the Problem Playground. The advert outlines Honda's environmental responsibility, demonstrating a hybrid engine, more efficient solar panels, and the FCX Clarity, a hydrogen-powered car. The 90-second advert has large-scale puzzles, involving Rubik's Cubes, large shapes, and a 3-dimensional puzzle. On 29 May 2008, Honda, in partnership with Channel 4, broadcast a live advertisement. It showed skydivers jumping from an airplane over Spain and forming the letters H, O, N, D, and A in mid-air. This live advertisement is generally agreed to be the first of its kind on British television. The ad lasted three minutes.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In 2009, American Honda released the Dream the Impossible documentary series, a collection of 5- to 8-minute web vignettes that focus on the core philosophies of Honda. Current short films include Failure: The Secret to Success, Kick Out the Ladder and Mobility 2088. They have Honda employees as well as Danica Patrick, Christopher Guest, Ben Bova, Chee Pearlman, Joe Johnston and Orson Scott Card. The film series plays at dreams.honda.com. In the UK, national television ads feature voice-overs from American radio host Garrison Keillor, while in the US the voice of Honda commercials is actor and wrestler John Cena",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In the North American market, Honda starts all of its commercials with a two-tone jingle since the mid-2010s.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The late F1 driver Ayrton Senna stated that Honda probably played the most significant role in his three world championships. He had immense respect for founder, Soichiro Honda, and had a good relationship with Nobuhiko Kawamoto, the chairman of Honda at that time. Senna once called Honda \"the greatest company in the world\".",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "As part of its marketing campaign, Honda is an official partner and sponsor of the National Hockey League, the Anaheim Ducks of the NHL, and the arena named after it: Honda Center. Honda also sponsors The Honda Classic golf tournament and is a sponsor of Major League Soccer. The \"Honda Player of the Year\" award is presented in United States soccer. The \"Honda Sports Award\" is given to the best female athlete in each of twelve college sports in the United States. One of the twelve Honda Sports Award winners is chosen to receive the Honda-Broderick Cup, as \"Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year.\"",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Honda sponsored La Liga club Valencia CF starting from 2014–15 season.",
"title": "Marketing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Honda has been a presenting sponsor of the Los Angeles Marathon since 2010 in a three-year sponsorship deal, with winners of the LA Marathon receiving a free Honda Accord. Since 1989, the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge has been a quiz bowl tournament for Historically black colleges and universities.",
"title": "Marketing"
}
]
| is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a production of 400 million by the end of 2019. It is also the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda became the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001. In 2015, Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world. Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft, power generators, and other products. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 HondaJet, which began production in 2012. Honda has two joint-ventures in China: Dongfeng Honda and GAC Honda. In 2013, Honda invested about 5.7% of its revenues into research and development. Also in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the United States, exporting 108,705 Honda and Acura models, while importing only 88,357. | 2001-09-25T09:34:27Z | 2023-12-31T14:14:38Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda |
13,730 | Handball | Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the goal of the opposing team. A standard match consists of two periods of 30 minutes, and the team that scores more goals wins.
Modern handball is played on a court of 40 by 20 metres (131 by 66 ft), with a goal in the middle of each end. The goals are surrounded by a 6-metre (20 ft) zone where only the defending goalkeeper is allowed; goals must be scored by throwing the ball from outside the zone or while "diving" into it. The sport is usually played indoors, but outdoor variants exist in the forms of field handball, Czech handball (which were more common in the past) and beach handball. The game is fast and high-scoring: professional teams now typically score between 20 and 35 goals each, though lower scores were not uncommon until a few decades ago. Body contact is permitted for the defenders trying to stop the attackers from approaching the goal. No protective equipment is mandated, but players may wear soft protective bands, pads and mouth guards.
The modern set of rules was published in 1917 by Karl Schelenz, Max Heiser, and Erich Konigh, on 29 October in Berlin, which day is seen as the date of birth of the sport. The rules have had several revisions since. The first official handball match was played in 1917 in Germany. Karl Schelenz modified the rules in 1919. The first international games were played (under these rules) with men in 1925 (between Germany and Belgium) and with women in 1930 (between Germany and Austria).
Men's handball was first played at the Olympics in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin outdoors, and the next time at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich indoors; handball has been an Olympic sport since then. Women's handball was added at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
The International Handball Federation was formed in 1946 and, as of 2016, has 197 member federations. The sport is most popular in Europe, and European countries have won all medals but one in the men's world championships since 1938. In the women's world championships, only two non-European countries have won the title: South Korea and Brazil. The game also enjoys popularity in East Asia, North Africa and parts of South America.
Games similar to handball were played in Ancient Greece and are represented on amphorae and stone carvings. Although detailed textual reference is rare, there are numerous descriptions of ball games being played where players throw the ball to one another; sometimes this is done in order to avoid interception by a player on the opposing team. Such games were played widely and served as both a form of exercise and a social event.
There is evidence of ancient Roman women playing a version of handball called expulsim ludere. There are records of handball-like games in medieval France, and among the Inuit in Greenland, in the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, there existed similar games of håndbold from Denmark, házená in the Czech Republic, handbol in Ukraine, and torball in Germany.
The team handball game of today was codified at the end of the 19th century in northern Europe: primarily in Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. The first written set of team handball rules was published in 1906 by the Danish gym teacher, lieutenant and Olympic medalist Holger Nielsen from Ordrup grammar school, north of Copenhagen. The modern set of rules was published by Max Heiser, Karl Schelenz, and Erich Konigh in 1917 on 29 October in Berlin, Germany; this day is therefore seen as the "date of birth" of the sport. The first official handball match was played on 2 December 1917 in Berlin. In 1919 the rules were modified by Karl Schelenz. The first international games were played under these rules, between Germany and Austria by men in 1925 and between Germany and Austria by women in 1930.
In 1926, the Congress of World Athletics (then known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation) nominated a committee to draw up international rules for field handball. The International Amateur Handball Federation was formed in 1928 and later the International Handball Federation was formed in 1946.
Men's field handball was played at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. During the next several decades, indoor handball flourished and evolved in the Scandinavian countries. The sport re-emerged onto the world stage as men's team handball for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Women's team handball was added at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Due to its popularity in the region, the Eastern European countries that refined the event became the dominant force in the sport when it was reintroduced.
The International Handball Federation organised the men's world championship in 1938 and every four (sometimes three) years from World War II to 1995. Since the 1995 world championship in Iceland, the competition has been held every two years. The women's world championship has been held since 1957. The IHF also organizes women's and men's junior world championships. By July 2009, the IHF listed 166 member federations – approximately 795,000 teams and 19 million players.
The rules are laid out in the IHF's set of rules.
Two teams of seven players (six court players plus one goalkeeper) take the court and attempt to score points by putting the game ball into the opposing team's goal. In handling the ball, players are subject to the following restrictions:
Notable scoring opportunities can occur when attacking players jump into the goal area. For example, an attacking player may catch a pass while launching toward the inside the goal area, and then shoot or pass before touching the floor. Doubling occurs when a diving attacking player passes to another diving teammate.
Handball is played on a court 40 by 20 metres (131 ft 3 in × 65 ft 7 in), with a goal in the centre of each end. The goals are surrounded by a near-semicircular area, called the zone or the crease, defined by a line six metres from the goal. A dashed near-semicircular line nine metres from the goal marks the free-throw line. Each line on the court is part of the area it encompasses; the centre line belongs to both halves at the same time.
The goals are two metres high and three metres wide. They must be securely bolted either to the floor or the wall behind.
The goal posts and the crossbar must be made out of the same material (e.g., wood or aluminium) and feature a quadratic cross section with sides of 8 cm (3 in). The three sides of the beams visible from the playing court must be painted alternatingly in two contrasting colors which both have to contrast against the background. The colors on both goals must be the same.
Each goal must feature a net. This must be fastened in such a way that a ball thrown into the goal does not leave or pass the goal under normal circumstances. If necessary, a second net may be clasped to the back of the net on the inside.
The goals are surrounded by the crease, also called the zone. This area is delineated by two quarter circles with a radius of six metres around the far corners of each goal post and a connecting line parallel to the goal line. Only the defending goalkeeper is allowed inside this zone. However, court players may catch and touch the ball in the air within it as long as the player starts their jump outside the zone and releases the ball before they land (landing inside the perimeter is allowed in this case as long as the ball has been released).
If a player without the ball contacts the ground inside the goal perimeter, or the line surrounding the perimeter, they must take the most direct path out of it. However, should a player cross the zone in an attempt to gain an advantage (e.g., better position) their team cedes the ball. Similarly, violation of the zone by a defending player is penalized only if they do so in order to gain an advantage in defending.
Outside of one long edge of the court to both sides of the middle line are the substitution areas for each team. Team officials, substitutes, and suspended players must wait within this area. A team's area is the same side as the goal the team is defending; during halftime, substitution areas are swapped. Any player entering or leaving the play must cross the substitution line which is part of the side line and extends 4.5 metres (15 ft) from the middle line to the team's side.
A standard match has two 30-minute halves with a 10- or 15-minute (major Championships/Olympics) halftime intermission. At half-time, teams switch sides of the court as well as benches. For youths, the length of the halves is reduced—25 minutes at ages 12 to 15, and 20 minutes at ages 8 to 11; though national federations of some countries may differ in their implementation from the official guidelines.
If a decision must be reached in a particular match (e.g., in a tournament) and it ends in a draw after regular time, there are at maximum two overtimes, each consisting of two straight 5-minute periods with a one-minute break in between. Should these not decide the game either, the winning team is determined in a penalty shootout (best-of-five rounds; if still tied, extra rounds are added until one team wins).
The referees may call timeout according to their sole discretion; typical reasons are injuries, suspensions, or court cleaning. Penalty throws should trigger a timeout only for lengthy delays, such as a change of the goalkeeper.
Since 2012, teams can call 3 team timeouts per game (up to two per half), which last one minute each. This right may only be invoked by the team in possession of the ball. Team representatives must show a green card marked with a black T on the timekeeper's desk. The timekeeper then immediately interrupts the game by sounding an acoustic signal to stop the clock. Before 2012, teams were allowed only one timeout per half. For the purpose of calling timeouts, overtime and shootouts are extensions of the second half.
A handball match is adjudicated by two equal referees. Some national bodies allow games with only a single referee in special cases like illness on short notice. Should the referees disagree on any occasion, a decision is made on mutual agreement during a short timeout; or, in case of punishments, the more severe of the two comes into effect. The referees are obliged to make their decisions "on the basis of their observations of facts". Their judgements are final and can be appealed against only if not in compliance with the rules.
The referees position themselves in such a way that the team players are confined between them. They stand diagonally aligned so that each can observe one side line. Depending on their positions, one is called court referee and the other goal referee. These positions automatically switch on ball turnover. They physically exchange their positions approximately every 10 minutes (long exchange), and change sides every five minutes (short exchange).
The IHF defines 18 hand signals for quick visual communication with players and officials. The signal for warning is accompanied by a yellow card. A disqualification for the game is indicated by a red card, followed by a blue card if the disqualification will be accompanied by a report. The referees also use whistle blows to indicate infractions or to restart the play.
The referees are supported by a scorekeeper and a timekeeper who attend to formal things such as keeping track of goals and suspensions, or starting and stopping the clock, respectively. They also keep an eye on the benches and notify the referees on substitution errors. Their desk is located between the two substitution areas.
Each team consists of seven players on court and seven substitute players on the bench. One player on the court must be the designated goalkeeper, differing in his clothing from the rest of the court players. Substitution of players can be done in any number and at any time during game play. An exchange takes place over the substitution line. A prior notification of the referees is not necessary.
Some national bodies, such as the Deutsche Handball Bund (DHB, "German Handball Federation"), allow substitution in junior teams only when in ball possession or during timeouts. This restriction is intended to prevent early specialization of players to offence or defence.
Court players are allowed to touch the ball with any part of their bodies above and including the knee. As in several other team sports, a distinction is made between catching and dribbling. A player who is in possession of the ball may stand stationary for only three seconds, and may take only three steps. They must then either shoot, pass, or dribble the ball. Taking more than three steps at any time is considered travelling, and results in a turnover. A player may dribble as many times as they want (though, since passing is faster, it is the preferred method of attack), as long as during each dribble the hand contacts only the top of the ball. Therefore, carrying is completely prohibited, and results in a turnover. After the dribble is picked up, the player has the right to another three seconds or three steps. The ball must then be passed or shot, as further holding or dribbling will result in a double dribble turnover and a free throw for the other team. Other offensive infractions that result in a turnover include charging and setting an illegal screen. Carrying the ball into the six-metre zone results either in ball possession by the goalkeeper (by attacker) or turnover (by defender).
Only the goalkeepers are allowed to move freely within the goal perimeter, although they may not cross the goal perimeter line while carrying or dribbling the ball. Within the zone, they are allowed to touch the ball with all parts of their bodies, including their feet, with a defensive aim (for other actions, they are subject to the same restrictions as the court players). The goalkeepers may participate in the normal play of their teammates. A regular court player may substitute for the goalkeeper if a team elects to use this scheme in order to outnumber the defending players. Prior to 2015, this court player became the designated goalkeeper on the court and had to wear some vest or bib the same color as the goalkeeper's shirt to be identified as such. A rule change meant to make the game more offensive now allows any player to substitute for the goalkeeper without becoming a designated goalkeeper. The new rule resembles the one used in ice hockey. This rule was first used in the women's world championship in December 2015 and has since been used by the men's European championship in January 2016 and by both genders in the Olympic tournament in 2016. This rule change has led to a drastic increase of empty net goals.
If either goalkeeper deflects the ball over the outer goal line, their team stays in possession of the ball, in contrast to other sports like football. The goalkeeper resumes the play with a throw from within the zone ("goalkeeper throw"). In a penalty shot, throwing the ball against the head of a goalkeeper who is not moving risks a direct disqualification ("red card").
Outside of own D-zone, the goalkeeper is treated as an ordinary court player, and has to follow court players' rules; holding or tackling an opponent player outside the area risks a direct disqualification. The goalkeeper may not return to the area with the ball. Passing to one's own goalkeeper results in a turnover.
Each team is allowed to have a maximum of four team officials seated on the benches. An official is anybody who is neither player nor substitute. One official must be the designated representative who is usually the team manager. Since 2012, representatives can call up to 3 team timeouts (up to twice per half), and may address the scorekeeper, timekeeper, and referees (before that, it was once per half); overtime and shootouts are considered extensions of the second half. Other officials typically include physicians or managers. No official is allowed to enter the playing court without the permission of the referees.
The ball is spherical and must be made either of leather or a synthetic material. It is not allowed to have a shiny or slippery surface. As the ball is intended to be operated by a single hand, its official sizes vary depending on age and gender of the participating teams.
The referees may award a special throw to a team. This usually happens after certain events such as scored goals, off-court balls, turnovers and timeouts. All of these special throws require the thrower to obtain a certain position, and pose restrictions on the positions of all other players. Sometimes the execution must wait for a whistle blow by the referee.
Penalties are given to players, in progressive format, for fouls that require more punishment than just a free-throw. Actions directed mainly at the opponent and not the ball (such as reaching around, holding, pushing, tripping, and jumping into opponent) as well as contact from the side, from behind a player or impeding the opponent's counterattack are all considered illegal and are subject to penalty. Any infraction that prevents a clear scoring opportunity will result in a seven-metre penalty shot.
Typically the referee will give a warning yellow card for an illegal action; but, if the contact was particularly dangerous, like striking the opponent in the head, neck or throat, the referee can forego the warning for an immediate two-minute suspension. Players are warned once before given a yellow card; they risk being red-carded if they receive three two-minute suspensions.
A red card results in an ejection from the game and a two-minute penalty for the team. A player may receive a red card directly for particularly rough penalties. For instance, any contact from behind during a fast break is now being treated with a red card; as does any deliberate intent to injure opponents. A red-carded player has to leave the playing area completely. A player who is disqualified may be substituted with another player after the two-minute penalty is served. A coach or official can also be penalized progressively. Any coach or official who receives a two-minute suspension will have to pull out one of their players for two minutes; however, the player is not the one punished, and can be substituted in again, as the penalty consists of the team playing with one fewer player than the opposing team.
After referees award the ball to the opponents for whatever reason, the player currently in possession of the ball has to lay it down quickly, or risk a two-minute suspension. Also, gesticulating or verbally questioning the referee's order, as well as arguing with the officials' decisions, will normally risk a yellow card. If the suspended player protests further, does not walk straight off the court to the bench, or if the referee deems the tempo deliberately slow, that player risks a double yellow card. Illegal substitution (outside of the dedicated area, or if the replacement player enters too early) is prohibited; if they do, they risk a yellow card.
Players are typically referred to by the positions they are playing. The positions are always denoted from the view of the respective goalkeeper, so that a defender on the right opposes an attacker on the left. However, not all of the following positions may be occupied depending on the formation or potential suspensions.
Sometimes, the offense uses formations with two pivot players.
There are many variations in defensive formations. Usually, they are described as n:m formations, where n is the number of players defending at the goal line and m the number of players defending more offensive. Exceptions are the 3:2:1 defense and n+m formation (e.g. 5+1), where m players defend some offensive player in man coverage (instead of the usual zone coverage).
Attacks are played with all court players on the side of the defenders. Depending on the speed of the attack, one distinguishes between three attack waves with a decreasing chance of success:
The third wave evolves into the normal offensive play when all defenders not only reach the zone, but gain their accustomed positions. Some teams then substitute specialised offence players. However, this implies that these players must play in the defence should the opposing team be able to switch quickly to offence. The latter is another benefit for fast playing teams.
If the attacking team does not make sufficient progress (eventually releasing a shot on goal), the referees can call passive play (since 1995, the referee gives an advance warning by holding one hand high, signalling that the attacking team should release a shot soon), turning control over to the other team. A shot on goal or an infringement leading to a yellow card or two-minute penalty will mark the start of a new attack, causing the hand to be taken down; but a shot blocked by the defense or a normal free throw will not. This rule prevents an attacking team from stalling the game indefinitely, as it is difficult to intercept a pass without at the same time conceding dangerous openings towards the goal.
The usual formations of the defense are 6–0, when all the defense players line up between the 6-metre (20 ft) and 9-metre (30 ft) lines to form a wall; the 5–1, when one of the players cruises outside the 9-metre (30 ft) perimeter, usually targeting the center forwards while the other 5 line up on the 6-metre (20 ft) line; and the less common 4–2 when there are two such defenders out front. Very fast teams will also try a 3–3 formation which is close to a switching man-to-man style. The formations vary greatly from country to country, and reflect each country's style of play. 6–0 is sometimes known as "flat defense", and all other formations are usually called "offensive defense".
Handball teams are usually organised as clubs. On a national level, the clubs are associated in federations which organize matches in leagues and tournaments.
The International Handball Federation (IHF) is the administrative and controlling body for international handball. Handball is an Olympic sport played during the Summer Olympics.
The IHF organizes world championships, held in odd-numbered years, with separate competitions for men and women. The IHF World Men's Handball Championship 2021 title holders are Denmark. The IHF World Women's Handball Championship 2021 title holder is Norway.
The IHF is composed of five continental federations: Asian Handball Federation, African Handball Confederation, Pan-American Team Handball Federation, European Handball Federation and Oceania Handball Federation. These federations organize continental championships held every other second year. Handball is played during the Pan American Games, All-Africa Games, and Asian Games. It is also played at the Mediterranean Games. In addition to continental competitions between national teams, the federations arrange international tournaments between club teams.
The current worldwide attendance record for seven-a-side handball was set on 6 September 2014, during a neutral venue German league game between HSV Hamburg and the Mannheim-based Rhein-Neckar Lions. The matchup drew 44,189 spectators to Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt, exceeding the previous record of 36,651 set at Copenhagen's Parken Stadium during the 2011 Danish Cup final.
Handball events have been selected as a main motif in numerous collectors' coins. One of the recent samples is the €10 Greek Handball commemorative coin, minted in 2003 to commemorate the 2004 Summer Olympics. On the coin, the modern athlete directs the ball in his hands towards his target, while in the background the ancient athlete is just about to throw a ball, in a game known as cheirosphaira, in a representation taken from a black-figure pottery vase of the Archaic period.
The most recent commemorative coin featuring handball is the British 50 pence coin, part of the series of coins commemorating the London 2012 Olympic Games. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the goal of the opposing team. A standard match consists of two periods of 30 minutes, and the team that scores more goals wins.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Modern handball is played on a court of 40 by 20 metres (131 by 66 ft), with a goal in the middle of each end. The goals are surrounded by a 6-metre (20 ft) zone where only the defending goalkeeper is allowed; goals must be scored by throwing the ball from outside the zone or while \"diving\" into it. The sport is usually played indoors, but outdoor variants exist in the forms of field handball, Czech handball (which were more common in the past) and beach handball. The game is fast and high-scoring: professional teams now typically score between 20 and 35 goals each, though lower scores were not uncommon until a few decades ago. Body contact is permitted for the defenders trying to stop the attackers from approaching the goal. No protective equipment is mandated, but players may wear soft protective bands, pads and mouth guards.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The modern set of rules was published in 1917 by Karl Schelenz, Max Heiser, and Erich Konigh, on 29 October in Berlin, which day is seen as the date of birth of the sport. The rules have had several revisions since. The first official handball match was played in 1917 in Germany. Karl Schelenz modified the rules in 1919. The first international games were played (under these rules) with men in 1925 (between Germany and Belgium) and with women in 1930 (between Germany and Austria).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Men's handball was first played at the Olympics in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin outdoors, and the next time at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich indoors; handball has been an Olympic sport since then. Women's handball was added at the 1976 Summer Olympics.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The International Handball Federation was formed in 1946 and, as of 2016, has 197 member federations. The sport is most popular in Europe, and European countries have won all medals but one in the men's world championships since 1938. In the women's world championships, only two non-European countries have won the title: South Korea and Brazil. The game also enjoys popularity in East Asia, North Africa and parts of South America.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Games similar to handball were played in Ancient Greece and are represented on amphorae and stone carvings. Although detailed textual reference is rare, there are numerous descriptions of ball games being played where players throw the ball to one another; sometimes this is done in order to avoid interception by a player on the opposing team. Such games were played widely and served as both a form of exercise and a social event.",
"title": "Origins and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There is evidence of ancient Roman women playing a version of handball called expulsim ludere. There are records of handball-like games in medieval France, and among the Inuit in Greenland, in the Middle Ages. By the 19th century, there existed similar games of håndbold from Denmark, házená in the Czech Republic, handbol in Ukraine, and torball in Germany.",
"title": "Origins and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The team handball game of today was codified at the end of the 19th century in northern Europe: primarily in Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. The first written set of team handball rules was published in 1906 by the Danish gym teacher, lieutenant and Olympic medalist Holger Nielsen from Ordrup grammar school, north of Copenhagen. The modern set of rules was published by Max Heiser, Karl Schelenz, and Erich Konigh in 1917 on 29 October in Berlin, Germany; this day is therefore seen as the \"date of birth\" of the sport. The first official handball match was played on 2 December 1917 in Berlin. In 1919 the rules were modified by Karl Schelenz. The first international games were played under these rules, between Germany and Austria by men in 1925 and between Germany and Austria by women in 1930.",
"title": "Origins and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1926, the Congress of World Athletics (then known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation) nominated a committee to draw up international rules for field handball. The International Amateur Handball Federation was formed in 1928 and later the International Handball Federation was formed in 1946.",
"title": "Origins and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Men's field handball was played at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. During the next several decades, indoor handball flourished and evolved in the Scandinavian countries. The sport re-emerged onto the world stage as men's team handball for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Women's team handball was added at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Due to its popularity in the region, the Eastern European countries that refined the event became the dominant force in the sport when it was reintroduced.",
"title": "Origins and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The International Handball Federation organised the men's world championship in 1938 and every four (sometimes three) years from World War II to 1995. Since the 1995 world championship in Iceland, the competition has been held every two years. The women's world championship has been held since 1957. The IHF also organizes women's and men's junior world championships. By July 2009, the IHF listed 166 member federations – approximately 795,000 teams and 19 million players.",
"title": "Origins and development"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The rules are laid out in the IHF's set of rules.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Two teams of seven players (six court players plus one goalkeeper) take the court and attempt to score points by putting the game ball into the opposing team's goal. In handling the ball, players are subject to the following restrictions:",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Notable scoring opportunities can occur when attacking players jump into the goal area. For example, an attacking player may catch a pass while launching toward the inside the goal area, and then shoot or pass before touching the floor. Doubling occurs when a diving attacking player passes to another diving teammate.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Handball is played on a court 40 by 20 metres (131 ft 3 in × 65 ft 7 in), with a goal in the centre of each end. The goals are surrounded by a near-semicircular area, called the zone or the crease, defined by a line six metres from the goal. A dashed near-semicircular line nine metres from the goal marks the free-throw line. Each line on the court is part of the area it encompasses; the centre line belongs to both halves at the same time.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The goals are two metres high and three metres wide. They must be securely bolted either to the floor or the wall behind.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The goal posts and the crossbar must be made out of the same material (e.g., wood or aluminium) and feature a quadratic cross section with sides of 8 cm (3 in). The three sides of the beams visible from the playing court must be painted alternatingly in two contrasting colors which both have to contrast against the background. The colors on both goals must be the same.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Each goal must feature a net. This must be fastened in such a way that a ball thrown into the goal does not leave or pass the goal under normal circumstances. If necessary, a second net may be clasped to the back of the net on the inside.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The goals are surrounded by the crease, also called the zone. This area is delineated by two quarter circles with a radius of six metres around the far corners of each goal post and a connecting line parallel to the goal line. Only the defending goalkeeper is allowed inside this zone. However, court players may catch and touch the ball in the air within it as long as the player starts their jump outside the zone and releases the ball before they land (landing inside the perimeter is allowed in this case as long as the ball has been released).",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "If a player without the ball contacts the ground inside the goal perimeter, or the line surrounding the perimeter, they must take the most direct path out of it. However, should a player cross the zone in an attempt to gain an advantage (e.g., better position) their team cedes the ball. Similarly, violation of the zone by a defending player is penalized only if they do so in order to gain an advantage in defending.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Outside of one long edge of the court to both sides of the middle line are the substitution areas for each team. Team officials, substitutes, and suspended players must wait within this area. A team's area is the same side as the goal the team is defending; during halftime, substitution areas are swapped. Any player entering or leaving the play must cross the substitution line which is part of the side line and extends 4.5 metres (15 ft) from the middle line to the team's side.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A standard match has two 30-minute halves with a 10- or 15-minute (major Championships/Olympics) halftime intermission. At half-time, teams switch sides of the court as well as benches. For youths, the length of the halves is reduced—25 minutes at ages 12 to 15, and 20 minutes at ages 8 to 11; though national federations of some countries may differ in their implementation from the official guidelines.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "If a decision must be reached in a particular match (e.g., in a tournament) and it ends in a draw after regular time, there are at maximum two overtimes, each consisting of two straight 5-minute periods with a one-minute break in between. Should these not decide the game either, the winning team is determined in a penalty shootout (best-of-five rounds; if still tied, extra rounds are added until one team wins).",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The referees may call timeout according to their sole discretion; typical reasons are injuries, suspensions, or court cleaning. Penalty throws should trigger a timeout only for lengthy delays, such as a change of the goalkeeper.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Since 2012, teams can call 3 team timeouts per game (up to two per half), which last one minute each. This right may only be invoked by the team in possession of the ball. Team representatives must show a green card marked with a black T on the timekeeper's desk. The timekeeper then immediately interrupts the game by sounding an acoustic signal to stop the clock. Before 2012, teams were allowed only one timeout per half. For the purpose of calling timeouts, overtime and shootouts are extensions of the second half.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A handball match is adjudicated by two equal referees. Some national bodies allow games with only a single referee in special cases like illness on short notice. Should the referees disagree on any occasion, a decision is made on mutual agreement during a short timeout; or, in case of punishments, the more severe of the two comes into effect. The referees are obliged to make their decisions \"on the basis of their observations of facts\". Their judgements are final and can be appealed against only if not in compliance with the rules.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The referees position themselves in such a way that the team players are confined between them. They stand diagonally aligned so that each can observe one side line. Depending on their positions, one is called court referee and the other goal referee. These positions automatically switch on ball turnover. They physically exchange their positions approximately every 10 minutes (long exchange), and change sides every five minutes (short exchange).",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The IHF defines 18 hand signals for quick visual communication with players and officials. The signal for warning is accompanied by a yellow card. A disqualification for the game is indicated by a red card, followed by a blue card if the disqualification will be accompanied by a report. The referees also use whistle blows to indicate infractions or to restart the play.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The referees are supported by a scorekeeper and a timekeeper who attend to formal things such as keeping track of goals and suspensions, or starting and stopping the clock, respectively. They also keep an eye on the benches and notify the referees on substitution errors. Their desk is located between the two substitution areas.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Each team consists of seven players on court and seven substitute players on the bench. One player on the court must be the designated goalkeeper, differing in his clothing from the rest of the court players. Substitution of players can be done in any number and at any time during game play. An exchange takes place over the substitution line. A prior notification of the referees is not necessary.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Some national bodies, such as the Deutsche Handball Bund (DHB, \"German Handball Federation\"), allow substitution in junior teams only when in ball possession or during timeouts. This restriction is intended to prevent early specialization of players to offence or defence.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Court players are allowed to touch the ball with any part of their bodies above and including the knee. As in several other team sports, a distinction is made between catching and dribbling. A player who is in possession of the ball may stand stationary for only three seconds, and may take only three steps. They must then either shoot, pass, or dribble the ball. Taking more than three steps at any time is considered travelling, and results in a turnover. A player may dribble as many times as they want (though, since passing is faster, it is the preferred method of attack), as long as during each dribble the hand contacts only the top of the ball. Therefore, carrying is completely prohibited, and results in a turnover. After the dribble is picked up, the player has the right to another three seconds or three steps. The ball must then be passed or shot, as further holding or dribbling will result in a double dribble turnover and a free throw for the other team. Other offensive infractions that result in a turnover include charging and setting an illegal screen. Carrying the ball into the six-metre zone results either in ball possession by the goalkeeper (by attacker) or turnover (by defender).",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Only the goalkeepers are allowed to move freely within the goal perimeter, although they may not cross the goal perimeter line while carrying or dribbling the ball. Within the zone, they are allowed to touch the ball with all parts of their bodies, including their feet, with a defensive aim (for other actions, they are subject to the same restrictions as the court players). The goalkeepers may participate in the normal play of their teammates. A regular court player may substitute for the goalkeeper if a team elects to use this scheme in order to outnumber the defending players. Prior to 2015, this court player became the designated goalkeeper on the court and had to wear some vest or bib the same color as the goalkeeper's shirt to be identified as such. A rule change meant to make the game more offensive now allows any player to substitute for the goalkeeper without becoming a designated goalkeeper. The new rule resembles the one used in ice hockey. This rule was first used in the women's world championship in December 2015 and has since been used by the men's European championship in January 2016 and by both genders in the Olympic tournament in 2016. This rule change has led to a drastic increase of empty net goals.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "If either goalkeeper deflects the ball over the outer goal line, their team stays in possession of the ball, in contrast to other sports like football. The goalkeeper resumes the play with a throw from within the zone (\"goalkeeper throw\"). In a penalty shot, throwing the ball against the head of a goalkeeper who is not moving risks a direct disqualification (\"red card\").",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Outside of own D-zone, the goalkeeper is treated as an ordinary court player, and has to follow court players' rules; holding or tackling an opponent player outside the area risks a direct disqualification. The goalkeeper may not return to the area with the ball. Passing to one's own goalkeeper results in a turnover.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Each team is allowed to have a maximum of four team officials seated on the benches. An official is anybody who is neither player nor substitute. One official must be the designated representative who is usually the team manager. Since 2012, representatives can call up to 3 team timeouts (up to twice per half), and may address the scorekeeper, timekeeper, and referees (before that, it was once per half); overtime and shootouts are considered extensions of the second half. Other officials typically include physicians or managers. No official is allowed to enter the playing court without the permission of the referees.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The ball is spherical and must be made either of leather or a synthetic material. It is not allowed to have a shiny or slippery surface. As the ball is intended to be operated by a single hand, its official sizes vary depending on age and gender of the participating teams.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The referees may award a special throw to a team. This usually happens after certain events such as scored goals, off-court balls, turnovers and timeouts. All of these special throws require the thrower to obtain a certain position, and pose restrictions on the positions of all other players. Sometimes the execution must wait for a whistle blow by the referee.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Penalties are given to players, in progressive format, for fouls that require more punishment than just a free-throw. Actions directed mainly at the opponent and not the ball (such as reaching around, holding, pushing, tripping, and jumping into opponent) as well as contact from the side, from behind a player or impeding the opponent's counterattack are all considered illegal and are subject to penalty. Any infraction that prevents a clear scoring opportunity will result in a seven-metre penalty shot.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Typically the referee will give a warning yellow card for an illegal action; but, if the contact was particularly dangerous, like striking the opponent in the head, neck or throat, the referee can forego the warning for an immediate two-minute suspension. Players are warned once before given a yellow card; they risk being red-carded if they receive three two-minute suspensions.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "A red card results in an ejection from the game and a two-minute penalty for the team. A player may receive a red card directly for particularly rough penalties. For instance, any contact from behind during a fast break is now being treated with a red card; as does any deliberate intent to injure opponents. A red-carded player has to leave the playing area completely. A player who is disqualified may be substituted with another player after the two-minute penalty is served. A coach or official can also be penalized progressively. Any coach or official who receives a two-minute suspension will have to pull out one of their players for two minutes; however, the player is not the one punished, and can be substituted in again, as the penalty consists of the team playing with one fewer player than the opposing team.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "After referees award the ball to the opponents for whatever reason, the player currently in possession of the ball has to lay it down quickly, or risk a two-minute suspension. Also, gesticulating or verbally questioning the referee's order, as well as arguing with the officials' decisions, will normally risk a yellow card. If the suspended player protests further, does not walk straight off the court to the bench, or if the referee deems the tempo deliberately slow, that player risks a double yellow card. Illegal substitution (outside of the dedicated area, or if the replacement player enters too early) is prohibited; if they do, they risk a yellow card.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Players are typically referred to by the positions they are playing. The positions are always denoted from the view of the respective goalkeeper, so that a defender on the right opposes an attacker on the left. However, not all of the following positions may be occupied depending on the formation or potential suspensions.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Sometimes, the offense uses formations with two pivot players.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "There are many variations in defensive formations. Usually, they are described as n:m formations, where n is the number of players defending at the goal line and m the number of players defending more offensive. Exceptions are the 3:2:1 defense and n+m formation (e.g. 5+1), where m players defend some offensive player in man coverage (instead of the usual zone coverage).",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Attacks are played with all court players on the side of the defenders. Depending on the speed of the attack, one distinguishes between three attack waves with a decreasing chance of success:",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The third wave evolves into the normal offensive play when all defenders not only reach the zone, but gain their accustomed positions. Some teams then substitute specialised offence players. However, this implies that these players must play in the defence should the opposing team be able to switch quickly to offence. The latter is another benefit for fast playing teams.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "If the attacking team does not make sufficient progress (eventually releasing a shot on goal), the referees can call passive play (since 1995, the referee gives an advance warning by holding one hand high, signalling that the attacking team should release a shot soon), turning control over to the other team. A shot on goal or an infringement leading to a yellow card or two-minute penalty will mark the start of a new attack, causing the hand to be taken down; but a shot blocked by the defense or a normal free throw will not. This rule prevents an attacking team from stalling the game indefinitely, as it is difficult to intercept a pass without at the same time conceding dangerous openings towards the goal.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The usual formations of the defense are 6–0, when all the defense players line up between the 6-metre (20 ft) and 9-metre (30 ft) lines to form a wall; the 5–1, when one of the players cruises outside the 9-metre (30 ft) perimeter, usually targeting the center forwards while the other 5 line up on the 6-metre (20 ft) line; and the less common 4–2 when there are two such defenders out front. Very fast teams will also try a 3–3 formation which is close to a switching man-to-man style. The formations vary greatly from country to country, and reflect each country's style of play. 6–0 is sometimes known as \"flat defense\", and all other formations are usually called \"offensive defense\".",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Handball teams are usually organised as clubs. On a national level, the clubs are associated in federations which organize matches in leagues and tournaments.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The International Handball Federation (IHF) is the administrative and controlling body for international handball. Handball is an Olympic sport played during the Summer Olympics.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The IHF organizes world championships, held in odd-numbered years, with separate competitions for men and women. The IHF World Men's Handball Championship 2021 title holders are Denmark. The IHF World Women's Handball Championship 2021 title holder is Norway.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The IHF is composed of five continental federations: Asian Handball Federation, African Handball Confederation, Pan-American Team Handball Federation, European Handball Federation and Oceania Handball Federation. These federations organize continental championships held every other second year. Handball is played during the Pan American Games, All-Africa Games, and Asian Games. It is also played at the Mediterranean Games. In addition to continental competitions between national teams, the federations arrange international tournaments between club teams.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The current worldwide attendance record for seven-a-side handball was set on 6 September 2014, during a neutral venue German league game between HSV Hamburg and the Mannheim-based Rhein-Neckar Lions. The matchup drew 44,189 spectators to Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt, exceeding the previous record of 36,651 set at Copenhagen's Parken Stadium during the 2011 Danish Cup final.",
"title": "Attendance records"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Handball events have been selected as a main motif in numerous collectors' coins. One of the recent samples is the €10 Greek Handball commemorative coin, minted in 2003 to commemorate the 2004 Summer Olympics. On the coin, the modern athlete directs the ball in his hands towards his target, while in the background the ancient athlete is just about to throw a ball, in a game known as cheirosphaira, in a representation taken from a black-figure pottery vase of the Archaic period.",
"title": "Commemorative coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The most recent commemorative coin featuring handball is the British 50 pence coin, part of the series of coins commemorating the London 2012 Olympic Games.",
"title": "Commemorative coins"
}
]
| Handball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the goal of the opposing team. A standard match consists of two periods of 30 minutes, and the team that scores more goals wins. Modern handball is played on a court of 40 by 20 metres, with a goal in the middle of each end. The goals are surrounded by a 6-metre (20 ft) zone where only the defending goalkeeper is allowed; goals must be scored by throwing the ball from outside the zone or while "diving" into it. The sport is usually played indoors, but outdoor variants exist in the forms of field handball, Czech handball and beach handball. The game is fast and high-scoring: professional teams now typically score between 20 and 35 goals each, though lower scores were not uncommon until a few decades ago. Body contact is permitted for the defenders trying to stop the attackers from approaching the goal. No protective equipment is mandated, but players may wear soft protective bands, pads and mouth guards. The modern set of rules was published in 1917 by Karl Schelenz, Max Heiser, and Erich Konigh, on 29 October in Berlin, which day is seen as the date of birth of the sport. The rules have had several revisions since. The first official handball match was played in 1917 in Germany. Karl Schelenz modified the rules in 1919. The first international games were played with men in 1925 and with women in 1930. Men's handball was first played at the Olympics in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin outdoors, and the next time at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich indoors; handball has been an Olympic sport since then. Women's handball was added at the 1976 Summer Olympics. The International Handball Federation was formed in 1946 and, as of 2016, has 197 member federations. The sport is most popular in Europe, and European countries have won all medals but one in the men's world championships since 1938. In the women's world championships, only two non-European countries have won the title: South Korea and Brazil. The game also enjoys popularity in East Asia, North Africa and parts of South America. | 2001-09-08T01:47:19Z | 2023-12-10T16:19:08Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handball |
13,733 | Hilbert's basis theorem | In mathematics, specifically commutative algebra, Hilbert's basis theorem says that a polynomial ring over a Noetherian ring is Noetherian.
If R {\displaystyle R} is a ring, let R [ X ] {\displaystyle R[X]} denote the ring of polynomials in the indeterminate X {\displaystyle X} over R {\displaystyle R} . Hilbert proved that if R {\displaystyle R} is "not too large", in the sense that if R {\displaystyle R} is Noetherian, the same must be true for R [ X ] {\displaystyle R[X]} . Formally,
Hilbert's Basis Theorem. If R {\displaystyle R} is a Noetherian ring, then R [ X ] {\displaystyle R[X]} is a Noetherian ring.
Corollary. If R {\displaystyle R} is a Noetherian ring, then R [ X 1 , … , X n ] {\displaystyle R[X_{1},\dotsc ,X_{n}]} is a Noetherian ring.
This can be translated into algebraic geometry as follows: every algebraic set over a field can be described as the set of common roots of finitely many polynomial equations. Hilbert proved the theorem (for the special case of polynomial rings over a field) in the course of his proof of finite generation of rings of invariants.
Hilbert produced an innovative proof by contradiction using mathematical induction; his method does not give an algorithm to produce the finitely many basis polynomials for a given ideal: it only shows that they must exist. One can determine basis polynomials using the method of Gröbner bases.
Theorem. If R {\displaystyle R} is a left (resp. right) Noetherian ring, then the polynomial ring R [ X ] {\displaystyle R[X]} is also a left (resp. right) Noetherian ring.
Suppose a ⊆ R [ X ] {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}\subseteq R[X]} is a non-finitely generated left ideal. Then by recursion (using the axiom of dependent choice) there is a sequence of polynomials { f 0 , f 1 , … } {\displaystyle \{f_{0},f_{1},\ldots \}} such that if b n {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {b}}_{n}} is the left ideal generated by f 0 , … , f n − 1 {\displaystyle f_{0},\ldots ,f_{n-1}} then f n ∈ a ∖ b n {\displaystyle f_{n}\in {\mathfrak {a}}\setminus {\mathfrak {b}}_{n}} is of minimal degree. By construction, { deg ( f 0 ) , deg ( f 1 ) , … } {\displaystyle \{\deg(f_{0}),\deg(f_{1}),\ldots \}} is a non-decreasing sequence of natural numbers. Let a n {\displaystyle a_{n}} be the leading coefficient of f n {\displaystyle f_{n}} and let b {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {b}}} be the left ideal in R {\displaystyle R} generated by a 0 , a 1 , … {\displaystyle a_{0},a_{1},\ldots } . Since R {\displaystyle R} is Noetherian the chain of ideals
must terminate. Thus b = ( a 0 , … , a N − 1 ) {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {b}}=(a_{0},\ldots ,a_{N-1})} for some integer N {\displaystyle N} . So in particular,
Now consider
whose leading term is equal to that of f N {\displaystyle f_{N}} ; moreover, g ∈ b N {\displaystyle g\in {\mathfrak {b}}_{N}} . However, f N ∉ b N {\displaystyle f_{N}\notin {\mathfrak {b}}_{N}} , which means that f N − g ∈ a ∖ b N {\displaystyle f_{N}-g\in {\mathfrak {a}}\setminus {\mathfrak {b}}_{N}} has degree less than f N {\displaystyle f_{N}} , contradicting the minimality.
Let a ⊆ R [ X ] {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}\subseteq R[X]} be a left ideal. Let b {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {b}}} be the set of leading coefficients of members of a {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}} . This is obviously a left ideal over R {\displaystyle R} , and so is finitely generated by the leading coefficients of finitely many members of a {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}} ; say f 0 , … , f N − 1 {\displaystyle f_{0},\ldots ,f_{N-1}} . Let d {\displaystyle d} be the maximum of the set { deg ( f 0 ) , … , deg ( f N − 1 ) } {\displaystyle \{\deg(f_{0}),\ldots ,\deg(f_{N-1})\}} , and let b k {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {b}}_{k}} be the set of leading coefficients of members of a {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}} , whose degree is ≤ k {\displaystyle \leq k} . As before, the b k {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {b}}_{k}} are left ideals over R {\displaystyle R} , and so are finitely generated by the leading coefficients of finitely many members of a {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}} , say
with degrees ≤ k {\displaystyle \leq k} . Now let a ∗ ⊆ R [ X ] {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}^{*}\subseteq R[X]} be the left ideal generated by:
We have a ∗ ⊆ a {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}^{*}\subseteq {\mathfrak {a}}} and claim also a ⊆ a ∗ {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}\subseteq {\mathfrak {a}}^{*}} . Suppose for the sake of contradiction this is not so. Then let h ∈ a ∖ a ∗ {\displaystyle h\in {\mathfrak {a}}\setminus {\mathfrak {a}}^{*}} be of minimal degree, and denote its leading coefficient by a {\displaystyle a} .
Thus our claim holds, and a = a ∗ {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {a}}={\mathfrak {a}}^{*}} which is finitely generated.
Note that the only reason we had to split into two cases was to ensure that the powers of X {\displaystyle X} multiplying the factors were non-negative in the constructions.
Let R {\displaystyle R} be a Noetherian commutative ring. Hilbert's basis theorem has some immediate corollaries.
Formal proofs of Hilbert's basis theorem have been verified through the Mizar project (see HILBASIS file) and Lean (see ring_theory.polynomial). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In mathematics, specifically commutative algebra, Hilbert's basis theorem says that a polynomial ring over a Noetherian ring is Noetherian.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "If R {\\displaystyle R} is a ring, let R [ X ] {\\displaystyle R[X]} denote the ring of polynomials in the indeterminate X {\\displaystyle X} over R {\\displaystyle R} . Hilbert proved that if R {\\displaystyle R} is \"not too large\", in the sense that if R {\\displaystyle R} is Noetherian, the same must be true for R [ X ] {\\displaystyle R[X]} . Formally,",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hilbert's Basis Theorem. If R {\\displaystyle R} is a Noetherian ring, then R [ X ] {\\displaystyle R[X]} is a Noetherian ring.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Corollary. If R {\\displaystyle R} is a Noetherian ring, then R [ X 1 , … , X n ] {\\displaystyle R[X_{1},\\dotsc ,X_{n}]} is a Noetherian ring.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "This can be translated into algebraic geometry as follows: every algebraic set over a field can be described as the set of common roots of finitely many polynomial equations. Hilbert proved the theorem (for the special case of polynomial rings over a field) in the course of his proof of finite generation of rings of invariants.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hilbert produced an innovative proof by contradiction using mathematical induction; his method does not give an algorithm to produce the finitely many basis polynomials for a given ideal: it only shows that they must exist. One can determine basis polynomials using the method of Gröbner bases.",
"title": "Statement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Theorem. If R {\\displaystyle R} is a left (resp. right) Noetherian ring, then the polynomial ring R [ X ] {\\displaystyle R[X]} is also a left (resp. right) Noetherian ring.",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Suppose a ⊆ R [ X ] {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}\\subseteq R[X]} is a non-finitely generated left ideal. Then by recursion (using the axiom of dependent choice) there is a sequence of polynomials { f 0 , f 1 , … } {\\displaystyle \\{f_{0},f_{1},\\ldots \\}} such that if b n {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {b}}_{n}} is the left ideal generated by f 0 , … , f n − 1 {\\displaystyle f_{0},\\ldots ,f_{n-1}} then f n ∈ a ∖ b n {\\displaystyle f_{n}\\in {\\mathfrak {a}}\\setminus {\\mathfrak {b}}_{n}} is of minimal degree. By construction, { deg ( f 0 ) , deg ( f 1 ) , … } {\\displaystyle \\{\\deg(f_{0}),\\deg(f_{1}),\\ldots \\}} is a non-decreasing sequence of natural numbers. Let a n {\\displaystyle a_{n}} be the leading coefficient of f n {\\displaystyle f_{n}} and let b {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {b}}} be the left ideal in R {\\displaystyle R} generated by a 0 , a 1 , … {\\displaystyle a_{0},a_{1},\\ldots } . Since R {\\displaystyle R} is Noetherian the chain of ideals",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "must terminate. Thus b = ( a 0 , … , a N − 1 ) {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {b}}=(a_{0},\\ldots ,a_{N-1})} for some integer N {\\displaystyle N} . So in particular,",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Now consider",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "whose leading term is equal to that of f N {\\displaystyle f_{N}} ; moreover, g ∈ b N {\\displaystyle g\\in {\\mathfrak {b}}_{N}} . However, f N ∉ b N {\\displaystyle f_{N}\\notin {\\mathfrak {b}}_{N}} , which means that f N − g ∈ a ∖ b N {\\displaystyle f_{N}-g\\in {\\mathfrak {a}}\\setminus {\\mathfrak {b}}_{N}} has degree less than f N {\\displaystyle f_{N}} , contradicting the minimality.",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Let a ⊆ R [ X ] {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}\\subseteq R[X]} be a left ideal. Let b {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {b}}} be the set of leading coefficients of members of a {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}} . This is obviously a left ideal over R {\\displaystyle R} , and so is finitely generated by the leading coefficients of finitely many members of a {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}} ; say f 0 , … , f N − 1 {\\displaystyle f_{0},\\ldots ,f_{N-1}} . Let d {\\displaystyle d} be the maximum of the set { deg ( f 0 ) , … , deg ( f N − 1 ) } {\\displaystyle \\{\\deg(f_{0}),\\ldots ,\\deg(f_{N-1})\\}} , and let b k {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {b}}_{k}} be the set of leading coefficients of members of a {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}} , whose degree is ≤ k {\\displaystyle \\leq k} . As before, the b k {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {b}}_{k}} are left ideals over R {\\displaystyle R} , and so are finitely generated by the leading coefficients of finitely many members of a {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}} , say",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "with degrees ≤ k {\\displaystyle \\leq k} . Now let a ∗ ⊆ R [ X ] {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}^{*}\\subseteq R[X]} be the left ideal generated by:",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "We have a ∗ ⊆ a {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}^{*}\\subseteq {\\mathfrak {a}}} and claim also a ⊆ a ∗ {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}\\subseteq {\\mathfrak {a}}^{*}} . Suppose for the sake of contradiction this is not so. Then let h ∈ a ∖ a ∗ {\\displaystyle h\\in {\\mathfrak {a}}\\setminus {\\mathfrak {a}}^{*}} be of minimal degree, and denote its leading coefficient by a {\\displaystyle a} .",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Thus our claim holds, and a = a ∗ {\\displaystyle {\\mathfrak {a}}={\\mathfrak {a}}^{*}} which is finitely generated.",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Note that the only reason we had to split into two cases was to ensure that the powers of X {\\displaystyle X} multiplying the factors were non-negative in the constructions.",
"title": "Proof"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Let R {\\displaystyle R} be a Noetherian commutative ring. Hilbert's basis theorem has some immediate corollaries.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Formal proofs of Hilbert's basis theorem have been verified through the Mizar project (see HILBASIS file) and Lean (see ring_theory.polynomial).",
"title": "Formal proofs"
}
]
| In mathematics, specifically commutative algebra, Hilbert's basis theorem says that a polynomial ring over a Noetherian ring is Noetherian. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-06T13:57:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_basis_theorem |
13,734 | Heterocyclic compound | A heterocyclic compound or ring structure is a cyclic compound that has atoms of at least two different elements as members of its ring(s). Heterocyclic organic chemistry is the branch of organic chemistry dealing with the synthesis, properties, and applications of organic heterocycles.
Examples of heterocyclic compounds include all of the nucleic acids, the majority of drugs, most biomass (cellulose and related materials), and many natural and synthetic dyes. More than half of known compounds are heterocycles. 59% of US FDA-approved drugs contain nitrogen heterocycles.
The study of organic heterocyclic chemistry focuses especially on organic unsaturated derivatives, and the preponderance of work and applications involves unstrained organic 5- and 6-membered rings. Included are pyridine, thiophene, pyrrole, and furan. Another large class of organic heterocycles refers to those fused to benzene rings. For example, the fused benzene derivatives of pyridine, thiophene, pyrrole, and furan are quinoline, benzothiophene, indole, and benzofuran, respectively. The fusion of two benzene rings gives rise to a third large family of organic compounds. Analogs of the previously mentioned heterocycles for this third family of compounds are acridine, dibenzothiophene, carbazole, and dibenzofuran, respectively.
Heterocyclic organic compounds can be usefully classified based on their electronic structure. The saturated organic heterocycles behave like the acyclic derivatives. Thus, piperidine and tetrahydrofuran are conventional amines and ethers, with modified steric profiles. Therefore, the study of organic heterocyclic chemistry focuses on organic unsaturated rings.
Some heterocycles contain no carbon. Examples are borazine (B3N3 ring), hexachlorophosphazenes (P3N3 rings), and tetrasulfur tetranitride S4N4. In comparison with organic heterocycles, which have numerous commercial applications, inorganic ring systems are mainly of theoretical interest. IUPAC recommends the Hantzsch-Widman nomenclature for naming heterocyclic compounds.
Although subject to ring strain, 3-membered heterocyclic rings are well characterized.
The 5-membered ring compounds containing two heteroatoms, at least one of which is nitrogen, are collectively called the azoles. Thiazoles and isothiazoles contain a sulfur and a nitrogen atom in the ring. Dithiolanes have two sulfur atoms.
A large group of 5-membered ring compounds with three or more heteroatoms also exists. One example is the class of dithiazoles, which contain two sulfur atoms and one nitrogen atom.
Carborazine is a six-membered ring with two nitrogen heteroatoms and two boron heteroatom.
The hypothetical chemical compound with six nitrogen heteroatoms would be hexazine.
Borazine is a six-membered ring with three nitrogen heteroatoms and three boron heteroatoms.
In a 7-membered ring, the heteroatom must be able to provide an empty π-orbital (e.g. boron) for "normal" aromatic stabilization to be available; otherwise, homoaromaticity may be possible. Compounds with one heteroatom include:
Those with two heteroatoms include:
Borazocine is an eight-membered ring with four nitrogen heteroatoms and four boron heteroatoms.
Heterocyclic rings systems that are formally derived by fusion with other rings, either carbocyclic or heterocyclic, have a variety of common and systematic names. For example, with the benzo-fused unsaturated nitrogen heterocycles, pyrrole provides indole or isoindole depending on the orientation. The pyridine analog is quinoline or isoquinoline. For azepine, benzazepine is the preferred name. Likewise, the compounds with two benzene rings fused to the central heterocycle are carbazole, acridine, and dibenzoazepine. Thienothiophene are the fusion of two thiophene rings. Phosphaphenalenes are a tricyclic phosphorus-containing heterocyclic system derived from the carbocycle phenalene.
The history of heterocyclic chemistry began in the 1800s, in step with the development of organic chemistry. Some noteworthy developments:
Heterocyclic compounds are pervasive in many areas of life sciences and technology. Many drugs are heterocyclic compounds. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A heterocyclic compound or ring structure is a cyclic compound that has atoms of at least two different elements as members of its ring(s). Heterocyclic organic chemistry is the branch of organic chemistry dealing with the synthesis, properties, and applications of organic heterocycles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Examples of heterocyclic compounds include all of the nucleic acids, the majority of drugs, most biomass (cellulose and related materials), and many natural and synthetic dyes. More than half of known compounds are heterocycles. 59% of US FDA-approved drugs contain nitrogen heterocycles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The study of organic heterocyclic chemistry focuses especially on organic unsaturated derivatives, and the preponderance of work and applications involves unstrained organic 5- and 6-membered rings. Included are pyridine, thiophene, pyrrole, and furan. Another large class of organic heterocycles refers to those fused to benzene rings. For example, the fused benzene derivatives of pyridine, thiophene, pyrrole, and furan are quinoline, benzothiophene, indole, and benzofuran, respectively. The fusion of two benzene rings gives rise to a third large family of organic compounds. Analogs of the previously mentioned heterocycles for this third family of compounds are acridine, dibenzothiophene, carbazole, and dibenzofuran, respectively.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Heterocyclic organic compounds can be usefully classified based on their electronic structure. The saturated organic heterocycles behave like the acyclic derivatives. Thus, piperidine and tetrahydrofuran are conventional amines and ethers, with modified steric profiles. Therefore, the study of organic heterocyclic chemistry focuses on organic unsaturated rings.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Some heterocycles contain no carbon. Examples are borazine (B3N3 ring), hexachlorophosphazenes (P3N3 rings), and tetrasulfur tetranitride S4N4. In comparison with organic heterocycles, which have numerous commercial applications, inorganic ring systems are mainly of theoretical interest. IUPAC recommends the Hantzsch-Widman nomenclature for naming heterocyclic compounds.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Although subject to ring strain, 3-membered heterocyclic rings are well characterized.",
"title": "3-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The 5-membered ring compounds containing two heteroatoms, at least one of which is nitrogen, are collectively called the azoles. Thiazoles and isothiazoles contain a sulfur and a nitrogen atom in the ring. Dithiolanes have two sulfur atoms.",
"title": "5-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A large group of 5-membered ring compounds with three or more heteroatoms also exists. One example is the class of dithiazoles, which contain two sulfur atoms and one nitrogen atom.",
"title": "5-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Carborazine is a six-membered ring with two nitrogen heteroatoms and two boron heteroatom.",
"title": "6-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The hypothetical chemical compound with six nitrogen heteroatoms would be hexazine.",
"title": "6-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Borazine is a six-membered ring with three nitrogen heteroatoms and three boron heteroatoms.",
"title": "6-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In a 7-membered ring, the heteroatom must be able to provide an empty π-orbital (e.g. boron) for \"normal\" aromatic stabilization to be available; otherwise, homoaromaticity may be possible. Compounds with one heteroatom include:",
"title": "7-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Those with two heteroatoms include:",
"title": "7-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Borazocine is an eight-membered ring with four nitrogen heteroatoms and four boron heteroatoms.",
"title": "8-membered rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Heterocyclic rings systems that are formally derived by fusion with other rings, either carbocyclic or heterocyclic, have a variety of common and systematic names. For example, with the benzo-fused unsaturated nitrogen heterocycles, pyrrole provides indole or isoindole depending on the orientation. The pyridine analog is quinoline or isoquinoline. For azepine, benzazepine is the preferred name. Likewise, the compounds with two benzene rings fused to the central heterocycle are carbazole, acridine, and dibenzoazepine. Thienothiophene are the fusion of two thiophene rings. Phosphaphenalenes are a tricyclic phosphorus-containing heterocyclic system derived from the carbocycle phenalene.",
"title": "Fused/condensed rings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The history of heterocyclic chemistry began in the 1800s, in step with the development of organic chemistry. Some noteworthy developments:",
"title": "History of heterocyclic chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Heterocyclic compounds are pervasive in many areas of life sciences and technology. Many drugs are heterocyclic compounds.",
"title": "Uses"
}
]
| A heterocyclic compound or ring structure is a cyclic compound that has atoms of at least two different elements as members of its ring(s). Heterocyclic organic chemistry is the branch of organic chemistry dealing with the synthesis, properties, and applications of organic heterocycles. Examples of heterocyclic compounds include all of the nucleic acids, the majority of drugs, most biomass, and many natural and synthetic dyes. More than half of known compounds are heterocycles. 59% of US FDA-approved drugs contain nitrogen heterocycles. | 2001-09-09T18:36:05Z | 2023-12-02T21:45:11Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterocyclic_compound |
13,743 | Harry Connick Jr. | Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. (born September 11, 1967) is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and former television host. As of 2019, he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16 million in certified sales. He has had seven top 20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in U.S. jazz chart history as of 2009.
Connick's best-selling album in the United States is his Christmas album When My Heart Finds Christmas (1993). His highest-charting album is Only You (2004), which reached No. 5 in the US and No. 6 in Britain. He has won three Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards. He played Leo Markus, the husband of Grace Adler (played by Debra Messing) on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace from 2002 to 2006.
Connick began his acting career playing a tail gunner in the World War II film Memphis Belle (1990). He played a serial killer in Copycat (1995) before being cast as a fighter pilot in the blockbuster Independence Day (1996). Connick's first role as a leading man was in Hope Floats (1998) with Sandra Bullock. He also lent his voice to the animated cult classic The Iron Giant (1999). His first thriller film since Copycat was Basic (2003) with John Travolta. Additionally, he played a violent ex-husband in Bug, and was in two romantic comedies: P.S. I Love You (2007), and New in Town (2009) with Renée Zellweger. He was the leading man. In 2011, he appeared in the family film Dolphin Tale as Dr. Clay Haskett and in its 2014 sequel.
Harry Connick Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans. His mother, Anita Frances Livingston (née Levy), was a lawyer and judge in New Orleans. His father, Harry Connick Sr., was the district attorney of Orleans Parish from 1973 to 2003. He has an older sister named Suzanna.
His parents also owned a record store. Connick's father is a Roman Catholic of Northern Irish descent, while his mother, who died of ovarian cancer, was Jewish and from New York. Connick and his sister, Suzanna, were raised in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans. Harry Connick began learning to play keyboards at age three, playing publicly at age five, and recording with a local jazz band when he was ten. At nine years old, Connick performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 Opus 37 with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra (now the Louisiana Philharmonic).
Later he played a duet with Eubie Blake at the Royal Orleans Esplanade Lounge in New Orleans. The song was "I'm Just Wild About Harry". It was recorded for a Japanese documentary called Jazz Around the World. The clip was also shown in a Bravo special called Worlds of Harry Connick, Junior. in 1999. His musical talents were developed at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and under the tutelage of Ellis Marsalis Jr. and James Booker.
Connick attended Jesuit High School, Isidore Newman School, Lakeview School, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts; they are all in New Orleans. After an unsuccessful attempt studying jazz at Loyola University New Orleans as well as giving recitals in the classical and jazz piano programs at Loyola, he left the city. He lived at the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City while he was a student at Hunter College and the Manhattan School of Music.
There he met Columbia Records executive, George Butler, who persuaded him to sign with Columbia. His first record, Harry Connick Jr., was mainly an album of instrumental standards. He soon acquired a reputation in jazz because of his regular performances at various high-profile New York City venues. His next album, 20, featured vocals and added to his success.
Connick's reputation was growing, and director Rob Reiner asked him to provide a soundtrack for his romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... (1989), starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. The soundtrack consisted of several standards, including "It Had to Be You", "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore". The soundtrack earned double-platinum status in the United States. Connick won his first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance for his work on the soundtrack.
Connick made his screen debut in Memphis Belle (1990), based on a true story about a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew in World War II. In that year, he began a two-year world tour. In addition, he released two albums in July 1990: the instrumental jazz trio album Lofty's Roach Souffle and a big-band album of mostly original songs titled We Are in Love, which also went double platinum. We Are in Love earned him his second consecutive Grammy for Best Jazz Male Vocal.
"Promise Me You'll Remember", his contribution to the Godfather III soundtrack, was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 1991. In a year of recognition, he was also nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Performance in a Variety Special for his PBS special Swingin' Out Live, which was also released as a video. In October 1991, he released his third consecutive multi-platinum album, Blue Light, Red Light, on which he wrote and arranged the songs. Also in October 1991, he starred in Little Man Tate, directed by Jodie Foster, playing the friend of a child prodigy who goes to college.
In November 1992, Connick released 25, a solo piano collection of standards that again went platinum. He also re-released the album Eleven. Connick contributed "A Wink and a Smile" to the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack, released in 1993. His multi-platinum album of holiday songs, When My Heart Finds Christmas, was the best-selling Christmas album in 1993.
In 1994, Connick decided to branch out. He released She, an album of New Orleans funk that also went platinum. In addition, he released a song called "(I Could Only) Whisper Your Name" for the soundtrack of The Mask, starring Jim Carrey, which is his most successful single in the United States to date.
Connick took his funk music on a tour of the United Kingdom in 1994, an effort that did not please some of his fans, who were expecting a jazz crooner. Connick also went on a tour of the People's Republic of China in 1995, playing at the Shanghai Center Theatre. The performance was televised live in China for what became known as the Shanghai Gumbo special. In his third film Copycat (1995), Connick played a serial killer who terrorizes a psychiatrist (played by Sigourney Weaver). The following year, he released his second funk album, Star Turtle, which did not sell as well as previous albums, although it did reach No. 38 on the charts. However, he appeared in the most successful movie of 1996, Independence Day, with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum.
For his 1997 release To See You, Connick recorded original love songs, touring the United States and Europe with a full symphony orchestra backing him and his piano in each city. As part of his tour, he played at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, with his final concert of that tour in Paris being recorded for a Valentine's Day special on PBS in 1998. He also continued his film career, starring in Excess Baggage (1997) opposite Alicia Silverstone and Benicio del Toro.
In May 1998, he had his first leading role in director Forest Whitaker's Hope Floats, with Sandra Bullock being the female lead. In 1999 he released Come By Me, his first album of big band music in eight years, and embarked on a world tour, visiting the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. In addition, he provided the voice of Dean McCoppin in the animated film The Iron Giant.
Connick wrote the score for Susan Stroman's Broadway musical Thou Shalt Not, based on Émile Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin which was written in 2000. The play premiered in 2001. His music and lyrics earned him a Tony Award nomination. He was also the narrator of the film My Dog Skip, released in that year.
In March 2001, Connick starred in a television production of South Pacific with Glenn Close; it was televised on the ABC network. He also starred in Mickey, a movie; John Grisham wrote the screenplay. In October 2001, he released two albums: Songs I Heard, featuring big band re-workings of children's show themes, and 30, featuring Connick on piano with guest appearances by several musical artists. Songs I Heard won Connick a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Album; he toured performing songs from the album, holding matinees. At the performances each parent in attendance had to be accompanied by a child.
In 2002, he received a U.S. Patent 6,348,648 for a "system and method for coordinating music display among players in an orchestra." Connick appeared as Grace Adler's boyfriend and later husband, Leo Markus on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace from 2002 to 2006.
In July 2003, Connick released his first instrumental album in fifteen years, Other Hours Connick on Piano Volume 1. It was released on Branford Marsalis' new label Marsalis Music leading to a short tour of nightclubs and small theaters. Connick appeared in the film Basic. In October 2003, he released his second Christmas album, Harry for the Holidays; it went gold and reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. He also had a television special on NBC featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Marc Anthony, and Kim Burrell. Only You, his seventeenth album for Columbia Records, was released in February 2004. A collection of 1950s and 1960s ballads, Only You, was in the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic and was certified gold in the United States in March 2004. The Only You big band toured the U.S., Australia, with a few stops in Asia. Harry for the Holidays was certified platinum in November 2004.
A music DVD Harry Connick Jr.—"Only You" in Concert was released in March 2004, after it had first aired as a Great Performances special on PBS. The special won him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction. The DVD received a Gold & Platinum Music Video—Long Form awards from the RIAA in November 2005.
An animated holiday special, The Happy Elf aired on NBC in December 2005; Connick was the composer, the narrator, and one of the executive producers. The show was released on DVD soon afterwards. The holiday special was based on his original song The Happy Elf, from his 2003 album Harry for the Holidays. Another album from Marsalis Music was recorded in 2005, Occasion : Connick on Piano, Volume 2, a duo album with Harry Connick Jr. on piano and Branford Marsalis on saxophone. A music DVD, A Duo Occasion was filmed at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival 2005 in Canada; it was released in November 2005.
He appeared in another episode of the Will & Grace sitcom in November 2005, he was in three more episodes in 2006.
Bug, a film directed by William Friedkin, is a psychological thriller filmed in 2005 starring Connick, Ashley Judd, and Michael Shannon. The film was released in 2007. He starred in the Broadway revival of The Pajama Game, produced by the Roundabout Theater Company, along with Michael McKean and Kelli O'Hara, at the American Airlines Theatre in 2006. It ran from February 23 to June 17, 2006; five benefit performances ran rom June 13 to 17. Connick's performance was highly acclaimed; David Rooney wrote in Variety, "With his handsome wholesomeness and those mellifluous Sinatra-esque pipes, it's hard to imagine a leading man more tailor-made for this 1954 show." The Pajama Game cast recording was nominated for a Grammy, after being released as part of Connick's double disc album Harry on Broadway, Act I.
He hosted The Weather Channel's miniseries 100 Biggest Weather Moments which aired in 2007. He was part of the documentary Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, released in November 2007. He sat in playing piano on Bob French's 2007 album Marsalis Music Honors Series: Bob French. He appeared in the film P.S. I Love You, released in December 2007.
The third album in the Connick on Piano series, Chanson du Vieux Carré was released in 2007, and Connick received two Grammy nominations for the track "Ash Wednesday" for the Grammy awards in 2008. Chanson du Vieux Carré was released simultaneously with the album Oh, My NOLA. He toured North America and Europe in 2007, and toured Asia and Australia in 2008 as part of his My New Orleans Tour. Connick wrote two songs and did the arrangements for Kelli O'Hara's album which was released in May 2008; he also sang a duet on the recording. He was the featured singer at the Concert of Hope immediately preceding Pope Benedict XVI's mass at Yankee Stadium in April 2008. He had the starring role of Dr. Dennis Slamon in the Lifetime television film Living Proof (2008). His third Christmas album, What a Night!, was released in November 2008.
Connick has a vast knowledge of musical genres and vocalists, even gospel music. One of his favorite gospel artists is Stellar Award winner and Grammy nominated artist Kim Burrell of Houston. Chris Gray of the Houston Press said, "... when Harry Connick Jr. assembled a symphony orchestra for Pope Benedict XVI's appearance at Yankee Stadium in 2008, he wanted Burrell on vocals"
The film New in Town starring Connick and Renée Zellweger began filming in January 2008; it was released in January 2009. Connick's album Your Songs was released on CD, September 22, 2009. In contrast to Connick's previous albums, this album is a collaboration with a record company producer, the multiple Grammy Award winning music executive Clive Davis.
Connick starred in the Broadway revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which opened at the St. James Theatre in November 2011 in previews. It closed in January 2012, after 29 previews and 57 performances.
Connick appeared on the May 4, 2010, episode of American Idol season 9, where he acted as a mentor for the top 5 finalists. He appeared again the next night on May 5 to perform "And I Love Her".
On January 6, 2012, NBC president Robert Greenblatt announced at the Television Critics Association winter press tour that Connick had been cast in a four-episode arc of NBC's long-running legal drama, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as new Executive ADA, David Haden, a prosecutor who is assigned a case with Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay).
On June 11, 2013, Connick released a new album of all original music titled Every Man Should Know. Connick debuted the title track live on May 2, 2013, episode of American Idol and appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show the following week to discuss his new project. A 2013 US summer tour was announced in support of the album.
Connick returned to American Idol to mentor the top four of season 12. He performed "Every Man Should Know" on the results show the following night. Connick was on the judging panel for seasons 13, 14 and 15 of American Idol, airing in 2014 to 2016.
Angels Sing, a family Christmas movie released in November 2013 by Lionsgate, afforded Connick an onscreen collaboration with fellow musician Willie Nelson. The two wrote a special song exclusively for the movie. Shot in Austin, Texas, Angels Sing features actor/musicians Connie Britton, Lyle Lovett, and Kris Kristofferson and is directed by Tim McCanlies, who previously worked with Connick in The Iron Giant.
A one-hour weekday daytime talk show starring Connick called Harry debuted on September 12, 2016.
In January 2019, it was announced that Connick was hired by piano instruction software company Playground Sessions as a video instructor.
On October 25, 2019, he released a new album of Cole Porter compositions rearranged by Connick himself from Porter's The Great American Songbook including “Anything Goes” and “You Do Something To Me.” After selecting the songs, and writing and orchestrating the arrangements, he assembled and conducted the orchestra which features his longtime touring band with additional horns and a full string section. Along with his album, Connick announced his return to Broadway on September 16, 2019, with Harry Connick Jr. — A Celebration of Cole Porter, a multimedia celebration of the Cole Porter songbook. The production was conceived and directed by Connick himself with the addition of theatrical and film elements accompanied by a company of dancers and an onstage orchestra.
Harry released his new album Alone With My Faith on March 19, 2021. With the Coronavirus pandemic casting a long shadow in 2020, Connick retreated to his home studio during the lockdown and emerged with an album of new music. He arranged all of the songs, played every instrument, and sang every part. In addition to the familiar, traditional songs, Connick wrote and recorded new tracks that tell the story of his experience coping during lockdown and feeling the full spectrum of emotions that came with it. Both the album cover and the music videos for “Amazing Grace” and “Alone With My Faith” were conceived and directed by Harry's daughter Georgia Connick. Alone With My Faith earned Connick his 16th career GRAMMY nomination for Best Roots Gospel Album as part of the 64th annual GRAMMY awards.
Harry joined the cast of Annie Live! as Sir Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks - opposite Taraji P. Henson's devious Miss Hannigan. The live production aired December 2, 2021, on NBC and also coincided with the release of the Annie Live! Cast Album – the original soundtrack of the NBC television event.
On 28 September 2022, Australia's Seven Network announced Connick Jr. would be a judge on the revival of Australian Idol in 2023.
The following musicians have toured as the Harry Connick Jr. Big Band since its inception in 1990:
Connick, a New Orleans native, is a founder of the Krewe of Orpheus which is a music-based New Orleans krewe. Its name is derived from Orpheus of classical mythology. The Krewe of Orpheus has parades on St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street in New Orleans on Lundi Gras (Fat Monday)—, which is the day before Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).
On September 2, 2005, Connick helped organize and appeared in the NBC-sponsored live telethon concert, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, for relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He spent several days touring the city to draw attention to the plight of citizens stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and other places. At the concert he paired with host Matt Lauer and entertainers including Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Kanye West, Mike Myers, and John Goodman.
On September 6, 2005, Connick was made the honorary chair of Habitat for Humanity's Operation Home Delivery, a long-term rebuilding plan for families who survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. His actions in New Orleans earned him a Jefferson Award for Public Service.
Connick's album Oh, My NOLA, and Chanson du Vieux Carré were released in 2007; a tour called the My New Orleans Tour followed.
Connick and Branford Marsalis devised an initiative to help restore New Orleans' musical heritage. Habitat for Humanity and New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, working with Connick and Marsalis announced on December 6, 2005, plans for a Musicians' Village in New Orleans. The Musicians' Village includes Habitat-constructed homes, with an Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, as the area's centerpiece. The Habitat-built homes provide musicians, and anyone else who qualifies, the opportunity to buy decent, affordable housing.
In 2012, Connick and Marsalis received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
On April 16, 1994, Connick married former Victoria's Secret model Jill Goodacre, who is originally from Texas, at the St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans. Jill is the daughter of sculptor Glenna Goodacre, originally from Lubbock, and now Santa Fe, New Mexico. The song "Jill", on the album Blue Light, Red Light (1991) is about Jill Goodacre. They have three daughters, Georgia Tatum (born April 17, 1996), Sarah Kate (born September 12, 1997), and Charlotte (born June 26, 2002). The family has lived in both New Orleans and New Canaan, Connecticut.
Connick is a practicing Roman Catholic, although he also identifies with his maternal Jewish heritage.
In 2011, Harry wrote Kate's debut song "A Lot Like Me". The song was released to celebrate the debut of American Girl's newest historical characters Cecile Rey and Marie Grace Gardner. "A Lot Like Me" is available on iTunes. The proceeds from "A Lot Like Me" went towards Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.
Connick is a supporter of hometown NFL franchise New Orleans Saints. He was caught on camera at the Super Bowl XLIV, which the Saints won, in Miami by the television crew of The Ellen DeGeneres Show during the post-game celebrations. Ellen's mother Betty was on the sidelines watching the festivities when she spotted Connick in the stands sporting a Drew Brees jersey.
Connick was arrested by the Port Authority Police in December 1992 and charged with having a 9 mm pistol in his possession at JFK International Airport. After he was in jail for a day, he agreed to make a public-service television commercial warning against carrying a pistol in New York City without a license. The court agreed to drop all charges if Connick stayed out of trouble for six months. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. (born September 11, 1967) is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and former television host. As of 2019, he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16 million in certified sales. He has had seven top 20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in U.S. jazz chart history as of 2009.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Connick's best-selling album in the United States is his Christmas album When My Heart Finds Christmas (1993). His highest-charting album is Only You (2004), which reached No. 5 in the US and No. 6 in Britain. He has won three Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards. He played Leo Markus, the husband of Grace Adler (played by Debra Messing) on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace from 2002 to 2006.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Connick began his acting career playing a tail gunner in the World War II film Memphis Belle (1990). He played a serial killer in Copycat (1995) before being cast as a fighter pilot in the blockbuster Independence Day (1996). Connick's first role as a leading man was in Hope Floats (1998) with Sandra Bullock. He also lent his voice to the animated cult classic The Iron Giant (1999). His first thriller film since Copycat was Basic (2003) with John Travolta. Additionally, he played a violent ex-husband in Bug, and was in two romantic comedies: P.S. I Love You (2007), and New in Town (2009) with Renée Zellweger. He was the leading man. In 2011, he appeared in the family film Dolphin Tale as Dr. Clay Haskett and in its 2014 sequel.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Harry Connick Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans. His mother, Anita Frances Livingston (née Levy), was a lawyer and judge in New Orleans. His father, Harry Connick Sr., was the district attorney of Orleans Parish from 1973 to 2003. He has an older sister named Suzanna.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "His parents also owned a record store. Connick's father is a Roman Catholic of Northern Irish descent, while his mother, who died of ovarian cancer, was Jewish and from New York. Connick and his sister, Suzanna, were raised in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans. Harry Connick began learning to play keyboards at age three, playing publicly at age five, and recording with a local jazz band when he was ten. At nine years old, Connick performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 Opus 37 with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra (now the Louisiana Philharmonic).",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Later he played a duet with Eubie Blake at the Royal Orleans Esplanade Lounge in New Orleans. The song was \"I'm Just Wild About Harry\". It was recorded for a Japanese documentary called Jazz Around the World. The clip was also shown in a Bravo special called Worlds of Harry Connick, Junior. in 1999. His musical talents were developed at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and under the tutelage of Ellis Marsalis Jr. and James Booker.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Connick attended Jesuit High School, Isidore Newman School, Lakeview School, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts; they are all in New Orleans. After an unsuccessful attempt studying jazz at Loyola University New Orleans as well as giving recitals in the classical and jazz piano programs at Loyola, he left the city. He lived at the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City while he was a student at Hunter College and the Manhattan School of Music.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "There he met Columbia Records executive, George Butler, who persuaded him to sign with Columbia. His first record, Harry Connick Jr., was mainly an album of instrumental standards. He soon acquired a reputation in jazz because of his regular performances at various high-profile New York City venues. His next album, 20, featured vocals and added to his success.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Connick's reputation was growing, and director Rob Reiner asked him to provide a soundtrack for his romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally... (1989), starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. The soundtrack consisted of several standards, including \"It Had to Be You\", \"Let's Call the Whole Thing Off\" and \"Don't Get Around Much Anymore\". The soundtrack earned double-platinum status in the United States. Connick won his first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance for his work on the soundtrack.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Connick made his screen debut in Memphis Belle (1990), based on a true story about a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew in World War II. In that year, he began a two-year world tour. In addition, he released two albums in July 1990: the instrumental jazz trio album Lofty's Roach Souffle and a big-band album of mostly original songs titled We Are in Love, which also went double platinum. We Are in Love earned him his second consecutive Grammy for Best Jazz Male Vocal.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "\"Promise Me You'll Remember\", his contribution to the Godfather III soundtrack, was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 1991. In a year of recognition, he was also nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Performance in a Variety Special for his PBS special Swingin' Out Live, which was also released as a video. In October 1991, he released his third consecutive multi-platinum album, Blue Light, Red Light, on which he wrote and arranged the songs. Also in October 1991, he starred in Little Man Tate, directed by Jodie Foster, playing the friend of a child prodigy who goes to college.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In November 1992, Connick released 25, a solo piano collection of standards that again went platinum. He also re-released the album Eleven. Connick contributed \"A Wink and a Smile\" to the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack, released in 1993. His multi-platinum album of holiday songs, When My Heart Finds Christmas, was the best-selling Christmas album in 1993.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1994, Connick decided to branch out. He released She, an album of New Orleans funk that also went platinum. In addition, he released a song called \"(I Could Only) Whisper Your Name\" for the soundtrack of The Mask, starring Jim Carrey, which is his most successful single in the United States to date.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Connick took his funk music on a tour of the United Kingdom in 1994, an effort that did not please some of his fans, who were expecting a jazz crooner. Connick also went on a tour of the People's Republic of China in 1995, playing at the Shanghai Center Theatre. The performance was televised live in China for what became known as the Shanghai Gumbo special. In his third film Copycat (1995), Connick played a serial killer who terrorizes a psychiatrist (played by Sigourney Weaver). The following year, he released his second funk album, Star Turtle, which did not sell as well as previous albums, although it did reach No. 38 on the charts. However, he appeared in the most successful movie of 1996, Independence Day, with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "For his 1997 release To See You, Connick recorded original love songs, touring the United States and Europe with a full symphony orchestra backing him and his piano in each city. As part of his tour, he played at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, with his final concert of that tour in Paris being recorded for a Valentine's Day special on PBS in 1998. He also continued his film career, starring in Excess Baggage (1997) opposite Alicia Silverstone and Benicio del Toro.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In May 1998, he had his first leading role in director Forest Whitaker's Hope Floats, with Sandra Bullock being the female lead. In 1999 he released Come By Me, his first album of big band music in eight years, and embarked on a world tour, visiting the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. In addition, he provided the voice of Dean McCoppin in the animated film The Iron Giant.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Connick wrote the score for Susan Stroman's Broadway musical Thou Shalt Not, based on Émile Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin which was written in 2000. The play premiered in 2001. His music and lyrics earned him a Tony Award nomination. He was also the narrator of the film My Dog Skip, released in that year.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In March 2001, Connick starred in a television production of South Pacific with Glenn Close; it was televised on the ABC network. He also starred in Mickey, a movie; John Grisham wrote the screenplay. In October 2001, he released two albums: Songs I Heard, featuring big band re-workings of children's show themes, and 30, featuring Connick on piano with guest appearances by several musical artists. Songs I Heard won Connick a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Album; he toured performing songs from the album, holding matinees. At the performances each parent in attendance had to be accompanied by a child.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 2002, he received a U.S. Patent 6,348,648 for a \"system and method for coordinating music display among players in an orchestra.\" Connick appeared as Grace Adler's boyfriend and later husband, Leo Markus on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace from 2002 to 2006.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In July 2003, Connick released his first instrumental album in fifteen years, Other Hours Connick on Piano Volume 1. It was released on Branford Marsalis' new label Marsalis Music leading to a short tour of nightclubs and small theaters. Connick appeared in the film Basic. In October 2003, he released his second Christmas album, Harry for the Holidays; it went gold and reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. He also had a television special on NBC featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Marc Anthony, and Kim Burrell. Only You, his seventeenth album for Columbia Records, was released in February 2004. A collection of 1950s and 1960s ballads, Only You, was in the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic and was certified gold in the United States in March 2004. The Only You big band toured the U.S., Australia, with a few stops in Asia. Harry for the Holidays was certified platinum in November 2004.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A music DVD Harry Connick Jr.—\"Only You\" in Concert was released in March 2004, after it had first aired as a Great Performances special on PBS. The special won him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction. The DVD received a Gold & Platinum Music Video—Long Form awards from the RIAA in November 2005.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "An animated holiday special, The Happy Elf aired on NBC in December 2005; Connick was the composer, the narrator, and one of the executive producers. The show was released on DVD soon afterwards. The holiday special was based on his original song The Happy Elf, from his 2003 album Harry for the Holidays. Another album from Marsalis Music was recorded in 2005, Occasion : Connick on Piano, Volume 2, a duo album with Harry Connick Jr. on piano and Branford Marsalis on saxophone. A music DVD, A Duo Occasion was filmed at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival 2005 in Canada; it was released in November 2005.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "He appeared in another episode of the Will & Grace sitcom in November 2005, he was in three more episodes in 2006.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Bug, a film directed by William Friedkin, is a psychological thriller filmed in 2005 starring Connick, Ashley Judd, and Michael Shannon. The film was released in 2007. He starred in the Broadway revival of The Pajama Game, produced by the Roundabout Theater Company, along with Michael McKean and Kelli O'Hara, at the American Airlines Theatre in 2006. It ran from February 23 to June 17, 2006; five benefit performances ran rom June 13 to 17. Connick's performance was highly acclaimed; David Rooney wrote in Variety, \"With his handsome wholesomeness and those mellifluous Sinatra-esque pipes, it's hard to imagine a leading man more tailor-made for this 1954 show.\" The Pajama Game cast recording was nominated for a Grammy, after being released as part of Connick's double disc album Harry on Broadway, Act I.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "He hosted The Weather Channel's miniseries 100 Biggest Weather Moments which aired in 2007. He was part of the documentary Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, released in November 2007. He sat in playing piano on Bob French's 2007 album Marsalis Music Honors Series: Bob French. He appeared in the film P.S. I Love You, released in December 2007.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The third album in the Connick on Piano series, Chanson du Vieux Carré was released in 2007, and Connick received two Grammy nominations for the track \"Ash Wednesday\" for the Grammy awards in 2008. Chanson du Vieux Carré was released simultaneously with the album Oh, My NOLA. He toured North America and Europe in 2007, and toured Asia and Australia in 2008 as part of his My New Orleans Tour. Connick wrote two songs and did the arrangements for Kelli O'Hara's album which was released in May 2008; he also sang a duet on the recording. He was the featured singer at the Concert of Hope immediately preceding Pope Benedict XVI's mass at Yankee Stadium in April 2008. He had the starring role of Dr. Dennis Slamon in the Lifetime television film Living Proof (2008). His third Christmas album, What a Night!, was released in November 2008.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Connick has a vast knowledge of musical genres and vocalists, even gospel music. One of his favorite gospel artists is Stellar Award winner and Grammy nominated artist Kim Burrell of Houston. Chris Gray of the Houston Press said, \"... when Harry Connick Jr. assembled a symphony orchestra for Pope Benedict XVI's appearance at Yankee Stadium in 2008, he wanted Burrell on vocals\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The film New in Town starring Connick and Renée Zellweger began filming in January 2008; it was released in January 2009. Connick's album Your Songs was released on CD, September 22, 2009. In contrast to Connick's previous albums, this album is a collaboration with a record company producer, the multiple Grammy Award winning music executive Clive Davis.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Connick starred in the Broadway revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which opened at the St. James Theatre in November 2011 in previews. It closed in January 2012, after 29 previews and 57 performances.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Connick appeared on the May 4, 2010, episode of American Idol season 9, where he acted as a mentor for the top 5 finalists. He appeared again the next night on May 5 to perform \"And I Love Her\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On January 6, 2012, NBC president Robert Greenblatt announced at the Television Critics Association winter press tour that Connick had been cast in a four-episode arc of NBC's long-running legal drama, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as new Executive ADA, David Haden, a prosecutor who is assigned a case with Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On June 11, 2013, Connick released a new album of all original music titled Every Man Should Know. Connick debuted the title track live on May 2, 2013, episode of American Idol and appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show the following week to discuss his new project. A 2013 US summer tour was announced in support of the album.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Connick returned to American Idol to mentor the top four of season 12. He performed \"Every Man Should Know\" on the results show the following night. Connick was on the judging panel for seasons 13, 14 and 15 of American Idol, airing in 2014 to 2016.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Angels Sing, a family Christmas movie released in November 2013 by Lionsgate, afforded Connick an onscreen collaboration with fellow musician Willie Nelson. The two wrote a special song exclusively for the movie. Shot in Austin, Texas, Angels Sing features actor/musicians Connie Britton, Lyle Lovett, and Kris Kristofferson and is directed by Tim McCanlies, who previously worked with Connick in The Iron Giant.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A one-hour weekday daytime talk show starring Connick called Harry debuted on September 12, 2016.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In January 2019, it was announced that Connick was hired by piano instruction software company Playground Sessions as a video instructor.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On October 25, 2019, he released a new album of Cole Porter compositions rearranged by Connick himself from Porter's The Great American Songbook including “Anything Goes” and “You Do Something To Me.” After selecting the songs, and writing and orchestrating the arrangements, he assembled and conducted the orchestra which features his longtime touring band with additional horns and a full string section. Along with his album, Connick announced his return to Broadway on September 16, 2019, with Harry Connick Jr. — A Celebration of Cole Porter, a multimedia celebration of the Cole Porter songbook. The production was conceived and directed by Connick himself with the addition of theatrical and film elements accompanied by a company of dancers and an onstage orchestra.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Harry released his new album Alone With My Faith on March 19, 2021. With the Coronavirus pandemic casting a long shadow in 2020, Connick retreated to his home studio during the lockdown and emerged with an album of new music. He arranged all of the songs, played every instrument, and sang every part. In addition to the familiar, traditional songs, Connick wrote and recorded new tracks that tell the story of his experience coping during lockdown and feeling the full spectrum of emotions that came with it. Both the album cover and the music videos for “Amazing Grace” and “Alone With My Faith” were conceived and directed by Harry's daughter Georgia Connick. Alone With My Faith earned Connick his 16th career GRAMMY nomination for Best Roots Gospel Album as part of the 64th annual GRAMMY awards.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Harry joined the cast of Annie Live! as Sir Oliver \"Daddy\" Warbucks - opposite Taraji P. Henson's devious Miss Hannigan. The live production aired December 2, 2021, on NBC and also coincided with the release of the Annie Live! Cast Album – the original soundtrack of the NBC television event.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On 28 September 2022, Australia's Seven Network announced Connick Jr. would be a judge on the revival of Australian Idol in 2023.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The following musicians have toured as the Harry Connick Jr. Big Band since its inception in 1990:",
"title": "Touring Big Band members"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Connick, a New Orleans native, is a founder of the Krewe of Orpheus which is a music-based New Orleans krewe. Its name is derived from Orpheus of classical mythology. The Krewe of Orpheus has parades on St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street in New Orleans on Lundi Gras (Fat Monday)—, which is the day before Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).",
"title": "Connick and New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "On September 2, 2005, Connick helped organize and appeared in the NBC-sponsored live telethon concert, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, for relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He spent several days touring the city to draw attention to the plight of citizens stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and other places. At the concert he paired with host Matt Lauer and entertainers including Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Kanye West, Mike Myers, and John Goodman.",
"title": "Connick and New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On September 6, 2005, Connick was made the honorary chair of Habitat for Humanity's Operation Home Delivery, a long-term rebuilding plan for families who survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. His actions in New Orleans earned him a Jefferson Award for Public Service.",
"title": "Connick and New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Connick's album Oh, My NOLA, and Chanson du Vieux Carré were released in 2007; a tour called the My New Orleans Tour followed.",
"title": "Connick and New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Connick and Branford Marsalis devised an initiative to help restore New Orleans' musical heritage. Habitat for Humanity and New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, working with Connick and Marsalis announced on December 6, 2005, plans for a Musicians' Village in New Orleans. The Musicians' Village includes Habitat-constructed homes, with an Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, as the area's centerpiece. The Habitat-built homes provide musicians, and anyone else who qualifies, the opportunity to buy decent, affordable housing.",
"title": "Connick and New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 2012, Connick and Marsalis received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.",
"title": "Connick and New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On April 16, 1994, Connick married former Victoria's Secret model Jill Goodacre, who is originally from Texas, at the St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans. Jill is the daughter of sculptor Glenna Goodacre, originally from Lubbock, and now Santa Fe, New Mexico. The song \"Jill\", on the album Blue Light, Red Light (1991) is about Jill Goodacre. They have three daughters, Georgia Tatum (born April 17, 1996), Sarah Kate (born September 12, 1997), and Charlotte (born June 26, 2002). The family has lived in both New Orleans and New Canaan, Connecticut.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Connick is a practicing Roman Catholic, although he also identifies with his maternal Jewish heritage.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 2011, Harry wrote Kate's debut song \"A Lot Like Me\". The song was released to celebrate the debut of American Girl's newest historical characters Cecile Rey and Marie Grace Gardner. \"A Lot Like Me\" is available on iTunes. The proceeds from \"A Lot Like Me\" went towards Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Connick is a supporter of hometown NFL franchise New Orleans Saints. He was caught on camera at the Super Bowl XLIV, which the Saints won, in Miami by the television crew of The Ellen DeGeneres Show during the post-game celebrations. Ellen's mother Betty was on the sidelines watching the festivities when she spotted Connick in the stands sporting a Drew Brees jersey.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Connick was arrested by the Port Authority Police in December 1992 and charged with having a 9 mm pistol in his possession at JFK International Airport. After he was in jail for a day, he agreed to make a public-service television commercial warning against carrying a pistol in New York City without a license. The court agreed to drop all charges if Connick stayed out of trouble for six months.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and former television host. As of 2019, he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16 million in certified sales. He has had seven top 20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in U.S. jazz chart history as of 2009. Connick's best-selling album in the United States is his Christmas album When My Heart Finds Christmas (1993). His highest-charting album is Only You (2004), which reached No. 5 in the US and No. 6 in Britain. He has won three Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards. He played Leo Markus, the husband of Grace Adler on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace from 2002 to 2006. Connick began his acting career playing a tail gunner in the World War II film Memphis Belle (1990). He played a serial killer in Copycat (1995) before being cast as a fighter pilot in the blockbuster Independence Day (1996). Connick's first role as a leading man was in Hope Floats (1998) with Sandra Bullock. He also lent his voice to the animated cult classic The Iron Giant (1999). His first thriller film since Copycat was Basic (2003) with John Travolta. Additionally, he played a violent ex-husband in Bug, and was in two romantic comedies: P.S. I Love You (2007), and New in Town (2009) with Renée Zellweger. He was the leading man. In 2011, he appeared in the family film Dolphin Tale as Dr. Clay Haskett and in its 2014 sequel. | 2001-10-16T15:42:21Z | 2023-12-18T16:21:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Connick_Jr. |
13,744 | List of humorists | A humorist (American English) or humourist (British English) is an intellectual who uses humor in writing or public speaking. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh, though it is possible for some persons to occupy both roles in the course of their careers.
Despite the fact that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts annually bestows a Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (usually on comedians) since 1998, this award does not by itself qualify the recipient as a humorist. As of 2017 only two recipients, Steve Martin and Neil Simon, are known as humorists, being humorous playwrights.
Notable humorists include: | [
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"text": "A humorist (American English) or humourist (British English) is an intellectual who uses humor in writing or public speaking. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh, though it is possible for some persons to occupy both roles in the course of their careers.",
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| A humorist or humourist is an intellectual who uses humor in writing or public speaking. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh, though it is possible for some persons to occupy both roles in the course of their careers. Despite the fact that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts annually bestows a Mark Twain Prize for American Humor since 1998, this award does not by itself qualify the recipient as a humorist. As of 2017 only two recipients, Steve Martin and Neil Simon, are known as humorists, being humorous playwrights. | 2001-09-12T17:40:08Z | 2023-12-13T07:07:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorists |
13,746 | Hydrostatic shock | Hydrostatic shock is the controversial concept that a penetrating projectile (such as a bullet) can produce a pressure wave that causes "remote neural damage", "subtle damage in neural tissues" and "rapid incapacitating effects" in living targets. It has also been suggested that pressure wave effects can cause indirect bone fractures at a distance from the projectile path, although it was later demonstrated that indirect bone fractures are caused by temporary cavity effects (strain placed on the bone by the radial tissue displacement produced by the temporary cavity formation).
Proponents of the concept argue that hydrostatic shock can produce remote neural damage and produce incapacitation more quickly than blood loss effects. In arguments about the differences in stopping power between calibers and between cartridge models, proponents of cartridges that are "light and fast" (such as the 9×19mm Parabellum) versus cartridges that are "slow and heavy" (such as the .45 ACP) often refer to this phenomenon.
Martin Fackler has argued that sonic pressure waves do not cause tissue disruption and that temporary cavity formation is the actual cause of tissue disruption mistakenly ascribed to sonic pressure waves. One review noted that strong opinion divided papers on whether the pressure wave contributes to wound injury. It ultimately concluded that no "conclusive evidence could be found for permanent pathological effects produced by the pressure wave".
An early mention of "hydrostatic shock" appeared in Popular Mechanics in April 1942. In the scientific literature, the first discussion of pressure waves created when a bullet hits a living target is presented by E. Harvey Newton and his research group at Princeton University in 1947:
It is generally recognized that when a high-velocity missile strikes the body and moves through soft tissues, pressures develop which are measured in thousands of atmospheres. Actually, three different types of pressure change appear: (1) shock wave pressures or sharp, high-pressure pulses, formed when the missile hits the body surface; (2) very high-pressure regions immediately in front and to each side of the moving missile; (3) relatively slow, low-pressure changes connected with the behavior of the large explosive temporary cavity, formed behind the missile. Such pressure changes appear to be responsible for what is known to hunters as hydraulic shock—a hydraulic transmission of energy that is believed to cause instant death of animals hit by high-velocity bullets (Powell (1)).
Frank Chamberlin, a World War II trauma surgeon and ballistics researcher, noted remote pressure wave effects. Col. Chamberlin described what he called "explosive effects" and "hydraulic reaction" of bullets in tissue. ...liquids are put in motion by 'shock waves' or hydraulic effects... with liquid filled tissues, the effects and destruction of tissues extend in all directions far beyond the wound axis. He avoided the ambiguous use of the term "shock" because it can refer to either a specific kind of pressure wave associated with explosions and supersonic projectiles or to a medical condition in the body.
Col. Chamberlin recognized that many theories have been advanced in wound ballistics. During World War II he commanded an 8,500-bed hospital center that treated over 67,000 patients during the fourteen months that he operated it. P.O. Ackley estimates that 85% of the patients were suffering from gunshot wounds. Col. Chamberlin spent many hours interviewing patients as to their reactions to bullet wounds. He conducted many live animal experiments after his tour of duty. On the subject of wound ballistics theories, he wrote:
If I had to pick one of these theories as gospel, I'd still go along with the Hydraulic Reaction of the Body Fluids plus the reactions on the Central Nervous System.
Other World War II era scientists noted remote pressure wave effects in the peripheral nerves. There was support for the idea of remote neural effects of ballistic pressure waves in the medical and scientific communities, but the phrase "hydrostatic shock" and similar phrases including "shock" were used mainly by gunwriters (such as Jack O'Conner) and the small arms industry (such as Roy Weatherby, and Federal "Hydra-Shok.")
Martin Fackler, a Vietnam-era trauma surgeon, wound ballistics researcher, a colonel in the U.S. Army and the head of the Wound Ballistics Laboratory for the U.S. Army's Medical Training Center, Letterman Institute, claimed that hydrostatic shock had been disproved and that the assertion that a pressure wave plays a role in injury or incapacitation is a myth. Others expressed similar views.
Fackler based his argument on the lithotriptor, a tool commonly used to break up kidney stones. A lithotriptor uses sonic pressure waves which are stronger than those caused by most handgun bullets, yet it produces no damage to soft tissues whatsoever. Hence, Fackler argued, ballistic pressure waves cannot damage tissue either.
Fackler claimed that a study of rifle bullet wounds in Vietnam (Wound Data and Munitions Effectiveness Team) found "no cases of bones being broken, or major vessels torn, that were not hit by the penetrating bullet. In only two cases, an organ that was not hit (but was within a few cm of the projectile path), suffered some disruption." Fackler cited a personal communication with R. F. Bellamy. However, Bellamy's published findings the following year estimated that 10% of fractures in the data set might be due to indirect injuries, and one specific case is described in detail (pp. 153–154). In addition, the published analysis documents five instances of abdominal wounding in cases where the bullet did not penetrate the abdominal cavity (pp. 149–152), a case of lung contusion resulting from a hit to the shoulder (pp. 146–149), and a case of indirect effects on the central nervous system (p. 155). Fackler's critics argue that his evidence does not contradict distant injuries, as Fackler claimed, but the WDMET data from Vietnam actually provides supporting evidence for it.
A summary of the debate was published in 2009 as part of a Historical Overview of Wound Ballistics Research.
Fackler [10, 13] however, disputed the shock wave hypothesis, claiming there is no physical evidence to support it, although some support for this hypothesis had already been provided by Harvey [20, 21], Kolsky [31], Suneson et. al. [42, 43], and Crucq [5]. Since that time, other authors suggest there is increasing evidence to support the hypothesis that shock waves from high velocity bullets can cause tissue related damage and damage to the nervous system. This has been shown in various experiments using simulant models [24, 48]. One of the most interesting is a study by Courtney and Courtney [4] who showed a link between traumatic brain injury and pressure waves originating in the thoracic cavity and extremities.
The Wound Data and Munitions Effectiveness Team (WDMET) gathered data on wounds sustained during the Vietnam War. In their analysis of this data published in the Textbook of Military Medicine, Ronald Bellamy and Russ Zajtchuck point out a number of cases which seem to be examples of distant injuries. Bellamy and Zajtchuck describe three mechanisms of distant wounding due to pressure transients: 1) stress waves 2) shear waves and 3) a vascular pressure impulse.
After citing Harvey's conclusion that "stress waves probably do not cause any tissue damage" (p. 136), Bellamy and Zajtchuck express their view that Harvey's interpretation might not be definitive because they write "the possibility that stress waves from a penetrating projectile might also cause tissue damage cannot be ruled out." (p. 136) The WDMET data includes a case of a lung contusion resulting from a hit to the shoulder. The caption to Figure 4-40 (p. 149) says, "The pulmonary injury may be the result of a stress wave." They describe the possibility that a hit to a soldier's trapezius muscle caused temporary paralysis due to "the stress wave passing through the soldier's neck indirectly [causing] cervical cord dysfunction." (p. 155)
In addition to stress waves, Bellamy and Zajtchuck describe shear waves as a possible mechanism of indirect injuries in the WDMET data. They estimate that 10% of bone fractures in the data may be the result of indirect injuries, that is, bones fractured by the bullet passing close to the bone without a direct impact. A Chinese experiment is cited which provides a formula estimating how pressure magnitude decreases with distance. Together with the difference between strength of human bones and strength of the animal bones in the Chinese experiment, Bellamy and Zajtchuck use this formula to estimate that assault rifle rounds "passing within a centimeter of a long bone might very well be capable of causing an indirect fracture." (p. 153) Bellamy and Zajtchuck suggest the fracture in Figures 4-46 and 4-47 is likely an indirect fracture of this type. Damage due to shear waves extends to even greater distances in abdominal injuries in the WDMET data. Bellamy and Zajtchuck write, "The abdomen is one body region in which damage from indirect effects may be common." (p. 150) Injuries to the liver and bowel shown in Figures 4-42 and 4-43 are described, "The damage shown in these examples extends far beyond the tissue that is likely to direct contact with the projectile." (p. 150)
In addition to providing examples from the WDMET data for indirect injury due to propagating shear and stress waves, Bellamy and Zajtchuck expresses an openness to the idea of pressure transients propagating via blood vessels can cause indirect injuries. "For example, pressure transients arising from an abdominal gunshot wound might propagate through the vena cavae and jugular venous system into the cranial cavity and cause a precipitous rise in intracranial pressure there, with attendant transient neurological dysfunction." (p. 154) However, no examples of this injury mechanism are presented from the WDMET data. However, the authors suggest the need for additional studies writing, "Clinical and experimental data need to be gathered before such indirect injuries can be confirmed." Distant injuries of this nature were later confirmed in the experimental data of Swedish and Chinese researchers, in the clinical findings of Krajsa and in autopsy findings from Iraq.
Proponents of the concept point to human autopsy results demonstrating brain hemorrhaging from fatal hits to the chest, including cases with handgun bullets. Thirty-three cases of fatal penetrating chest wounds by a single bullet were selected from a much larger set by excluding all other traumatic factors, including past history.
In such meticulously selected cases brain tissue was examined histologically; samples were taken from brain hemispheres, basal ganglia, the pons, the oblongate and from the cerebellum. Cufflike pattern hemorrhages around small brain vessels were found in all specimens. These hemorrhages are caused by sudden changes of the intravascular blood pressure as a result of a compression of intrathoracic great vessels by a shock wave caused by a penetrating bullet.
An 8-month study in Iraq performed in 2010 and published in 2011 reports on autopsies of 30 gunshot victims struck with high-velocity (greater than 2500 fps) rifle bullets. The authors determined that the lungs and chest are the most susceptible to distant wounding, followed by the abdomen. The study noted that the "sample size was so small [too small] to reach the level of statistical significance". Nevertheless, the authors conclude:
Distant injuries away from the main track in high-velocity missile injuries are very important and almost always present in all cases, especially in the chest and abdomen and this should be put in the consideration on the part of the forensic pathologist and probably the general surgeon.
A shock wave can be created when fluid is rapidly displaced by an explosive or projectile. Tissue behaves similarly enough to water that a sonic pressure wave can be created by a bullet impact, generating pressures in excess of 1,500 psi (10,000 kPa).
Duncan MacPherson, a former member of the International Wound Ballistics Association and author of the book, Bullet Penetration, claimed that shock waves cannot result from bullet impacts with tissue. In contrast, Brad Sturtevant, a leading researcher in shock wave physics at Caltech for many decades, found that shock waves can result from handgun bullet impacts in tissue. Other sources indicate that ballistic impacts can create shock waves in tissue.
Blast and ballistic pressure waves have physical similarities. Prior to wave reflection, they both are characterized by a steep wave front followed by a nearly exponential decay at close distances. They have similarities in how they cause neural effects in the brain. In tissue, both types of pressure waves have similar magnitudes, duration, and frequency characteristics. Both have been shown to cause damage in the hippocampus. It has been hypothesized that both reach the brain from the thoracic cavity via major blood vessels.
For example, Ibolja Cernak, a leading researcher in blast wave injury at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, hypothesized, "alterations in brain function following blast exposure are induced by kinetic energy transfer of blast overpressure via great blood vessels in abdomen and thorax to the central nervous system." This hypothesis is supported by observations of neural effects in the brain from localized blast exposure focused on the lungs in experiments in animals.
A number of papers describe the physics of ballistic pressure waves created when a high-speed projectile enters a viscous medium. These results show that ballistic impacts produce pressure waves that propagate at close to the speed of sound.
Lee et al. present an analytical model showing that unreflected ballistic pressure waves are well approximated by an exponential decay, which is similar to blast pressure waves. Lee et al. note the importance of the energy transfer:
As would be expected, an accurate estimation of the kinetic energy loss by a projectile is always important in determining the ballistic waves.
The rigorous calculations of Lee et al. require knowing the drag coefficient and frontal area of the penetrating projectile at every instant of the penetration. Since this is not generally possible with expanding handgun bullets, Courtney and Courtney developed a model for estimating the peak pressure waves of handgun bullets from the impact energy and penetration depth in ballistic gelatin. This model agrees with the more rigorous approach of Lee et al. for projectiles where they can both be applied. For expanding handgun bullets, the peak pressure wave magnitude is proportional to the bullet's kinetic energy divided by the penetration depth.
Göransson et al. were the first contemporary researchers to present compelling evidence for remote cerebral effects of extremity bullet impact. They observed changes in EEG readings from pigs shot in the thigh. A follow-up experiment by Suneson et al. implanted high-speed pressure transducers into the brain of pigs and demonstrated that a significant pressure wave reaches the brain of pigs shot in the thigh. These scientists observed apnea, depressed EEG readings, and neural damage in the brain caused by the distant effects of the ballistic pressure wave originating in the thigh.
The results of Suneson et al. were confirmed and expanded upon by a later experiment in dogs which "confirmed that distant effect exists in the central nervous system after a high-energy missile impact to an extremity. A high-frequency oscillating pressure wave with large amplitude and short duration was found in the brain after the extremity impact of a high-energy missile..." Wang et al. observed significant damage in both the hypothalamus and hippocampus regions of the brain due to remote effects of the ballistic pressure wave.
In a study of a handgun injury, Sturtevant found that pressure waves from a bullet impact in the torso can reach the spine and that a focusing effect from concave surfaces can concentrate the pressure wave on the spinal cord producing significant injury. This is consistent with other work showing remote spinal cord injuries from ballistic impacts.
Roberts et al. present both experimental work and finite element modeling showing that there can be considerable pressure wave magnitudes in the thoracic cavity for handgun projectiles stopped by a Kevlar vest. For example, an 8 gram projectile at 360 m/s impacting a NIJ level II vest over the sternum can produce an estimated pressure wave level of nearly 2.0 MPa (280 psi) in the heart and a pressure wave level of nearly 1.5 MPa (210 psi) in the lungs. Impacting over the liver can produce an estimated pressure wave level of 2.0 MPa (280 psi) in the liver.
The work of Courtney et al. supports the role of a ballistic pressure wave in incapacitation and injury. The work of Suneson et al. and Courtney et al. suggest that remote neural effects can occur with levels of energy transfer possible with handguns, about 500 ft⋅lbf (680 J). Using sensitive biochemical techniques, the work of Wang et al. suggests even lower impact energy thresholds for remote neural injury to the brain. In analysis of experiments of dogs shot in the thigh they report highly significant (p < 0.01), easily detectable neural effects in the hypothalamus and hippocampus with energy transfer levels close to 550 ft⋅lbf (750 J). Wang et al. reports less significant (p < 0.05) remote effects in the hypothalamus with energy transfer just under 100 ft⋅lbf (140 J).
Even though Wang et al. document remote neural damage for low levels of energy transfer, roughly 100 ft⋅lbf (140 J), these levels of neural damage are probably too small to contribute to rapid incapacitation. Courtney and Courtney believe that remote neural effects only begin to make significant contributions to rapid incapacitation for ballistic pressure wave levels above 500 psi (3,400 kPa) (corresponds to transferring roughly 300 ft⋅lbf (410 J) in 12 inches (30 cm) of penetration) and become easily observable above 1,000 psi (6,900 kPa) (corresponds to transferring roughly 600 ft⋅lbf (810 J) in 12 inches (0.30 m) of penetration). Incapacitating effects in this range of energy transfer are consistent with observations of remote spinal injuries, observations of suppressed EEGs and apnea in pigs and with observations of incapacitating effects of ballistic pressure waves without a wound channel.
The scientific literature contains significant other findings regarding injury mechanisms of ballistic pressure waves. Ming et al. found that ballistic pressure waves can break bones. Tikka et al. reports abdominal pressure changes produced in pigs hit in one thigh. Akimov et al. report on injuries to the nerve trunk from gunshot wounds to the extremities.
In self-defense, military, and law enforcement communities, opinions vary regarding the importance of remote wounding effects in ammunition design and selection. In his book on hostage rescuers, Leroy Thompson discusses the importance of hydrostatic shock in choosing a specific design of .357 Magnum and 9×19mm Parabellum bullets. In Armed and Female, Paxton Quigley explains that hydrostatic shock is the real source of "stopping power." Jim Carmichael, who served as shooting editor for Outdoor Life magazine for 25 years, believes that hydrostatic shock is important to "a more immediate disabling effect" and is a key difference in the performance of .38 Special and .357 Magnum hollow point bullets. In "The search for an effective police handgun," Allen Bristow describes that police departments recognize the importance of hydrostatic shock when choosing ammunition. A research group at West Point suggests handgun loads with at least 500 ft⋅lbf (680 J) of energy and 12 inches (300 mm) of penetration and recommends:
One should not be overly impressed by the propensity for shallow penetrating loads to produce larger pressure waves. Selection criteria should first determine the required penetration depth for the given risk assessment and application, and only use pressure wave magnitude as a selection criterion for loads meeting minimum penetration requirements. Reliable expansion, penetration, feeding, and functioning are all important aspects of load testing and selection. We do not advocate abandoning long-held aspects of the load testing and selection process, but it seems prudent to consider the pressure wave magnitude along with other factors.
A number of law enforcement and military agencies have adopted the 5.7×28mm cartridge. These agencies include the Navy SEALs and the Federal Protective Service branch of the ICE. In contrast, some defense contractors, law enforcement analysts, and military analysts say that hydrostatic shock is an unimportant factor when selecting cartridges for a particular use because any incapacitating effect it may have on a target is difficult to measure and inconsistent from one individual to the next. This is in contrast to factors such as proper shot placement and massive blood loss which are almost always eventually incapacitating for nearly every individual.
The FBI recommends that loads intended for self-defense and law enforcement applications meet a minimum penetration requirement of 12 inches (300 mm) in ballistic gelatin and explicitly advises against selecting rounds based on hydrostatic shock effects.
Hydrostatic shock is commonly considered as a factor in the selection of hunting ammunition. Peter Capstick explains that hydrostatic shock may have value for animals up to the size of white-tailed deer, but the ratio of energy transfer to animal weight is an important consideration for larger animals. If the animal's weight exceeds the bullet's energy transfer, penetration in an undeviating line to a vital organ is a much more important consideration than energy transfer and hydrostatic shock. Jim Carmichael, in contrast, describes evidence that hydrostatic shock can affect animals as large as Cape Buffalo in the results of a carefully controlled study carried out by veterinarians in a buffalo culling operation.
Whereas virtually all of our opinions about knockdown power are based on isolated examples, the data gathered during the culling operation was taken from a number of animals. Even more important, the animals were then examined and dissected in a scientific manner by professionals.
Predictably, some of the buffalo dropped where they were shot and some didn't, even though all received near-identical hits in the vital heart-lung area. When the brains of all the buffalo were removed, the researchers discovered that those that had been knocked down instantly had suffered massive rupturing of blood vessels in the brain. The brains of animals that hadn't fallen instantly showed no such damage.
Randall Gilbert describes hydrostatic shock as an important factor in bullet performance on whitetail deer, "When it [a bullet] enters a whitetail’s body, huge accompanying shock waves send vast amounts of energy through nearby organs, sending them into arrest or shut down." Dave Ehrig expresses the view that hydrostatic shock depends on impact velocities above 1,100 ft (340 m) per second. Sid Evans explains the performance of the Nosler Partition bullet and Federal Cartridge Company's decision to load this bullet in terms of the large tissue cavitation and hydrostatic shock produced from the frontal diameter of the expanded bullet. The North American Hunting Club suggests big game cartridges that create enough hydrostatic shock to quickly bring animals down. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hydrostatic shock is the controversial concept that a penetrating projectile (such as a bullet) can produce a pressure wave that causes \"remote neural damage\", \"subtle damage in neural tissues\" and \"rapid incapacitating effects\" in living targets. It has also been suggested that pressure wave effects can cause indirect bone fractures at a distance from the projectile path, although it was later demonstrated that indirect bone fractures are caused by temporary cavity effects (strain placed on the bone by the radial tissue displacement produced by the temporary cavity formation).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Proponents of the concept argue that hydrostatic shock can produce remote neural damage and produce incapacitation more quickly than blood loss effects. In arguments about the differences in stopping power between calibers and between cartridge models, proponents of cartridges that are \"light and fast\" (such as the 9×19mm Parabellum) versus cartridges that are \"slow and heavy\" (such as the .45 ACP) often refer to this phenomenon.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Martin Fackler has argued that sonic pressure waves do not cause tissue disruption and that temporary cavity formation is the actual cause of tissue disruption mistakenly ascribed to sonic pressure waves. One review noted that strong opinion divided papers on whether the pressure wave contributes to wound injury. It ultimately concluded that no \"conclusive evidence could be found for permanent pathological effects produced by the pressure wave\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "An early mention of \"hydrostatic shock\" appeared in Popular Mechanics in April 1942. In the scientific literature, the first discussion of pressure waves created when a bullet hits a living target is presented by E. Harvey Newton and his research group at Princeton University in 1947:",
"title": "Origin of the hypothesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "It is generally recognized that when a high-velocity missile strikes the body and moves through soft tissues, pressures develop which are measured in thousands of atmospheres. Actually, three different types of pressure change appear: (1) shock wave pressures or sharp, high-pressure pulses, formed when the missile hits the body surface; (2) very high-pressure regions immediately in front and to each side of the moving missile; (3) relatively slow, low-pressure changes connected with the behavior of the large explosive temporary cavity, formed behind the missile. Such pressure changes appear to be responsible for what is known to hunters as hydraulic shock—a hydraulic transmission of energy that is believed to cause instant death of animals hit by high-velocity bullets (Powell (1)).",
"title": "Origin of the hypothesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Frank Chamberlin, a World War II trauma surgeon and ballistics researcher, noted remote pressure wave effects. Col. Chamberlin described what he called \"explosive effects\" and \"hydraulic reaction\" of bullets in tissue. ...liquids are put in motion by 'shock waves' or hydraulic effects... with liquid filled tissues, the effects and destruction of tissues extend in all directions far beyond the wound axis. He avoided the ambiguous use of the term \"shock\" because it can refer to either a specific kind of pressure wave associated with explosions and supersonic projectiles or to a medical condition in the body.",
"title": "Origin of the hypothesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Col. Chamberlin recognized that many theories have been advanced in wound ballistics. During World War II he commanded an 8,500-bed hospital center that treated over 67,000 patients during the fourteen months that he operated it. P.O. Ackley estimates that 85% of the patients were suffering from gunshot wounds. Col. Chamberlin spent many hours interviewing patients as to their reactions to bullet wounds. He conducted many live animal experiments after his tour of duty. On the subject of wound ballistics theories, he wrote:",
"title": "Origin of the hypothesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "If I had to pick one of these theories as gospel, I'd still go along with the Hydraulic Reaction of the Body Fluids plus the reactions on the Central Nervous System.",
"title": "Origin of the hypothesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Other World War II era scientists noted remote pressure wave effects in the peripheral nerves. There was support for the idea of remote neural effects of ballistic pressure waves in the medical and scientific communities, but the phrase \"hydrostatic shock\" and similar phrases including \"shock\" were used mainly by gunwriters (such as Jack O'Conner) and the small arms industry (such as Roy Weatherby, and Federal \"Hydra-Shok.\")",
"title": "Origin of the hypothesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Martin Fackler, a Vietnam-era trauma surgeon, wound ballistics researcher, a colonel in the U.S. Army and the head of the Wound Ballistics Laboratory for the U.S. Army's Medical Training Center, Letterman Institute, claimed that hydrostatic shock had been disproved and that the assertion that a pressure wave plays a role in injury or incapacitation is a myth. Others expressed similar views.",
"title": "Arguments against"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Fackler based his argument on the lithotriptor, a tool commonly used to break up kidney stones. A lithotriptor uses sonic pressure waves which are stronger than those caused by most handgun bullets, yet it produces no damage to soft tissues whatsoever. Hence, Fackler argued, ballistic pressure waves cannot damage tissue either.",
"title": "Arguments against"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Fackler claimed that a study of rifle bullet wounds in Vietnam (Wound Data and Munitions Effectiveness Team) found \"no cases of bones being broken, or major vessels torn, that were not hit by the penetrating bullet. In only two cases, an organ that was not hit (but was within a few cm of the projectile path), suffered some disruption.\" Fackler cited a personal communication with R. F. Bellamy. However, Bellamy's published findings the following year estimated that 10% of fractures in the data set might be due to indirect injuries, and one specific case is described in detail (pp. 153–154). In addition, the published analysis documents five instances of abdominal wounding in cases where the bullet did not penetrate the abdominal cavity (pp. 149–152), a case of lung contusion resulting from a hit to the shoulder (pp. 146–149), and a case of indirect effects on the central nervous system (p. 155). Fackler's critics argue that his evidence does not contradict distant injuries, as Fackler claimed, but the WDMET data from Vietnam actually provides supporting evidence for it.",
"title": "Arguments against"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A summary of the debate was published in 2009 as part of a Historical Overview of Wound Ballistics Research.",
"title": "Arguments against"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Fackler [10, 13] however, disputed the shock wave hypothesis, claiming there is no physical evidence to support it, although some support for this hypothesis had already been provided by Harvey [20, 21], Kolsky [31], Suneson et. al. [42, 43], and Crucq [5]. Since that time, other authors suggest there is increasing evidence to support the hypothesis that shock waves from high velocity bullets can cause tissue related damage and damage to the nervous system. This has been shown in various experiments using simulant models [24, 48]. One of the most interesting is a study by Courtney and Courtney [4] who showed a link between traumatic brain injury and pressure waves originating in the thoracic cavity and extremities.",
"title": "Arguments against"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Wound Data and Munitions Effectiveness Team (WDMET) gathered data on wounds sustained during the Vietnam War. In their analysis of this data published in the Textbook of Military Medicine, Ronald Bellamy and Russ Zajtchuck point out a number of cases which seem to be examples of distant injuries. Bellamy and Zajtchuck describe three mechanisms of distant wounding due to pressure transients: 1) stress waves 2) shear waves and 3) a vascular pressure impulse.",
"title": "Distant injuries in the WDMET data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "After citing Harvey's conclusion that \"stress waves probably do not cause any tissue damage\" (p. 136), Bellamy and Zajtchuck express their view that Harvey's interpretation might not be definitive because they write \"the possibility that stress waves from a penetrating projectile might also cause tissue damage cannot be ruled out.\" (p. 136) The WDMET data includes a case of a lung contusion resulting from a hit to the shoulder. The caption to Figure 4-40 (p. 149) says, \"The pulmonary injury may be the result of a stress wave.\" They describe the possibility that a hit to a soldier's trapezius muscle caused temporary paralysis due to \"the stress wave passing through the soldier's neck indirectly [causing] cervical cord dysfunction.\" (p. 155)",
"title": "Distant injuries in the WDMET data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In addition to stress waves, Bellamy and Zajtchuck describe shear waves as a possible mechanism of indirect injuries in the WDMET data. They estimate that 10% of bone fractures in the data may be the result of indirect injuries, that is, bones fractured by the bullet passing close to the bone without a direct impact. A Chinese experiment is cited which provides a formula estimating how pressure magnitude decreases with distance. Together with the difference between strength of human bones and strength of the animal bones in the Chinese experiment, Bellamy and Zajtchuck use this formula to estimate that assault rifle rounds \"passing within a centimeter of a long bone might very well be capable of causing an indirect fracture.\" (p. 153) Bellamy and Zajtchuck suggest the fracture in Figures 4-46 and 4-47 is likely an indirect fracture of this type. Damage due to shear waves extends to even greater distances in abdominal injuries in the WDMET data. Bellamy and Zajtchuck write, \"The abdomen is one body region in which damage from indirect effects may be common.\" (p. 150) Injuries to the liver and bowel shown in Figures 4-42 and 4-43 are described, \"The damage shown in these examples extends far beyond the tissue that is likely to direct contact with the projectile.\" (p. 150)",
"title": "Distant injuries in the WDMET data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In addition to providing examples from the WDMET data for indirect injury due to propagating shear and stress waves, Bellamy and Zajtchuck expresses an openness to the idea of pressure transients propagating via blood vessels can cause indirect injuries. \"For example, pressure transients arising from an abdominal gunshot wound might propagate through the vena cavae and jugular venous system into the cranial cavity and cause a precipitous rise in intracranial pressure there, with attendant transient neurological dysfunction.\" (p. 154) However, no examples of this injury mechanism are presented from the WDMET data. However, the authors suggest the need for additional studies writing, \"Clinical and experimental data need to be gathered before such indirect injuries can be confirmed.\" Distant injuries of this nature were later confirmed in the experimental data of Swedish and Chinese researchers, in the clinical findings of Krajsa and in autopsy findings from Iraq.",
"title": "Distant injuries in the WDMET data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Proponents of the concept point to human autopsy results demonstrating brain hemorrhaging from fatal hits to the chest, including cases with handgun bullets. Thirty-three cases of fatal penetrating chest wounds by a single bullet were selected from a much larger set by excluding all other traumatic factors, including past history.",
"title": "Autopsy findings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In such meticulously selected cases brain tissue was examined histologically; samples were taken from brain hemispheres, basal ganglia, the pons, the oblongate and from the cerebellum. Cufflike pattern hemorrhages around small brain vessels were found in all specimens. These hemorrhages are caused by sudden changes of the intravascular blood pressure as a result of a compression of intrathoracic great vessels by a shock wave caused by a penetrating bullet.",
"title": "Autopsy findings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "An 8-month study in Iraq performed in 2010 and published in 2011 reports on autopsies of 30 gunshot victims struck with high-velocity (greater than 2500 fps) rifle bullets. The authors determined that the lungs and chest are the most susceptible to distant wounding, followed by the abdomen. The study noted that the \"sample size was so small [too small] to reach the level of statistical significance\". Nevertheless, the authors conclude:",
"title": "Autopsy findings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Distant injuries away from the main track in high-velocity missile injuries are very important and almost always present in all cases, especially in the chest and abdomen and this should be put in the consideration on the part of the forensic pathologist and probably the general surgeon.",
"title": "Autopsy findings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A shock wave can be created when fluid is rapidly displaced by an explosive or projectile. Tissue behaves similarly enough to water that a sonic pressure wave can be created by a bullet impact, generating pressures in excess of 1,500 psi (10,000 kPa).",
"title": "Inferences from blast pressure wave observations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Duncan MacPherson, a former member of the International Wound Ballistics Association and author of the book, Bullet Penetration, claimed that shock waves cannot result from bullet impacts with tissue. In contrast, Brad Sturtevant, a leading researcher in shock wave physics at Caltech for many decades, found that shock waves can result from handgun bullet impacts in tissue. Other sources indicate that ballistic impacts can create shock waves in tissue.",
"title": "Inferences from blast pressure wave observations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Blast and ballistic pressure waves have physical similarities. Prior to wave reflection, they both are characterized by a steep wave front followed by a nearly exponential decay at close distances. They have similarities in how they cause neural effects in the brain. In tissue, both types of pressure waves have similar magnitudes, duration, and frequency characteristics. Both have been shown to cause damage in the hippocampus. It has been hypothesized that both reach the brain from the thoracic cavity via major blood vessels.",
"title": "Inferences from blast pressure wave observations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "For example, Ibolja Cernak, a leading researcher in blast wave injury at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, hypothesized, \"alterations in brain function following blast exposure are induced by kinetic energy transfer of blast overpressure via great blood vessels in abdomen and thorax to the central nervous system.\" This hypothesis is supported by observations of neural effects in the brain from localized blast exposure focused on the lungs in experiments in animals.",
"title": "Inferences from blast pressure wave observations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "A number of papers describe the physics of ballistic pressure waves created when a high-speed projectile enters a viscous medium. These results show that ballistic impacts produce pressure waves that propagate at close to the speed of sound.",
"title": "Physics of ballistic pressure waves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Lee et al. present an analytical model showing that unreflected ballistic pressure waves are well approximated by an exponential decay, which is similar to blast pressure waves. Lee et al. note the importance of the energy transfer:",
"title": "Physics of ballistic pressure waves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "As would be expected, an accurate estimation of the kinetic energy loss by a projectile is always important in determining the ballistic waves.",
"title": "Physics of ballistic pressure waves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The rigorous calculations of Lee et al. require knowing the drag coefficient and frontal area of the penetrating projectile at every instant of the penetration. Since this is not generally possible with expanding handgun bullets, Courtney and Courtney developed a model for estimating the peak pressure waves of handgun bullets from the impact energy and penetration depth in ballistic gelatin. This model agrees with the more rigorous approach of Lee et al. for projectiles where they can both be applied. For expanding handgun bullets, the peak pressure wave magnitude is proportional to the bullet's kinetic energy divided by the penetration depth.",
"title": "Physics of ballistic pressure waves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Göransson et al. were the first contemporary researchers to present compelling evidence for remote cerebral effects of extremity bullet impact. They observed changes in EEG readings from pigs shot in the thigh. A follow-up experiment by Suneson et al. implanted high-speed pressure transducers into the brain of pigs and demonstrated that a significant pressure wave reaches the brain of pigs shot in the thigh. These scientists observed apnea, depressed EEG readings, and neural damage in the brain caused by the distant effects of the ballistic pressure wave originating in the thigh.",
"title": "Remote cerebral effects of ballistic pressure waves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The results of Suneson et al. were confirmed and expanded upon by a later experiment in dogs which \"confirmed that distant effect exists in the central nervous system after a high-energy missile impact to an extremity. A high-frequency oscillating pressure wave with large amplitude and short duration was found in the brain after the extremity impact of a high-energy missile...\" Wang et al. observed significant damage in both the hypothalamus and hippocampus regions of the brain due to remote effects of the ballistic pressure wave.",
"title": "Remote cerebral effects of ballistic pressure waves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In a study of a handgun injury, Sturtevant found that pressure waves from a bullet impact in the torso can reach the spine and that a focusing effect from concave surfaces can concentrate the pressure wave on the spinal cord producing significant injury. This is consistent with other work showing remote spinal cord injuries from ballistic impacts.",
"title": "Remote pressure wave effects in the spine and internal organs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Roberts et al. present both experimental work and finite element modeling showing that there can be considerable pressure wave magnitudes in the thoracic cavity for handgun projectiles stopped by a Kevlar vest. For example, an 8 gram projectile at 360 m/s impacting a NIJ level II vest over the sternum can produce an estimated pressure wave level of nearly 2.0 MPa (280 psi) in the heart and a pressure wave level of nearly 1.5 MPa (210 psi) in the lungs. Impacting over the liver can produce an estimated pressure wave level of 2.0 MPa (280 psi) in the liver.",
"title": "Remote pressure wave effects in the spine and internal organs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The work of Courtney et al. supports the role of a ballistic pressure wave in incapacitation and injury. The work of Suneson et al. and Courtney et al. suggest that remote neural effects can occur with levels of energy transfer possible with handguns, about 500 ft⋅lbf (680 J). Using sensitive biochemical techniques, the work of Wang et al. suggests even lower impact energy thresholds for remote neural injury to the brain. In analysis of experiments of dogs shot in the thigh they report highly significant (p < 0.01), easily detectable neural effects in the hypothalamus and hippocampus with energy transfer levels close to 550 ft⋅lbf (750 J). Wang et al. reports less significant (p < 0.05) remote effects in the hypothalamus with energy transfer just under 100 ft⋅lbf (140 J).",
"title": "Energy transfer required for remote neural effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Even though Wang et al. document remote neural damage for low levels of energy transfer, roughly 100 ft⋅lbf (140 J), these levels of neural damage are probably too small to contribute to rapid incapacitation. Courtney and Courtney believe that remote neural effects only begin to make significant contributions to rapid incapacitation for ballistic pressure wave levels above 500 psi (3,400 kPa) (corresponds to transferring roughly 300 ft⋅lbf (410 J) in 12 inches (30 cm) of penetration) and become easily observable above 1,000 psi (6,900 kPa) (corresponds to transferring roughly 600 ft⋅lbf (810 J) in 12 inches (0.30 m) of penetration). Incapacitating effects in this range of energy transfer are consistent with observations of remote spinal injuries, observations of suppressed EEGs and apnea in pigs and with observations of incapacitating effects of ballistic pressure waves without a wound channel.",
"title": "Energy transfer required for remote neural effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The scientific literature contains significant other findings regarding injury mechanisms of ballistic pressure waves. Ming et al. found that ballistic pressure waves can break bones. Tikka et al. reports abdominal pressure changes produced in pigs hit in one thigh. Akimov et al. report on injuries to the nerve trunk from gunshot wounds to the extremities.",
"title": "Other scientific findings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In self-defense, military, and law enforcement communities, opinions vary regarding the importance of remote wounding effects in ammunition design and selection. In his book on hostage rescuers, Leroy Thompson discusses the importance of hydrostatic shock in choosing a specific design of .357 Magnum and 9×19mm Parabellum bullets. In Armed and Female, Paxton Quigley explains that hydrostatic shock is the real source of \"stopping power.\" Jim Carmichael, who served as shooting editor for Outdoor Life magazine for 25 years, believes that hydrostatic shock is important to \"a more immediate disabling effect\" and is a key difference in the performance of .38 Special and .357 Magnum hollow point bullets. In \"The search for an effective police handgun,\" Allen Bristow describes that police departments recognize the importance of hydrostatic shock when choosing ammunition. A research group at West Point suggests handgun loads with at least 500 ft⋅lbf (680 J) of energy and 12 inches (300 mm) of penetration and recommends:",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "One should not be overly impressed by the propensity for shallow penetrating loads to produce larger pressure waves. Selection criteria should first determine the required penetration depth for the given risk assessment and application, and only use pressure wave magnitude as a selection criterion for loads meeting minimum penetration requirements. Reliable expansion, penetration, feeding, and functioning are all important aspects of load testing and selection. We do not advocate abandoning long-held aspects of the load testing and selection process, but it seems prudent to consider the pressure wave magnitude along with other factors.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "A number of law enforcement and military agencies have adopted the 5.7×28mm cartridge. These agencies include the Navy SEALs and the Federal Protective Service branch of the ICE. In contrast, some defense contractors, law enforcement analysts, and military analysts say that hydrostatic shock is an unimportant factor when selecting cartridges for a particular use because any incapacitating effect it may have on a target is difficult to measure and inconsistent from one individual to the next. This is in contrast to factors such as proper shot placement and massive blood loss which are almost always eventually incapacitating for nearly every individual.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The FBI recommends that loads intended for self-defense and law enforcement applications meet a minimum penetration requirement of 12 inches (300 mm) in ballistic gelatin and explicitly advises against selecting rounds based on hydrostatic shock effects.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Hydrostatic shock is commonly considered as a factor in the selection of hunting ammunition. Peter Capstick explains that hydrostatic shock may have value for animals up to the size of white-tailed deer, but the ratio of energy transfer to animal weight is an important consideration for larger animals. If the animal's weight exceeds the bullet's energy transfer, penetration in an undeviating line to a vital organ is a much more important consideration than energy transfer and hydrostatic shock. Jim Carmichael, in contrast, describes evidence that hydrostatic shock can affect animals as large as Cape Buffalo in the results of a carefully controlled study carried out by veterinarians in a buffalo culling operation.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Whereas virtually all of our opinions about knockdown power are based on isolated examples, the data gathered during the culling operation was taken from a number of animals. Even more important, the animals were then examined and dissected in a scientific manner by professionals.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Predictably, some of the buffalo dropped where they were shot and some didn't, even though all received near-identical hits in the vital heart-lung area. When the brains of all the buffalo were removed, the researchers discovered that those that had been knocked down instantly had suffered massive rupturing of blood vessels in the brain. The brains of animals that hadn't fallen instantly showed no such damage.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Randall Gilbert describes hydrostatic shock as an important factor in bullet performance on whitetail deer, \"When it [a bullet] enters a whitetail’s body, huge accompanying shock waves send vast amounts of energy through nearby organs, sending them into arrest or shut down.\" Dave Ehrig expresses the view that hydrostatic shock depends on impact velocities above 1,100 ft (340 m) per second. Sid Evans explains the performance of the Nosler Partition bullet and Federal Cartridge Company's decision to load this bullet in terms of the large tissue cavitation and hydrostatic shock produced from the frontal diameter of the expanded bullet. The North American Hunting Club suggests big game cartridges that create enough hydrostatic shock to quickly bring animals down.",
"title": "Hydrostatic shock as a factor in selection of ammunition"
}
]
| Hydrostatic shock is the controversial concept that a penetrating projectile can produce a pressure wave that causes "remote neural damage", "subtle damage in neural tissues" and "rapid incapacitating effects" in living targets. It has also been suggested that pressure wave effects can cause indirect bone fractures at a distance from the projectile path, although it was later demonstrated that indirect bone fractures are caused by temporary cavity effects. Proponents of the concept argue that hydrostatic shock can produce remote neural damage and produce incapacitation more quickly than blood loss effects. In arguments about the differences in stopping power between calibers and between cartridge models, proponents of cartridges that are "light and fast" versus cartridges that are "slow and heavy" often refer to this phenomenon. Martin Fackler has argued that sonic pressure waves do not cause tissue disruption and that temporary cavity formation is the actual cause of tissue disruption mistakenly ascribed to sonic pressure waves. One review noted that strong opinion divided papers on whether the pressure wave contributes to wound injury. It ultimately concluded that no "conclusive evidence could be found for permanent pathological effects produced by the pressure wave". | 2001-09-13T12:52:57Z | 2023-10-29T21:26:09Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_shock |
13,749 | Hadith | Ḥadīth (/ˈhædɪθ/ or /hɑːˈdiːθ/; Arabic: حديث, ḥadīṯ, Arabic pronunciation: [ħadiːθ]; pl. aḥādīth, أحاديث, ʾaḥādīṯ, Arabic pronunciation: [ʔaħaːdiːθ], lit. 'talk' or 'discourse') or Athar (Arabic: أثر, ʾAṯar, lit. 'remnant' or 'effect') refers to what most Muslims and the mainstream schools of Islamic thought/believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. In other words, the ḥadīth are attributed reports about what Muhammad said and did (see: Oral tradition).
Ḥadīth is the Arabic word for things like a report or an account (of an event). For many, the authority of hadith is a source for religious and moral guidance known as Sunnah, which ranks second only to that of the Quran (which Muslims hold to be the word of God revealed to Muhammad). While the number of verses pertaining to law in the Quran is relatively small, hadith are considered by many to give direction on everything from details of religious obligations (such as Ghusl or Wudu, ablutions for salat prayer), to the correct forms of salutations and the importance of benevolence to slaves. Thus for many, the "great bulk" of the rules of Sharia are derived from hadith, rather than the Quran.
Unlike the Quran, not all Muslims believe that hadith accounts (or at least not all hadith accounts) are divine revelation. Different collections of hadīth would come to differentiate the different branches of the Islamic faith. Some Muslims believe that Islamic guidance should be based on the Quran only, thus rejecting the authority of hadith; some further claim that most hadiths are fabrications (pseudepigrapha) created in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, and which are falsely attributed to Muhammad. Historically, some sects of the Kharijites also rejected the hadiths, while Mu'tazilites rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and Ijma. Muslims who criticise the hadith emphasise that the problems in the Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings.
Because some hadith contain questionable and even contradictory statements, the authentication of hadith became a major field of study in Islam. In its classic form a hadith consists of two parts—the chain of narrators who have transmitted the report (the isnad), and the main text of the report (the matn). Individual hadith are classified by Muslim clerics and jurists into categories such as sahih ("authentic"), hasan ("good"), or da'if ("weak"). However, different groups and different scholars may classify a hadith differently.
Among scholars of Sunni Islam the term hadith may include not only the words, advice, practices, etc. of Muhammad, but also those of his companions. In Shia Islam, hadith are the embodiment of the sunnah, the words and actions of Muhammad and his family, the Ahl al-Bayt (The Twelve Imams and Muhammad's daughter, Fatimah).
In Arabic, the noun ḥadīth (حديث IPA: [ħæˈdiːθ]) means "report", "account", or "narrative". Its Arabic plural is aḥādīth (أحاديث [ʔæħæːˈdiːθ]). Hadith also refers to the speech of a person.
In Islamic terminology, according to Juan Campo, the term hadith refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval or criticism of something said or done in his presence.
Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of hadith in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran.
Scholar Patricia Crone includes reports by others than Muhammad in her definition of hadith: "short reports (sometimes just a line or two) recording what an early figure, such as a companion of the prophet or Muhammad himself, said or did on a particular occasion, preceded by a chain of transmitters". However, she adds that "nowadays, hadith almost always means hadith from Muhammad himself."
In contrast, according to the Shia Islam Ahlul Bayt Digital Library Project, "... when there is no clear Qur'anic statement, nor is there a Hadith upon which Muslim schools have agreed. ... Shi'a ... refer to Ahlul-Bayt [the family of Muhammad] to derive the Sunnah of the Prophet"—implying that while hadith is limited to the "Traditions" of Muhammad, the Shi'a Sunna draws on the sayings, etc. of the Ahlul-Bayt i.e. the Imams of Shi'a Islam.
The word sunnah is also used in reference to a normative custom of Muhammad or the early Muslim community.
Joseph Schacht describes hadith as providing "the documentation" of the sunnah.
Another source (Joseph A. Islam) distinguishes between the two saying:
Whereas the 'Hadith' is an oral communication that is allegedly derived from the Prophet or his teachings, the 'Sunna' (quite literally: mode of life, behaviour or example) signifies the prevailing customs of a particular community or people. ... A 'Sunna' is a practice which has been passed on by a community from generation to generation en masse, whereas the hadith are reports collected by later compilers often centuries removed from the source. ... A practice which is contained within the Hadith may well be regarded as Sunna, but it is not necessary that a Sunna would have a supporting hadith sanctioning it.
Some sources (Khaled Abou El Fadl) limit hadith to verbal reports, with the deeds of Muhammad and reports about his companions being part of the sunnah, but not hadith.
Islamic literary classifications similar to hadith (but not sunnah) are maghazi and sira. They differ from hadith in that they are organized "relatively chronologically" rather than by subject.
Other "traditions" of Islam related to hadith include:
The hadith literature in use today is based on spoken reports in circulation after the death of Muhammad. Unlike the Quran, hadith were not promptly written down during Muhammad's lifetime or immediately after his death. Hadith were evaluated orally to written and gathered into large collections during the 8th and 9th centuries, generations after Muhammad's death, after the end of the era of the Rashidun Caliphate, over 1,000 km (600 mi) from where Muhammad lived.
"Many thousands of times" more numerous than the verses of the Quran, hadith have been described as resembling layers surrounding the "core" of Islamic beliefs (the Quran). Well-known, widely accepted hadith make up the narrow inner layer, with a hadith becoming less reliable and accepted with each layer stretching outward.
The reports of Muhammad's (and sometimes his companions') behavior collected by hadith compilers include details of ritual religious practice such as the five salat (obligatory Islamic prayers) that are not found in the Quran, as well as everyday behavior such as table manners, dress, and posture. Hadith are also regarded by Muslims as important tools for understanding things mentioned in the Quran but not explained, a source for tafsir (commentaries written on the Quran).
Some important elements, which are today taken to be a long-held part of Islamic practice and belief are not mentioned in the Quran, but are reported in hadiths. Therefore, Muslims usually maintain that hadiths are a necessary requirement for the true and proper practice of Islam, as it gives Muslims the nuanced details of Islamic practice and belief in areas where the Quran is silent. An example is the obligatory prayers, which are commanded in the Quran, but explained in hadith.
Details of the prescribed movements and words of the prayer (known as rak'a) and how many times they are to be performed, are found in hadith. However, hadiths differ on these details and consequently salat is performed differently by different hadithist Islamic sects. Quranists, on the other hand, believe that if the Quran is silent on some matter, it is because God did not hold its detail to be of consequence; and that some hadith contradict the Quran, proving that some hadith are a source of corruption and not a complement to the Quran.
Joseph Schacht quotes a hadith of Muhammad that is used "to justify reference" in Islamic law to the companions of Muhammad as religious authorities—"My companions are like lodestars."
According to Schacht, (and other scholars) in the very first generations after the death of Muhammad, use of hadith from Sahabah ("companions" of Muhammad) and Tabi'un ("successors" of the companions) "was the rule", while use of hadith of Muhammad himself by Muslims was "the exception". Schacht credits Al-Shafi'i—founder of the Shafi'i school of fiqh (or madh'hab)—with establishing the principle of the using the hadith of Muhammad for Islamic law, and emphasizing the inferiority of hadith of anyone else, saying hadiths:
"...from other persons are of no account in the face of a tradition from the Prophet, whether they confirm or contradict it; if the other persons had been aware of the tradition from the Prophet, they would have followed it".
This led to "the almost complete neglect" of traditions from the Companions and others.
Collections of hadith sometimes mix those of Muhammad with the reports of others. Muwatta Imam Malik is usually described as "the earliest written collection of hadith" but sayings of Muhammad are "blended with the sayings of the companions", (822 hadith from Muhammad and 898 from others, according to the count of one edition). In Introduction to Hadith by Abd al-Hadi al-Fadli, Kitab Ali is referred to as "the first hadith book of the Ahl al-Bayt (family of Muhammad) to be written on the authority of the Prophet". However, the acts, statements or approvals of the Prophet Muhammad are called "Marfu hadith", while those of companions are called "mawquf (موقوف) hadith", and those of Tabi'un are called "maqtu' (مقطوع) hadith".
The hadith had a profound and controversial influence on tafsir (commentaries of the Quran). The earliest commentary of the Quran known as Tafsir Ibn Abbas is sometimes attributed to the companion Ibn Abbas.
The hadith were used the form the basis of sharia (the religious law system forming part of the Islamic tradition), and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). The hadith are at the root of why there is no single fiqh system, but rather a collection of parallel systems within Islam.
Much of the early Islamic history available today is also based on the hadith, although it has been challenged for its lack of basis in primary source material and the internal contradictions of available secondary material.
The hadith have been called by American-Sunni scholar Jonathan A. C. Brown as "the backbone" of Islamic civilization.
Hadith may be hadith qudsi (sacred hadith) — which some Muslims regard as the words of God — or hadith sharif (noble hadith), which are Muhammad's own utterances.
According to as-Sayyid ash-Sharif al-Jurjani, the hadith qudsi differ from the Quran in that the former are "expressed in Muhammad's words", whereas the latter are the "direct words of God". A hadith qudsi need not be a sahih (sound hadith), but may be da'if or even mawdu'.
An example of a hadith qudsi is the hadith of Abu Hurairah who said that Muhammad said:
When God decreed the Creation He pledged Himself by writing in His book which is laid down with Him: My mercy prevails over My wrath.
In the Shia school of thought, there are two fundamental viewpoints of hadith: The Usuli view and the Akhbari view. The Usuli scholars emphasize the importance of scientific examination of hadiths through ijtihad while the Akhbari scholars consider all hadiths from the four Shia books as authentic .
The two major aspects of a hadith are the text of the report (the matn), which contains the actual narrative, and the chain of narrators (the isnad), which documents the route by which the report has been transmitted. The isnad was an effort to document that a hadith actually came from Muhammad, and Muslim scholars from the eighth century to the present have never ceased to repeat the mantra "The isnad is part of the religion — if not for the isnad, whoever wanted could say whatever they wanted." The isnad literally means "support", and it is so named because hadith specialists rely on it to determine the authenticity or weakness of a hadith. The isnad consists of a chronological list of the narrators, each mentioning the one from whom they heard the hadith, until mentioning the originator of the matn along with the matn itself.
The first people to hear hadith were the companions who preserved it and then conveyed it to those after them. Then the generation following them received it, thus conveying it to those after them and so on. So a companion would say, "I heard the Prophet say such and such." The Follower would then say, "I heard a companion say, 'I heard the Prophet.'" The one after him would then say, "I heard someone say, 'I heard a Companion say, 'I heard the Prophet...''" and so on.
Different branches of Islam refer to different collections of hadith, although the same incident may be found in hadith from different collections. In general, the difference between Shi'a and Sunni collections is that Shia give preference to hadiths attributed to Muhammad's family and close companions (Ahl al-Bayt), while Sunnis do not consider family lineage in evaluating hadith and sunnah narrated by any of twelve thousand companions of Muhammad.
Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632. Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Caliphate, or third successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), is generally credited with urging Muslims to record the hadith just as Muhammad had suggested that some of his followers to write down his words and actions.
Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656. No direct sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period.
According to British historian of Arab world Alfred Guillaume, it is "certain" that "several small collections" of hadith were "assembled in Umayyad times."
In Islamic law, the use of hadith as it is understood today (hadith of Muhammad with documentation, isnads, etc.) came gradually. According to scholars such as Joseph Schacht, Ignaz Goldziher, and Daniel W. Brown, early schools of Islamic jurisprudence used the rulings of the Prophet's Companions, the rulings of the Caliphs, and practices that “had gained general acceptance among the jurists of that school”. On his deathbed, Caliph Umar instructed Muslims to seek guidance from the Quran, the early Muslims (muhajirun) who emigrated to Medina with Muhammad, the Medina residents who welcomed and supported the muhajirun (the ansar) and the people of the desert.
According to the scholars Harald Motzki and Daniel W. Brown the earliest Islamic legal reasonings that have come down to us were "virtually hadith-free", but gradually, over the course of second century A.H. "the infiltration and incorporation of Prophetic hadiths into Islamic jurisprudence" took place.
It was Abū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (150-204 AH), known as al-Shafi'i, who emphasized the final authority of a hadith of Muhammad, so that even the Quran was "to be interpreted in the light of traditions (i.e. hadith), and not vice versa." While traditionally the Qur'an has traditionally been considered superior in authority to the sunna, Al-Shafi'i "forcefully argued" that the sunna was "on equal footing with the Quran", (according to scholar Daniel Brown) for (as Al-Shafi'i put it) “the command of the Prophet is the command of God.”
In 851 the rationalist Mu`tazila school of thought fell out of favor in the Abbasid Caliphate. The Mu`tazila, for whom the "judge of truth ... was human reason," had clashed with traditionists who looked to the literal meaning of the Quran and hadith for truth. While the Quran had been officially compiled and approved, hadiths had not. One result was the number of hadiths began "multiplying in suspiciously direct correlation to their utility" to the quoter of the hadith (Traditionists quoted hadith warning against listening to human opinion instead of Sharia; Hanafites quoted a hadith stating that "In my community there will rise a man called Abu Hanifa [the Hanafite founder] who will be its guiding light". In fact one agreed upon hadith warned that, "There will be forgers, liars who will bring you hadiths which neither you nor your forefathers have heard, Beware of them." In addition the number of hadith grew enormously. While Malik ibn Anas had attributed just 1720 statements or deeds to the Muhammad, it was no longer unusual to find people who had collected a hundred times that number of hadith.
Faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions supporting different views on a wide variety of controversial matters—some of them flatly contradicting each other—Islamic scholars of the Abbasid period sought to authenticate hadith. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been fabricated for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.
The earliest surviving hadith manuscripts were copied on papyrus. A long scroll collects traditions transmitted by the scholar and qadi 'Abd Allāh ibn Lahīʻa (d. 790). A Ḥadīth Dāwūd (History of David), attributed to Wahb ibn Munabbih, survives in a manuscript dated 844. A collection of hadiths dedicated to invocations to God, attributed to a certain Khālid ibn Yazīd, is dated 880-881. A consistent fragment of the Jāmiʿ of the Egyptian Maliki jurist 'Abd Allāh ibn Wahb (d. 813) is finally dated to 889.
Sunni and Shia hadith collections differ because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters. Narrators who sided with Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are considered unreliable by the Shia; narrations attributed to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari'a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions.
In the Sunni tradition, the number of such texts is somewhere between seven and thirteen thousand, but the number of hadiths is far greater because several isnad sharing the same text are each counted as individual hadith. If, say, ten companions record a text reporting a single incident in the life of Muhammad, hadith scholars can count this as ten hadiths. Thus, Musnad Ahmad, for example, has over 30,000 hadiths—but this count includes texts that are repeated in order to record slight variations within the text or within the chains of narrations. Identifying the narrators of the various texts, comparing their narrations of the same texts to identify both the soundest reporting of a text and the reporters who are most sound in their reporting occupied experts of hadith throughout the 2nd century. In the 3rd century of Islam (from 225/840 to about 275/889), hadith experts composed brief works recording a selection of about two- to five-thousand such texts which they felt to have been most soundly documented or most widely referred to in the Muslim scholarly community. The 4th and 5th century saw these six works being commented on quite widely. This auxiliary literature has contributed to making their study the place of departure for any serious study of hadith. In addition, Bukhari and Muslim in particular, claimed that they were collecting only the soundest of sound hadiths. These later scholars tested their claims and agreed to them, so that today, they are considered the most reliable collections of hadith. Toward the end of the 5th century, Ibn al-Qaisarani formally standardized the Sunni canon into six pivotal works, a delineation which remains to this day.
Over the centuries, several different categories of collections have emerged. Some are more general, such as the muṣannaf, the muʿjam, and the jāmiʿ, and some more specific, characterized either by the subjects covered, such as the sunan (restricted to legal-liturgical traditions), or bytheirs composition, such as the arbaʿīniyyāt (collections of forty hadiths).
Shi'a Muslims seldom if ever use the six major hadith collections followed by the Sunnis because they do not trust many of the Sunni narrators and transmitters. They have their own extensive hadith literature. The best-known hadith collections are The Four Books, which were compiled by three authors who are known as the 'Three Muhammads'. The Four Books are: Kitab al-Kafi by Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Kulayni al-Razi (329 AH), Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih by Muhammad ibn Babuya and Al-Tahdhib and Al-Istibsar both by Shaykh Muhammad Tusi. Shi'a clerics also make use of extensive collections and commentaries by later authors.
Unlike Sunnis, the majority of Shia do not consider any of their hadith collections to be sahih (authentic) in their entirety. Therefore, each individual hadith in a specific collection must be investigated separately to determine its authenticity. The Akhbari school, however, considers all the hadith from the four books to be authentic.
The importance of hadith in the Shia school of thought is well documented. This can be captured by Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin of Muhammad, when he narrated that "Whoever of our Shia (followers) knows our Shariah and takes out the weak of our followers from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge (Hadith) which we (Ahl al-Bayt) have gifted to them, he on the day of judgement will come with a crown on his head. It will shine among the people gathered on the plain of resurrection." Hassan al-Askari, a descendant of Muhammad, gave support to this narration, stating "Whoever he had taken out in the worldly life from the darkness of ignorance can hold to his light to be taken out of the darkness of the plain of resurrection to the garden (paradise). Then all those whomever he had taught in the worldly life anything of goodness, or had opened from his heart a lock of ignorance or had removed his doubts will come out."
Regarding the importance of maintaining accuracy in recording hadith, it has been documented that Muhammad al-Baqir, the great grandson of Muhammad, has said that "Holding back in a doubtful issue is better than entering destruction. Your not narrating a Hadith is better than you narrating a Hadith in which you have not studied thoroughly. On every truth, there is a reality. Above every right thing, there is a light. Whatever agrees with the book of Allah you must take it and whatever disagrees you must leave it alone." Al-Baqir also emphasized the selfless devotion of Ahl al-Bayt to preserving the traditions of Muhammad through his conversation with Jabir ibn Abd Allah, an old companion of Muhammad. He (Al-Baqir) said, "Oh Jabir, had we spoken to you from our opinions and desires, we would be counted among those who are destroyed. We speak to you of the hadith which we treasure from the Messenger of Allah, Oh Allah grant compensation to Muhammad and his family worthy of their services to your cause, just as they treasure their gold and silver." Further, it has been narrated that Ja'far al-Sadiq, the son of al-Baqir, has said the following regarding hadith: "You must write it down; you will not memorize until you write it down."
Hadith as an Interpretation of the Holy Quran:
Move not your tongue with it, to hasten with recitation of it. Indeed, upon Us is its collection and its recitation. So when We have recited it, then follow its recitation. Then upon Us is Interpretation. Surah Al Qiyamah, verse 16-19.
The mainstream sects consider hadith to be essential supplements to, and clarifications of, the Quran, Islam's holy book, as well as for clarifying issues pertaining to Islamic jurisprudence. Ibn al-Salah, a hadith specialist, described the relationship between hadith and other aspects of the religion by saying: "It is the science most pervasive in respect to the other sciences in their various branches, in particular to jurisprudence being the most important of them." "The intended meaning of 'other sciences' here are those pertaining to religion," explains Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, "Quranic exegesis, hadith, and jurisprudence. The science of hadith became the most pervasive due to the need displayed by each of these three sciences. The need hadith has of its science is apparent. As for Quranic exegesis, then the preferred manner of explaining the speech of God is by means of what has been accepted as a statement of Muhammad. The one looking to this is in need of distinguishing the acceptable from the unacceptable. Regarding jurisprudence, then the jurist is in need of citing as an evidence the acceptable to the exception of the later, something only possible utilizing the science of hadith."
Authenticity of a hadith is primarily verified by its chain of transmission (isnad). Because a chain of transmission can be a forgery, the status of authenticity given by Muslim scholars, is not accepted by Orientalists or historians. Ignaz Goldziherr demonstrated that several hadiths do not fit the time of Muhammad chronologically and content-wise. As a result, many Orientalists regarded hadiths generally to be constructs of a later period of time, temporarily. This overly critical attitude is not the norm today. Comparing and analyzing different hadiths shows that many hadiths must have been written as early as the 7th century. Which hadith are authentic and which are not cannot be determined. According to Bernard Lewis, "in the early Islamic centuries there could be no better way of promoting a cause, an opinion, or a faction than to cite an appropriate action or utterance of the Prophet." To fight these forgeries, the elaborate science of hadith studies was devised to authenticate hadith known as ilm al jarh or ilm al dirayah
Hadith studies use a number of methods of evaluation developed by early Muslim scholars in determining the veracity of reports attributed to Muhammad. This is achieved by:
Based on these criteria, various classifications of hadith have been developed. The earliest comprehensive work in hadith studies was Abu Muhammad al-Ramahurmuzi's al-Muhaddith al-Fasil, while another significant work was al-Hakim al-Naysaburi's Ma‘rifat ‘ulum al-hadith. Ibn al-Salah's ʻUlum al-hadith is considered the standard classical reference on hadith studies. Some schools of Hadith methodology apply as many as sixteen separate tests.
Biographical analysis (‘ilm al-rijāl, lit. "science of people", also "science of Asma Al-Rijal or ‘ilm al-jarḥ wa al-taʻdīl ("science of discrediting and accrediting"), in which details about the transmitter are scrutinized. This includes analyzing their date and place of birth; familial connections; teachers and students; religiosity; moral behaviour; literary output; their travels; as well as their date of death. Based upon these criteria, the reliability (thiqāt) of the transmitter is assessed. It is also determined whether the individual was actually able to transmit the report, which is deduced from their contemporaneity and geographical proximity with the other transmitters in the chain. Examples of biographical dictionaries include: Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb and al-Dhahabi's Tadhkirat al-huffaz.
Hadith on matters of importance needed to come through a number of independent chains, this was known as the scale of transmission. Reports that passed through many reliable transmitters in many isnad up until their collection and transcription are known as mutawātir. These reports are considered the most authoritative as they pass through so many different routes that collusion between all of the transmitters becomes an impossibility. Reports not meeting this standard are known as aahad, and are of several different types.
According to Muhammad Shafi, Hadith whose isnad has been scrutinized then have their text or matn examined for:
However, Joseph Schacht states that the "whole technical criticism of traditions ... is mainly based on criticism of isnads", which he (and others) believe to be ineffective in eliminating fraudulent hadith.
Having been evaluated, hadith may be categorized. Two categories are:
Other classifications include:
Both sahīh and hasan reports are considered acceptable for usage in Islamic legal discourse.
Critics have complained that, contrary to the description above where the matn is scrutinized, the process of authenticating hadith "was confined to a careful examination of the chain of transmitters who narrated the report and not report itself. 'Provided the chain was uninterrupted and its individual links deemed trustworthy persons, the Hadith was accepted as binding law. There could, by the terms of the religious faith itself, be no questioning of the content of the report; for this was the substance of divine revelation and therefore not susceptible to any form of legal or historical criticism,'" according to scholar N.J. Coulson.
The major points of intra-Muslim criticism of the hadith literature is based in questions regarding its authenticity. However, Muslim criticism of hadith is also based on theological and philosophical Islamic grounds of argument and critique.
With regard to clarity, Imam Ali al-Ridha has narrated that "In our Hadith there are Mutashabih (unclear ones) like those in al-Quran as well as Muhkam (clear ones) like those of al-Quran. You must refer the unclear ones to the clear ones."
Muslim scholars have a long history of questioning the hadith literature throughout Islamic history. Western academics also became active in the field later, starting in 1890, but much more often since 1950.
Some Muslim critics of hadith even go so far as to completely reject them as the basic texts of Islam and instead adhere to the movement called Quranism. Quranists argue that the Quran itself does not contain an invitation to accept hadith as a second theological source alongside the Quran. The expression "to obey God and the Messenger", which occurs among others in 3:132 or 4:69, is understood to mean that one follows the Messenger whose task it was to convey the Quran by following the Quran alone. Muhammad is, so to speak, a mediator from God to people through the Quran alone and not through hadith, according to Quranists. Both modernist Muslims and Qur'anists believe that the problems in the Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings.
Historically, Mu'tazilites rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and ijma. For Mu'tazilites, the basic argument for rejecting the hadiths was that "since its essence is transmission by individuals, [it] cannot be a sure avenue of our knowledge about the Prophetic teaching unlike the Qur'an about whose transmission there is a universal unanimity among Muslims".
Among the most prominent Muslim critics of hadith in modern times are the Egyptian Rashad Khalifa, who became known as the "discoverer" of the Quran code (Code 19), the Malaysian Kassim Ahmad and the American-Turkish Edip Yüksel (Quranism). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ḥadīth (/ˈhædɪθ/ or /hɑːˈdiːθ/; Arabic: حديث, ḥadīṯ, Arabic pronunciation: [ħadiːθ]; pl. aḥādīth, أحاديث, ʾaḥādīṯ, Arabic pronunciation: [ʔaħaːdiːθ], lit. 'talk' or 'discourse') or Athar (Arabic: أثر, ʾAṯar, lit. 'remnant' or 'effect') refers to what most Muslims and the mainstream schools of Islamic thought/believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. In other words, the ḥadīth are attributed reports about what Muhammad said and did (see: Oral tradition).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ḥadīth is the Arabic word for things like a report or an account (of an event). For many, the authority of hadith is a source for religious and moral guidance known as Sunnah, which ranks second only to that of the Quran (which Muslims hold to be the word of God revealed to Muhammad). While the number of verses pertaining to law in the Quran is relatively small, hadith are considered by many to give direction on everything from details of religious obligations (such as Ghusl or Wudu, ablutions for salat prayer), to the correct forms of salutations and the importance of benevolence to slaves. Thus for many, the \"great bulk\" of the rules of Sharia are derived from hadith, rather than the Quran.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Unlike the Quran, not all Muslims believe that hadith accounts (or at least not all hadith accounts) are divine revelation. Different collections of hadīth would come to differentiate the different branches of the Islamic faith. Some Muslims believe that Islamic guidance should be based on the Quran only, thus rejecting the authority of hadith; some further claim that most hadiths are fabrications (pseudepigrapha) created in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, and which are falsely attributed to Muhammad. Historically, some sects of the Kharijites also rejected the hadiths, while Mu'tazilites rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and Ijma. Muslims who criticise the hadith emphasise that the problems in the Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Because some hadith contain questionable and even contradictory statements, the authentication of hadith became a major field of study in Islam. In its classic form a hadith consists of two parts—the chain of narrators who have transmitted the report (the isnad), and the main text of the report (the matn). Individual hadith are classified by Muslim clerics and jurists into categories such as sahih (\"authentic\"), hasan (\"good\"), or da'if (\"weak\"). However, different groups and different scholars may classify a hadith differently.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Among scholars of Sunni Islam the term hadith may include not only the words, advice, practices, etc. of Muhammad, but also those of his companions. In Shia Islam, hadith are the embodiment of the sunnah, the words and actions of Muhammad and his family, the Ahl al-Bayt (The Twelve Imams and Muhammad's daughter, Fatimah).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In Arabic, the noun ḥadīth (حديث IPA: [ħæˈdiːθ]) means \"report\", \"account\", or \"narrative\". Its Arabic plural is aḥādīth (أحاديث [ʔæħæːˈdiːθ]). Hadith also refers to the speech of a person.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In Islamic terminology, according to Juan Campo, the term hadith refers to reports of statements or actions of Muhammad, or of his tacit approval or criticism of something said or done in his presence.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Classical hadith specialist Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani says that the intended meaning of hadith in religious tradition is something attributed to Muhammad but that is not found in the Quran.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Scholar Patricia Crone includes reports by others than Muhammad in her definition of hadith: \"short reports (sometimes just a line or two) recording what an early figure, such as a companion of the prophet or Muhammad himself, said or did on a particular occasion, preceded by a chain of transmitters\". However, she adds that \"nowadays, hadith almost always means hadith from Muhammad himself.\"",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In contrast, according to the Shia Islam Ahlul Bayt Digital Library Project, \"... when there is no clear Qur'anic statement, nor is there a Hadith upon which Muslim schools have agreed. ... Shi'a ... refer to Ahlul-Bayt [the family of Muhammad] to derive the Sunnah of the Prophet\"—implying that while hadith is limited to the \"Traditions\" of Muhammad, the Shi'a Sunna draws on the sayings, etc. of the Ahlul-Bayt i.e. the Imams of Shi'a Islam.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The word sunnah is also used in reference to a normative custom of Muhammad or the early Muslim community.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Joseph Schacht describes hadith as providing \"the documentation\" of the sunnah.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Another source (Joseph A. Islam) distinguishes between the two saying:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Whereas the 'Hadith' is an oral communication that is allegedly derived from the Prophet or his teachings, the 'Sunna' (quite literally: mode of life, behaviour or example) signifies the prevailing customs of a particular community or people. ... A 'Sunna' is a practice which has been passed on by a community from generation to generation en masse, whereas the hadith are reports collected by later compilers often centuries removed from the source. ... A practice which is contained within the Hadith may well be regarded as Sunna, but it is not necessary that a Sunna would have a supporting hadith sanctioning it.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Some sources (Khaled Abou El Fadl) limit hadith to verbal reports, with the deeds of Muhammad and reports about his companions being part of the sunnah, but not hadith.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Islamic literary classifications similar to hadith (but not sunnah) are maghazi and sira. They differ from hadith in that they are organized \"relatively chronologically\" rather than by subject.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Other \"traditions\" of Islam related to hadith include:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The hadith literature in use today is based on spoken reports in circulation after the death of Muhammad. Unlike the Quran, hadith were not promptly written down during Muhammad's lifetime or immediately after his death. Hadith were evaluated orally to written and gathered into large collections during the 8th and 9th centuries, generations after Muhammad's death, after the end of the era of the Rashidun Caliphate, over 1,000 km (600 mi) from where Muhammad lived.",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "\"Many thousands of times\" more numerous than the verses of the Quran, hadith have been described as resembling layers surrounding the \"core\" of Islamic beliefs (the Quran). Well-known, widely accepted hadith make up the narrow inner layer, with a hadith becoming less reliable and accepted with each layer stretching outward.",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The reports of Muhammad's (and sometimes his companions') behavior collected by hadith compilers include details of ritual religious practice such as the five salat (obligatory Islamic prayers) that are not found in the Quran, as well as everyday behavior such as table manners, dress, and posture. Hadith are also regarded by Muslims as important tools for understanding things mentioned in the Quran but not explained, a source for tafsir (commentaries written on the Quran).",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Some important elements, which are today taken to be a long-held part of Islamic practice and belief are not mentioned in the Quran, but are reported in hadiths. Therefore, Muslims usually maintain that hadiths are a necessary requirement for the true and proper practice of Islam, as it gives Muslims the nuanced details of Islamic practice and belief in areas where the Quran is silent. An example is the obligatory prayers, which are commanded in the Quran, but explained in hadith.",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Details of the prescribed movements and words of the prayer (known as rak'a) and how many times they are to be performed, are found in hadith. However, hadiths differ on these details and consequently salat is performed differently by different hadithist Islamic sects. Quranists, on the other hand, believe that if the Quran is silent on some matter, it is because God did not hold its detail to be of consequence; and that some hadith contradict the Quran, proving that some hadith are a source of corruption and not a complement to the Quran.",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Joseph Schacht quotes a hadith of Muhammad that is used \"to justify reference\" in Islamic law to the companions of Muhammad as religious authorities—\"My companions are like lodestars.\"",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "According to Schacht, (and other scholars) in the very first generations after the death of Muhammad, use of hadith from Sahabah (\"companions\" of Muhammad) and Tabi'un (\"successors\" of the companions) \"was the rule\", while use of hadith of Muhammad himself by Muslims was \"the exception\". Schacht credits Al-Shafi'i—founder of the Shafi'i school of fiqh (or madh'hab)—with establishing the principle of the using the hadith of Muhammad for Islamic law, and emphasizing the inferiority of hadith of anyone else, saying hadiths:",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "\"...from other persons are of no account in the face of a tradition from the Prophet, whether they confirm or contradict it; if the other persons had been aware of the tradition from the Prophet, they would have followed it\".",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "This led to \"the almost complete neglect\" of traditions from the Companions and others.",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Collections of hadith sometimes mix those of Muhammad with the reports of others. Muwatta Imam Malik is usually described as \"the earliest written collection of hadith\" but sayings of Muhammad are \"blended with the sayings of the companions\", (822 hadith from Muhammad and 898 from others, according to the count of one edition). In Introduction to Hadith by Abd al-Hadi al-Fadli, Kitab Ali is referred to as \"the first hadith book of the Ahl al-Bayt (family of Muhammad) to be written on the authority of the Prophet\". However, the acts, statements or approvals of the Prophet Muhammad are called \"Marfu hadith\", while those of companions are called \"mawquf (موقوف) hadith\", and those of Tabi'un are called \"maqtu' (مقطوع) hadith\".",
"title": "Hadith compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The hadith had a profound and controversial influence on tafsir (commentaries of the Quran). The earliest commentary of the Quran known as Tafsir Ibn Abbas is sometimes attributed to the companion Ibn Abbas.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The hadith were used the form the basis of sharia (the religious law system forming part of the Islamic tradition), and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). The hadith are at the root of why there is no single fiqh system, but rather a collection of parallel systems within Islam.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Much of the early Islamic history available today is also based on the hadith, although it has been challenged for its lack of basis in primary source material and the internal contradictions of available secondary material.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The hadith have been called by American-Sunni scholar Jonathan A. C. Brown as \"the backbone\" of Islamic civilization.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Hadith may be hadith qudsi (sacred hadith) — which some Muslims regard as the words of God — or hadith sharif (noble hadith), which are Muhammad's own utterances.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "According to as-Sayyid ash-Sharif al-Jurjani, the hadith qudsi differ from the Quran in that the former are \"expressed in Muhammad's words\", whereas the latter are the \"direct words of God\". A hadith qudsi need not be a sahih (sound hadith), but may be da'if or even mawdu'.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "An example of a hadith qudsi is the hadith of Abu Hurairah who said that Muhammad said:",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "When God decreed the Creation He pledged Himself by writing in His book which is laid down with Him: My mercy prevails over My wrath.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In the Shia school of thought, there are two fundamental viewpoints of hadith: The Usuli view and the Akhbari view. The Usuli scholars emphasize the importance of scientific examination of hadiths through ijtihad while the Akhbari scholars consider all hadiths from the four Shia books as authentic .",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The two major aspects of a hadith are the text of the report (the matn), which contains the actual narrative, and the chain of narrators (the isnad), which documents the route by which the report has been transmitted. The isnad was an effort to document that a hadith actually came from Muhammad, and Muslim scholars from the eighth century to the present have never ceased to repeat the mantra \"The isnad is part of the religion — if not for the isnad, whoever wanted could say whatever they wanted.\" The isnad literally means \"support\", and it is so named because hadith specialists rely on it to determine the authenticity or weakness of a hadith. The isnad consists of a chronological list of the narrators, each mentioning the one from whom they heard the hadith, until mentioning the originator of the matn along with the matn itself.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The first people to hear hadith were the companions who preserved it and then conveyed it to those after them. Then the generation following them received it, thus conveying it to those after them and so on. So a companion would say, \"I heard the Prophet say such and such.\" The Follower would then say, \"I heard a companion say, 'I heard the Prophet.'\" The one after him would then say, \"I heard someone say, 'I heard a Companion say, 'I heard the Prophet...''\" and so on.",
"title": "Impact, typology and components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Different branches of Islam refer to different collections of hadith, although the same incident may be found in hadith from different collections. In general, the difference between Shi'a and Sunni collections is that Shia give preference to hadiths attributed to Muhammad's family and close companions (Ahl al-Bayt), while Sunnis do not consider family lineage in evaluating hadith and sunnah narrated by any of twelve thousand companions of Muhammad.",
"title": "Hadith literature by branch or denomination of Islam"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632. Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Caliphate, or third successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), is generally credited with urging Muslims to record the hadith just as Muhammad had suggested that some of his followers to write down his words and actions.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656. No direct sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "According to British historian of Arab world Alfred Guillaume, it is \"certain\" that \"several small collections\" of hadith were \"assembled in Umayyad times.\"",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In Islamic law, the use of hadith as it is understood today (hadith of Muhammad with documentation, isnads, etc.) came gradually. According to scholars such as Joseph Schacht, Ignaz Goldziher, and Daniel W. Brown, early schools of Islamic jurisprudence used the rulings of the Prophet's Companions, the rulings of the Caliphs, and practices that “had gained general acceptance among the jurists of that school”. On his deathbed, Caliph Umar instructed Muslims to seek guidance from the Quran, the early Muslims (muhajirun) who emigrated to Medina with Muhammad, the Medina residents who welcomed and supported the muhajirun (the ansar) and the people of the desert.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "According to the scholars Harald Motzki and Daniel W. Brown the earliest Islamic legal reasonings that have come down to us were \"virtually hadith-free\", but gradually, over the course of second century A.H. \"the infiltration and incorporation of Prophetic hadiths into Islamic jurisprudence\" took place.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "It was Abū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (150-204 AH), known as al-Shafi'i, who emphasized the final authority of a hadith of Muhammad, so that even the Quran was \"to be interpreted in the light of traditions (i.e. hadith), and not vice versa.\" While traditionally the Qur'an has traditionally been considered superior in authority to the sunna, Al-Shafi'i \"forcefully argued\" that the sunna was \"on equal footing with the Quran\", (according to scholar Daniel Brown) for (as Al-Shafi'i put it) “the command of the Prophet is the command of God.”",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 851 the rationalist Mu`tazila school of thought fell out of favor in the Abbasid Caliphate. The Mu`tazila, for whom the \"judge of truth ... was human reason,\" had clashed with traditionists who looked to the literal meaning of the Quran and hadith for truth. While the Quran had been officially compiled and approved, hadiths had not. One result was the number of hadiths began \"multiplying in suspiciously direct correlation to their utility\" to the quoter of the hadith (Traditionists quoted hadith warning against listening to human opinion instead of Sharia; Hanafites quoted a hadith stating that \"In my community there will rise a man called Abu Hanifa [the Hanafite founder] who will be its guiding light\". In fact one agreed upon hadith warned that, \"There will be forgers, liars who will bring you hadiths which neither you nor your forefathers have heard, Beware of them.\" In addition the number of hadith grew enormously. While Malik ibn Anas had attributed just 1720 statements or deeds to the Muhammad, it was no longer unusual to find people who had collected a hundred times that number of hadith.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions supporting different views on a wide variety of controversial matters—some of them flatly contradicting each other—Islamic scholars of the Abbasid period sought to authenticate hadith. Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been fabricated for political or theological purposes. To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The earliest surviving hadith manuscripts were copied on papyrus. A long scroll collects traditions transmitted by the scholar and qadi 'Abd Allāh ibn Lahīʻa (d. 790). A Ḥadīth Dāwūd (History of David), attributed to Wahb ibn Munabbih, survives in a manuscript dated 844. A collection of hadiths dedicated to invocations to God, attributed to a certain Khālid ibn Yazīd, is dated 880-881. A consistent fragment of the Jāmiʿ of the Egyptian Maliki jurist 'Abd Allāh ibn Wahb (d. 813) is finally dated to 889.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Sunni and Shia hadith collections differ because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters. Narrators who sided with Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are considered unreliable by the Shia; narrations attributed to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari'a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In the Sunni tradition, the number of such texts is somewhere between seven and thirteen thousand, but the number of hadiths is far greater because several isnad sharing the same text are each counted as individual hadith. If, say, ten companions record a text reporting a single incident in the life of Muhammad, hadith scholars can count this as ten hadiths. Thus, Musnad Ahmad, for example, has over 30,000 hadiths—but this count includes texts that are repeated in order to record slight variations within the text or within the chains of narrations. Identifying the narrators of the various texts, comparing their narrations of the same texts to identify both the soundest reporting of a text and the reporters who are most sound in their reporting occupied experts of hadith throughout the 2nd century. In the 3rd century of Islam (from 225/840 to about 275/889), hadith experts composed brief works recording a selection of about two- to five-thousand such texts which they felt to have been most soundly documented or most widely referred to in the Muslim scholarly community. The 4th and 5th century saw these six works being commented on quite widely. This auxiliary literature has contributed to making their study the place of departure for any serious study of hadith. In addition, Bukhari and Muslim in particular, claimed that they were collecting only the soundest of sound hadiths. These later scholars tested their claims and agreed to them, so that today, they are considered the most reliable collections of hadith. Toward the end of the 5th century, Ibn al-Qaisarani formally standardized the Sunni canon into six pivotal works, a delineation which remains to this day.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Over the centuries, several different categories of collections have emerged. Some are more general, such as the muṣannaf, the muʿjam, and the jāmiʿ, and some more specific, characterized either by the subjects covered, such as the sunan (restricted to legal-liturgical traditions), or bytheirs composition, such as the arbaʿīniyyāt (collections of forty hadiths).",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Shi'a Muslims seldom if ever use the six major hadith collections followed by the Sunnis because they do not trust many of the Sunni narrators and transmitters. They have their own extensive hadith literature. The best-known hadith collections are The Four Books, which were compiled by three authors who are known as the 'Three Muhammads'. The Four Books are: Kitab al-Kafi by Muhammad ibn Ya'qub al-Kulayni al-Razi (329 AH), Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih by Muhammad ibn Babuya and Al-Tahdhib and Al-Istibsar both by Shaykh Muhammad Tusi. Shi'a clerics also make use of extensive collections and commentaries by later authors.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Unlike Sunnis, the majority of Shia do not consider any of their hadith collections to be sahih (authentic) in their entirety. Therefore, each individual hadith in a specific collection must be investigated separately to determine its authenticity. The Akhbari school, however, considers all the hadith from the four books to be authentic.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The importance of hadith in the Shia school of thought is well documented. This can be captured by Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin of Muhammad, when he narrated that \"Whoever of our Shia (followers) knows our Shariah and takes out the weak of our followers from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge (Hadith) which we (Ahl al-Bayt) have gifted to them, he on the day of judgement will come with a crown on his head. It will shine among the people gathered on the plain of resurrection.\" Hassan al-Askari, a descendant of Muhammad, gave support to this narration, stating \"Whoever he had taken out in the worldly life from the darkness of ignorance can hold to his light to be taken out of the darkness of the plain of resurrection to the garden (paradise). Then all those whomever he had taught in the worldly life anything of goodness, or had opened from his heart a lock of ignorance or had removed his doubts will come out.\"",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Regarding the importance of maintaining accuracy in recording hadith, it has been documented that Muhammad al-Baqir, the great grandson of Muhammad, has said that \"Holding back in a doubtful issue is better than entering destruction. Your not narrating a Hadith is better than you narrating a Hadith in which you have not studied thoroughly. On every truth, there is a reality. Above every right thing, there is a light. Whatever agrees with the book of Allah you must take it and whatever disagrees you must leave it alone.\" Al-Baqir also emphasized the selfless devotion of Ahl al-Bayt to preserving the traditions of Muhammad through his conversation with Jabir ibn Abd Allah, an old companion of Muhammad. He (Al-Baqir) said, \"Oh Jabir, had we spoken to you from our opinions and desires, we would be counted among those who are destroyed. We speak to you of the hadith which we treasure from the Messenger of Allah, Oh Allah grant compensation to Muhammad and his family worthy of their services to your cause, just as they treasure their gold and silver.\" Further, it has been narrated that Ja'far al-Sadiq, the son of al-Baqir, has said the following regarding hadith: \"You must write it down; you will not memorize until you write it down.\"",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Hadith as an Interpretation of the Holy Quran:",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Move not your tongue with it, to hasten with recitation of it. Indeed, upon Us is its collection and its recitation. So when We have recited it, then follow its recitation. Then upon Us is Interpretation. Surah Al Qiyamah, verse 16-19.",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The mainstream sects consider hadith to be essential supplements to, and clarifications of, the Quran, Islam's holy book, as well as for clarifying issues pertaining to Islamic jurisprudence. Ibn al-Salah, a hadith specialist, described the relationship between hadith and other aspects of the religion by saying: \"It is the science most pervasive in respect to the other sciences in their various branches, in particular to jurisprudence being the most important of them.\" \"The intended meaning of 'other sciences' here are those pertaining to religion,\" explains Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, \"Quranic exegesis, hadith, and jurisprudence. The science of hadith became the most pervasive due to the need displayed by each of these three sciences. The need hadith has of its science is apparent. As for Quranic exegesis, then the preferred manner of explaining the speech of God is by means of what has been accepted as a statement of Muhammad. The one looking to this is in need of distinguishing the acceptable from the unacceptable. Regarding jurisprudence, then the jurist is in need of citing as an evidence the acceptable to the exception of the later, something only possible utilizing the science of hadith.\"",
"title": "History, tradition and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Authenticity of a hadith is primarily verified by its chain of transmission (isnad). Because a chain of transmission can be a forgery, the status of authenticity given by Muslim scholars, is not accepted by Orientalists or historians. Ignaz Goldziherr demonstrated that several hadiths do not fit the time of Muhammad chronologically and content-wise. As a result, many Orientalists regarded hadiths generally to be constructs of a later period of time, temporarily. This overly critical attitude is not the norm today. Comparing and analyzing different hadiths shows that many hadiths must have been written as early as the 7th century. Which hadith are authentic and which are not cannot be determined. According to Bernard Lewis, \"in the early Islamic centuries there could be no better way of promoting a cause, an opinion, or a faction than to cite an appropriate action or utterance of the Prophet.\" To fight these forgeries, the elaborate science of hadith studies was devised to authenticate hadith known as ilm al jarh or ilm al dirayah",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Hadith studies use a number of methods of evaluation developed by early Muslim scholars in determining the veracity of reports attributed to Muhammad. This is achieved by:",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Based on these criteria, various classifications of hadith have been developed. The earliest comprehensive work in hadith studies was Abu Muhammad al-Ramahurmuzi's al-Muhaddith al-Fasil, while another significant work was al-Hakim al-Naysaburi's Ma‘rifat ‘ulum al-hadith. Ibn al-Salah's ʻUlum al-hadith is considered the standard classical reference on hadith studies. Some schools of Hadith methodology apply as many as sixteen separate tests.",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Biographical analysis (‘ilm al-rijāl, lit. \"science of people\", also \"science of Asma Al-Rijal or ‘ilm al-jarḥ wa al-taʻdīl (\"science of discrediting and accrediting\"), in which details about the transmitter are scrutinized. This includes analyzing their date and place of birth; familial connections; teachers and students; religiosity; moral behaviour; literary output; their travels; as well as their date of death. Based upon these criteria, the reliability (thiqāt) of the transmitter is assessed. It is also determined whether the individual was actually able to transmit the report, which is deduced from their contemporaneity and geographical proximity with the other transmitters in the chain. Examples of biographical dictionaries include: Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi's Al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb and al-Dhahabi's Tadhkirat al-huffaz.",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Hadith on matters of importance needed to come through a number of independent chains, this was known as the scale of transmission. Reports that passed through many reliable transmitters in many isnad up until their collection and transcription are known as mutawātir. These reports are considered the most authoritative as they pass through so many different routes that collusion between all of the transmitters becomes an impossibility. Reports not meeting this standard are known as aahad, and are of several different types.",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "According to Muhammad Shafi, Hadith whose isnad has been scrutinized then have their text or matn examined for:",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "However, Joseph Schacht states that the \"whole technical criticism of traditions ... is mainly based on criticism of isnads\", which he (and others) believe to be ineffective in eliminating fraudulent hadith.",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Having been evaluated, hadith may be categorized. Two categories are:",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Other classifications include:",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Both sahīh and hasan reports are considered acceptable for usage in Islamic legal discourse.",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Critics have complained that, contrary to the description above where the matn is scrutinized, the process of authenticating hadith \"was confined to a careful examination of the chain of transmitters who narrated the report and not report itself. 'Provided the chain was uninterrupted and its individual links deemed trustworthy persons, the Hadith was accepted as binding law. There could, by the terms of the religious faith itself, be no questioning of the content of the report; for this was the substance of divine revelation and therefore not susceptible to any form of legal or historical criticism,'\" according to scholar N.J. Coulson.",
"title": "Studies and authentication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The major points of intra-Muslim criticism of the hadith literature is based in questions regarding its authenticity. However, Muslim criticism of hadith is also based on theological and philosophical Islamic grounds of argument and critique.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "With regard to clarity, Imam Ali al-Ridha has narrated that \"In our Hadith there are Mutashabih (unclear ones) like those in al-Quran as well as Muhkam (clear ones) like those of al-Quran. You must refer the unclear ones to the clear ones.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Muslim scholars have a long history of questioning the hadith literature throughout Islamic history. Western academics also became active in the field later, starting in 1890, but much more often since 1950.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Some Muslim critics of hadith even go so far as to completely reject them as the basic texts of Islam and instead adhere to the movement called Quranism. Quranists argue that the Quran itself does not contain an invitation to accept hadith as a second theological source alongside the Quran. The expression \"to obey God and the Messenger\", which occurs among others in 3:132 or 4:69, is understood to mean that one follows the Messenger whose task it was to convey the Quran by following the Quran alone. Muhammad is, so to speak, a mediator from God to people through the Quran alone and not through hadith, according to Quranists. Both modernist Muslims and Qur'anists believe that the problems in the Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Historically, Mu'tazilites rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and ijma. For Mu'tazilites, the basic argument for rejecting the hadiths was that \"since its essence is transmission by individuals, [it] cannot be a sure avenue of our knowledge about the Prophetic teaching unlike the Qur'an about whose transmission there is a universal unanimity among Muslims\".",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Among the most prominent Muslim critics of hadith in modern times are the Egyptian Rashad Khalifa, who became known as the \"discoverer\" of the Quran code (Code 19), the Malaysian Kassim Ahmad and the American-Turkish Edip Yüksel (Quranism).",
"title": "Criticism"
}
]
| Ḥadīth or Athar refers to what most Muslims and the mainstream schools of Islamic thought/believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. In other words, the ḥadīth are attributed reports about what Muhammad said and did. Ḥadīth is the Arabic word for things like a report or an account. For many, the authority of hadith is a source for religious and moral guidance known as Sunnah, which ranks second only to that of the Quran. While the number of verses pertaining to law in the Quran is relatively small, hadith are considered by many to give direction on everything from details of religious obligations, to the correct forms of salutations and the importance of benevolence to slaves. Thus for many, the "great bulk" of the rules of Sharia are derived from hadith, rather than the Quran. Unlike the Quran, not all Muslims believe that hadith accounts are divine revelation. Different collections of hadīth would come to differentiate the different branches of the Islamic faith. Some Muslims believe that Islamic guidance should be based on the Quran only, thus rejecting the authority of hadith; some further claim that most hadiths are fabrications (pseudepigrapha) created in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, and which are falsely attributed to Muhammad. Historically, some sects of the Kharijites also rejected the hadiths, while Mu'tazilites rejected the hadiths as the basis for Islamic law, while at the same time accepting the Sunnah and Ijma. Muslims who criticise the hadith emphasise that the problems in the Islamic world come partly from the traditional elements of the hadith and seek to reject those teachings. Because some hadith contain questionable and even contradictory statements, the authentication of hadith became a major field of study in Islam. In its classic form a hadith consists of two parts—the chain of narrators who have transmitted the report, and the main text of the report. Individual hadith are classified by Muslim clerics and jurists into categories such as sahih ("authentic"), hasan ("good"), or da'if ("weak"). However, different groups and different scholars may classify a hadith differently. Among scholars of Sunni Islam the term hadith may include not only the words, advice, practices, etc. of Muhammad, but also those of his companions. In Shia Islam, hadith are the embodiment of the sunnah, the words and actions of Muhammad and his family, the Ahl al-Bayt. | 2001-10-10T03:12:05Z | 2023-12-25T07:06:09Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith |
13,755 | Hull (watercraft) | A hull is the watertight body of a ship, boat, or flying boat. The hull may open at the top (such as a dinghy), or it may be fully or partially covered with a deck. Atop the deck may be a deckhouse and other superstructures, such as a funnel, derrick, or mast. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline.
There is a wide variety of hull types that are chosen for suitability for different usages, the hull shape being dependent upon the needs of the design. Shapes range from a nearly perfect box in the case of scow barges to a needle-sharp surface of revolution in the case of a racing multihull sailboat. The shape is chosen to strike a balance between cost, hydrostatic considerations (accommodation, load carrying, and stability), hydrodynamics (speed, power requirements, and motion and behavior in a seaway) and special considerations for the ship's role, such as the rounded bow of an icebreaker or the flat bottom of a landing craft.
In a typical modern steel ship, the hull will have watertight decks, and major transverse members called bulkheads. There may also be intermediate members such as girders, stringers and webs, and minor members called ordinary transverse frames, frames, or longitudinals, depending on the structural arrangement. The uppermost continuous deck may be called the "upper deck", "weather deck", "spar deck", "main deck", or simply "deck". The particular name given depends on the context—the type of ship or boat, the arrangement, or even where it sails.
In a typical wooden sailboat, the hull is constructed of wooden planking, supported by transverse frames (often referred to as ribs) and bulkheads, which are further tied together by longitudinal stringers or ceiling. Often but not always there is a centerline longitudinal member called a keel. In fiberglass or composite hulls, the structure may resemble wooden or steel vessels to some extent, or be of a monocoque arrangement. In many cases, composite hulls are built by sandwiching thin fiber-reinforced skins over a lightweight but reasonably rigid core of foam, balsa wood, impregnated paper honeycomb, or other material.
Perhaps the earliest proper hulls were built by the Ancient Egyptians, who by 3000 BC knew how to assemble wooden planks into a hull.
Hulls come in many varieties and can have composite shape, (e.g., a fine entry forward and inverted bell shape aft), but are grouped primarily as follows:
At present, the most widely used form is the round bilge hull.
With a small payload, such a craft has less of its hull below the waterline, giving less resistance and more speed. With a greater payload, resistance is greater and speed lower, but the hull's outward bend provides smoother performance in waves. As such, the inverted bell shape is a popular form used with planing hulls.
A chined hull does not have a smooth rounded transition between bottom and sides. Instead, its contours are interrupted by sharp angles where predominantly longitudinal panels of the hull meet. The sharper the intersection (the more acute the angle), the "harder" the chine. More than one chine per side is possible.
The Cajun "pirogue" is an example of a craft with hard chines.
Benefits of this type of hull include potentially lower production cost and a (usually) fairly flat bottom, making the boat faster at planing. A hard chined hull resists rolling (in smooth water) more than does a hull with rounded bilges (the chine creates turbulence and drag resisting the rolling motion, as it moves through the water, the rounded-bilge provides less flow resistance around the turn). In rough seas, this can make the boat roll more, as the motion drags first down, then up, on a chine: round-bilge boats are more seakindly in waves, as a result.
Chined hulls may have one of three shapes:
Each of these chine hulls has its own unique characteristics and use. The flat-bottom hull has high initial stability but high drag. To counter the high drag, hull forms are narrow and sometimes severely tapered at bow and stern. This leads to poor stability when heeled in a sailboat. This is often countered by using heavy interior ballast on sailing versions. They are best suited to sheltered inshore waters. Early racing power boats were fine forward and flat aft. This produced maximum lift and a smooth, fast ride in flat water, but this hull form is easily unsettled in waves. The multi-chine hull approximates a curved hull form. It has less drag than a flat-bottom boat. Multi chines are more complex to build but produce a more seaworthy hull form. They are usually displacement hulls. V or arc-bottom chine boats have a V shape between 6° and 23°. This is called the deadrise angle. The flatter shape of a 6-degree hull will plane with less wind or a lower-horsepower engine but will pound more in waves. The deep V form (between 18 and 23 degrees) is only suited to high-powered planing boats. They require more powerful engines to lift the boat onto the plane but give a faster, smoother ride in waves. Displacement chined hulls have more wetted surface area, hence more drag, than an equivalent round-hull form, for any given displacement.
Smooth curve hulls are hulls that use, just like the curved hulls, a centreboard, or an attached keel.
Semi round bilge hulls are somewhat less round. The advantage of the semi-round is that it is a nice middle between the S-bottom and chined hull. Typical examples of a semi-round bilge hull can be found in the Centaur and Laser sailing dinghies.
S-bottom hulls are sailing boat hulls with a midships transverse half-section shaped like an s. In the s-bottom, the hull has round bilges and merges smoothly with the keel, and there are no sharp corners on the hull sides between the keel centreline and the sheer line. Boats with this hull form may have a long fixed deep keel, or a long shallow fixed keel with a centreboard swing keel inside. Ballast may be internal, external, or a combination. This hull form was most popular in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Examples of small sailboats that use this s-shape are the Yngling and Randmeer.
Hull forms are defined as follows:
Block measures that define the principal dimensions. They are:
Form derivatives that are calculated from the shape and the block measures. They are:
Coefficients help compare hull forms as well:
Note:
Use of computer-aided design has superseded paper-based methods of ship design that relied on manual calculations and lines drawing. Since the early 1990s, a variety of commercial and freeware software packages specialized for naval architecture have been developed that provide 3D drafting capabilities combined with calculation modules for hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. These may be referred to as geometric modeling systems for naval architecture. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hull is the watertight body of a ship, boat, or flying boat. The hull may open at the top (such as a dinghy), or it may be fully or partially covered with a deck. Atop the deck may be a deckhouse and other superstructures, such as a funnel, derrick, or mast. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "There is a wide variety of hull types that are chosen for suitability for different usages, the hull shape being dependent upon the needs of the design. Shapes range from a nearly perfect box in the case of scow barges to a needle-sharp surface of revolution in the case of a racing multihull sailboat. The shape is chosen to strike a balance between cost, hydrostatic considerations (accommodation, load carrying, and stability), hydrodynamics (speed, power requirements, and motion and behavior in a seaway) and special considerations for the ship's role, such as the rounded bow of an icebreaker or the flat bottom of a landing craft.",
"title": "General features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In a typical modern steel ship, the hull will have watertight decks, and major transverse members called bulkheads. There may also be intermediate members such as girders, stringers and webs, and minor members called ordinary transverse frames, frames, or longitudinals, depending on the structural arrangement. The uppermost continuous deck may be called the \"upper deck\", \"weather deck\", \"spar deck\", \"main deck\", or simply \"deck\". The particular name given depends on the context—the type of ship or boat, the arrangement, or even where it sails.",
"title": "General features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In a typical wooden sailboat, the hull is constructed of wooden planking, supported by transverse frames (often referred to as ribs) and bulkheads, which are further tied together by longitudinal stringers or ceiling. Often but not always there is a centerline longitudinal member called a keel. In fiberglass or composite hulls, the structure may resemble wooden or steel vessels to some extent, or be of a monocoque arrangement. In many cases, composite hulls are built by sandwiching thin fiber-reinforced skins over a lightweight but reasonably rigid core of foam, balsa wood, impregnated paper honeycomb, or other material.",
"title": "General features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Perhaps the earliest proper hulls were built by the Ancient Egyptians, who by 3000 BC knew how to assemble wooden planks into a hull.",
"title": "General features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hulls come in many varieties and can have composite shape, (e.g., a fine entry forward and inverted bell shape aft), but are grouped primarily as follows:",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At present, the most widely used form is the round bilge hull.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "With a small payload, such a craft has less of its hull below the waterline, giving less resistance and more speed. With a greater payload, resistance is greater and speed lower, but the hull's outward bend provides smoother performance in waves. As such, the inverted bell shape is a popular form used with planing hulls.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A chined hull does not have a smooth rounded transition between bottom and sides. Instead, its contours are interrupted by sharp angles where predominantly longitudinal panels of the hull meet. The sharper the intersection (the more acute the angle), the \"harder\" the chine. More than one chine per side is possible.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Cajun \"pirogue\" is an example of a craft with hard chines.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Benefits of this type of hull include potentially lower production cost and a (usually) fairly flat bottom, making the boat faster at planing. A hard chined hull resists rolling (in smooth water) more than does a hull with rounded bilges (the chine creates turbulence and drag resisting the rolling motion, as it moves through the water, the rounded-bilge provides less flow resistance around the turn). In rough seas, this can make the boat roll more, as the motion drags first down, then up, on a chine: round-bilge boats are more seakindly in waves, as a result.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Chined hulls may have one of three shapes:",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Each of these chine hulls has its own unique characteristics and use. The flat-bottom hull has high initial stability but high drag. To counter the high drag, hull forms are narrow and sometimes severely tapered at bow and stern. This leads to poor stability when heeled in a sailboat. This is often countered by using heavy interior ballast on sailing versions. They are best suited to sheltered inshore waters. Early racing power boats were fine forward and flat aft. This produced maximum lift and a smooth, fast ride in flat water, but this hull form is easily unsettled in waves. The multi-chine hull approximates a curved hull form. It has less drag than a flat-bottom boat. Multi chines are more complex to build but produce a more seaworthy hull form. They are usually displacement hulls. V or arc-bottom chine boats have a V shape between 6° and 23°. This is called the deadrise angle. The flatter shape of a 6-degree hull will plane with less wind or a lower-horsepower engine but will pound more in waves. The deep V form (between 18 and 23 degrees) is only suited to high-powered planing boats. They require more powerful engines to lift the boat onto the plane but give a faster, smoother ride in waves. Displacement chined hulls have more wetted surface area, hence more drag, than an equivalent round-hull form, for any given displacement.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Smooth curve hulls are hulls that use, just like the curved hulls, a centreboard, or an attached keel.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Semi round bilge hulls are somewhat less round. The advantage of the semi-round is that it is a nice middle between the S-bottom and chined hull. Typical examples of a semi-round bilge hull can be found in the Centaur and Laser sailing dinghies.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "S-bottom hulls are sailing boat hulls with a midships transverse half-section shaped like an s. In the s-bottom, the hull has round bilges and merges smoothly with the keel, and there are no sharp corners on the hull sides between the keel centreline and the sheer line. Boats with this hull form may have a long fixed deep keel, or a long shallow fixed keel with a centreboard swing keel inside. Ballast may be internal, external, or a combination. This hull form was most popular in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Examples of small sailboats that use this s-shape are the Yngling and Randmeer.",
"title": "Hull shapes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Hull forms are defined as follows:",
"title": "Metrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Block measures that define the principal dimensions. They are:",
"title": "Metrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Form derivatives that are calculated from the shape and the block measures. They are:",
"title": "Metrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Coefficients help compare hull forms as well:",
"title": "Metrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Note:",
"title": "Metrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Use of computer-aided design has superseded paper-based methods of ship design that relied on manual calculations and lines drawing. Since the early 1990s, a variety of commercial and freeware software packages specialized for naval architecture have been developed that provide 3D drafting capabilities combined with calculation modules for hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. These may be referred to as geometric modeling systems for naval architecture.",
"title": "Computer-aided design"
}
]
| A hull is the watertight body of a ship, boat, or flying boat. The hull may open at the top, or it may be fully or partially covered with a deck. Atop the deck may be a deckhouse and other superstructures, such as a funnel, derrick, or mast. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline. | 2001-09-16T03:29:50Z | 2023-11-24T20:24:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_(watercraft) |
13,756 | Hymn | A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος (hymnos), which means "a song of praise". A writer of hymns is known as a hymnist. The singing or composition of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment.
Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christianity, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent (stotras). Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts.
Ancient Eastern hymns include the Egyptian Great Hymn to the Aten, composed by Pharaoh Akhenaten; the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal; the Rigveda, an Indian collection of Vedic hymns; hymns from the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), a collection of Chinese poems from 11th to 7th centuries BC; the Gathas—Avestan hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster; and the Biblical Book of Psalms.
The Western tradition of hymnody begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, the oldest of which were written in the 7th century BC, praising deities of the ancient Greek religions. Surviving from the 3rd century BC is a collection of six literary hymns (Ὕμνοι) by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus. The Orphic hymns are a collection of 87 short poems in Greek religion.
Patristic writers began applying the term ὕμνος, or hymnus in Latin, to Christian songs of praise, and frequently used the word as a synonym for "psalm".
Originally modelled on the Book of Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as "canticles") in the Scriptures, Christian hymns are generally directed as praise to the Christian God. Many refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.
Since the earliest times, Christians have sung "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs", both in private devotions and in corporate worship. Non-scriptural hymns (i.e. not psalms or canticles) from the Early Church still sung today include 'Phos Hilaron', 'Sub tuum praesidium', and 'Te Deum'.
One definition of a hymn is "...a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper's attitude toward God or God's purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it."
Christian hymns are often written with special or seasonal themes and these are used on holy days such as Christmas, Easter and the Feast of All Saints, or during particular seasons such as Advent and Lent. Others are used to encourage reverence for the Bible or to celebrate Christian practices such as the eucharist or baptism. Some hymns praise or address individual saints, particularly the Blessed Virgin Mary; such hymns are particularly prevalent in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and to some extent High Church Anglicanism.
A writer of hymns is known as a hymnodist, and the practice of singing hymns is called hymnody; the same word is used for the collectivity of hymns belonging to a particular denomination or period (e.g. "nineteenth century Methodist hymnody" would mean the body of hymns written and/or used by Methodists in the 19th century). A collection of hymns is called a hymnal, hymn book or hymnary. These may or may not include music; among the hymnals without printed music, some include names of hymn tunes suggested for use with each text, in case readers already know the tunes or would like to find them elsewhere. A student of hymnody is called a hymnologist, and the scholarly study of hymns, hymnists and hymnody is hymnology. The music to which a hymn may be sung is a hymn tune.
In many Evangelical churches, traditional songs are classified as hymns while more contemporary worship songs are not considered hymns. The reason for this distinction is unclear, but according to some it is due to the radical shift of style and devotional thinking that began with the Jesus movement and Jesus music. In recent years, Christian traditional hymns have seen a revival in some churches, usually more Reformed or Calvinistic in nature, as modern hymn writers such as Keith and Kristyn Getty and Sovereign Grace Music have reset old lyrics to new melodies, revised old hymns and republished them, or simply written a song in a hymn-like fashion such as In Christ Alone.
In ancient and medieval times, string instruments such as the harp, lyre and lute were used with psalms and hymns.
Since there is a lack of musical notation in early writings, the actual musical forms in the early church can only be surmised. During the Middle Ages a rich hymnody developed in the form of Gregorian chant or plainsong. This type was sung in unison, in one of eight church modes, and most often by monastic choirs. While they were written originally in Latin, many have been translated; a familiar example is the 4th century Of the Father's Heart Begotten sung to the 11th century plainsong Divinum Mysterium.
Later hymnody in the Western church introduced four-part vocal harmony as the norm, adopting major and minor keys, and came to be led by organ and choir. It shares many elements with classical music.
Today, except for choirs, more musically inclined congregations and a cappella congregations, hymns are typically sung in unison. In some cases complementary full settings for organ are also published, in others organists and other accompanists are expected to adapt the available setting, or extemporise one, on their instrument of choice.
In traditional Anglican practice, hymns are sung (often accompanied by an organ) during the processional to the altar, during the receiving of communion, during the recessional, and sometimes at other points during the service. The Doxology is also sung after the tithes and offerings are brought up to the altar.
Contemporary Christian worship, as often found in Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, may include the use of contemporary worship music played with electric guitars and the drum kit, sharing many elements with rock music.
Other groups of Christians have historically excluded instrumental accompaniment, citing the absence of instruments in worship by the church in the first several centuries of its existence, and adhere to an unaccompanied a cappella congregational singing of hymns. These groups include the 'Brethren' (often both 'Open' and 'Exclusive'), the Churches of Christ, Mennonites, several Anabaptist-based denominations—such as the Apostolic Christian Church of America—Primitive Baptists, and certain Reformed churches, although during the last century or so, several of these, such as the Free Church of Scotland have abandoned this stance.
Eastern Christianity (the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches) has a variety of ancient hymnographical traditions. In the Byzantine Rite, chant is used for all forms of liturgical worship: if it is not sung a cappella, the only accompaniment is usually an ison, or drone. Organs and other instruments were excluded from church use, although they were employed in imperial ceremonies. However, instruments are common in some other Oriental traditions. The Coptic tradition makes use of the cymbals and the triangle only. The Indian Orthodox (Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church) use the organ. The Tewahedo Churches use drums, cymbals and other instruments on certain occasions.
Thomas Aquinas, in the introduction to his commentary on the Psalms, defined the Christian hymn thus: "Hymnus est laus Dei cum cantico; canticum autem exultatio mentis de aeternis habita, prorumpens in vocem." ("A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.")
The Protestant Reformation resulted in two conflicting attitudes towards hymns. One approach, the regulative principle of worship, favoured by many Zwinglians, Calvinists and some radical reformers, considered anything that was not directly authorised by the Bible to be a novel and Catholic introduction to worship, which was to be rejected. All hymns that were not direct quotations from the Bible fell into this category. Such hymns were banned, along with any form of instrumental musical accompaniment, and organs were removed from churches. Instead of hymns, biblical psalms were chanted, most often without accompaniment, to very basic melodies. This was known as exclusive psalmody. Examples of this may still be found in various places, including in some of the Presbyterian churches of western Scotland.
The other Reformation approach, the normative principle of worship, produced a burst of hymn writing and congregational singing. Martin Luther is notable not only as a reformer, but as the author of hymns including "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" ("A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"), "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ" ("Praise be to You, Jesus Christ"), and many others. Luther and his followers often used their hymns, or chorales, to teach tenets of the faith to worshipers. The first Protestant hymnal was published in Bohemia in 1532 by the Unitas Fratrum.
Count Zinzendorf, the Lutheran leader of the Moravian Church in the 18th century wrote some 2,000 hymns.
The earlier English writers tended to paraphrase biblical texts, particularly Psalms; Isaac Watts followed this tradition, but is also credited as having written the first English hymn which was not a direct paraphrase of Scripture. Watts (1674–1748), whose father was an Elder of a dissenter congregation, complained at age 16, that when allowed only psalms to sing, the faithful could not even sing about their Lord, Christ Jesus. His father invited him to see what he could do about it; the result was Watts' first hymn, "Behold the glories of the Lamb". Found in few hymnals today, the hymn has eight stanzas in common meter and is based on Revelation 5:6, 8, 9, 10, 12.
Relying heavily on Scripture, Watts wrote metered texts based on New Testament passages that brought the Christian faith into the songs of the church. Isaac Watts has been called "the father of English hymnody", but Erik Routley sees him more as "the liberator of English hymnody", because his hymns, and hymns like them, moved worshipers beyond singing only Old Testament psalms, inspiring congregations and revitalizing worship.
Later writers took even more freedom, some even including allegory and metaphor in their texts.
Charles Wesley's hymns spread Methodist theology, not only within Methodism, but in most Protestant churches. He developed a new focus: expressing one's personal feelings in the relationship with God as well as the simple worship seen in older hymns.
Wesley's contribution, along with the Second Great Awakening in America led to a new style called gospel, and a new explosion of sacred music writing with Fanny Crosby, Lina Sandell, Philip Bliss, Ira D. Sankey, and others who produced testimonial music for revivals, camp meetings, and evangelistic crusades. The tune style or form is technically designated "gospel songs" as distinct from hymns. Gospel songs generally include a refrain (or chorus) and usually (though not always) a faster tempo than the hymns. As examples of the distinction, "Amazing Grace" is a hymn (no refrain), but "How Great Thou Art" is a gospel song. During the 19th century, the gospel-song genre spread rapidly in Protestantism and to a lesser but still definite extent, in Roman Catholicism; the gospel-song genre is unknown in the worship per se by Eastern Orthodox churches, which rely exclusively on traditional chants (a type of hymn).
The Methodist Revival of the 18th century created an explosion of hymn-writing in Welsh, which continued into the first half of the 19th century. The most prominent names among Welsh hymn-writers are William Williams Pantycelyn and Ann Griffiths. The second half of the 19th century witnessed an explosion of hymn tune composition and congregational four-part singing in Wales.
Along with the more classical sacred music of composers ranging from Charpentier (19 Hymns, H.53 - H.71) to Mozart to Monteverdi, the Catholic Church continued to produce many popular hymns such as Lead, Kindly Light, Silent Night, O Sacrament Most Holy, and Faith of Our Fathers.
In some radical Protestant movements, their own sacred hymns completely replaced the written Bible. An example of this, the Book of Life (Russian: "Zhivotnaya kniga") is the name of all oral hymns of the Doukhobors, the Russian denomination, similar to western Quakers. The Book of Life of the Doukhobors (1909) is firstly printed hymnal containing songs, which to have been composed as an oral piece to be sung aloud.
Many churches today use contemporary worship music which includes a range of styles often influenced by popular music. This often leads to some conflict between older and younger congregants (see contemporary worship). This is not new; the Christian pop music style began in the late 1960s and became very popular during the 1970s, as young hymnists sought ways in which to make the music of their religion relevant for their generation.
This long tradition has resulted in a wide variety of hymns. Some modern churches include within hymnody the traditional hymn (usually describing God), contemporary worship music (often directed to God) and gospel music (expressions of one's personal experience of God). This distinction is not perfectly clear; and purists remove the second two types from the classification as hymns. It is a matter of debate, even sometimes within a single congregation, often between revivalist and traditionalist movements.
Swedish composer and musicologist Elisabet Wentz-Janacek mapped 20,000 melody variants for Swedish hymns and helped create the Swedish Choral Registrar, which displays the wide variety of hymns today.
In modern times, hymn use has not been limited to strictly religious settings, including secular occasions such as Remembrance Day, and this "secularization" also includes use as sources of musical entertainment or even vehicles for mass emotion.
Hymn writing, composition, performance and the publishing of Christian hymnals were prolific in the 19th-century and were often linked to the abolitionist movement by many hymn writers. Stephen Foster wrote a number of hymns that were used during church services during this era of publishing.
Thomas Symmes spread throughout churches a new idea of how to sing hymns, in which anyone could sing a hymn any way they felt led to; this idea was opposed by the views of Symmes' colleagues who felt it was "like Five Hundred different Tunes roared out at the same time". William Billings, a singing school teacher, created the first tune book with only American born compositions. Within his books, Billings did not put as much emphasis on "common measure" which was the typical way hymns were sung, but he attempted "to have a Sufficiency in each measure". Boston's Handel and Haydn Society aimed at raising the level of church music in America, publishing their "Collection of Church Music". In the late 19th century Ira D. Sankey and Dwight L. Moody developed the relatively new subcategory of gospel hymns.
Earlier in the 19th century, the use of musical notation, especially shape notes, exploded in America, and professional singing masters went from town to town teaching the population how to sing from sight, instead of the more common lining out that had been used before that. During this period hundreds of tune books were published, including B.F. White's Sacred Harp, and earlier works like the Missouri Harmony, Kentucky Harmony, Hesperian Harp, D.H. Mansfield's The American Vocalist, The Social Harp, the Southern Harmony, William Walker's Christian Harmony, Jeremiah Ingalls' Christian Harmony, and literally many dozens of others. Shape notes were important in the spread of (then) more modern singing styles, with tenor-led 4-part harmony (based on older English West Gallery music), fuging sections, anthems and other more complex features. During this period, hymns were incredibly popular in the United States, and one or more of the above-mentioned tunebooks could be found in almost every household. It is not uncommon to hear accounts of young people and teenagers gathering together to spend an afternoon singing hymns and anthems from tune books, which was considered great fun, and there are surviving accounts of Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart singing together from the Missouri Harmony during his youth.
By the 1860s musical reformers like Lowell Mason (the so-called "better music boys") were actively campaigning for the introduction of more "refined" and modern singing styles, and eventually these American tune books were replaced in many churches, starting in the Northeast and urban areas, and spreading out into the countryside as people adopted the gentler, more soothing tones of Victorian hymnody, and even adopted dedicated, trained choirs to do their church's singing, rather than having the entire congregation participate. But in many rural areas the old traditions lived on, not in churches, but in weekly, monthly or annual conventions were people would meet to sing from their favorite tunebooks. The most popular one, and the only one that survived continuously in print, was the Sacred Harp, which could be found in the typical rural Southern home right up until the living tradition was "re-discovered" by Alan Lomax in the 1960s (although it had been well-documented by musicologist George Pullen Jackson prior to this). Since then there has been a renaissance in "Sacred Harp singing", with annual conventions popping up in all 50 states and in a number of European countries recently, including the UK, Germany, Ireland and Poland, as well as in Australia.
African-Americans developed a rich hymnody from spirituals during times of slavery to the modern, lively black gospel style. The first influences of African-American culture into hymns came from slave songs of the United States a collection of slave hymns, compiled by William Francis Allen, who had difficulty pinning them down from the oral tradition, and though he succeeded, he points out the awe-inspiring effect of the hymns when sung in by their originators. Some of the first hymns in the black church were renderings of Isaac Watts hymns written in the African-American vernacular English of the time.
The meter indicates the number of syllables for the lines in each stanza of a hymn. This provides a means of marrying the hymn's text with an appropriate hymn tune for singing. In practice many hymns conform to one of a relatively small number of meters (syllable count and stress patterns). Care must be taken, however, to ensure that not only the metre of words and tune match, but also the stresses on the words in each line. Technically speaking an iambic tune, for instance, cannot be used with words of, say, trochaic metre.
The meter is often denoted by a row of figures besides the name of the tune, such as "87.87.87", which would inform the reader that each verse has six lines, and that the first line has eight syllables, the second has seven, the third line eight, etc. The meter can also be described by initials; L.M. indicates long meter, which is 88.88 (four lines, each eight syllables long); S.M. is short meter (66.86); C.M. is common metre (86.86), while D.L.M., D.S.M. and D.C.M. (the "D" stands for double) are similar to their respective single meters except that they have eight lines in a verse instead of four.
Also, if the number of syllables in one verse differ from another verse in the same hymn (e.g., the hymn "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God"), the meter is called Irregular.
The Rigveda is the earliest and foundational Indian collection of over a thousand liturgical hymns in Vedic Sanskrit.
Between other notable Hindu hymns (stotras and others) or their collections there are:
A hymnody acquired tremendous importance during the medieval era of the bhakti movements. When the chanting (bhajan and kirtan) of the devotional songs of the poet-sants (Basava, Chandidas, Dadu Dayal, Haridas, Hith Harivansh, Kabir, Meera Bai, Namdev, Nanak, Ramprasad Sen, Ravidas, Sankardev, Surdas, Vidyapati) in local languages in a number of groups, namely Dadu panth, Kabir panth, Lingayatism, Radha-vallabha, Sikhism, completely or significantly replaced all previous Sanskrit literature. The same and with the songs of Baul movement. That is, the new hymns themselves received the status of holy scripture. An example of a hymnist, both lyricist and composer is the 15th–16th centuries Assamese reformer guru Sankardev with his borgeet-songs.
The Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ Punjabi pronunciation: [ɡʊɾu ɡɾəntʰ sɑhɪb]), is a collection of hymns (Shabad) or Gurbani describing the qualities of God and why one should meditate on God's name. The Guru Granth Sahib is divided by their musical setting in different ragas into fourteen hundred and thirty pages known as Angs (limbs) in Sikh tradition. Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the tenth guru, after adding Guru Tegh Bahadur's bani to the Adi Granth affirmed the sacred text as his successor, elevating it to Guru Granth Sahib. The text remains the holy scripture of the Sikhs, regarded as the teachings of the Ten Gurus. The role of Guru Granth Sahib, as a source or guide of prayer, is pivotal in Sikh worship.
The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), were initially lyrics. The Shijing, with its collection of poems and folk songs, was heavily valued by the philosopher Confucius and is considered to be one of the official Confucian classics. His remarks on the subject have become an invaluable source in ancient music theory.
According to Nissim Ezekiel, views on hymns can be divided:
...poets who have mystical experiences and project them in verse have occasionally been successful but mystics who write poetry do it badly. Religious hymns, however notable the religious sentiment they express are not notably poetic. Great religious poetry undoubtedly exists but the greatness is unequally divided between the poetry and religion, while perfect integration between the two is rare.
The links below are restricted to either material that is historical or resources that are non-denominational or inter-denominational. Denomination-specific resources are mentioned from the relevant denomination-specific articles. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος (hymnos), which means \"a song of praise\". A writer of hymns is known as a hymnist. The singing or composition of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christianity, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent (stotras). Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ancient Eastern hymns include the Egyptian Great Hymn to the Aten, composed by Pharaoh Akhenaten; the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal; the Rigveda, an Indian collection of Vedic hymns; hymns from the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), a collection of Chinese poems from 11th to 7th centuries BC; the Gathas—Avestan hymns believed to have been composed by Zoroaster; and the Biblical Book of Psalms.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Western tradition of hymnody begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, the oldest of which were written in the 7th century BC, praising deities of the ancient Greek religions. Surviving from the 3rd century BC is a collection of six literary hymns (Ὕμνοι) by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus. The Orphic hymns are a collection of 87 short poems in Greek religion.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Patristic writers began applying the term ὕμνος, or hymnus in Latin, to Christian songs of praise, and frequently used the word as a synonym for \"psalm\".",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Originally modelled on the Book of Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as \"canticles\") in the Scriptures, Christian hymns are generally directed as praise to the Christian God. Many refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Since the earliest times, Christians have sung \"psalms and hymns and spiritual songs\", both in private devotions and in corporate worship. Non-scriptural hymns (i.e. not psalms or canticles) from the Early Church still sung today include 'Phos Hilaron', 'Sub tuum praesidium', and 'Te Deum'.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "One definition of a hymn is \"...a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper's attitude toward God or God's purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it.\"",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Christian hymns are often written with special or seasonal themes and these are used on holy days such as Christmas, Easter and the Feast of All Saints, or during particular seasons such as Advent and Lent. Others are used to encourage reverence for the Bible or to celebrate Christian practices such as the eucharist or baptism. Some hymns praise or address individual saints, particularly the Blessed Virgin Mary; such hymns are particularly prevalent in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and to some extent High Church Anglicanism.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A writer of hymns is known as a hymnodist, and the practice of singing hymns is called hymnody; the same word is used for the collectivity of hymns belonging to a particular denomination or period (e.g. \"nineteenth century Methodist hymnody\" would mean the body of hymns written and/or used by Methodists in the 19th century). A collection of hymns is called a hymnal, hymn book or hymnary. These may or may not include music; among the hymnals without printed music, some include names of hymn tunes suggested for use with each text, in case readers already know the tunes or would like to find them elsewhere. A student of hymnody is called a hymnologist, and the scholarly study of hymns, hymnists and hymnody is hymnology. The music to which a hymn may be sung is a hymn tune.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In many Evangelical churches, traditional songs are classified as hymns while more contemporary worship songs are not considered hymns. The reason for this distinction is unclear, but according to some it is due to the radical shift of style and devotional thinking that began with the Jesus movement and Jesus music. In recent years, Christian traditional hymns have seen a revival in some churches, usually more Reformed or Calvinistic in nature, as modern hymn writers such as Keith and Kristyn Getty and Sovereign Grace Music have reset old lyrics to new melodies, revised old hymns and republished them, or simply written a song in a hymn-like fashion such as In Christ Alone.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In ancient and medieval times, string instruments such as the harp, lyre and lute were used with psalms and hymns.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Since there is a lack of musical notation in early writings, the actual musical forms in the early church can only be surmised. During the Middle Ages a rich hymnody developed in the form of Gregorian chant or plainsong. This type was sung in unison, in one of eight church modes, and most often by monastic choirs. While they were written originally in Latin, many have been translated; a familiar example is the 4th century Of the Father's Heart Begotten sung to the 11th century plainsong Divinum Mysterium.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Later hymnody in the Western church introduced four-part vocal harmony as the norm, adopting major and minor keys, and came to be led by organ and choir. It shares many elements with classical music.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Today, except for choirs, more musically inclined congregations and a cappella congregations, hymns are typically sung in unison. In some cases complementary full settings for organ are also published, in others organists and other accompanists are expected to adapt the available setting, or extemporise one, on their instrument of choice.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In traditional Anglican practice, hymns are sung (often accompanied by an organ) during the processional to the altar, during the receiving of communion, during the recessional, and sometimes at other points during the service. The Doxology is also sung after the tithes and offerings are brought up to the altar.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Contemporary Christian worship, as often found in Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, may include the use of contemporary worship music played with electric guitars and the drum kit, sharing many elements with rock music.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Other groups of Christians have historically excluded instrumental accompaniment, citing the absence of instruments in worship by the church in the first several centuries of its existence, and adhere to an unaccompanied a cappella congregational singing of hymns. These groups include the 'Brethren' (often both 'Open' and 'Exclusive'), the Churches of Christ, Mennonites, several Anabaptist-based denominations—such as the Apostolic Christian Church of America—Primitive Baptists, and certain Reformed churches, although during the last century or so, several of these, such as the Free Church of Scotland have abandoned this stance.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Eastern Christianity (the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches) has a variety of ancient hymnographical traditions. In the Byzantine Rite, chant is used for all forms of liturgical worship: if it is not sung a cappella, the only accompaniment is usually an ison, or drone. Organs and other instruments were excluded from church use, although they were employed in imperial ceremonies. However, instruments are common in some other Oriental traditions. The Coptic tradition makes use of the cymbals and the triangle only. The Indian Orthodox (Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church) use the organ. The Tewahedo Churches use drums, cymbals and other instruments on certain occasions.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Thomas Aquinas, in the introduction to his commentary on the Psalms, defined the Christian hymn thus: \"Hymnus est laus Dei cum cantico; canticum autem exultatio mentis de aeternis habita, prorumpens in vocem.\" (\"A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.\")",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Protestant Reformation resulted in two conflicting attitudes towards hymns. One approach, the regulative principle of worship, favoured by many Zwinglians, Calvinists and some radical reformers, considered anything that was not directly authorised by the Bible to be a novel and Catholic introduction to worship, which was to be rejected. All hymns that were not direct quotations from the Bible fell into this category. Such hymns were banned, along with any form of instrumental musical accompaniment, and organs were removed from churches. Instead of hymns, biblical psalms were chanted, most often without accompaniment, to very basic melodies. This was known as exclusive psalmody. Examples of this may still be found in various places, including in some of the Presbyterian churches of western Scotland.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The other Reformation approach, the normative principle of worship, produced a burst of hymn writing and congregational singing. Martin Luther is notable not only as a reformer, but as the author of hymns including \"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott\" (\"A Mighty Fortress Is Our God\"), \"Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ\" (\"Praise be to You, Jesus Christ\"), and many others. Luther and his followers often used their hymns, or chorales, to teach tenets of the faith to worshipers. The first Protestant hymnal was published in Bohemia in 1532 by the Unitas Fratrum.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Count Zinzendorf, the Lutheran leader of the Moravian Church in the 18th century wrote some 2,000 hymns.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The earlier English writers tended to paraphrase biblical texts, particularly Psalms; Isaac Watts followed this tradition, but is also credited as having written the first English hymn which was not a direct paraphrase of Scripture. Watts (1674–1748), whose father was an Elder of a dissenter congregation, complained at age 16, that when allowed only psalms to sing, the faithful could not even sing about their Lord, Christ Jesus. His father invited him to see what he could do about it; the result was Watts' first hymn, \"Behold the glories of the Lamb\". Found in few hymnals today, the hymn has eight stanzas in common meter and is based on Revelation 5:6, 8, 9, 10, 12.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Relying heavily on Scripture, Watts wrote metered texts based on New Testament passages that brought the Christian faith into the songs of the church. Isaac Watts has been called \"the father of English hymnody\", but Erik Routley sees him more as \"the liberator of English hymnody\", because his hymns, and hymns like them, moved worshipers beyond singing only Old Testament psalms, inspiring congregations and revitalizing worship.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Later writers took even more freedom, some even including allegory and metaphor in their texts.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Charles Wesley's hymns spread Methodist theology, not only within Methodism, but in most Protestant churches. He developed a new focus: expressing one's personal feelings in the relationship with God as well as the simple worship seen in older hymns.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Wesley's contribution, along with the Second Great Awakening in America led to a new style called gospel, and a new explosion of sacred music writing with Fanny Crosby, Lina Sandell, Philip Bliss, Ira D. Sankey, and others who produced testimonial music for revivals, camp meetings, and evangelistic crusades. The tune style or form is technically designated \"gospel songs\" as distinct from hymns. Gospel songs generally include a refrain (or chorus) and usually (though not always) a faster tempo than the hymns. As examples of the distinction, \"Amazing Grace\" is a hymn (no refrain), but \"How Great Thou Art\" is a gospel song. During the 19th century, the gospel-song genre spread rapidly in Protestantism and to a lesser but still definite extent, in Roman Catholicism; the gospel-song genre is unknown in the worship per se by Eastern Orthodox churches, which rely exclusively on traditional chants (a type of hymn).",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Methodist Revival of the 18th century created an explosion of hymn-writing in Welsh, which continued into the first half of the 19th century. The most prominent names among Welsh hymn-writers are William Williams Pantycelyn and Ann Griffiths. The second half of the 19th century witnessed an explosion of hymn tune composition and congregational four-part singing in Wales.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Along with the more classical sacred music of composers ranging from Charpentier (19 Hymns, H.53 - H.71) to Mozart to Monteverdi, the Catholic Church continued to produce many popular hymns such as Lead, Kindly Light, Silent Night, O Sacrament Most Holy, and Faith of Our Fathers.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In some radical Protestant movements, their own sacred hymns completely replaced the written Bible. An example of this, the Book of Life (Russian: \"Zhivotnaya kniga\") is the name of all oral hymns of the Doukhobors, the Russian denomination, similar to western Quakers. The Book of Life of the Doukhobors (1909) is firstly printed hymnal containing songs, which to have been composed as an oral piece to be sung aloud.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Many churches today use contemporary worship music which includes a range of styles often influenced by popular music. This often leads to some conflict between older and younger congregants (see contemporary worship). This is not new; the Christian pop music style began in the late 1960s and became very popular during the 1970s, as young hymnists sought ways in which to make the music of their religion relevant for their generation.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "This long tradition has resulted in a wide variety of hymns. Some modern churches include within hymnody the traditional hymn (usually describing God), contemporary worship music (often directed to God) and gospel music (expressions of one's personal experience of God). This distinction is not perfectly clear; and purists remove the second two types from the classification as hymns. It is a matter of debate, even sometimes within a single congregation, often between revivalist and traditionalist movements.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Swedish composer and musicologist Elisabet Wentz-Janacek mapped 20,000 melody variants for Swedish hymns and helped create the Swedish Choral Registrar, which displays the wide variety of hymns today.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In modern times, hymn use has not been limited to strictly religious settings, including secular occasions such as Remembrance Day, and this \"secularization\" also includes use as sources of musical entertainment or even vehicles for mass emotion.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Hymn writing, composition, performance and the publishing of Christian hymnals were prolific in the 19th-century and were often linked to the abolitionist movement by many hymn writers. Stephen Foster wrote a number of hymns that were used during church services during this era of publishing.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Thomas Symmes spread throughout churches a new idea of how to sing hymns, in which anyone could sing a hymn any way they felt led to; this idea was opposed by the views of Symmes' colleagues who felt it was \"like Five Hundred different Tunes roared out at the same time\". William Billings, a singing school teacher, created the first tune book with only American born compositions. Within his books, Billings did not put as much emphasis on \"common measure\" which was the typical way hymns were sung, but he attempted \"to have a Sufficiency in each measure\". Boston's Handel and Haydn Society aimed at raising the level of church music in America, publishing their \"Collection of Church Music\". In the late 19th century Ira D. Sankey and Dwight L. Moody developed the relatively new subcategory of gospel hymns.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Earlier in the 19th century, the use of musical notation, especially shape notes, exploded in America, and professional singing masters went from town to town teaching the population how to sing from sight, instead of the more common lining out that had been used before that. During this period hundreds of tune books were published, including B.F. White's Sacred Harp, and earlier works like the Missouri Harmony, Kentucky Harmony, Hesperian Harp, D.H. Mansfield's The American Vocalist, The Social Harp, the Southern Harmony, William Walker's Christian Harmony, Jeremiah Ingalls' Christian Harmony, and literally many dozens of others. Shape notes were important in the spread of (then) more modern singing styles, with tenor-led 4-part harmony (based on older English West Gallery music), fuging sections, anthems and other more complex features. During this period, hymns were incredibly popular in the United States, and one or more of the above-mentioned tunebooks could be found in almost every household. It is not uncommon to hear accounts of young people and teenagers gathering together to spend an afternoon singing hymns and anthems from tune books, which was considered great fun, and there are surviving accounts of Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart singing together from the Missouri Harmony during his youth.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "By the 1860s musical reformers like Lowell Mason (the so-called \"better music boys\") were actively campaigning for the introduction of more \"refined\" and modern singing styles, and eventually these American tune books were replaced in many churches, starting in the Northeast and urban areas, and spreading out into the countryside as people adopted the gentler, more soothing tones of Victorian hymnody, and even adopted dedicated, trained choirs to do their church's singing, rather than having the entire congregation participate. But in many rural areas the old traditions lived on, not in churches, but in weekly, monthly or annual conventions were people would meet to sing from their favorite tunebooks. The most popular one, and the only one that survived continuously in print, was the Sacred Harp, which could be found in the typical rural Southern home right up until the living tradition was \"re-discovered\" by Alan Lomax in the 1960s (although it had been well-documented by musicologist George Pullen Jackson prior to this). Since then there has been a renaissance in \"Sacred Harp singing\", with annual conventions popping up in all 50 states and in a number of European countries recently, including the UK, Germany, Ireland and Poland, as well as in Australia.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "African-Americans developed a rich hymnody from spirituals during times of slavery to the modern, lively black gospel style. The first influences of African-American culture into hymns came from slave songs of the United States a collection of slave hymns, compiled by William Francis Allen, who had difficulty pinning them down from the oral tradition, and though he succeeded, he points out the awe-inspiring effect of the hymns when sung in by their originators. Some of the first hymns in the black church were renderings of Isaac Watts hymns written in the African-American vernacular English of the time.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The meter indicates the number of syllables for the lines in each stanza of a hymn. This provides a means of marrying the hymn's text with an appropriate hymn tune for singing. In practice many hymns conform to one of a relatively small number of meters (syllable count and stress patterns). Care must be taken, however, to ensure that not only the metre of words and tune match, but also the stresses on the words in each line. Technically speaking an iambic tune, for instance, cannot be used with words of, say, trochaic metre.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The meter is often denoted by a row of figures besides the name of the tune, such as \"87.87.87\", which would inform the reader that each verse has six lines, and that the first line has eight syllables, the second has seven, the third line eight, etc. The meter can also be described by initials; L.M. indicates long meter, which is 88.88 (four lines, each eight syllables long); S.M. is short meter (66.86); C.M. is common metre (86.86), while D.L.M., D.S.M. and D.C.M. (the \"D\" stands for double) are similar to their respective single meters except that they have eight lines in a verse instead of four.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Also, if the number of syllables in one verse differ from another verse in the same hymn (e.g., the hymn \"I Sing a Song of the Saints of God\"), the meter is called Irregular.",
"title": "Christian hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Rigveda is the earliest and foundational Indian collection of over a thousand liturgical hymns in Vedic Sanskrit.",
"title": "Hindu hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Between other notable Hindu hymns (stotras and others) or their collections there are:",
"title": "Hindu hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "A hymnody acquired tremendous importance during the medieval era of the bhakti movements. When the chanting (bhajan and kirtan) of the devotional songs of the poet-sants (Basava, Chandidas, Dadu Dayal, Haridas, Hith Harivansh, Kabir, Meera Bai, Namdev, Nanak, Ramprasad Sen, Ravidas, Sankardev, Surdas, Vidyapati) in local languages in a number of groups, namely Dadu panth, Kabir panth, Lingayatism, Radha-vallabha, Sikhism, completely or significantly replaced all previous Sanskrit literature. The same and with the songs of Baul movement. That is, the new hymns themselves received the status of holy scripture. An example of a hymnist, both lyricist and composer is the 15th–16th centuries Assamese reformer guru Sankardev with his borgeet-songs.",
"title": "Hindu hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib (Punjabi: ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ Punjabi pronunciation: [ɡʊɾu ɡɾəntʰ sɑhɪb]), is a collection of hymns (Shabad) or Gurbani describing the qualities of God and why one should meditate on God's name. The Guru Granth Sahib is divided by their musical setting in different ragas into fourteen hundred and thirty pages known as Angs (limbs) in Sikh tradition. Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the tenth guru, after adding Guru Tegh Bahadur's bani to the Adi Granth affirmed the sacred text as his successor, elevating it to Guru Granth Sahib. The text remains the holy scripture of the Sikhs, regarded as the teachings of the Ten Gurus. The role of Guru Granth Sahib, as a source or guide of prayer, is pivotal in Sikh worship.",
"title": "Sikh hymnody"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), were initially lyrics. The Shijing, with its collection of poems and folk songs, was heavily valued by the philosopher Confucius and is considered to be one of the official Confucian classics. His remarks on the subject have become an invaluable source in ancient music theory.",
"title": "In other religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "According to Nissim Ezekiel, views on hymns can be divided:",
"title": "Appreciations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "...poets who have mystical experiences and project them in verse have occasionally been successful but mystics who write poetry do it badly. Religious hymns, however notable the religious sentiment they express are not notably poetic. Great religious poetry undoubtedly exists but the greatness is unequally divided between the poetry and religion, while perfect integration between the two is rare.",
"title": "Appreciations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The links below are restricted to either material that is historical or resources that are non-denominational or inter-denominational. Denomination-specific resources are mentioned from the relevant denomination-specific articles.",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος (hymnos), which means "a song of praise". A writer of hymns is known as a hymnist. The singing or composition of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment. Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christianity, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent (stotras). Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts. | 2001-09-14T22:52:13Z | 2023-12-05T22:23:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn |
13,758 | History of physics | Physics is a branch of science whose primary objects of study are matter and energy. Discoveries of physics find applications throughout the natural sciences and in technology. Historically, physics emerged from the scientific revolution of the 17th century, grew rapidly in the 19th century, then was transformed by a series of discoveries in the 20th century. Physics today may be divided loosely into classical physics and modern physics.
Many detailed articles on specific topics are available through the Outline of the history of physics.
Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy. Ancient philosophy, meanwhile, included what was called "Physics".
The move towards a rational understanding of nature began at least since the Archaic period in Greece (650–480 BCE) with the Pre-Socratic philosophers. The philosopher Thales of Miletus (7th and 6th centuries BCE), dubbed "the Father of Science" for refusing to accept various supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena, proclaimed that every event had a natural cause. Thales also made advancements in 580 BCE by suggesting that water is the basic element, experimenting with the attraction between magnets and rubbed amber and formulating the first recorded cosmologies. Anaximander, famous for his proto-evolutionary theory, disputed Thales' ideas and proposed that rather than water, a substance called apeiron was the building block of all matter. Around 500 BCE, Heraclitus proposed that the only basic law governing the Universe was the principle of change and that nothing remains in the same state indefinitely. Along with his contemporary Parmenides were among the first scholars in ancient physics to contemplate on the role of time in the universe, a key concept that is still an issue in modern physics.
During the classical period in Greece (6th, 5th and 4th centuries BCE) and in Hellenistic times, natural philosophy slowly developed into an exciting and contentious field of study. Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384–322 BCE), a student of Plato, promoted the concept that observation of physical phenomena could ultimately lead to the discovery of the natural laws governing them. Aristotle's writings cover physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology. He wrote the first work which refers to that line of study as "Physics" – in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle founded the system known as Aristotelian physics. He attempted to explain ideas such as motion (and gravity) with the theory of four elements. Aristotle believed that all matter was made up of aether, or some combination of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. According to Aristotle, these four terrestrial elements are capable of inter-transformation and move toward their natural place, so a stone falls downward toward the center of the cosmos, but flames rise upward toward the circumference. Eventually, Aristotelian physics became enormously popular for many centuries in Europe, informing the scientific and scholastic developments of the Middle Ages. It remained the mainstream scientific paradigm in Europe until the time of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.
Early in Classical Greece, knowledge that the Earth is spherical ("round") was common. Around 240 BCE, as the result of a seminal experiment, Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) accurately estimated its circumference. In contrast to Aristotle's geocentric views, Aristarchus of Samos (Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος; c. 310 – c. 230 BCE) presented an explicit argument for a heliocentric model of the Solar System, i.e. for placing the Sun, not the Earth, at its centre. Seleucus of Seleucia, a follower of Aristarchus' heliocentric theory, stated that the Earth rotated around its own axis, which, in turn, revolved around the Sun. Though the arguments he used were lost, Plutarch stated that Seleucus was the first to prove the heliocentric system through reasoning.
In the 3rd century BCE, the Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης (287–212 BCE) – generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time – laid the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and calculated the underlying mathematics of the lever. A leading scientist of classical antiquity, Archimedes also developed elaborate systems of pulleys to move large objects with a minimum of effort. The Archimedes' screw underpins modern hydroengineering, and his machines of war helped to hold back the armies of Rome in the First Punic War. Archimedes even tore apart the arguments of Aristotle and his metaphysics, pointing out that it was impossible to separate mathematics and nature and proved it by converting mathematical theories into practical inventions. Furthermore, in his work On Floating Bodies, around 250 BCE, Archimedes developed the law of buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' principle. In mathematics, Archimedes used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers. He also developed the principles of equilibrium states and centers of gravity, ideas that would influence the well known scholars, Galileo, and Newton.
Hipparchus (190–120 BCE), focusing on astronomy and mathematics, used sophisticated geometrical techniques to map the motion of the stars and planets, even predicting the times that Solar eclipses would happen. He added calculations of the distance of the Sun and Moon from the Earth, based upon his improvements to the observational instruments used at that time. Another of the most famous of the early physicists was Ptolemy (90–168 CE), one of the leading minds during the time of the Roman Empire. Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world.
Much of the accumulated knowledge of the ancient world was lost. Even of the works of the better known thinkers, few fragments survived. Although he wrote at least fourteen books, almost nothing of Hipparchus' direct work survived. Of the 150 reputed Aristotelian works, only 30 exist, and some of those are "little more than lecture notes".
Important physical and mathematical traditions also existed in ancient Chinese and Indian sciences.
In Indian philosophy, Maharishi Kanada was the first to systematically develop a theory of atomism around 200 BCE though some authors have allotted him an earlier era in the 6th century BCE. It was further elaborated by the Buddhist atomists Dharmakirti and Dignāga during the 1st millennium CE. Pakudha Kaccayana, a 6th-century BCE Indian philosopher and contemporary of Gautama Buddha, had also propounded ideas about the atomic constitution of the material world. These philosophers believed that other elements (except ether) were physically palpable and hence comprised minuscule particles of matter. The last minuscule particle of matter that could not be subdivided further was termed Parmanu. These philosophers considered the atom to be indestructible and hence eternal. The Buddhists thought atoms to be minute objects unable to be seen to the naked eye that come into being and vanish in an instant. The Vaisheshika school of philosophers believed that an atom was a mere point in space. It was also first to depict relations between motion and force applied. Indian theories about the atom are greatly abstract and enmeshed in philosophy as they were based on logic and not on personal experience or experimentation. In Indian astronomy, Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (499 CE) proposed the Earth's rotation, while Nilakantha Somayaji (1444–1544) of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics proposed a semi-heliocentric model resembling the Tychonic system.
The study of magnetism in Ancient China dates back to the 4th century BCE. (in the Book of the Devil Valley Master), A main contributor to this field was Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a polymath and statesman who was the first to describe the magnetic-needle compass used for navigation, as well as establishing the concept of true north. In optics, Shen Kuo independently developed a camera obscura.
In the 7th to 15th centuries, scientific progress occurred in the Muslim world. Many classic works in Indian, Assyrian, Sassanian (Persian) and Greek, including the works of Aristotle, were translated into Arabic. Important contributions were made by Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040), an Arab scientist, considered to be a founder of modern optics. Ptolemy and Aristotle theorised that light either shone from the eye to illuminate objects or that "forms" emanated from objects themselves, whereas al-Haytham (known by the Latin name "Alhazen") suggested that light travels to the eye in rays from different points on an object. The works of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Biruni (973–1050), a Persian scientist, eventually passed on to Western Europe where they were studied by scholars such as Roger Bacon and Vitello.
Ibn al-Haytham used controlled experiments in his work on optics, although to what extent it differed from Ptolemy is up to debate . Arabic mechanics like Bīrūnī and Al-Khazini developed sophisticated "science of weight", carrying out measurements of specific weights and volumes
Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), known as "Avicenna", was a polymath from Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan) responsible for important contributions to physics, optics, philosophy and medicine. He published his theory of motion in Book of Healing (1020), where he argued that an impetus is imparted to a projectile by the thrower, and believed that it was a temporary virtue that would decline even in a vacuum. He viewed it as persistent, requiring external forces such as air resistance to dissipate it. Ibn Sina made a distinction between 'force' and 'inclination' (called "mayl"), and argued that an object gained mayl when the object is in opposition to its natural motion. He concluded that continuation of motion is attributed to the inclination that is transferred to the object, and that object will be in motion until the mayl is spent. He also claimed that projectile in a vacuum would not stop unless it is acted upon. This conception of motion is consistent with Newton's first law of motion, inertia, which states that an object in motion will stay in motion unless it is acted on by an external force. This idea which dissented from the Aristotelian view was later described as "impetus" by John Buridan, who was influenced by Ibn Sina's Book of Healing.
Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (c. 1080 – c. 1165) adopted and modified Ibn Sina's theory on projectile motion. In his Kitab al-Mu'tabar, Abu'l-Barakat stated that the mover imparts a violent inclination (mayl qasri) on the moved and that this diminishes as the moving object distances itself from the mover. He also proposed an explanation of the acceleration of falling bodies by the accumulation of successive increments of power with successive increments of velocity. According to Shlomo Pines, al-Baghdaadi's theory of motion was "the oldest negation of Aristotle's fundamental dynamic law [namely, that a constant force produces a uniform motion], [and is thus an] anticipation in a vague fashion of the fundamental law of classical mechanics [namely, that a force applied continuously produces acceleration]." Jean Buridan and Albert of Saxony later referred to Abu'l-Barakat in explaining that the acceleration of a falling body is a result of its increasing impetus.
Ibn Bajjah (c. 1085 – 1138), known as "Avempace" in Europe, proposed that for every force there is always a reaction force. Ibn Bajjah was a critic of Ptolemy and he worked on creating a new theory of velocity to replace the one theorized by Aristotle. Two future philosophers supported the theories Avempace created, known as Avempacean dynamics. These philosophers were Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic priest, and John Duns Scotus. Galileo went on to adopt Avempace's formula "that the velocity of a given object is the difference of the motive power of that object and the resistance of the medium of motion".
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274), a Persian astronomer and mathematician who died in Baghdad introduced the Tusi couple. Copernicus later drew heavily on the work of al-Din al-Tusi and his students, but without acknowledgment.
Awareness of ancient works re-entered the West through translations from Arabic to Latin. Their re-introduction, combined with Judeo-Islamic theological commentaries, had a great influence on Medieval philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. Scholastic European scholars, who sought to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with Christian theology, proclaimed Aristotle the greatest thinker of the ancient world. In cases where they didn't directly contradict the Bible, Aristotelian physics became the foundation for the physical explanations of the European Churches. Quantification became a core element of medieval physics.
Based on Aristotelian physics, Scholastic physics described things as moving according to their essential nature. Celestial objects were described as moving in circles, because perfect circular motion was considered an innate property of objects that existed in the uncorrupted realm of the celestial spheres. The theory of impetus, the ancestor to the concepts of inertia and momentum, was developed along similar lines by medieval philosophers such as John Philoponus and Jean Buridan. Motions below the lunar sphere were seen as imperfect, and thus could not be expected to exhibit consistent motion. More idealized motion in the "sublunary" realm could only be achieved through artifice, and prior to the 17th century, many did not view artificial experiments as a valid means of learning about the natural world. Physical explanations in the sublunary realm revolved around tendencies. Stones contained the element earth, and earthly objects tended to move in a straight line toward the centre of the earth (and the universe in the Aristotelian geocentric view) unless otherwise prevented from doing so.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, a large advancement of scientific progress known as the Scientific Revolution took place in Europe. Dissatisfaction with older philosophical approaches had begun earlier and had produced other changes in society, such as the Protestant Reformation, but the revolution in science began when natural philosophers began to mount a sustained attack on the Scholastic philosophical programme and supposed that mathematical descriptive schemes adopted from such fields as mechanics and astronomy could actually yield universally valid characterizations of motion and other concepts.
A breakthrough in astronomy was made by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) when, in 1543, he gave strong arguments for the heliocentric model of the Solar System, ostensibly as a means to render tables charting planetary motion more accurate and to simplify their production. In heliocentric models of the Solar system, the Earth orbits the Sun along with other bodies in Earth's galaxy, a contradiction according to the Greek-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century CE; see above), whose system placed the Earth at the center of the Universe and had been accepted for over 1,400 years. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 – c. 230 BCE) had suggested that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but Copernicus' reasoning led to lasting general acceptance of this "revolutionary" idea. Copernicus' book presenting the theory (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres") was published just before his death in 1543 and, as it is now generally considered to mark the beginning of modern astronomy, is also considered to mark the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. Copernicus' new perspective, along with the accurate observations made by Tycho Brahe, enabled German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) to formulate his laws regarding planetary motion that remain in use today.
The Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was famous for his support for Copernicanism, his astronomical discoveries, empirical experiments and his improvement of the telescope. As a mathematician, Galileo's role in the university culture of his era was subordinated to the three major topics of study: law, medicine, and theology (which was closely allied to philosophy). Galileo, however, felt that the descriptive content of the technical disciplines warranted philosophical interest, particularly because mathematical analysis of astronomical observations – notably, Copernicus' analysis of the relative motions of the Sun, Earth, Moon, and planets – indicated that philosophers' statements about the nature of the universe could be shown to be in error. Galileo also performed mechanical experiments, insisting that motion itself – regardless of whether it was produced "naturally" or "artificially" (i.e. deliberately) – had universally consistent characteristics that could be described mathematically.
Galileo's early studies at the University of Pisa were in medicine, but he was soon drawn to mathematics and physics. At 19, he discovered (and, subsequently, verified) the isochronal nature of the pendulum when, using his pulse, he timed the oscillations of a swinging lamp in Pisa's cathedral and found that it remained the same for each swing regardless of the swing's amplitude. He soon became known through his invention of a hydrostatic balance and for his treatise on the center of gravity of solid bodies. While teaching at the University of Pisa (1589–92), he initiated his experiments concerning the laws of bodies in motion that brought results so contradictory to the accepted teachings of Aristotle that strong antagonism was aroused. He found that bodies do not fall with velocities proportional to their weights. The famous story in which Galileo is said to have dropped weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa is apocryphal, but he did find that the path of a projectile is a parabola and is credited with conclusions that anticipated Newton's laws of motion (e.g. the notion of inertia). Among these is what is now called Galilean relativity, the first precisely formulated statement about properties of space and time outside three-dimensional geometry.
Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the father of modern science". According to Stephen Hawking, "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science." As religious orthodoxy decreed a geocentric or Tychonic understanding of the Solar system, Galileo's support for heliocentrism provoked controversy and he was tried by the Inquisition. Found "vehemently suspect of heresy", he was forced to recant and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
The contributions that Galileo made to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus; his discovery, in 1609, of Jupiter's four largest moons (subsequently given the collective name of the "Galilean moons"); and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also pursued applied science and technology, inventing, among other instruments, a military compass. His discovery of the Jovian moons was published in 1610 and enabled him to obtain the position of mathematician and philosopher to the Medici court. As such, he was expected to engage in debates with philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition and received a large audience for his own publications such as the Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (published abroad following his arrest for the publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) and The Assayer. Galileo's interest in experimenting with and formulating mathematical descriptions of motion established experimentation as an integral part of natural philosophy. This tradition, combining with the non-mathematical emphasis on the collection of "experimental histories" by philosophical reformists such as William Gilbert and Francis Bacon, drew a significant following in the years leading up to and following Galileo's death, including Evangelista Torricelli and the participants in the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; Marin Mersenne and Blaise Pascal in France; Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands; and Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle in England.
The French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was well-connected to, and influential within, the experimental philosophy networks of the day. Descartes had a more ambitious agenda, however, which was geared toward replacing the Scholastic philosophical tradition altogether. Questioning the reality interpreted through the senses, Descartes sought to re-establish philosophical explanatory schemes by reducing all perceived phenomena to being attributable to the motion of an invisible sea of "corpuscles". (Notably, he reserved human thought and God from his scheme, holding these to be separate from the physical universe). In proposing this philosophical framework, Descartes supposed that different kinds of motion, such as that of planets versus that of terrestrial objects, were not fundamentally different, but were merely different manifestations of an endless chain of corpuscular motions obeying universal principles. Particularly influential were his explanations for circular astronomical motions in terms of the vortex motion of corpuscles in space (Descartes argued, in accord with the beliefs, if not the methods, of the Scholastics, that a vacuum could not exist), and his explanation of gravity in terms of corpuscles pushing objects downward.
Descartes, like Galileo, was convinced of the importance of mathematical explanation, and he and his followers were key figures in the development of mathematics and geometry in the 17th century. Cartesian mathematical descriptions of motion held that all mathematical formulations had to be justifiable in terms of direct physical action, a position held by Huygens and the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who, while following in the Cartesian tradition, developed his own philosophical alternative to Scholasticism, which he outlined in his 1714 work, the Monadology. Descartes has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system — allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system — was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, important to the discovery of calculus and analysis.
The Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) was the leading scientist in Europe between Galileo and Newton. Huygens came from a family of nobility that had an important position in the Dutch society of the 17th century; a time in which the Dutch Republic flourished economically and culturally. This period — roughly between 1588 and 1702 — of the history of the Netherlands is also referred to as the Dutch Golden Age, an era during the Scientific Revolution when Dutch science was among the most acclaimed in Europe. At this time, intellectuals and scientists like René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Pierre Bayle, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, John Locke and Hugo Grotius resided in the Netherlands. It was in this intellectual environment where Christiaan Huygens grew up. Christiaan's father, Constantijn Huygens, was, apart from an important poet, the secretary and diplomat for the Princes of Orange. He knew many scientists of his time because of his contacts and intellectual interests, including René Descartes and Marin Mersenne, and it was because of these contacts that Christiaan Huygens became aware of their work. Especially Descartes, whose mechanistic philosophy was going to have a huge influence on Huygens' own work. Descartes was later impressed by the skills Christiaan Huygens showed in geometry, as was Mersenne, who christened him "the new Archimedes" (which led Constantijn to refer to his son as "my little Archimedes").
A child prodigy, Huygens began his correspondence with Marin Mersenne when he was 17 years old. Huygens became interested in games of chance when he encountered the work of Fermat, Blaise Pascal and Girard Desargues. It was Blaise Pascal who encourages him to write Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Gluck, which Frans van Schooten translated and published as De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae in 1657. The book is the earliest known scientific treatment of the subject, and at the time the most coherent presentation of a mathematical approach to games of chance. Two years later Huygens derived geometrically the now standard formulae in classical mechanics for the centripetal- and centrifugal force in his work De vi Centrifuga (1659). Around the same time Huygens' research in horology resulted in the invention of the pendulum clock; a breakthrough in timekeeping and the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. The theoretical research of the way the pendulum works eventually led to the publication of one of his most important achievements: the Horologium Oscillatorium. This work was published in 1673 and became one of the three most important 17th century works on mechanics (the other two being Galileo’s Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (1638) and Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)). The Horologium Oscillatorium is the first modern treatise in which a physical problem (the accelerated motion of a falling body) is idealized by a set of parameters then analyzed mathematically and constitutes one of the seminal works of applied mathematics. It is for this reason, Huygens has been called the first theoretical physicist and one of the founders of modern mathematical physics. Huygens' Horologium Oscillatorium had a tremendous influence on the history of physics, especially on the work of Isaac Newton, who greatly admired the work. For instance, the laws Huygens described in the Horologium Oscillatorium are structurally the same as Newton's first two laws of motion.
Five years after the publication of his Horologium Oscillatorium, Huygens described his wave theory of light. Though proposed in 1678, it wasn't published until 1690 in his Traité de la Lumière. His mathematical theory of light was initially rejected in favour of Newton's corpuscular theory of light, until Augustin-Jean Fresnel adopted Huygens' principle to give a complete explanation of the rectilinear propagation and diffraction effects of light in 1821. Today this principle is known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle. As an astronomer, Huygens began grinding lenses with his brother Constantijn jr. to build telescopes for astronomical research. He was the first to identify the rings of Saturn as "a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic," and discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan, using a refracting telescope.
Apart from the many important discoveries Huygens made in physics and astronomy, and his inventions of ingenious devices, he was also the first who brought mathematical rigor to the description of physical phenomena. Because of this, and the fact that he developed institutional frameworks for scientific research on the continent, he has been referred to as "the leading actor in 'the making of science in Europe'"
The late 17th and early 18th centuries saw the achievements of Cambridge University physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton, a fellow of the Royal Society of England, combined his own discoveries in mechanics and astronomy to earlier ones to create a single system for describing the workings of the universe. Newton formulated three laws of motion which formulated the relationship between motion and objects and also the law of universal gravitation, the latter of which could be used to explain the behavior not only of falling bodies on the earth but also planets and other celestial bodies. To arrive at his results, Newton invented one form of an entirely new branch of mathematics: calculus (also invented independently by Gottfried Leibniz), which was to become an essential tool in much of the later development in most branches of physics. Newton's findings were set forth in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), the publication of which in 1687 marked the beginning of the modern period of mechanics and astronomy.
Newton was able to refute the Cartesian mechanical tradition that all motions should be explained with respect to the immediate force exerted by corpuscles. Using his three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, Newton removed the idea that objects followed paths determined by natural shapes and instead demonstrated that not only regularly observed paths, but all the future motions of any body could be deduced mathematically based on knowledge of their existing motion, their mass, and the forces acting upon them. However, observed celestial motions did not precisely conform to a Newtonian treatment, and Newton, who was also deeply interested in theology, imagined that God intervened to ensure the continued stability of the solar system.
Newton's principles (but not his mathematical treatments) proved controversial with Continental philosophers, who found his lack of metaphysical explanation for movement and gravitation philosophically unacceptable. Beginning around 1700, a bitter rift opened between the Continental and British philosophical traditions, which were stoked by heated, ongoing, and viciously personal disputes between the followers of Newton and Leibniz concerning priority over the analytical techniques of calculus, which each had developed independently. Initially, the Cartesian and Leibnizian traditions prevailed on the Continent (leading to the dominance of the Leibnizian calculus notation everywhere except Britain). Newton himself remained privately disturbed at the lack of a philosophical understanding of gravitation while insisting in his writings that none was necessary to infer its reality. As the 18th century progressed, Continental natural philosophers increasingly accepted the Newtonians' willingness to forgo ontological metaphysical explanations for mathematically described motions.
Newton built the first functioning reflecting telescope and developed a theory of color, published in Opticks, based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours forming the visible spectrum. While Newton explained light as being composed of tiny particles, a rival theory of light which explained its behavior in terms of waves was presented in 1690 by Christiaan Huygens. However, the belief in the mechanistic philosophy coupled with Newton's reputation meant that the wave theory saw relatively little support until the 19th century. Newton also formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound, investigated power series, demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem and developed a method for approximating the roots of a function. His work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin's decimals. Most importantly, Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, which were neither capricious nor malevolent. By demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his own theory of gravitation, Newton also removed the last doubts about heliocentrism. By bringing together all the ideas set forth during the Scientific Revolution, Newton effectively established the foundation for modern society in mathematics and science.
Other branches of physics also received attention during the period of the Scientific Revolution. William Gilbert, court physician to Queen Elizabeth I, published an important work on magnetism in 1600, describing how the earth itself behaves like a giant magnet. Robert Boyle (1627–91) studied the behavior of gases enclosed in a chamber and formulated the gas law named for him; he also contributed to physiology and to the founding of modern chemistry. Another important factor in the scientific revolution was the rise of learned societies and academies in various countries. The earliest of these were in Italy and Germany and were short-lived. More influential were the Royal Society of England (1660) and the Academy of Sciences in France (1666). The former was a private institution in London and included such scientists as John Wallis, William Brouncker, Thomas Sydenham, John Mayow, and Christopher Wren (who contributed not only to architecture but also to astronomy and anatomy); the latter, in Paris, was a government institution and included as a foreign member the Dutchman Huygens. In the 18th century, important royal academies were established at Berlin (1700) and at St. Petersburg (1724). The societies and academies provided the principal opportunities for the publication and discussion of scientific results during and after the scientific revolution. In 1690, James Bernoulli showed that the cycloid is the solution to the tautochrone problem; and the following year, in 1691, Johann Bernoulli showed that a chain freely suspended from two points will form a catenary, the curve with the lowest possible center of gravity available to any chain hung between two fixed points. He then showed, in 1696, that the cycloid is the solution to the brachistochrone problem.
A precursor of the engine was designed by the German scientist Otto von Guericke who, in 1650, designed and built the world's first vacuum pump to create a vacuum as demonstrated in the Magdeburg hemispheres experiment. He was driven to make a vacuum to disprove Aristotle's long-held supposition that 'Nature abhors a vacuum'. Shortly thereafter, Irish physicist and chemist Boyle had learned of Guericke's designs and in 1656, in coordination with English scientist Robert Hooke, built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed the pressure-volume correlation for a gas: PV = k, where P is pressure, V is volume and k is a constant: this relationship is known as Boyle's Law. In that time, air was assumed to be a system of motionless particles, and not interpreted as a system of moving molecules. The concept of thermal motion came two centuries later. Therefore, Boyle's publication in 1660 speaks about a mechanical concept: the air spring. Later, after the invention of the thermometer, the property temperature could be quantified. This tool gave Gay-Lussac the opportunity to derive his law, which led shortly later to the ideal gas law. But, already before the establishment of the ideal gas law, an associate of Boyle's named Denis Papin built in 1679 a bone digester, which is a closed vessel with a tightly fitting lid that confines steam until a high pressure is generated.
Later designs implemented a steam release valve to keep the machine from exploding. By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down, Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and cylinder engine. He did not however follow through with his design. Nevertheless, in 1697, based on Papin's designs, engineer Thomas Savery built the first engine. Although these early engines were crude and inefficient, they attracted the attention of the leading scientists of the time. Hence, prior to 1698 and the invention of the Savery Engine, horses were used to power pulleys, attached to buckets, which lifted water out of flooded salt mines in England. In the years to follow, more variations of steam engines were built, such as the Newcomen Engine, and later the Watt Engine. In time, these early engines would eventually be utilized in place of horses. Thus, each engine began to be associated with a certain amount of "horse power" depending upon how many horses it had replaced. The main problem with these first engines was that they were slow and clumsy, converting less than 2% of the input fuel into useful work. In other words, large quantities of coal (or wood) had to be burned to yield only a small fraction of work output. Hence the need for a new science of engine dynamics was born.
During the 18th century, the mechanics founded by Newton was developed by several scientists as more mathematicians learned calculus and elaborated upon its initial formulation. The application of mathematical analysis to problems of motion was known as rational mechanics, or mixed mathematics (and was later termed classical mechanics).
In 1714, Brook Taylor derived the fundamental frequency of a stretched vibrating string in terms of its tension and mass per unit length by solving a differential equation. The Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) made important mathematical studies of the behavior of gases, anticipating the kinetic theory of gases developed more than a century later, and has been referred to as the first mathematical physicist. In 1733, Daniel Bernoulli derived the fundamental frequency and harmonics of a hanging chain by solving a differential equation. In 1734, Bernoulli solved the differential equation for the vibrations of an elastic bar clamped at one end. Bernoulli's treatment of fluid dynamics and his examination of fluid flow was introduced in his 1738 work Hydrodynamica.
Rational mechanics dealt primarily with the development of elaborate mathematical treatments of observed motions, using Newtonian principles as a basis, and emphasized improving the tractability of complex calculations and developing of legitimate means of analytical approximation. A representative contemporary textbook was published by Johann Baptiste Horvath. By the end of the century analytical treatments were rigorous enough to verify the stability of the Solar System solely on the basis of Newton's laws without reference to divine intervention—even as deterministic treatments of systems as simple as the three body problem in gravitation remained intractable. In 1705, Edmond Halley predicted the periodicity of Halley's Comet, William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, and Henry Cavendish measured the gravitational constant and determined the mass of the Earth in 1798. In 1783, John Michell suggested that some objects might be so massive that not even light could escape from them.
In 1739, Leonhard Euler solved the ordinary differential equation for a forced harmonic oscillator and noticed the resonance phenomenon. In 1742, Colin Maclaurin discovered his uniformly rotating self-gravitating spheroids. In 1742, Benjamin Robins published his New Principles in Gunnery, establishing the science of aerodynamics. British work, carried on by mathematicians such as Taylor and Maclaurin, fell behind Continental developments as the century progressed. Meanwhile, work flourished at scientific academies on the Continent, led by such mathematicians as Bernoulli and Euler, as well as Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Adrien-Marie Legendre. In 1743, Jean le Rond d'Alembert published his Traité de dynamique, in which he introduced the concept of generalized forces for accelerating systems and systems with constraints, and applied the new idea of virtual work to solve dynamical problem, now known as D'Alembert's principle, as a rival to Newton's second law of motion. In 1747, Pierre Louis Maupertuis applied minimum principles to mechanics. In 1759, Euler solved the partial differential equation for the vibration of a rectangular drum. In 1764, Euler examined the partial differential equation for the vibration of a circular drum and found one of the Bessel function solutions. In 1776, John Smeaton published a paper on experiments relating power, work, momentum and kinetic energy, and supporting the conservation of energy. In 1788, Lagrange presented his equations of motion in Mécanique analytique, in which the whole of mechanics was organized around the principle of virtual work. In 1789, Antoine Lavoisier stated the law of conservation of mass. The rational mechanics developed in the 18th century received expositions in both Lagrange's Mécanique analytique and Laplace's Traité de mécanique céleste (1799–1825).
During the 18th century, thermodynamics was developed through the theories of weightless "imponderable fluids", such as heat ("caloric"), electricity, and phlogiston (which was rapidly overthrown as a concept following Lavoisier's identification of oxygen gas late in the century). Assuming that these concepts were real fluids, their flow could be traced through a mechanical apparatus or chemical reactions. This tradition of experimentation led to the development of new kinds of experimental apparatus, such as the Leyden Jar; and new kinds of measuring instruments, such as the calorimeter, and improved versions of old ones, such as the thermometer. Experiments also produced new concepts, such as the University of Glasgow experimenter Joseph Black's notion of latent heat and Philadelphia intellectual Benjamin Franklin's characterization of electrical fluid as flowing between places of excess and deficit (a concept later reinterpreted in terms of positive and negative charges). Franklin also showed that lightning is electricity in 1752.
The accepted theory of heat in the 18th century viewed it as a kind of fluid, called caloric; although this theory was later shown to be erroneous, a number of scientists adhering to it nevertheless made important discoveries useful in developing the modern theory, including Joseph Black (1728–99) and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). Opposed to this caloric theory, which had been developed mainly by the chemists, was the less accepted theory dating from Newton's time that heat is due to the motions of the particles of a substance. This mechanical theory gained support in 1798 from the cannon-boring experiments of Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), who found a direct relationship between heat and mechanical energy.
While it was recognized early in the 18th century that finding absolute theories of electrostatic and magnetic force akin to Newton's principles of motion would be an important achievement, none were forthcoming. This impossibility only slowly disappeared as experimental practice became more widespread and more refined in the early years of the 19th century in places such as the newly established Royal Institution in London. Meanwhile, the analytical methods of rational mechanics began to be applied to experimental phenomena, most influentially with the French mathematician Joseph Fourier's analytical treatment of the flow of heat, as published in 1822. Joseph Priestley proposed an electrical inverse-square law in 1767, and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb introduced the inverse-square law of electrostatics in 1798.
At the end of the century, the members of the French Academy of Sciences had attained clear dominance in the field. At the same time, the experimental tradition established by Galileo and his followers persisted. The Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences were major centers for the performance and reporting of experimental work. Experiments in mechanics, optics, magnetism, static electricity, chemistry, and physiology were not clearly distinguished from each other during the 18th century, but significant differences in explanatory schemes and, thus, experiment design were emerging. Chemical experimenters, for instance, defied attempts to enforce a scheme of abstract Newtonian forces onto chemical affiliations, and instead focused on the isolation and classification of chemical substances and reactions.
In 1821, William Hamilton began his analysis of Hamilton's characteristic function. In 1835, he stated Hamilton's canonical equations of motion.
In 1813, Peter Ewart supported the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper On the measure of moving force. In 1829, Gaspard Coriolis introduced the terms of work (force times distance) and kinetic energy with the meanings they have today. In 1841, Julius Robert von Mayer, an amateur scientist, wrote a paper on the conservation of energy, although his lack of academic training led to its rejection. In 1847, Hermann von Helmholtz formally stated the law of conservation of energy.
In 1800, Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery (known as the voltaic pile) and thus improved the way electric currents could also be studied. A year later, Thomas Young demonstrated the wave nature of light—which received strong experimental support from the work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel—and the principle of interference. In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted found that a current-carrying conductor gives rise to a magnetic force surrounding it, and within a week after Ørsted's discovery reached France, André-Marie Ampère discovered that two parallel electric currents will exert forces on each other. In 1821, Michael Faraday built an electricity-powered motor, while Georg Ohm stated his law of electrical resistance in 1826, expressing the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in an electric circuit.
In 1831, Faraday (and independently Joseph Henry) discovered the reverse effect, the production of an electric potential or current through magnetism – known as electromagnetic induction; these two discoveries are the basis of the electric motor and the electric generator, respectively.
In the 19th century, the connection between heat and mechanical energy was established quantitatively by Julius Robert von Mayer and James Prescott Joule, who measured the mechanical equivalent of heat in the 1840s. In 1849, Joule published results from his series of experiments (including the paddlewheel experiment) which show that heat is a form of energy, a fact that was accepted in the 1850s. The relation between heat and energy was important for the development of steam engines, and in 1824 the experimental and theoretical work of Sadi Carnot was published. Carnot captured some of the ideas of thermodynamics in his discussion of the efficiency of an idealized engine. Sadi Carnot's work provided a basis for the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics—a restatement of the law of conservation of energy—which was stated around 1850 by William Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin, and Rudolf Clausius. Lord Kelvin, who had extended the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances in 1848, drew upon the engineering theory of Lazare Carnot, Sadi Carnot, and Émile Clapeyron–as well as the experimentation of James Prescott Joule on the interchangeability of mechanical, chemical, thermal, and electrical forms of work—to formulate the first law.
Kelvin and Clausius also stated the second law of thermodynamics, which was originally formulated in terms of the fact that heat does not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a hotter. Other formulations followed quickly (for example, the second law was expounded in Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait's influential work Treatise on Natural Philosophy) and Kelvin in particular understood some of the law's general implications. The second Law was the idea that gases consist of molecules in motion had been discussed in some detail by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738, but had fallen out of favor, and was revived by Clausius in 1857. In 1850, Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault measured the speed of light in water and find that it is slower than in air, in support of the wave model of light. In 1852, Joule and Thomson demonstrated that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the Joule–Thomson effect or Joule–Kelvin effect. Hermann von Helmholtz puts forward the idea of the heat death of the universe in 1854, the same year that Clausius established the importance of dQ/T (Clausius's theorem) (though he did not yet name the quantity).
In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell discovered the distribution law of molecular velocities. Maxwell showed that electric and magnetic fields are propagated outward from their source at a speed equal to that of light and that light is one of several kinds of electromagnetic radiation, differing only in frequency and wavelength from the others. In 1859, Maxwell worked out the mathematics of the distribution of velocities of the molecules of a gas. The wave theory of light was widely accepted by the time of Maxwell's work on the electromagnetic field, and afterward the study of light and that of electricity and magnetism were closely related. In 1864 James Maxwell published his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field, and stated that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon in the 1873 publication of Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. This work drew upon theoretical work by German theoreticians such as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber. The encapsulation of heat in particulate motion, and the addition of electromagnetic forces to Newtonian dynamics established an enormously robust theoretical underpinning to physical observations.
The prediction that light represented a transmission of energy in wave form through a "luminiferous ether", and the seeming confirmation of that prediction with Helmholtz student Heinrich Hertz's 1888 detection of electromagnetic radiation, was a major triumph for physical theory and raised the possibility that even more fundamental theories based on the field could soon be developed. Experimental confirmation of Maxwell's theory was provided by Hertz, who generated and detected electric waves in 1886 and verified their properties, at the same time foreshadowing their application in radio, television, and other devices. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered the photoelectric effect. Research on the electromagnetic waves began soon after, with many scientists and inventors conducting experiments on their properties. In the mid to late 1890s Guglielmo Marconi developed a radio wave based wireless telegraphy system (see invention of radio).
The atomic theory of matter had been proposed again in the early 19th century by the chemist John Dalton and became one of the hypotheses of the kinetic-molecular theory of gases developed by Clausius and James Clerk Maxwell to explain the laws of thermodynamics.
The kinetic theory in turn led to a revolutionary approach to science, the statistical mechanics of Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) and Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), which studies the statistics of microstates of a system and uses statistics to determine the state of a physical system. Interrelating the statistical likelihood of certain states of organization of these particles with the energy of those states, Clausius reinterpreted the dissipation of energy to be the statistical tendency of molecular configurations to pass toward increasingly likely, increasingly disorganized states (coining the term "entropy" to describe the disorganization of a state). The statistical versus absolute interpretations of the second law of thermodynamics set up a dispute that would last for several decades (producing arguments such as "Maxwell's demon"), and that would not be held to be definitively resolved until the behavior of atoms was firmly established in the early 20th century. In 1902, James Jeans found the length scale required for gravitational perturbations to grow in a static nearly homogeneous medium.
In 1822, botanist Robert Brown discovered Brownian motion: pollen grains in water undergoing movement resulting from their bombardment by the fast-moving atoms or molecules in the liquid.
In 1834, Carl Jacobi discovered his uniformly rotating self-gravitating ellipsoids (the Jacobi ellipsoid).
In 1834, John Russell observed a nondecaying solitary water wave (soliton) in the Union Canal near Edinburgh and used a water tank to study the dependence of solitary water wave velocities on wave amplitude and water depth. In 1835, Gaspard Coriolis examined theoretically the mechanical efficiency of waterwheels, and deduced the Coriolis effect. In 1842, Christian Doppler proposed the Doppler effect.
In 1851, Léon Foucault showed the Earth's rotation with a huge pendulum (Foucault pendulum).
There were important advances in continuum mechanics in the first half of the century, namely formulation of laws of elasticity for solids and discovery of Navier–Stokes equations for fluids.
At the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at which classical mechanics could cope with highly complex problems involving macroscopic situations; thermodynamics and kinetic theory were well established; geometrical and physical optics could be understood in terms of electromagnetic waves; and the conservation laws for energy and momentum (and mass) were widely accepted. So profound were these and other developments that it was generally accepted that all the important laws of physics had been discovered and that, henceforth, research would be concerned with clearing up minor problems and particularly with improvements of method and measurement.
However, around 1900 serious doubts arose about the completeness of the classical theories—the triumph of Maxwell's theories, for example, was undermined by inadequacies that had already begun to appear—and their inability to explain certain physical phenomena, such as the energy distribution in blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect, while some of the theoretical formulations led to paradoxes when pushed to the limit. Prominent physicists such as Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Cohn, Ernst Wiechert and Wilhelm Wien believed that some modification of Maxwell's equations might provide the basis for all physical laws. These shortcomings of classical physics were never to be resolved and new ideas were required. At the beginning of the 20th century a major revolution shook the world of physics, which led to a new era, generally referred to as modern physics.
In the 19th century, experimenters began to detect unexpected forms of radiation: Wilhelm Röntgen caused a sensation with his discovery of X-rays in 1895; in 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that certain kinds of matter emit radiation on their own accord. In 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered the electron, and new radioactive elements found by Marie and Pierre Curie raised questions about the supposedly indestructible atom and the nature of matter. Marie and Pierre coined the term "radioactivity" to describe this property of matter, and isolated the radioactive elements radium and polonium. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified two of Becquerel's forms of radiation with electrons and the element helium. Rutherford identified and named two types of radioactivity and in 1911 interpreted experimental evidence as showing that the atom consists of a dense, positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Classical theory, however, predicted that this structure should be unstable. Classical theory had also failed to explain successfully two other experimental results that appeared in the late 19th century. One of these was the demonstration by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley—known as the Michelson–Morley experiment—which showed there did not seem to be a preferred frame of reference, at rest with respect to the hypothetical luminiferous ether, for describing electromagnetic phenomena. Studies of radiation and radioactive decay continued to be a preeminent focus for physical and chemical research through the 1930s, when the discovery of nuclear fission by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch opened the way to the practical exploitation of what came to be called "atomic" energy.
In 1905, a 26-year-old German physicist named Albert Einstein (then a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland) showed how measurements of time and space are affected by motion between an observer and what is being observed. Einstein's radical theory of relativity revolutionized science. Although Einstein made many other important contributions to science, the theory of relativity alone represents one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Although the concept of relativity was not introduced by Einstein, he recognised that the speed of light in vacuum is constant, i.e., the same for all observers, and an absolute upper limit to speed. This does not impact a person's day-to-day life since most objects travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects travelling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity shows that clocks associated with those objects will run more slowly and that the objects shorten in length according to measurements of an observer on Earth. Einstein also derived the famous equation, E = mc, which expresses the equivalence of mass and energy.
Einstein argued that the speed of light was a constant in all inertial reference frames and that electromagnetic laws should remain valid independent of reference frame—assertions which rendered the ether "superfluous" to physical theory, and that held that observations of time and length varied relative to how the observer was moving with respect to the object being measured (what came to be called the "special theory of relativity"). It also followed that mass and energy were interchangeable quantities according to the equation E=mc. In another paper published the same year, Einstein asserted that electromagnetic radiation was transmitted in discrete quantities ("quanta"), according to a constant that the theoretical physicist Max Planck had posited in 1900 to arrive at an accurate theory for the distribution of blackbody radiation—an assumption that explained the strange properties of the photoelectric effect.
The special theory of relativity is a formulation of the relationship between physical observations and the concepts of space and time. The theory arose out of contradictions between electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics and had great impact on both those areas. The original historical issue was whether it was meaningful to discuss the electromagnetic wave-carrying "ether" and motion relative to it and also whether one could detect such motion, as was unsuccessfully attempted in the Michelson–Morley experiment. Einstein demolished these questions and the ether concept in his special theory of relativity. However, his basic formulation does not involve detailed electromagnetic theory. It arises out of the question: "What is time?" Newton, in the Principia (1686), had given an unambiguous answer: "Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration." This definition is basic to all classical physics.
Einstein had the genius to question it, and found that it was incomplete. Instead, each "observer" necessarily makes use of his or her own scale of time, and for two observers in relative motion, their time-scales will differ. This induces a related effect on position measurements. Space and time become intertwined concepts, fundamentally dependent on the observer. Each observer presides over his or her own space-time framework or coordinate system. There being no absolute frame of reference, all observers of given events make different but equally valid (and reconcilable) measurements. What remains absolute is stated in Einstein's relativity postulate: "The basic laws of physics are identical for two observers who have a constant relative velocity with respect to each other."
Special relativity had a profound effect on physics: started as a rethinking of the theory of electromagnetism, it found a new symmetry law of nature, now called Poincaré symmetry, that replaced the old Galilean symmetry.
Special relativity exerted another long-lasting effect on dynamics. Although initially it was credited with the "unification of mass and energy", it became evident that relativistic dynamics established a firm distinction between rest mass, which is an invariant (observer independent) property of a particle or system of particles, and the energy and momentum of a system. The latter two are separately conserved in all situations but not invariant with respect to different observers. The term mass in particle physics underwent a semantic change, and since the late 20th century it almost exclusively denotes the rest (or invariant) mass.
By 1916, Einstein was able to generalize this further, to deal with all states of motion including non-uniform acceleration, which became the general theory of relativity. In this theory Einstein also specified a new concept, the curvature of space-time, which described the gravitational effect at every point in space. In fact, the curvature of space-time completely replaced Newton's universal law of gravitation. According to Einstein, gravitational force in the normal sense is a kind of illusion caused by the geometry of space. The presence of a mass causes a curvature of space-time in the vicinity of the mass, and this curvature dictates the space-time path that all freely-moving objects must follow. It was also predicted from this theory that light should be subject to gravity - all of which was verified experimentally. This aspect of relativity explained the phenomena of light bending around the sun, predicted black holes as well as properties of the Cosmic microwave background radiation — a discovery rendering fundamental anomalies in the classic Steady-State hypothesis. For his work on relativity, the photoelectric effect and blackbody radiation, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921.
The gradual acceptance of Einstein's theories of relativity and the quantized nature of light transmission, and of Niels Bohr's model of the atom created as many problems as they solved, leading to a full-scale effort to reestablish physics on new fundamental principles. Expanding relativity to cases of accelerating reference frames (the "general theory of relativity") in the 1910s, Einstein posited an equivalence between the inertial force of acceleration and the force of gravity, leading to the conclusion that space is curved and finite in size, and the prediction of such phenomena as gravitational lensing and the distortion of time in gravitational fields.
Although relativity resolved the electromagnetic phenomena conflict demonstrated by Michelson and Morley, a second theoretical problem was the explanation of the distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body; experiment showed that at shorter wavelengths, toward the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, the energy approached zero, but classical theory predicted it should become infinite. This glaring discrepancy, known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, was solved by the new theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the theory of atoms and subatomic systems. Approximately the first 30 years of the 20th century represent the time of the conception and evolution of the theory. The basic ideas of quantum theory were introduced in 1900 by Max Planck (1858–1947), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918 for his discovery of the quantified nature of energy. The quantum theory (which previously relied in the "correspondence" at large scales between the quantized world of the atom and the continuities of the "classical" world) was accepted when the Compton Effect established that light carries momentum and can scatter off particles, and when Louis de Broglie asserted that matter can be seen as behaving as a wave in much the same way as electromagnetic waves behave like particles (wave–particle duality).
In 1905, Einstein used the quantum theory to explain the photoelectric effect, and in 1913 the Danish physicist Niels Bohr used the same constant to explain the stability of Rutherford's atom as well as the frequencies of light emitted by hydrogen gas. The quantized theory of the atom gave way to a full-scale quantum mechanics in the 1920s. New principles of a "quantum" rather than a "classical" mechanics, formulated in matrix-form by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan in 1925, were based on the probabilistic relationship between discrete "states" and denied the possibility of causality. Quantum mechanics was extensively developed by Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, and Erwin Schrödinger, who established an equivalent theory based on waves in 1926; but Heisenberg's 1927 "uncertainty principle" (indicating the impossibility of precisely and simultaneously measuring position and momentum) and the "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics (named after Bohr's home city) continued to deny the possibility of fundamental causality, though opponents such as Einstein would metaphorically assert that "God does not play dice with the universe". The new quantum mechanics became an indispensable tool in the investigation and explanation of phenomena at the atomic level. Also in the 1920s, the Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose's work on photons and quantum mechanics provided the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics, the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate.
The spin–statistics theorem established that any particle in quantum mechanics may be either a boson (statistically Bose–Einstein) or a fermion (statistically Fermi–Dirac). It was later found that all fundamental bosons transmit forces, such as the photon that transmits electromagnetism.
Fermions are particles "like electrons and nucleons" and are the usual constituents of matter. Fermi–Dirac statistics later found numerous other uses, from astrophysics (see Degenerate matter) to semiconductor design.
As the philosophically inclined continued to debate the fundamental nature of the universe, quantum theories continued to be produced, beginning with Paul Dirac's formulation of a relativistic quantum theory in 1928. However, attempts to quantize electromagnetic theory entirely were stymied throughout the 1930s by theoretical formulations yielding infinite energies. This situation was not considered adequately resolved until after World War II ended, when Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga independently posited the technique of renormalization, which allowed for an establishment of a robust quantum electrodynamics (QED).
Meanwhile, new theories of fundamental particles proliferated with the rise of the idea of the quantization of fields through "exchange forces" regulated by an exchange of short-lived "virtual" particles, which were allowed to exist according to the laws governing the uncertainties inherent in the quantum world. Notably, Hideki Yukawa proposed that the positive charges of the nucleus were kept together courtesy of a powerful but short-range force mediated by a particle with a mass between that of the electron and proton. This particle, the "pion", was identified in 1947 as part of what became a slew of particles discovered after World War II. Initially, such particles were found as ionizing radiation left by cosmic rays, but increasingly came to be produced in newer and more powerful particle accelerators.
Outside particle physics, significant advances of the time were:
Einstein deemed that all fundamental interactions in nature can be explained in a single theory. Unified field theories were numerous attempts to "merge" several interactions. One of many formulations of such theories (as well as field theories in general) is a gauge theory, a generalization of the idea of symmetry. Eventually the Standard Model (see below) succeeded in unification of strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. All attempts to unify gravitation with something else failed.
When parity was broken in weak interactions by Chien-Shiung Wu in her experiment, a series of discoveries were created thereafter. The interaction of these particles by scattering and decay provided a key to new fundamental quantum theories. Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman brought some order to these new particles by classifying them according to certain qualities, beginning with what Gell-Mann referred to as the "Eightfold Way". While its further development, the quark model, at first seemed inadequate to describe strong nuclear forces, allowing the temporary rise of competing theories such as the S-Matrix, the establishment of quantum chromodynamics in the 1970s finalized a set of fundamental and exchange particles, which allowed for the establishment of a "standard model" based on the mathematics of gauge invariance, which successfully described all forces except for gravitation, and which remains generally accepted within its domain of application.
The Standard Model, based on the Yang–Mills theory groups the electroweak interaction theory and quantum chromodynamics into a structure denoted by the gauge group SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1). The formulation of the unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions in the standard model is due to Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg and, subsequently, Sheldon Glashow. Electroweak theory was later confirmed experimentally (by observation of neutral weak currents), and distinguished by the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Since the 1970s, fundamental particle physics has provided insights into early universe cosmology, particularly the Big Bang theory proposed as a consequence of Einstein's general theory of relativity. However, starting in the 1990s, astronomical observations have also provided new challenges, such as the need for new explanations of galactic stability ("dark matter") and the apparent acceleration in the expansion of the universe ("dark energy").
While accelerators have confirmed most aspects of the Standard Model by detecting expected particle interactions at various collision energies, no theory reconciling general relativity with the Standard Model has yet been found, although supersymmetry and string theory were believed by many theorists to be a promising avenue forward. The Large Hadron Collider, however, which began operating in 2008, has failed to find any evidence whatsoever that is supportive of supersymmetry and string theory.
Cosmology may be said to have become a serious research question with the publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1915 although it did not enter the scientific mainstream until the period known as the "Golden age of general relativity".
About a decade later, in the midst of what was dubbed the "Great Debate", Hubble and Slipher discovered the expansion of universe in the 1920s measuring the redshifts of Doppler spectra from galactic nebulae. Using Einstein's general relativity, Lemaître and Gamow formulated what would become known as the big bang theory. A rival, called the steady state theory, was devised by Hoyle, Gold, Narlikar and Bondi.
Cosmic background radiation was verified in the 1960s by Penzias and Wilson, and this discovery favoured the big bang at the expense of the steady state scenario. Later work was by Smoot et al. (1989), among other contributors, using data from the Cosmic Background explorer (CoBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellites that refined these observations. The 1980s (the same decade of the COBE measurements) also saw the proposal of inflation theory by Alan Guth.
Recently the problems of dark matter and dark energy have risen to the top of the cosmology agenda.
On July 4, 2012, physicists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle greatly resembling the Higgs boson, a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe. For now, some physicists are calling it a "Higgslike" particle. Joe Incandela, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, said, "It's something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years, going way back to the discovery of quarks, for example." Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and the chairman of the physics center board, said:
"This is a big moment for particle physics and a crossroads — will this be the high water mark or will it be the first of many discoveries that point us toward solving the really big questions that we have posed?"
Peter Higgs was one of six physicists, working in three independent groups, who, in 1964, invented the notion of the Higgs field ("cosmic molasses"). The others were Tom Kibble of Imperial College, London; Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester; Gerald Guralnik of Brown University; and François Englert and Robert Brout, both of Université libre de Bruxelles.
Although they have never been seen, Higgslike fields play an important role in theories of the universe and in string theory. Under certain conditions, according to the strange accounting of Einsteinian physics, they can become suffused with energy that exerts an antigravitational force. Such fields have been proposed as the source of an enormous burst of expansion, known as inflation, early in the universe and, possibly, as the secret of the dark energy that now seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe.
With increased accessibility to and elaboration upon advanced analytical techniques in the 19th century, physics was defined as much, if not more, by those techniques than by the search for universal principles of motion and energy, and the fundamental nature of matter. Fields such as acoustics, geophysics, astrophysics, aerodynamics, plasma physics, low-temperature physics, and solid-state physics joined optics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, and mechanics as areas of physical research. In the 20th century, physics also became closely allied with such fields as electrical, aerospace and materials engineering, and physicists began to work in government and industrial laboratories as much as in academic settings. Following World War II, the population of physicists increased dramatically, and came to be centered on the United States, while, in more recent decades, physics has become a more international pursuit than at any time in its previous history. | [
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"text": "Physics is a branch of science whose primary objects of study are matter and energy. Discoveries of physics find applications throughout the natural sciences and in technology. Historically, physics emerged from the scientific revolution of the 17th century, grew rapidly in the 19th century, then was transformed by a series of discoveries in the 20th century. Physics today may be divided loosely into classical physics and modern physics.",
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Many detailed articles on specific topics are available through the Outline of the history of physics.",
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"text": "Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy. Ancient philosophy, meanwhile, included what was called \"Physics\".",
"title": "Ancient history"
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The move towards a rational understanding of nature began at least since the Archaic period in Greece (650–480 BCE) with the Pre-Socratic philosophers. The philosopher Thales of Miletus (7th and 6th centuries BCE), dubbed \"the Father of Science\" for refusing to accept various supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena, proclaimed that every event had a natural cause. Thales also made advancements in 580 BCE by suggesting that water is the basic element, experimenting with the attraction between magnets and rubbed amber and formulating the first recorded cosmologies. Anaximander, famous for his proto-evolutionary theory, disputed Thales' ideas and proposed that rather than water, a substance called apeiron was the building block of all matter. Around 500 BCE, Heraclitus proposed that the only basic law governing the Universe was the principle of change and that nothing remains in the same state indefinitely. Along with his contemporary Parmenides were among the first scholars in ancient physics to contemplate on the role of time in the universe, a key concept that is still an issue in modern physics.",
"title": "Ancient history"
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"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "During the classical period in Greece (6th, 5th and 4th centuries BCE) and in Hellenistic times, natural philosophy slowly developed into an exciting and contentious field of study. Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384–322 BCE), a student of Plato, promoted the concept that observation of physical phenomena could ultimately lead to the discovery of the natural laws governing them. Aristotle's writings cover physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology. He wrote the first work which refers to that line of study as \"Physics\" – in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle founded the system known as Aristotelian physics. He attempted to explain ideas such as motion (and gravity) with the theory of four elements. Aristotle believed that all matter was made up of aether, or some combination of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. According to Aristotle, these four terrestrial elements are capable of inter-transformation and move toward their natural place, so a stone falls downward toward the center of the cosmos, but flames rise upward toward the circumference. Eventually, Aristotelian physics became enormously popular for many centuries in Europe, informing the scientific and scholastic developments of the Middle Ages. It remained the mainstream scientific paradigm in Europe until the time of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Early in Classical Greece, knowledge that the Earth is spherical (\"round\") was common. Around 240 BCE, as the result of a seminal experiment, Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) accurately estimated its circumference. In contrast to Aristotle's geocentric views, Aristarchus of Samos (Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος; c. 310 – c. 230 BCE) presented an explicit argument for a heliocentric model of the Solar System, i.e. for placing the Sun, not the Earth, at its centre. Seleucus of Seleucia, a follower of Aristarchus' heliocentric theory, stated that the Earth rotated around its own axis, which, in turn, revolved around the Sun. Though the arguments he used were lost, Plutarch stated that Seleucus was the first to prove the heliocentric system through reasoning.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the 3rd century BCE, the Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης (287–212 BCE) – generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time – laid the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and calculated the underlying mathematics of the lever. A leading scientist of classical antiquity, Archimedes also developed elaborate systems of pulleys to move large objects with a minimum of effort. The Archimedes' screw underpins modern hydroengineering, and his machines of war helped to hold back the armies of Rome in the First Punic War. Archimedes even tore apart the arguments of Aristotle and his metaphysics, pointing out that it was impossible to separate mathematics and nature and proved it by converting mathematical theories into practical inventions. Furthermore, in his work On Floating Bodies, around 250 BCE, Archimedes developed the law of buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' principle. In mathematics, Archimedes used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for expressing very large numbers. He also developed the principles of equilibrium states and centers of gravity, ideas that would influence the well known scholars, Galileo, and Newton.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Hipparchus (190–120 BCE), focusing on astronomy and mathematics, used sophisticated geometrical techniques to map the motion of the stars and planets, even predicting the times that Solar eclipses would happen. He added calculations of the distance of the Sun and Moon from the Earth, based upon his improvements to the observational instruments used at that time. Another of the most famous of the early physicists was Ptolemy (90–168 CE), one of the leading minds during the time of the Roman Empire. Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, \"The Great Treatise\", originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, \"Mathematical Treatise\"). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Much of the accumulated knowledge of the ancient world was lost. Even of the works of the better known thinkers, few fragments survived. Although he wrote at least fourteen books, almost nothing of Hipparchus' direct work survived. Of the 150 reputed Aristotelian works, only 30 exist, and some of those are \"little more than lecture notes\".",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Important physical and mathematical traditions also existed in ancient Chinese and Indian sciences.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In Indian philosophy, Maharishi Kanada was the first to systematically develop a theory of atomism around 200 BCE though some authors have allotted him an earlier era in the 6th century BCE. It was further elaborated by the Buddhist atomists Dharmakirti and Dignāga during the 1st millennium CE. Pakudha Kaccayana, a 6th-century BCE Indian philosopher and contemporary of Gautama Buddha, had also propounded ideas about the atomic constitution of the material world. These philosophers believed that other elements (except ether) were physically palpable and hence comprised minuscule particles of matter. The last minuscule particle of matter that could not be subdivided further was termed Parmanu. These philosophers considered the atom to be indestructible and hence eternal. The Buddhists thought atoms to be minute objects unable to be seen to the naked eye that come into being and vanish in an instant. The Vaisheshika school of philosophers believed that an atom was a mere point in space. It was also first to depict relations between motion and force applied. Indian theories about the atom are greatly abstract and enmeshed in philosophy as they were based on logic and not on personal experience or experimentation. In Indian astronomy, Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (499 CE) proposed the Earth's rotation, while Nilakantha Somayaji (1444–1544) of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics proposed a semi-heliocentric model resembling the Tychonic system.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The study of magnetism in Ancient China dates back to the 4th century BCE. (in the Book of the Devil Valley Master), A main contributor to this field was Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a polymath and statesman who was the first to describe the magnetic-needle compass used for navigation, as well as establishing the concept of true north. In optics, Shen Kuo independently developed a camera obscura.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In the 7th to 15th centuries, scientific progress occurred in the Muslim world. Many classic works in Indian, Assyrian, Sassanian (Persian) and Greek, including the works of Aristotle, were translated into Arabic. Important contributions were made by Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040), an Arab scientist, considered to be a founder of modern optics. Ptolemy and Aristotle theorised that light either shone from the eye to illuminate objects or that \"forms\" emanated from objects themselves, whereas al-Haytham (known by the Latin name \"Alhazen\") suggested that light travels to the eye in rays from different points on an object. The works of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Biruni (973–1050), a Persian scientist, eventually passed on to Western Europe where they were studied by scholars such as Roger Bacon and Vitello.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Ibn al-Haytham used controlled experiments in his work on optics, although to what extent it differed from Ptolemy is up to debate . Arabic mechanics like Bīrūnī and Al-Khazini developed sophisticated \"science of weight\", carrying out measurements of specific weights and volumes",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), known as \"Avicenna\", was a polymath from Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan) responsible for important contributions to physics, optics, philosophy and medicine. He published his theory of motion in Book of Healing (1020), where he argued that an impetus is imparted to a projectile by the thrower, and believed that it was a temporary virtue that would decline even in a vacuum. He viewed it as persistent, requiring external forces such as air resistance to dissipate it. Ibn Sina made a distinction between 'force' and 'inclination' (called \"mayl\"), and argued that an object gained mayl when the object is in opposition to its natural motion. He concluded that continuation of motion is attributed to the inclination that is transferred to the object, and that object will be in motion until the mayl is spent. He also claimed that projectile in a vacuum would not stop unless it is acted upon. This conception of motion is consistent with Newton's first law of motion, inertia, which states that an object in motion will stay in motion unless it is acted on by an external force. This idea which dissented from the Aristotelian view was later described as \"impetus\" by John Buridan, who was influenced by Ibn Sina's Book of Healing.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (c. 1080 – c. 1165) adopted and modified Ibn Sina's theory on projectile motion. In his Kitab al-Mu'tabar, Abu'l-Barakat stated that the mover imparts a violent inclination (mayl qasri) on the moved and that this diminishes as the moving object distances itself from the mover. He also proposed an explanation of the acceleration of falling bodies by the accumulation of successive increments of power with successive increments of velocity. According to Shlomo Pines, al-Baghdaadi's theory of motion was \"the oldest negation of Aristotle's fundamental dynamic law [namely, that a constant force produces a uniform motion], [and is thus an] anticipation in a vague fashion of the fundamental law of classical mechanics [namely, that a force applied continuously produces acceleration].\" Jean Buridan and Albert of Saxony later referred to Abu'l-Barakat in explaining that the acceleration of a falling body is a result of its increasing impetus.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Ibn Bajjah (c. 1085 – 1138), known as \"Avempace\" in Europe, proposed that for every force there is always a reaction force. Ibn Bajjah was a critic of Ptolemy and he worked on creating a new theory of velocity to replace the one theorized by Aristotle. Two future philosophers supported the theories Avempace created, known as Avempacean dynamics. These philosophers were Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic priest, and John Duns Scotus. Galileo went on to adopt Avempace's formula \"that the velocity of a given object is the difference of the motive power of that object and the resistance of the medium of motion\".",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274), a Persian astronomer and mathematician who died in Baghdad introduced the Tusi couple. Copernicus later drew heavily on the work of al-Din al-Tusi and his students, but without acknowledgment.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Awareness of ancient works re-entered the West through translations from Arabic to Latin. Their re-introduction, combined with Judeo-Islamic theological commentaries, had a great influence on Medieval philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. Scholastic European scholars, who sought to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with Christian theology, proclaimed Aristotle the greatest thinker of the ancient world. In cases where they didn't directly contradict the Bible, Aristotelian physics became the foundation for the physical explanations of the European Churches. Quantification became a core element of medieval physics.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Based on Aristotelian physics, Scholastic physics described things as moving according to their essential nature. Celestial objects were described as moving in circles, because perfect circular motion was considered an innate property of objects that existed in the uncorrupted realm of the celestial spheres. The theory of impetus, the ancestor to the concepts of inertia and momentum, was developed along similar lines by medieval philosophers such as John Philoponus and Jean Buridan. Motions below the lunar sphere were seen as imperfect, and thus could not be expected to exhibit consistent motion. More idealized motion in the \"sublunary\" realm could only be achieved through artifice, and prior to the 17th century, many did not view artificial experiments as a valid means of learning about the natural world. Physical explanations in the sublunary realm revolved around tendencies. Stones contained the element earth, and earthly objects tended to move in a straight line toward the centre of the earth (and the universe in the Aristotelian geocentric view) unless otherwise prevented from doing so.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During the 16th and 17th centuries, a large advancement of scientific progress known as the Scientific Revolution took place in Europe. Dissatisfaction with older philosophical approaches had begun earlier and had produced other changes in society, such as the Protestant Reformation, but the revolution in science began when natural philosophers began to mount a sustained attack on the Scholastic philosophical programme and supposed that mathematical descriptive schemes adopted from such fields as mechanics and astronomy could actually yield universally valid characterizations of motion and other concepts.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A breakthrough in astronomy was made by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) when, in 1543, he gave strong arguments for the heliocentric model of the Solar System, ostensibly as a means to render tables charting planetary motion more accurate and to simplify their production. In heliocentric models of the Solar system, the Earth orbits the Sun along with other bodies in Earth's galaxy, a contradiction according to the Greek-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century CE; see above), whose system placed the Earth at the center of the Universe and had been accepted for over 1,400 years. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 – c. 230 BCE) had suggested that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but Copernicus' reasoning led to lasting general acceptance of this \"revolutionary\" idea. Copernicus' book presenting the theory (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, \"On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres\") was published just before his death in 1543 and, as it is now generally considered to mark the beginning of modern astronomy, is also considered to mark the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. Copernicus' new perspective, along with the accurate observations made by Tycho Brahe, enabled German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) to formulate his laws regarding planetary motion that remain in use today.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was famous for his support for Copernicanism, his astronomical discoveries, empirical experiments and his improvement of the telescope. As a mathematician, Galileo's role in the university culture of his era was subordinated to the three major topics of study: law, medicine, and theology (which was closely allied to philosophy). Galileo, however, felt that the descriptive content of the technical disciplines warranted philosophical interest, particularly because mathematical analysis of astronomical observations – notably, Copernicus' analysis of the relative motions of the Sun, Earth, Moon, and planets – indicated that philosophers' statements about the nature of the universe could be shown to be in error. Galileo also performed mechanical experiments, insisting that motion itself – regardless of whether it was produced \"naturally\" or \"artificially\" (i.e. deliberately) – had universally consistent characteristics that could be described mathematically.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Galileo's early studies at the University of Pisa were in medicine, but he was soon drawn to mathematics and physics. At 19, he discovered (and, subsequently, verified) the isochronal nature of the pendulum when, using his pulse, he timed the oscillations of a swinging lamp in Pisa's cathedral and found that it remained the same for each swing regardless of the swing's amplitude. He soon became known through his invention of a hydrostatic balance and for his treatise on the center of gravity of solid bodies. While teaching at the University of Pisa (1589–92), he initiated his experiments concerning the laws of bodies in motion that brought results so contradictory to the accepted teachings of Aristotle that strong antagonism was aroused. He found that bodies do not fall with velocities proportional to their weights. The famous story in which Galileo is said to have dropped weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa is apocryphal, but he did find that the path of a projectile is a parabola and is credited with conclusions that anticipated Newton's laws of motion (e.g. the notion of inertia). Among these is what is now called Galilean relativity, the first precisely formulated statement about properties of space and time outside three-dimensional geometry.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Galileo has been called the \"father of modern observational astronomy\", the \"father of modern physics\", the \"father of science\", and \"the father of modern science\". According to Stephen Hawking, \"Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.\" As religious orthodoxy decreed a geocentric or Tychonic understanding of the Solar system, Galileo's support for heliocentrism provoked controversy and he was tried by the Inquisition. Found \"vehemently suspect of heresy\", he was forced to recant and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The contributions that Galileo made to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus; his discovery, in 1609, of Jupiter's four largest moons (subsequently given the collective name of the \"Galilean moons\"); and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also pursued applied science and technology, inventing, among other instruments, a military compass. His discovery of the Jovian moons was published in 1610 and enabled him to obtain the position of mathematician and philosopher to the Medici court. As such, he was expected to engage in debates with philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition and received a large audience for his own publications such as the Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (published abroad following his arrest for the publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) and The Assayer. Galileo's interest in experimenting with and formulating mathematical descriptions of motion established experimentation as an integral part of natural philosophy. This tradition, combining with the non-mathematical emphasis on the collection of \"experimental histories\" by philosophical reformists such as William Gilbert and Francis Bacon, drew a significant following in the years leading up to and following Galileo's death, including Evangelista Torricelli and the participants in the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; Marin Mersenne and Blaise Pascal in France; Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands; and Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle in England.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was well-connected to, and influential within, the experimental philosophy networks of the day. Descartes had a more ambitious agenda, however, which was geared toward replacing the Scholastic philosophical tradition altogether. Questioning the reality interpreted through the senses, Descartes sought to re-establish philosophical explanatory schemes by reducing all perceived phenomena to being attributable to the motion of an invisible sea of \"corpuscles\". (Notably, he reserved human thought and God from his scheme, holding these to be separate from the physical universe). In proposing this philosophical framework, Descartes supposed that different kinds of motion, such as that of planets versus that of terrestrial objects, were not fundamentally different, but were merely different manifestations of an endless chain of corpuscular motions obeying universal principles. Particularly influential were his explanations for circular astronomical motions in terms of the vortex motion of corpuscles in space (Descartes argued, in accord with the beliefs, if not the methods, of the Scholastics, that a vacuum could not exist), and his explanation of gravity in terms of corpuscles pushing objects downward.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Descartes, like Galileo, was convinced of the importance of mathematical explanation, and he and his followers were key figures in the development of mathematics and geometry in the 17th century. Cartesian mathematical descriptions of motion held that all mathematical formulations had to be justifiable in terms of direct physical action, a position held by Huygens and the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who, while following in the Cartesian tradition, developed his own philosophical alternative to Scholasticism, which he outlined in his 1714 work, the Monadology. Descartes has been dubbed the \"Father of Modern Philosophy\", and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system — allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system — was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, important to the discovery of calculus and analysis.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) was the leading scientist in Europe between Galileo and Newton. Huygens came from a family of nobility that had an important position in the Dutch society of the 17th century; a time in which the Dutch Republic flourished economically and culturally. This period — roughly between 1588 and 1702 — of the history of the Netherlands is also referred to as the Dutch Golden Age, an era during the Scientific Revolution when Dutch science was among the most acclaimed in Europe. At this time, intellectuals and scientists like René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Pierre Bayle, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, John Locke and Hugo Grotius resided in the Netherlands. It was in this intellectual environment where Christiaan Huygens grew up. Christiaan's father, Constantijn Huygens, was, apart from an important poet, the secretary and diplomat for the Princes of Orange. He knew many scientists of his time because of his contacts and intellectual interests, including René Descartes and Marin Mersenne, and it was because of these contacts that Christiaan Huygens became aware of their work. Especially Descartes, whose mechanistic philosophy was going to have a huge influence on Huygens' own work. Descartes was later impressed by the skills Christiaan Huygens showed in geometry, as was Mersenne, who christened him \"the new Archimedes\" (which led Constantijn to refer to his son as \"my little Archimedes\").",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A child prodigy, Huygens began his correspondence with Marin Mersenne when he was 17 years old. Huygens became interested in games of chance when he encountered the work of Fermat, Blaise Pascal and Girard Desargues. It was Blaise Pascal who encourages him to write Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Gluck, which Frans van Schooten translated and published as De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae in 1657. The book is the earliest known scientific treatment of the subject, and at the time the most coherent presentation of a mathematical approach to games of chance. Two years later Huygens derived geometrically the now standard formulae in classical mechanics for the centripetal- and centrifugal force in his work De vi Centrifuga (1659). Around the same time Huygens' research in horology resulted in the invention of the pendulum clock; a breakthrough in timekeeping and the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. The theoretical research of the way the pendulum works eventually led to the publication of one of his most important achievements: the Horologium Oscillatorium. This work was published in 1673 and became one of the three most important 17th century works on mechanics (the other two being Galileo’s Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (1638) and Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)). The Horologium Oscillatorium is the first modern treatise in which a physical problem (the accelerated motion of a falling body) is idealized by a set of parameters then analyzed mathematically and constitutes one of the seminal works of applied mathematics. It is for this reason, Huygens has been called the first theoretical physicist and one of the founders of modern mathematical physics. Huygens' Horologium Oscillatorium had a tremendous influence on the history of physics, especially on the work of Isaac Newton, who greatly admired the work. For instance, the laws Huygens described in the Horologium Oscillatorium are structurally the same as Newton's first two laws of motion.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Five years after the publication of his Horologium Oscillatorium, Huygens described his wave theory of light. Though proposed in 1678, it wasn't published until 1690 in his Traité de la Lumière. His mathematical theory of light was initially rejected in favour of Newton's corpuscular theory of light, until Augustin-Jean Fresnel adopted Huygens' principle to give a complete explanation of the rectilinear propagation and diffraction effects of light in 1821. Today this principle is known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle. As an astronomer, Huygens began grinding lenses with his brother Constantijn jr. to build telescopes for astronomical research. He was the first to identify the rings of Saturn as \"a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic,\" and discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan, using a refracting telescope.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Apart from the many important discoveries Huygens made in physics and astronomy, and his inventions of ingenious devices, he was also the first who brought mathematical rigor to the description of physical phenomena. Because of this, and the fact that he developed institutional frameworks for scientific research on the continent, he has been referred to as \"the leading actor in 'the making of science in Europe'\"",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The late 17th and early 18th centuries saw the achievements of Cambridge University physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton, a fellow of the Royal Society of England, combined his own discoveries in mechanics and astronomy to earlier ones to create a single system for describing the workings of the universe. Newton formulated three laws of motion which formulated the relationship between motion and objects and also the law of universal gravitation, the latter of which could be used to explain the behavior not only of falling bodies on the earth but also planets and other celestial bodies. To arrive at his results, Newton invented one form of an entirely new branch of mathematics: calculus (also invented independently by Gottfried Leibniz), which was to become an essential tool in much of the later development in most branches of physics. Newton's findings were set forth in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (\"Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy\"), the publication of which in 1687 marked the beginning of the modern period of mechanics and astronomy.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Newton was able to refute the Cartesian mechanical tradition that all motions should be explained with respect to the immediate force exerted by corpuscles. Using his three laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, Newton removed the idea that objects followed paths determined by natural shapes and instead demonstrated that not only regularly observed paths, but all the future motions of any body could be deduced mathematically based on knowledge of their existing motion, their mass, and the forces acting upon them. However, observed celestial motions did not precisely conform to a Newtonian treatment, and Newton, who was also deeply interested in theology, imagined that God intervened to ensure the continued stability of the solar system.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Newton's principles (but not his mathematical treatments) proved controversial with Continental philosophers, who found his lack of metaphysical explanation for movement and gravitation philosophically unacceptable. Beginning around 1700, a bitter rift opened between the Continental and British philosophical traditions, which were stoked by heated, ongoing, and viciously personal disputes between the followers of Newton and Leibniz concerning priority over the analytical techniques of calculus, which each had developed independently. Initially, the Cartesian and Leibnizian traditions prevailed on the Continent (leading to the dominance of the Leibnizian calculus notation everywhere except Britain). Newton himself remained privately disturbed at the lack of a philosophical understanding of gravitation while insisting in his writings that none was necessary to infer its reality. As the 18th century progressed, Continental natural philosophers increasingly accepted the Newtonians' willingness to forgo ontological metaphysical explanations for mathematically described motions.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Newton built the first functioning reflecting telescope and developed a theory of color, published in Opticks, based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours forming the visible spectrum. While Newton explained light as being composed of tiny particles, a rival theory of light which explained its behavior in terms of waves was presented in 1690 by Christiaan Huygens. However, the belief in the mechanistic philosophy coupled with Newton's reputation meant that the wave theory saw relatively little support until the 19th century. Newton also formulated an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound, investigated power series, demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem and developed a method for approximating the roots of a function. His work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin's decimals. Most importantly, Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, which were neither capricious nor malevolent. By demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his own theory of gravitation, Newton also removed the last doubts about heliocentrism. By bringing together all the ideas set forth during the Scientific Revolution, Newton effectively established the foundation for modern society in mathematics and science.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Other branches of physics also received attention during the period of the Scientific Revolution. William Gilbert, court physician to Queen Elizabeth I, published an important work on magnetism in 1600, describing how the earth itself behaves like a giant magnet. Robert Boyle (1627–91) studied the behavior of gases enclosed in a chamber and formulated the gas law named for him; he also contributed to physiology and to the founding of modern chemistry. Another important factor in the scientific revolution was the rise of learned societies and academies in various countries. The earliest of these were in Italy and Germany and were short-lived. More influential were the Royal Society of England (1660) and the Academy of Sciences in France (1666). The former was a private institution in London and included such scientists as John Wallis, William Brouncker, Thomas Sydenham, John Mayow, and Christopher Wren (who contributed not only to architecture but also to astronomy and anatomy); the latter, in Paris, was a government institution and included as a foreign member the Dutchman Huygens. In the 18th century, important royal academies were established at Berlin (1700) and at St. Petersburg (1724). The societies and academies provided the principal opportunities for the publication and discussion of scientific results during and after the scientific revolution. In 1690, James Bernoulli showed that the cycloid is the solution to the tautochrone problem; and the following year, in 1691, Johann Bernoulli showed that a chain freely suspended from two points will form a catenary, the curve with the lowest possible center of gravity available to any chain hung between two fixed points. He then showed, in 1696, that the cycloid is the solution to the brachistochrone problem.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "A precursor of the engine was designed by the German scientist Otto von Guericke who, in 1650, designed and built the world's first vacuum pump to create a vacuum as demonstrated in the Magdeburg hemispheres experiment. He was driven to make a vacuum to disprove Aristotle's long-held supposition that 'Nature abhors a vacuum'. Shortly thereafter, Irish physicist and chemist Boyle had learned of Guericke's designs and in 1656, in coordination with English scientist Robert Hooke, built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed the pressure-volume correlation for a gas: PV = k, where P is pressure, V is volume and k is a constant: this relationship is known as Boyle's Law. In that time, air was assumed to be a system of motionless particles, and not interpreted as a system of moving molecules. The concept of thermal motion came two centuries later. Therefore, Boyle's publication in 1660 speaks about a mechanical concept: the air spring. Later, after the invention of the thermometer, the property temperature could be quantified. This tool gave Gay-Lussac the opportunity to derive his law, which led shortly later to the ideal gas law. But, already before the establishment of the ideal gas law, an associate of Boyle's named Denis Papin built in 1679 a bone digester, which is a closed vessel with a tightly fitting lid that confines steam until a high pressure is generated.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Later designs implemented a steam release valve to keep the machine from exploding. By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down, Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and cylinder engine. He did not however follow through with his design. Nevertheless, in 1697, based on Papin's designs, engineer Thomas Savery built the first engine. Although these early engines were crude and inefficient, they attracted the attention of the leading scientists of the time. Hence, prior to 1698 and the invention of the Savery Engine, horses were used to power pulleys, attached to buckets, which lifted water out of flooded salt mines in England. In the years to follow, more variations of steam engines were built, such as the Newcomen Engine, and later the Watt Engine. In time, these early engines would eventually be utilized in place of horses. Thus, each engine began to be associated with a certain amount of \"horse power\" depending upon how many horses it had replaced. The main problem with these first engines was that they were slow and clumsy, converting less than 2% of the input fuel into useful work. In other words, large quantities of coal (or wood) had to be burned to yield only a small fraction of work output. Hence the need for a new science of engine dynamics was born.",
"title": "Scientific Revolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the 18th century, the mechanics founded by Newton was developed by several scientists as more mathematicians learned calculus and elaborated upon its initial formulation. The application of mathematical analysis to problems of motion was known as rational mechanics, or mixed mathematics (and was later termed classical mechanics).",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1714, Brook Taylor derived the fundamental frequency of a stretched vibrating string in terms of its tension and mass per unit length by solving a differential equation. The Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) made important mathematical studies of the behavior of gases, anticipating the kinetic theory of gases developed more than a century later, and has been referred to as the first mathematical physicist. In 1733, Daniel Bernoulli derived the fundamental frequency and harmonics of a hanging chain by solving a differential equation. In 1734, Bernoulli solved the differential equation for the vibrations of an elastic bar clamped at one end. Bernoulli's treatment of fluid dynamics and his examination of fluid flow was introduced in his 1738 work Hydrodynamica.",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Rational mechanics dealt primarily with the development of elaborate mathematical treatments of observed motions, using Newtonian principles as a basis, and emphasized improving the tractability of complex calculations and developing of legitimate means of analytical approximation. A representative contemporary textbook was published by Johann Baptiste Horvath. By the end of the century analytical treatments were rigorous enough to verify the stability of the Solar System solely on the basis of Newton's laws without reference to divine intervention—even as deterministic treatments of systems as simple as the three body problem in gravitation remained intractable. In 1705, Edmond Halley predicted the periodicity of Halley's Comet, William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, and Henry Cavendish measured the gravitational constant and determined the mass of the Earth in 1798. In 1783, John Michell suggested that some objects might be so massive that not even light could escape from them.",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 1739, Leonhard Euler solved the ordinary differential equation for a forced harmonic oscillator and noticed the resonance phenomenon. In 1742, Colin Maclaurin discovered his uniformly rotating self-gravitating spheroids. In 1742, Benjamin Robins published his New Principles in Gunnery, establishing the science of aerodynamics. British work, carried on by mathematicians such as Taylor and Maclaurin, fell behind Continental developments as the century progressed. Meanwhile, work flourished at scientific academies on the Continent, led by such mathematicians as Bernoulli and Euler, as well as Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Adrien-Marie Legendre. In 1743, Jean le Rond d'Alembert published his Traité de dynamique, in which he introduced the concept of generalized forces for accelerating systems and systems with constraints, and applied the new idea of virtual work to solve dynamical problem, now known as D'Alembert's principle, as a rival to Newton's second law of motion. In 1747, Pierre Louis Maupertuis applied minimum principles to mechanics. In 1759, Euler solved the partial differential equation for the vibration of a rectangular drum. In 1764, Euler examined the partial differential equation for the vibration of a circular drum and found one of the Bessel function solutions. In 1776, John Smeaton published a paper on experiments relating power, work, momentum and kinetic energy, and supporting the conservation of energy. In 1788, Lagrange presented his equations of motion in Mécanique analytique, in which the whole of mechanics was organized around the principle of virtual work. In 1789, Antoine Lavoisier stated the law of conservation of mass. The rational mechanics developed in the 18th century received expositions in both Lagrange's Mécanique analytique and Laplace's Traité de mécanique céleste (1799–1825).",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "During the 18th century, thermodynamics was developed through the theories of weightless \"imponderable fluids\", such as heat (\"caloric\"), electricity, and phlogiston (which was rapidly overthrown as a concept following Lavoisier's identification of oxygen gas late in the century). Assuming that these concepts were real fluids, their flow could be traced through a mechanical apparatus or chemical reactions. This tradition of experimentation led to the development of new kinds of experimental apparatus, such as the Leyden Jar; and new kinds of measuring instruments, such as the calorimeter, and improved versions of old ones, such as the thermometer. Experiments also produced new concepts, such as the University of Glasgow experimenter Joseph Black's notion of latent heat and Philadelphia intellectual Benjamin Franklin's characterization of electrical fluid as flowing between places of excess and deficit (a concept later reinterpreted in terms of positive and negative charges). Franklin also showed that lightning is electricity in 1752.",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The accepted theory of heat in the 18th century viewed it as a kind of fluid, called caloric; although this theory was later shown to be erroneous, a number of scientists adhering to it nevertheless made important discoveries useful in developing the modern theory, including Joseph Black (1728–99) and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). Opposed to this caloric theory, which had been developed mainly by the chemists, was the less accepted theory dating from Newton's time that heat is due to the motions of the particles of a substance. This mechanical theory gained support in 1798 from the cannon-boring experiments of Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson), who found a direct relationship between heat and mechanical energy.",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "While it was recognized early in the 18th century that finding absolute theories of electrostatic and magnetic force akin to Newton's principles of motion would be an important achievement, none were forthcoming. This impossibility only slowly disappeared as experimental practice became more widespread and more refined in the early years of the 19th century in places such as the newly established Royal Institution in London. Meanwhile, the analytical methods of rational mechanics began to be applied to experimental phenomena, most influentially with the French mathematician Joseph Fourier's analytical treatment of the flow of heat, as published in 1822. Joseph Priestley proposed an electrical inverse-square law in 1767, and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb introduced the inverse-square law of electrostatics in 1798.",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "At the end of the century, the members of the French Academy of Sciences had attained clear dominance in the field. At the same time, the experimental tradition established by Galileo and his followers persisted. The Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences were major centers for the performance and reporting of experimental work. Experiments in mechanics, optics, magnetism, static electricity, chemistry, and physiology were not clearly distinguished from each other during the 18th century, but significant differences in explanatory schemes and, thus, experiment design were emerging. Chemical experimenters, for instance, defied attempts to enforce a scheme of abstract Newtonian forces onto chemical affiliations, and instead focused on the isolation and classification of chemical substances and reactions.",
"title": "18th-century developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 1821, William Hamilton began his analysis of Hamilton's characteristic function. In 1835, he stated Hamilton's canonical equations of motion.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1813, Peter Ewart supported the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper On the measure of moving force. In 1829, Gaspard Coriolis introduced the terms of work (force times distance) and kinetic energy with the meanings they have today. In 1841, Julius Robert von Mayer, an amateur scientist, wrote a paper on the conservation of energy, although his lack of academic training led to its rejection. In 1847, Hermann von Helmholtz formally stated the law of conservation of energy.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 1800, Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery (known as the voltaic pile) and thus improved the way electric currents could also be studied. A year later, Thomas Young demonstrated the wave nature of light—which received strong experimental support from the work of Augustin-Jean Fresnel—and the principle of interference. In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted found that a current-carrying conductor gives rise to a magnetic force surrounding it, and within a week after Ørsted's discovery reached France, André-Marie Ampère discovered that two parallel electric currents will exert forces on each other. In 1821, Michael Faraday built an electricity-powered motor, while Georg Ohm stated his law of electrical resistance in 1826, expressing the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in an electric circuit.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 1831, Faraday (and independently Joseph Henry) discovered the reverse effect, the production of an electric potential or current through magnetism – known as electromagnetic induction; these two discoveries are the basis of the electric motor and the electric generator, respectively.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In the 19th century, the connection between heat and mechanical energy was established quantitatively by Julius Robert von Mayer and James Prescott Joule, who measured the mechanical equivalent of heat in the 1840s. In 1849, Joule published results from his series of experiments (including the paddlewheel experiment) which show that heat is a form of energy, a fact that was accepted in the 1850s. The relation between heat and energy was important for the development of steam engines, and in 1824 the experimental and theoretical work of Sadi Carnot was published. Carnot captured some of the ideas of thermodynamics in his discussion of the efficiency of an idealized engine. Sadi Carnot's work provided a basis for the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics—a restatement of the law of conservation of energy—which was stated around 1850 by William Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin, and Rudolf Clausius. Lord Kelvin, who had extended the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances in 1848, drew upon the engineering theory of Lazare Carnot, Sadi Carnot, and Émile Clapeyron–as well as the experimentation of James Prescott Joule on the interchangeability of mechanical, chemical, thermal, and electrical forms of work—to formulate the first law.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Kelvin and Clausius also stated the second law of thermodynamics, which was originally formulated in terms of the fact that heat does not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a hotter. Other formulations followed quickly (for example, the second law was expounded in Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait's influential work Treatise on Natural Philosophy) and Kelvin in particular understood some of the law's general implications. The second Law was the idea that gases consist of molecules in motion had been discussed in some detail by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738, but had fallen out of favor, and was revived by Clausius in 1857. In 1850, Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault measured the speed of light in water and find that it is slower than in air, in support of the wave model of light. In 1852, Joule and Thomson demonstrated that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the Joule–Thomson effect or Joule–Kelvin effect. Hermann von Helmholtz puts forward the idea of the heat death of the universe in 1854, the same year that Clausius established the importance of dQ/T (Clausius's theorem) (though he did not yet name the quantity).",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell discovered the distribution law of molecular velocities. Maxwell showed that electric and magnetic fields are propagated outward from their source at a speed equal to that of light and that light is one of several kinds of electromagnetic radiation, differing only in frequency and wavelength from the others. In 1859, Maxwell worked out the mathematics of the distribution of velocities of the molecules of a gas. The wave theory of light was widely accepted by the time of Maxwell's work on the electromagnetic field, and afterward the study of light and that of electricity and magnetism were closely related. In 1864 James Maxwell published his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field, and stated that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon in the 1873 publication of Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. This work drew upon theoretical work by German theoreticians such as Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber. The encapsulation of heat in particulate motion, and the addition of electromagnetic forces to Newtonian dynamics established an enormously robust theoretical underpinning to physical observations.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The prediction that light represented a transmission of energy in wave form through a \"luminiferous ether\", and the seeming confirmation of that prediction with Helmholtz student Heinrich Hertz's 1888 detection of electromagnetic radiation, was a major triumph for physical theory and raised the possibility that even more fundamental theories based on the field could soon be developed. Experimental confirmation of Maxwell's theory was provided by Hertz, who generated and detected electric waves in 1886 and verified their properties, at the same time foreshadowing their application in radio, television, and other devices. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered the photoelectric effect. Research on the electromagnetic waves began soon after, with many scientists and inventors conducting experiments on their properties. In the mid to late 1890s Guglielmo Marconi developed a radio wave based wireless telegraphy system (see invention of radio).",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The atomic theory of matter had been proposed again in the early 19th century by the chemist John Dalton and became one of the hypotheses of the kinetic-molecular theory of gases developed by Clausius and James Clerk Maxwell to explain the laws of thermodynamics.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The kinetic theory in turn led to a revolutionary approach to science, the statistical mechanics of Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) and Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), which studies the statistics of microstates of a system and uses statistics to determine the state of a physical system. Interrelating the statistical likelihood of certain states of organization of these particles with the energy of those states, Clausius reinterpreted the dissipation of energy to be the statistical tendency of molecular configurations to pass toward increasingly likely, increasingly disorganized states (coining the term \"entropy\" to describe the disorganization of a state). The statistical versus absolute interpretations of the second law of thermodynamics set up a dispute that would last for several decades (producing arguments such as \"Maxwell's demon\"), and that would not be held to be definitively resolved until the behavior of atoms was firmly established in the early 20th century. In 1902, James Jeans found the length scale required for gravitational perturbations to grow in a static nearly homogeneous medium.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1822, botanist Robert Brown discovered Brownian motion: pollen grains in water undergoing movement resulting from their bombardment by the fast-moving atoms or molecules in the liquid.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 1834, Carl Jacobi discovered his uniformly rotating self-gravitating ellipsoids (the Jacobi ellipsoid).",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In 1834, John Russell observed a nondecaying solitary water wave (soliton) in the Union Canal near Edinburgh and used a water tank to study the dependence of solitary water wave velocities on wave amplitude and water depth. In 1835, Gaspard Coriolis examined theoretically the mechanical efficiency of waterwheels, and deduced the Coriolis effect. In 1842, Christian Doppler proposed the Doppler effect.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In 1851, Léon Foucault showed the Earth's rotation with a huge pendulum (Foucault pendulum).",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "There were important advances in continuum mechanics in the first half of the century, namely formulation of laws of elasticity for solids and discovery of Navier–Stokes equations for fluids.",
"title": "19th century"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "At the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at which classical mechanics could cope with highly complex problems involving macroscopic situations; thermodynamics and kinetic theory were well established; geometrical and physical optics could be understood in terms of electromagnetic waves; and the conservation laws for energy and momentum (and mass) were widely accepted. So profound were these and other developments that it was generally accepted that all the important laws of physics had been discovered and that, henceforth, research would be concerned with clearing up minor problems and particularly with improvements of method and measurement.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "However, around 1900 serious doubts arose about the completeness of the classical theories—the triumph of Maxwell's theories, for example, was undermined by inadequacies that had already begun to appear—and their inability to explain certain physical phenomena, such as the energy distribution in blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect, while some of the theoretical formulations led to paradoxes when pushed to the limit. Prominent physicists such as Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Cohn, Ernst Wiechert and Wilhelm Wien believed that some modification of Maxwell's equations might provide the basis for all physical laws. These shortcomings of classical physics were never to be resolved and new ideas were required. At the beginning of the 20th century a major revolution shook the world of physics, which led to a new era, generally referred to as modern physics.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In the 19th century, experimenters began to detect unexpected forms of radiation: Wilhelm Röntgen caused a sensation with his discovery of X-rays in 1895; in 1896 Henri Becquerel discovered that certain kinds of matter emit radiation on their own accord. In 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered the electron, and new radioactive elements found by Marie and Pierre Curie raised questions about the supposedly indestructible atom and the nature of matter. Marie and Pierre coined the term \"radioactivity\" to describe this property of matter, and isolated the radioactive elements radium and polonium. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified two of Becquerel's forms of radiation with electrons and the element helium. Rutherford identified and named two types of radioactivity and in 1911 interpreted experimental evidence as showing that the atom consists of a dense, positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Classical theory, however, predicted that this structure should be unstable. Classical theory had also failed to explain successfully two other experimental results that appeared in the late 19th century. One of these was the demonstration by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley—known as the Michelson–Morley experiment—which showed there did not seem to be a preferred frame of reference, at rest with respect to the hypothetical luminiferous ether, for describing electromagnetic phenomena. Studies of radiation and radioactive decay continued to be a preeminent focus for physical and chemical research through the 1930s, when the discovery of nuclear fission by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch opened the way to the practical exploitation of what came to be called \"atomic\" energy.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 1905, a 26-year-old German physicist named Albert Einstein (then a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland) showed how measurements of time and space are affected by motion between an observer and what is being observed. Einstein's radical theory of relativity revolutionized science. Although Einstein made many other important contributions to science, the theory of relativity alone represents one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Although the concept of relativity was not introduced by Einstein, he recognised that the speed of light in vacuum is constant, i.e., the same for all observers, and an absolute upper limit to speed. This does not impact a person's day-to-day life since most objects travel at speeds much slower than light speed. For objects travelling near light speed, however, the theory of relativity shows that clocks associated with those objects will run more slowly and that the objects shorten in length according to measurements of an observer on Earth. Einstein also derived the famous equation, E = mc, which expresses the equivalence of mass and energy.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Einstein argued that the speed of light was a constant in all inertial reference frames and that electromagnetic laws should remain valid independent of reference frame—assertions which rendered the ether \"superfluous\" to physical theory, and that held that observations of time and length varied relative to how the observer was moving with respect to the object being measured (what came to be called the \"special theory of relativity\"). It also followed that mass and energy were interchangeable quantities according to the equation E=mc. In another paper published the same year, Einstein asserted that electromagnetic radiation was transmitted in discrete quantities (\"quanta\"), according to a constant that the theoretical physicist Max Planck had posited in 1900 to arrive at an accurate theory for the distribution of blackbody radiation—an assumption that explained the strange properties of the photoelectric effect.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The special theory of relativity is a formulation of the relationship between physical observations and the concepts of space and time. The theory arose out of contradictions between electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics and had great impact on both those areas. The original historical issue was whether it was meaningful to discuss the electromagnetic wave-carrying \"ether\" and motion relative to it and also whether one could detect such motion, as was unsuccessfully attempted in the Michelson–Morley experiment. Einstein demolished these questions and the ether concept in his special theory of relativity. However, his basic formulation does not involve detailed electromagnetic theory. It arises out of the question: \"What is time?\" Newton, in the Principia (1686), had given an unambiguous answer: \"Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration.\" This definition is basic to all classical physics.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Einstein had the genius to question it, and found that it was incomplete. Instead, each \"observer\" necessarily makes use of his or her own scale of time, and for two observers in relative motion, their time-scales will differ. This induces a related effect on position measurements. Space and time become intertwined concepts, fundamentally dependent on the observer. Each observer presides over his or her own space-time framework or coordinate system. There being no absolute frame of reference, all observers of given events make different but equally valid (and reconcilable) measurements. What remains absolute is stated in Einstein's relativity postulate: \"The basic laws of physics are identical for two observers who have a constant relative velocity with respect to each other.\"",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Special relativity had a profound effect on physics: started as a rethinking of the theory of electromagnetism, it found a new symmetry law of nature, now called Poincaré symmetry, that replaced the old Galilean symmetry.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Special relativity exerted another long-lasting effect on dynamics. Although initially it was credited with the \"unification of mass and energy\", it became evident that relativistic dynamics established a firm distinction between rest mass, which is an invariant (observer independent) property of a particle or system of particles, and the energy and momentum of a system. The latter two are separately conserved in all situations but not invariant with respect to different observers. The term mass in particle physics underwent a semantic change, and since the late 20th century it almost exclusively denotes the rest (or invariant) mass.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "By 1916, Einstein was able to generalize this further, to deal with all states of motion including non-uniform acceleration, which became the general theory of relativity. In this theory Einstein also specified a new concept, the curvature of space-time, which described the gravitational effect at every point in space. In fact, the curvature of space-time completely replaced Newton's universal law of gravitation. According to Einstein, gravitational force in the normal sense is a kind of illusion caused by the geometry of space. The presence of a mass causes a curvature of space-time in the vicinity of the mass, and this curvature dictates the space-time path that all freely-moving objects must follow. It was also predicted from this theory that light should be subject to gravity - all of which was verified experimentally. This aspect of relativity explained the phenomena of light bending around the sun, predicted black holes as well as properties of the Cosmic microwave background radiation — a discovery rendering fundamental anomalies in the classic Steady-State hypothesis. For his work on relativity, the photoelectric effect and blackbody radiation, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The gradual acceptance of Einstein's theories of relativity and the quantized nature of light transmission, and of Niels Bohr's model of the atom created as many problems as they solved, leading to a full-scale effort to reestablish physics on new fundamental principles. Expanding relativity to cases of accelerating reference frames (the \"general theory of relativity\") in the 1910s, Einstein posited an equivalence between the inertial force of acceleration and the force of gravity, leading to the conclusion that space is curved and finite in size, and the prediction of such phenomena as gravitational lensing and the distortion of time in gravitational fields.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Although relativity resolved the electromagnetic phenomena conflict demonstrated by Michelson and Morley, a second theoretical problem was the explanation of the distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body; experiment showed that at shorter wavelengths, toward the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, the energy approached zero, but classical theory predicted it should become infinite. This glaring discrepancy, known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, was solved by the new theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the theory of atoms and subatomic systems. Approximately the first 30 years of the 20th century represent the time of the conception and evolution of the theory. The basic ideas of quantum theory were introduced in 1900 by Max Planck (1858–1947), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918 for his discovery of the quantified nature of energy. The quantum theory (which previously relied in the \"correspondence\" at large scales between the quantized world of the atom and the continuities of the \"classical\" world) was accepted when the Compton Effect established that light carries momentum and can scatter off particles, and when Louis de Broglie asserted that matter can be seen as behaving as a wave in much the same way as electromagnetic waves behave like particles (wave–particle duality).",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 1905, Einstein used the quantum theory to explain the photoelectric effect, and in 1913 the Danish physicist Niels Bohr used the same constant to explain the stability of Rutherford's atom as well as the frequencies of light emitted by hydrogen gas. The quantized theory of the atom gave way to a full-scale quantum mechanics in the 1920s. New principles of a \"quantum\" rather than a \"classical\" mechanics, formulated in matrix-form by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan in 1925, were based on the probabilistic relationship between discrete \"states\" and denied the possibility of causality. Quantum mechanics was extensively developed by Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, and Erwin Schrödinger, who established an equivalent theory based on waves in 1926; but Heisenberg's 1927 \"uncertainty principle\" (indicating the impossibility of precisely and simultaneously measuring position and momentum) and the \"Copenhagen interpretation\" of quantum mechanics (named after Bohr's home city) continued to deny the possibility of fundamental causality, though opponents such as Einstein would metaphorically assert that \"God does not play dice with the universe\". The new quantum mechanics became an indispensable tool in the investigation and explanation of phenomena at the atomic level. Also in the 1920s, the Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose's work on photons and quantum mechanics provided the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics, the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The spin–statistics theorem established that any particle in quantum mechanics may be either a boson (statistically Bose–Einstein) or a fermion (statistically Fermi–Dirac). It was later found that all fundamental bosons transmit forces, such as the photon that transmits electromagnetism.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Fermions are particles \"like electrons and nucleons\" and are the usual constituents of matter. Fermi–Dirac statistics later found numerous other uses, from astrophysics (see Degenerate matter) to semiconductor design.",
"title": "20th century: birth of modern physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "As the philosophically inclined continued to debate the fundamental nature of the universe, quantum theories continued to be produced, beginning with Paul Dirac's formulation of a relativistic quantum theory in 1928. However, attempts to quantize electromagnetic theory entirely were stymied throughout the 1930s by theoretical formulations yielding infinite energies. This situation was not considered adequately resolved until after World War II ended, when Julian Schwinger, Richard Feynman and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga independently posited the technique of renormalization, which allowed for an establishment of a robust quantum electrodynamics (QED).",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Meanwhile, new theories of fundamental particles proliferated with the rise of the idea of the quantization of fields through \"exchange forces\" regulated by an exchange of short-lived \"virtual\" particles, which were allowed to exist according to the laws governing the uncertainties inherent in the quantum world. Notably, Hideki Yukawa proposed that the positive charges of the nucleus were kept together courtesy of a powerful but short-range force mediated by a particle with a mass between that of the electron and proton. This particle, the \"pion\", was identified in 1947 as part of what became a slew of particles discovered after World War II. Initially, such particles were found as ionizing radiation left by cosmic rays, but increasingly came to be produced in newer and more powerful particle accelerators.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Outside particle physics, significant advances of the time were:",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Einstein deemed that all fundamental interactions in nature can be explained in a single theory. Unified field theories were numerous attempts to \"merge\" several interactions. One of many formulations of such theories (as well as field theories in general) is a gauge theory, a generalization of the idea of symmetry. Eventually the Standard Model (see below) succeeded in unification of strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. All attempts to unify gravitation with something else failed.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "When parity was broken in weak interactions by Chien-Shiung Wu in her experiment, a series of discoveries were created thereafter. The interaction of these particles by scattering and decay provided a key to new fundamental quantum theories. Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman brought some order to these new particles by classifying them according to certain qualities, beginning with what Gell-Mann referred to as the \"Eightfold Way\". While its further development, the quark model, at first seemed inadequate to describe strong nuclear forces, allowing the temporary rise of competing theories such as the S-Matrix, the establishment of quantum chromodynamics in the 1970s finalized a set of fundamental and exchange particles, which allowed for the establishment of a \"standard model\" based on the mathematics of gauge invariance, which successfully described all forces except for gravitation, and which remains generally accepted within its domain of application.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The Standard Model, based on the Yang–Mills theory groups the electroweak interaction theory and quantum chromodynamics into a structure denoted by the gauge group SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1). The formulation of the unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions in the standard model is due to Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg and, subsequently, Sheldon Glashow. Electroweak theory was later confirmed experimentally (by observation of neutral weak currents), and distinguished by the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Since the 1970s, fundamental particle physics has provided insights into early universe cosmology, particularly the Big Bang theory proposed as a consequence of Einstein's general theory of relativity. However, starting in the 1990s, astronomical observations have also provided new challenges, such as the need for new explanations of galactic stability (\"dark matter\") and the apparent acceleration in the expansion of the universe (\"dark energy\").",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "While accelerators have confirmed most aspects of the Standard Model by detecting expected particle interactions at various collision energies, no theory reconciling general relativity with the Standard Model has yet been found, although supersymmetry and string theory were believed by many theorists to be a promising avenue forward. The Large Hadron Collider, however, which began operating in 2008, has failed to find any evidence whatsoever that is supportive of supersymmetry and string theory.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Cosmology may be said to have become a serious research question with the publication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1915 although it did not enter the scientific mainstream until the period known as the \"Golden age of general relativity\".",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "About a decade later, in the midst of what was dubbed the \"Great Debate\", Hubble and Slipher discovered the expansion of universe in the 1920s measuring the redshifts of Doppler spectra from galactic nebulae. Using Einstein's general relativity, Lemaître and Gamow formulated what would become known as the big bang theory. A rival, called the steady state theory, was devised by Hoyle, Gold, Narlikar and Bondi.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Cosmic background radiation was verified in the 1960s by Penzias and Wilson, and this discovery favoured the big bang at the expense of the steady state scenario. Later work was by Smoot et al. (1989), among other contributors, using data from the Cosmic Background explorer (CoBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellites that refined these observations. The 1980s (the same decade of the COBE measurements) also saw the proposal of inflation theory by Alan Guth.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Recently the problems of dark matter and dark energy have risen to the top of the cosmology agenda.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "On July 4, 2012, physicists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle greatly resembling the Higgs boson, a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe. For now, some physicists are calling it a \"Higgslike\" particle. Joe Incandela, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, said, \"It's something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years, going way back to the discovery of quarks, for example.\" Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and the chairman of the physics center board, said:",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "\"This is a big moment for particle physics and a crossroads — will this be the high water mark or will it be the first of many discoveries that point us toward solving the really big questions that we have posed?\"",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Peter Higgs was one of six physicists, working in three independent groups, who, in 1964, invented the notion of the Higgs field (\"cosmic molasses\"). The others were Tom Kibble of Imperial College, London; Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester; Gerald Guralnik of Brown University; and François Englert and Robert Brout, both of Université libre de Bruxelles.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Although they have never been seen, Higgslike fields play an important role in theories of the universe and in string theory. Under certain conditions, according to the strange accounting of Einsteinian physics, they can become suffused with energy that exerts an antigravitational force. Such fields have been proposed as the source of an enormous burst of expansion, known as inflation, early in the universe and, possibly, as the secret of the dark energy that now seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "With increased accessibility to and elaboration upon advanced analytical techniques in the 19th century, physics was defined as much, if not more, by those techniques than by the search for universal principles of motion and energy, and the fundamental nature of matter. Fields such as acoustics, geophysics, astrophysics, aerodynamics, plasma physics, low-temperature physics, and solid-state physics joined optics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, and mechanics as areas of physical research. In the 20th century, physics also became closely allied with such fields as electrical, aerospace and materials engineering, and physicists began to work in government and industrial laboratories as much as in academic settings. Following World War II, the population of physicists increased dramatically, and came to be centered on the United States, while, in more recent decades, physics has become a more international pursuit than at any time in its previous history.",
"title": "Contemporary physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "",
"title": "Articles on the history of physics"
}
]
| Physics is a branch of science whose primary objects of study are matter and energy. Discoveries of physics find applications throughout the natural sciences and in technology. Historically, physics emerged from the scientific revolution of the 17th century, grew rapidly in the 19th century, then was transformed by a series of discoveries in the 20th century. Physics today may be divided loosely into classical physics and modern physics. Many detailed articles on specific topics are available through the Outline of the history of physics. | 2001-09-19T21:06:18Z | 2023-12-25T19:23:07Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics |
13,761 | Hydrofoil | A hydrofoil is a lifting surface, or foil, that operates in water. They are similar in appearance and purpose to aerofoils used by aeroplanes. Boats that use hydrofoil technology are also simply termed hydrofoils. As a hydrofoil craft gains speed, the hydrofoils lift the boat's hull out of the water, decreasing drag and allowing greater speeds.
The hydrofoil usually consists of a winglike structure mounted on struts below the hull, or across the keels of a catamaran in a variety of boats (see illustration). As a hydrofoil-equipped watercraft increases in speed, the hydrofoil elements below the hull(s) develop enough lift to raise the hull out of the water, which greatly reduces hull drag. This provides a corresponding increase in speed and fuel efficiency.
Wider adoption of hydrofoils is prevented by the increased complexity of building and maintaining them. Hydrofoils are generally prohibitively more expensive than conventional watercraft above a certain displacement, so most hydrofoil craft are relatively small, and are mainly used as high-speed passenger ferries, where the relatively high passenger fees can offset the high cost of the craft itself. However, the design is simple enough that there are many human-powered hydrofoil designs. Amateur experimentation and development of the concept is popular.
Since air and water are governed by similar fluid equations—albeit with different levels of viscosity, density, and compressibility—the hydrofoil and airfoil (both types of foil) create lift in identical ways. The foil shape moves smoothly through the water, deflecting the flow downward, which, following the Euler equations, exerts an upward force on the foil. This turning of the water creates higher pressure on the bottom of the foil and reduced pressure on the top. This pressure difference is accompanied by a velocity difference, via Bernoulli's principle, so the resulting flow field about the foil has a higher average velocity on one side than the other.
When used as a lifting element on a hydrofoil boat, this upward force lifts the body of the vessel, decreasing drag and increasing speed. The lifting force eventually balances with the weight of the craft, reaching a point where the hydrofoil no longer lifts out of the water but remains in equilibrium. Since wave resistance and other impeding forces such as various types of drag (physics) on the hull are eliminated as the hull lifts clear, turbulence and drag act increasingly on the much smaller surface area of the hydrofoil, and decreasingly on the hull, creating a marked increase in speed.
Early hydrofoils used V-shaped foils. Hydrofoils of this type are known as "surface-piercing" since portions of the V-shape hydrofoils rise above the water surface when foilborne. Some modern hydrofoils use fully submerged inverted T-shape foils. Fully submerged hydrofoils are less subject to the effects of wave action, and, therefore, more stable at sea and more comfortable for crew and passengers. This type of configuration, however, is not self-stabilizing. The angle of attack on the hydrofoils must be adjusted continuously to changing conditions, a control process performed by sensors, a computer, and active surfaces.
The first evidence of a hydrofoil on a vessel appears on a British patent granted in 1869 to Emmanuel Denis Farcot, a Parisian. He claimed that "adapting to the sides and bottom of the vessel a series or inclined planes or wedge formed pieces, which as the vessel is driven forward will have the effect of lifting it in the water and reducing the draught.". Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini began work on hydrofoils in 1898 and used a "ladder" foil system. Forlanini obtained patents in Britain and the United States for his ideas and designs.
Between 1899 and 1901, British boat designer John Thornycroft worked on a series of models with a stepped hull and single bow foil. In 1909 his company built the full scale 22-foot (6.7 m) long boat, Miranda III. Driven by a 60 hp (45 kW) engine, it rode on a bowfoil and flat stern. The subsequent Miranda IV was credited with a speed of 35 kn (65 km/h; 40 mph).
In May 1904 a hydrofoil boat was described being tested on the River Seine "in the neighbourhood of Paris". This boat was designed by Comte de Lambert. This had 5 variable pitch fins on the hull beneath the water so inclined that when the boat begins to move "the boat rises and the planes come to the surface" with the result that "it skims over the surface with little but the propellers beneath the surface". The boat had twin hulls 18-foot long connected by a single deck 9-foot wide, and was fitted with a 14HP De Dion-Bouton motor, the boat was reported to have reached 20 mph. It was stated that "The boat running practically on its fins resembles an aeroplane".
A March 1906 Scientific American article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. Alexander Graham Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane (now regarded as a distinct type, but also employing lift) a very significant achievement, and after reading the article began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. With his chief engineer Casey Baldwin, Bell began hydrofoil experiments in the summer of 1908. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models based on those designs, which led to the development of hydrofoil watercraft. During Bell's world tour of 1910–1911, Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in Italy, where they rode in his hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying.
On returning to Bell's large laboratory at his Beinn Bhreagh estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, they experimented with a number of designs, culminating in Bell's HD-4. Using Renault engines, a top speed of 87 km/h (47 kn; 54 mph) was achieved, accelerating rapidly, taking waves without difficulty, steering well and showing good stability. Bell's report to the United States Navy permitted him to obtain two 260 kW (350 hp) engines. On 9 September 1919 the HD-4 set a world marine speed record of 114 km/h (62 kn; 71 mph), which stood for two decades. A full-scale replica of the HD-4 is viewable at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
In the early 1950s an English couple built the White Hawk, a jet-powered hydrofoil water craft, in an attempt to beat the absolute water speed record. However, in tests, White Hawk could barely top the record breaking speed of the 1919 HD-4. The designers had faced an engineering phenomenon that limits the top speed of even modern hydrofoils: cavitation disturbs the lift created by the foils as they move through the water at speed above 60 kn (110 km/h; 69 mph), bending the lifting foil.
German engineer Hanns von Schertel worked on hydrofoils prior to and during World War II in Germany. After the war, the Russians captured Schertel's team. As Germany was not authorized to build fast boats, Schertel went to Switzerland, where he established the Supramar company. In 1952, Supramar launched the first commercial hydrofoil, PT10 "Freccia d'Oro" (Golden Arrow), in Lake Maggiore, between Switzerland and Italy. The PT10 is of surface-piercing type, it can carry 32 passengers and travel at 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). In 1968, the Bahraini born banker Hussain Najadi acquired the Supramar AG and expanded its operations into Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, Norway and the US. General Dynamics of the United States became its licensee, and the Pentagon awarded its first R&D naval research project in the field of supercavitation. Hitachi Shipbuilding of Osaka, Japan, was another licensee of Supramar, as well as many leading ship owners and shipyards in the OECD countries.
From 1952 to 1971, Supramar designed many models of hydrofoils: PT20, PT50, PT75, PT100 and PT150. All are of surface-piercing type, except the PT150 combining a surface-piercing foil forward with a fully submerged foil in the aft location. Over 200 of Supramar's design were built, most of them by Rodriguez in Sicily, Italy.
During the same period the Soviet Union experimented extensively with hydrofoils, constructing hydrofoil river boats and ferries with streamlined designs during the cold war period and into the 1980s. Such vessels include the Raketa (1957) type, followed by the larger Meteor type and the smaller Voskhod type. One of the most successful Soviet designer/inventor in this area was Rostislav Alexeyev, who some consider the 'father' of the modern hydrofoil due to his 1950s era high speed hydrofoil designs. Later, circa 1970s, Alexeyev combined his hydrofoil experience with the surface effect principle to create the Ekranoplan. Extensive investment in this type of technology in the USSR resulted in the largest civil hydrofoil fleet in the world and the making of the Meteor type, the most successful hydrofoil in history, with more than 400 units built.
In 1961, SRI International issued a study on "The Economic Feasibility of Passenger Hydrofoil Craft in US Domestic and Foreign Commerce". Commercial use of hydrofoils in the US first appeared in 1961 when two commuter vessels were commissioned by Harry Gale Nye, Jr.'s North American Hydrofoils to service the route from Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey to the financial district of Lower Manhattan.
A 17-ton German craft VS-6 Hydrofoil was designed and constructed in 1940, completed in 1941 for use as a mine layer, it was tested in the Baltic Sea, producing speeds of 47 knots. Tested against a standard E-boat over the next three years it performed well but was not brought into production. Being faster it could carry a higher payload and was capable of travelling over minefields but was prone to damage and noisier.
In Canada during World War II, Baldwin worked on an experimental smoke laying hydrofoil (later called the Comox Torpedo) that was later superseded by other smoke-laying technology and an experimental target-towing hydrofoil. The forward two foil assemblies of what is believed to be the latter hydrofoil were salvaged in the mid-1960s from a derelict hulk in Baddeck, Nova Scotia by Colin MacGregor Stevens. These were donated to the Maritime Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Canadian Armed Forces built and tested a number of hydrofoils (e.g., Baddeck and two vessels named Bras d'Or), which culminated in the high-speed anti-submarine hydrofoil HMCS Bras d'Or in the late 1960s. However, the program was cancelled in the early 1970s due to a shift away from anti-submarine warfare by the Canadian military. The Bras d'Or was a surface-piercing type that performed well during her trials, reaching a maximum speed of 63 knots (117 km/h).
The USSR introduced several hydrofoil-based fast attack craft into their navy, principally:
The US Navy began experiments with hydrofoils in the mid-1950s by funding a sailing vessel that used hydrofoils to reach speeds in the 30 mph range. The XCH-4 (officially, Experimental Craft, Hydrofoil No. 4), designed by William P. Carl, exceeded speeds of 65 mph (56 kn; 105 km/h) and was mistaken for a seaplane due to its shape.
The US Navy implemented a small number of combat hydrofoils, such as the Pegasus class, from 1977 through 1993. These hydrofoils were fast and well armed.
The Italian Navy has used six hydrofoils of the Sparviero class since the late 1970s. These were armed with a 76 mm gun and two missiles, and were capable of speeds up to 50 knots (93 km/h). Three similar boats were built for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Several editions of the America's Cup have been raced with foiling yachts. In 2013 and 2017 respectively the AC72 and AC50 classes of catamaran, and in 2021 the AC75 class of foiling monohulls with canting arms.
The French experimental sail powered hydrofoil Hydroptère is the result of a research project that involves advanced engineering skills and technologies. In September 2009, the Hydroptère set new sailcraft world speed records in the 500 m category, with a speed of 51.36 knots (95.12 km/h) and in the 1 nautical mile (1852 m) category with a speed of 50.17 knots (92.91 km/h).
The 500 m speed record for sailboats is currently held by the Vestas Sailrocket, an exotic design which operates in effect as a hydrofoil.
Another trimaran sailboat is the Windrider Rave. The Rave is a commercially available 17-foot (5.2 m), two person, hydrofoil trimaran, capable of reaching speeds of 40 kn (74 km/h). The boat was designed by Jim Brown.
The Moth dinghy has evolved into some radical foil configurations.
Hobie Sailboats produced a production foiling trimaran, the Hobie Trifoiler, the fastest production sailboat. Trifoilers have clocked speeds upward of thirty knots.
A new kayak design, called Flyak, has hydrofoils that lift the kayak enough to significantly reduce drag, allowing speeds of up to 27 km/h (17 mph). Some surfers have developed surfboards with hydrofoils called foilboards, specifically aimed at surfing big waves further out to sea.
Quadrofoil Q2 is a two-seater, four-foiled hydrofoil electrical leisure watercraft. Its initial design was set in 2012 and it has been available commercially since the end of 2016. Powered by a 5.2-kWh lithium-ion battery pack and propelled by a 5.5 kW motor, it reaches the top speed of 40 km/h and has 80 km of range.
The Manta5 Hydrofoiler XE-1 is a Hydrofoil E-bike, designed and built in New Zealand that has since been available commercially for pre-order since late 2017. Propelled by a 400 watt motor, it can reach speeds exceeding 14 km/h with a weight of 22 kg. A single charge of the battery lasts an hour for a rider weighing 85 kg.
Candela, a Swedish company, is producing a recreational hydrofoil powerboat, making strong claims for efficiency, performance, and range.
Hydrofoils are now widely used with kitesurfing, that is traction kites over water. Hydrofoils are a new trend in windsurfing - including the new Summer Olympic class, the IQFoil, and more recently with Wing foiling, which are essentially a kite with no strings, or a hand-held sail.
Soviet-built Voskhods are one of the most successful passenger hydrofoil designs. Manufactured in Soviet and later Ukrainian Crimea, they are in service in more than 20 countries. The most recent model, Voskhod-2M FFF, also known as Eurofoil, was built in Feodosiya for the Dutch public transport operator Connexxion.
Mid-2010s saw a Russian governmental program aimed at restoring passenger hydrofoil production. The Kometa 120M [ru], based on the earlier Kometa, Kolhida and Katran models, became the first to enter production, initially on Vympel [ru] factory in Rybinsk, and later on More shipyard in Feodosiya. Since 2018, the ships are running Sevastopol-Yalta and Sochi-Gelenzhik-Novorossiysk, with a Sevastopol-Sochi connection in the immediate plans in 2021. At the same time, the Alekseyev Bureau began building lighter, smaller Valday 45R [ru] hydrofoils, based on a widely successful Polesye [ru] model, at its own plant in Nizhny Novgorod, the relatively shallow-draft boats used on the Ob and the Volga. The Meteor 120R [ru], a development of the Meteor [ru], became the Valday's larger sibling, the first ship launched in Nizhny Novgorod in August 2021.
The Boeing 929 is widely used in Asia for passenger services, between Hong Kong and Macau and between the many islands of Japan, also on the Korean peninsula. The main user is Hong Kong private corp.
Current operators of hydrofoils include:
Currently, the main hydrofoil operator in Italy is Liberty Lines, which operates connections between the smaller Sicilian islands with Sicily and Calabria and between Trieste and some towns on the Croatian coast. SNAV operates connections between Naples and the smaller Campanian islands and - in the summer period - between Naples and the Aeolian Islands. In summer, Aliscost operates a connection between Salerno and some coastal towns of Campania and the Aeolian Islands. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hydrofoil is a lifting surface, or foil, that operates in water. They are similar in appearance and purpose to aerofoils used by aeroplanes. Boats that use hydrofoil technology are also simply termed hydrofoils. As a hydrofoil craft gains speed, the hydrofoils lift the boat's hull out of the water, decreasing drag and allowing greater speeds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The hydrofoil usually consists of a winglike structure mounted on struts below the hull, or across the keels of a catamaran in a variety of boats (see illustration). As a hydrofoil-equipped watercraft increases in speed, the hydrofoil elements below the hull(s) develop enough lift to raise the hull out of the water, which greatly reduces hull drag. This provides a corresponding increase in speed and fuel efficiency.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Wider adoption of hydrofoils is prevented by the increased complexity of building and maintaining them. Hydrofoils are generally prohibitively more expensive than conventional watercraft above a certain displacement, so most hydrofoil craft are relatively small, and are mainly used as high-speed passenger ferries, where the relatively high passenger fees can offset the high cost of the craft itself. However, the design is simple enough that there are many human-powered hydrofoil designs. Amateur experimentation and development of the concept is popular.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Since air and water are governed by similar fluid equations—albeit with different levels of viscosity, density, and compressibility—the hydrofoil and airfoil (both types of foil) create lift in identical ways. The foil shape moves smoothly through the water, deflecting the flow downward, which, following the Euler equations, exerts an upward force on the foil. This turning of the water creates higher pressure on the bottom of the foil and reduced pressure on the top. This pressure difference is accompanied by a velocity difference, via Bernoulli's principle, so the resulting flow field about the foil has a higher average velocity on one side than the other.",
"title": "Hydrodynamic mechanics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "When used as a lifting element on a hydrofoil boat, this upward force lifts the body of the vessel, decreasing drag and increasing speed. The lifting force eventually balances with the weight of the craft, reaching a point where the hydrofoil no longer lifts out of the water but remains in equilibrium. Since wave resistance and other impeding forces such as various types of drag (physics) on the hull are eliminated as the hull lifts clear, turbulence and drag act increasingly on the much smaller surface area of the hydrofoil, and decreasingly on the hull, creating a marked increase in speed.",
"title": "Hydrodynamic mechanics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Early hydrofoils used V-shaped foils. Hydrofoils of this type are known as \"surface-piercing\" since portions of the V-shape hydrofoils rise above the water surface when foilborne. Some modern hydrofoils use fully submerged inverted T-shape foils. Fully submerged hydrofoils are less subject to the effects of wave action, and, therefore, more stable at sea and more comfortable for crew and passengers. This type of configuration, however, is not self-stabilizing. The angle of attack on the hydrofoils must be adjusted continuously to changing conditions, a control process performed by sensors, a computer, and active surfaces.",
"title": "Hydrodynamic mechanics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first evidence of a hydrofoil on a vessel appears on a British patent granted in 1869 to Emmanuel Denis Farcot, a Parisian. He claimed that \"adapting to the sides and bottom of the vessel a series or inclined planes or wedge formed pieces, which as the vessel is driven forward will have the effect of lifting it in the water and reducing the draught.\". Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini began work on hydrofoils in 1898 and used a \"ladder\" foil system. Forlanini obtained patents in Britain and the United States for his ideas and designs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Between 1899 and 1901, British boat designer John Thornycroft worked on a series of models with a stepped hull and single bow foil. In 1909 his company built the full scale 22-foot (6.7 m) long boat, Miranda III. Driven by a 60 hp (45 kW) engine, it rode on a bowfoil and flat stern. The subsequent Miranda IV was credited with a speed of 35 kn (65 km/h; 40 mph).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In May 1904 a hydrofoil boat was described being tested on the River Seine \"in the neighbourhood of Paris\". This boat was designed by Comte de Lambert. This had 5 variable pitch fins on the hull beneath the water so inclined that when the boat begins to move \"the boat rises and the planes come to the surface\" with the result that \"it skims over the surface with little but the propellers beneath the surface\". The boat had twin hulls 18-foot long connected by a single deck 9-foot wide, and was fitted with a 14HP De Dion-Bouton motor, the boat was reported to have reached 20 mph. It was stated that \"The boat running practically on its fins resembles an aeroplane\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A March 1906 Scientific American article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. Alexander Graham Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane (now regarded as a distinct type, but also employing lift) a very significant achievement, and after reading the article began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. With his chief engineer Casey Baldwin, Bell began hydrofoil experiments in the summer of 1908. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models based on those designs, which led to the development of hydrofoil watercraft. During Bell's world tour of 1910–1911, Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in Italy, where they rode in his hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On returning to Bell's large laboratory at his Beinn Bhreagh estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, they experimented with a number of designs, culminating in Bell's HD-4. Using Renault engines, a top speed of 87 km/h (47 kn; 54 mph) was achieved, accelerating rapidly, taking waves without difficulty, steering well and showing good stability. Bell's report to the United States Navy permitted him to obtain two 260 kW (350 hp) engines. On 9 September 1919 the HD-4 set a world marine speed record of 114 km/h (62 kn; 71 mph), which stood for two decades. A full-scale replica of the HD-4 is viewable at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the early 1950s an English couple built the White Hawk, a jet-powered hydrofoil water craft, in an attempt to beat the absolute water speed record. However, in tests, White Hawk could barely top the record breaking speed of the 1919 HD-4. The designers had faced an engineering phenomenon that limits the top speed of even modern hydrofoils: cavitation disturbs the lift created by the foils as they move through the water at speed above 60 kn (110 km/h; 69 mph), bending the lifting foil.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "German engineer Hanns von Schertel worked on hydrofoils prior to and during World War II in Germany. After the war, the Russians captured Schertel's team. As Germany was not authorized to build fast boats, Schertel went to Switzerland, where he established the Supramar company. In 1952, Supramar launched the first commercial hydrofoil, PT10 \"Freccia d'Oro\" (Golden Arrow), in Lake Maggiore, between Switzerland and Italy. The PT10 is of surface-piercing type, it can carry 32 passengers and travel at 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). In 1968, the Bahraini born banker Hussain Najadi acquired the Supramar AG and expanded its operations into Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, Norway and the US. General Dynamics of the United States became its licensee, and the Pentagon awarded its first R&D naval research project in the field of supercavitation. Hitachi Shipbuilding of Osaka, Japan, was another licensee of Supramar, as well as many leading ship owners and shipyards in the OECD countries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "From 1952 to 1971, Supramar designed many models of hydrofoils: PT20, PT50, PT75, PT100 and PT150. All are of surface-piercing type, except the PT150 combining a surface-piercing foil forward with a fully submerged foil in the aft location. Over 200 of Supramar's design were built, most of them by Rodriguez in Sicily, Italy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During the same period the Soviet Union experimented extensively with hydrofoils, constructing hydrofoil river boats and ferries with streamlined designs during the cold war period and into the 1980s. Such vessels include the Raketa (1957) type, followed by the larger Meteor type and the smaller Voskhod type. One of the most successful Soviet designer/inventor in this area was Rostislav Alexeyev, who some consider the 'father' of the modern hydrofoil due to his 1950s era high speed hydrofoil designs. Later, circa 1970s, Alexeyev combined his hydrofoil experience with the surface effect principle to create the Ekranoplan. Extensive investment in this type of technology in the USSR resulted in the largest civil hydrofoil fleet in the world and the making of the Meteor type, the most successful hydrofoil in history, with more than 400 units built.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1961, SRI International issued a study on \"The Economic Feasibility of Passenger Hydrofoil Craft in US Domestic and Foreign Commerce\". Commercial use of hydrofoils in the US first appeared in 1961 when two commuter vessels were commissioned by Harry Gale Nye, Jr.'s North American Hydrofoils to service the route from Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey to the financial district of Lower Manhattan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A 17-ton German craft VS-6 Hydrofoil was designed and constructed in 1940, completed in 1941 for use as a mine layer, it was tested in the Baltic Sea, producing speeds of 47 knots. Tested against a standard E-boat over the next three years it performed well but was not brought into production. Being faster it could carry a higher payload and was capable of travelling over minefields but was prone to damage and noisier.",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In Canada during World War II, Baldwin worked on an experimental smoke laying hydrofoil (later called the Comox Torpedo) that was later superseded by other smoke-laying technology and an experimental target-towing hydrofoil. The forward two foil assemblies of what is believed to be the latter hydrofoil were salvaged in the mid-1960s from a derelict hulk in Baddeck, Nova Scotia by Colin MacGregor Stevens. These were donated to the Maritime Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia.",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Canadian Armed Forces built and tested a number of hydrofoils (e.g., Baddeck and two vessels named Bras d'Or), which culminated in the high-speed anti-submarine hydrofoil HMCS Bras d'Or in the late 1960s. However, the program was cancelled in the early 1970s due to a shift away from anti-submarine warfare by the Canadian military. The Bras d'Or was a surface-piercing type that performed well during her trials, reaching a maximum speed of 63 knots (117 km/h).",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The USSR introduced several hydrofoil-based fast attack craft into their navy, principally:",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The US Navy began experiments with hydrofoils in the mid-1950s by funding a sailing vessel that used hydrofoils to reach speeds in the 30 mph range. The XCH-4 (officially, Experimental Craft, Hydrofoil No. 4), designed by William P. Carl, exceeded speeds of 65 mph (56 kn; 105 km/h) and was mistaken for a seaplane due to its shape.",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The US Navy implemented a small number of combat hydrofoils, such as the Pegasus class, from 1977 through 1993. These hydrofoils were fast and well armed.",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Italian Navy has used six hydrofoils of the Sparviero class since the late 1970s. These were armed with a 76 mm gun and two missiles, and were capable of speeds up to 50 knots (93 km/h). Three similar boats were built for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.",
"title": "Military usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Several editions of the America's Cup have been raced with foiling yachts. In 2013 and 2017 respectively the AC72 and AC50 classes of catamaran, and in 2021 the AC75 class of foiling monohulls with canting arms.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The French experimental sail powered hydrofoil Hydroptère is the result of a research project that involves advanced engineering skills and technologies. In September 2009, the Hydroptère set new sailcraft world speed records in the 500 m category, with a speed of 51.36 knots (95.12 km/h) and in the 1 nautical mile (1852 m) category with a speed of 50.17 knots (92.91 km/h).",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The 500 m speed record for sailboats is currently held by the Vestas Sailrocket, an exotic design which operates in effect as a hydrofoil.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Another trimaran sailboat is the Windrider Rave. The Rave is a commercially available 17-foot (5.2 m), two person, hydrofoil trimaran, capable of reaching speeds of 40 kn (74 km/h). The boat was designed by Jim Brown.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Moth dinghy has evolved into some radical foil configurations.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Hobie Sailboats produced a production foiling trimaran, the Hobie Trifoiler, the fastest production sailboat. Trifoilers have clocked speeds upward of thirty knots.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A new kayak design, called Flyak, has hydrofoils that lift the kayak enough to significantly reduce drag, allowing speeds of up to 27 km/h (17 mph). Some surfers have developed surfboards with hydrofoils called foilboards, specifically aimed at surfing big waves further out to sea.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Quadrofoil Q2 is a two-seater, four-foiled hydrofoil electrical leisure watercraft. Its initial design was set in 2012 and it has been available commercially since the end of 2016. Powered by a 5.2-kWh lithium-ion battery pack and propelled by a 5.5 kW motor, it reaches the top speed of 40 km/h and has 80 km of range.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Manta5 Hydrofoiler XE-1 is a Hydrofoil E-bike, designed and built in New Zealand that has since been available commercially for pre-order since late 2017. Propelled by a 400 watt motor, it can reach speeds exceeding 14 km/h with a weight of 22 kg. A single charge of the battery lasts an hour for a rider weighing 85 kg.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Candela, a Swedish company, is producing a recreational hydrofoil powerboat, making strong claims for efficiency, performance, and range.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hydrofoils are now widely used with kitesurfing, that is traction kites over water. Hydrofoils are a new trend in windsurfing - including the new Summer Olympic class, the IQFoil, and more recently with Wing foiling, which are essentially a kite with no strings, or a hand-held sail.",
"title": "Sailing and sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Soviet-built Voskhods are one of the most successful passenger hydrofoil designs. Manufactured in Soviet and later Ukrainian Crimea, they are in service in more than 20 countries. The most recent model, Voskhod-2M FFF, also known as Eurofoil, was built in Feodosiya for the Dutch public transport operator Connexxion.",
"title": "Modern passenger boats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Mid-2010s saw a Russian governmental program aimed at restoring passenger hydrofoil production. The Kometa 120M [ru], based on the earlier Kometa, Kolhida and Katran models, became the first to enter production, initially on Vympel [ru] factory in Rybinsk, and later on More shipyard in Feodosiya. Since 2018, the ships are running Sevastopol-Yalta and Sochi-Gelenzhik-Novorossiysk, with a Sevastopol-Sochi connection in the immediate plans in 2021. At the same time, the Alekseyev Bureau began building lighter, smaller Valday 45R [ru] hydrofoils, based on a widely successful Polesye [ru] model, at its own plant in Nizhny Novgorod, the relatively shallow-draft boats used on the Ob and the Volga. The Meteor 120R [ru], a development of the Meteor [ru], became the Valday's larger sibling, the first ship launched in Nizhny Novgorod in August 2021.",
"title": "Modern passenger boats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Boeing 929 is widely used in Asia for passenger services, between Hong Kong and Macau and between the many islands of Japan, also on the Korean peninsula. The main user is Hong Kong private corp.",
"title": "Modern passenger boats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Current operators of hydrofoils include:",
"title": "Modern passenger boats"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Currently, the main hydrofoil operator in Italy is Liberty Lines, which operates connections between the smaller Sicilian islands with Sicily and Calabria and between Trieste and some towns on the Croatian coast. SNAV operates connections between Naples and the smaller Campanian islands and - in the summer period - between Naples and the Aeolian Islands. In summer, Aliscost operates a connection between Salerno and some coastal towns of Campania and the Aeolian Islands.",
"title": "Modern passenger boats"
}
]
| A hydrofoil is a lifting surface, or foil, that operates in water. They are similar in appearance and purpose to aerofoils used by aeroplanes. Boats that use hydrofoil technology are also simply termed hydrofoils. As a hydrofoil craft gains speed, the hydrofoils lift the boat's hull out of the water, decreasing drag and allowing greater speeds. | 2001-09-15T07:28:11Z | 2023-12-30T16:45:44Z | [
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13,763 | Henri Chopin | Henri Chopin (18 June 1922 – 3 January 2008) was a French avant-garde poet and musician.
Henri Chopin was born in Paris, 18 June 1922, one of three brothers, and the son of an accountant. Both his siblings died during the war. One was shot by a German soldier the day after an armistice was declared in Paris, the other while sabotaging a train.
Chopin was a French practitioner of concrete and sound poetry, well known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again. He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos.
Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, filmmaker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s.
In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, Peter Weibel and others a participant of the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London.
In 1964 he created OU, one of the most notable reviews of the second half of the 20th century, and he ran it until 1974. OU's contributors included William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Gil J. Wolman, François Dufrêne, Bernard Heidsieck, John Furnival, Tom Phillips, and the Austrian sculptor, writer and Dada pioneer Raoul Hausmann.
His books included Le Dernier Roman du Monde (1971), Portrait des 9 (1975), The Cosmographical Lobster (1976), Poésie Sonore Internationale (1979), Les Riches Heures de l'Alphabet (1992) and Graphpoemesmachine (2006). Henri also created many graphic works on his typewriter: the typewriter poems (also known as dactylopoèmes) feature in international art collections such as those of Francesco Conz in Verona, the Morra Foundation in Naples and Ruth and Marvin Sackner in Miami, and have been the subject of Australian, British and French retrospectives.
His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines Cinquième Saison and OU between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and Fluxus, Jiri Kolar, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Tom Phillips, Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as Raoul Hausmann and Marcel Janco to a fresh audience.
From 1968 to 1986 Henri Chopin lived in Ingatestone, Essex, but with the death of his wife Jean in 1985, he moved back to France.
In 2001 with his health failing, he returned to England, living with his daughter and family at Dereham, Norfolk until his death on 3 January 2008.
Chopin's poesie sonore aesthetics included a deliberate cultivation of a barbarian approach in production, using raw or crude sound manipulations to explore the area between distortion and intelligibility. He avoided high-quality, professional recording machines, preferring to use very basic equipment and bricolage methods, such as sticking matchsticks in the erase heads of a second-hand tape recorder, or manually interfering with the tape path. | [
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"text": "Henri Chopin (18 June 1922 – 3 January 2008) was a French avant-garde poet and musician.",
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"text": "Henri Chopin was born in Paris, 18 June 1922, one of three brothers, and the son of an accountant. Both his siblings died during the war. One was shot by a German soldier the day after an armistice was declared in Paris, the other while sabotaging a train.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Chopin was a French practitioner of concrete and sound poetry, well known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again. He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Chopin is significant above all for his diverse spread of creative achievement, as well as for his position as a focal point of contact for the international arts. As poet, painter, graphic artist and designer, typographer, independent publisher, filmmaker, broadcaster and arts promoter, Chopin's work is a barometer of the shifts in European media between the 1950s and the 1970s.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, Peter Weibel and others a participant of the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1964 he created OU, one of the most notable reviews of the second half of the 20th century, and he ran it until 1974. OU's contributors included William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Gil J. Wolman, François Dufrêne, Bernard Heidsieck, John Furnival, Tom Phillips, and the Austrian sculptor, writer and Dada pioneer Raoul Hausmann.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "His books included Le Dernier Roman du Monde (1971), Portrait des 9 (1975), The Cosmographical Lobster (1976), Poésie Sonore Internationale (1979), Les Riches Heures de l'Alphabet (1992) and Graphpoemesmachine (2006). Henri also created many graphic works on his typewriter: the typewriter poems (also known as dactylopoèmes) feature in international art collections such as those of Francesco Conz in Verona, the Morra Foundation in Naples and Ruth and Marvin Sackner in Miami, and have been the subject of Australian, British and French retrospectives.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "His publication and design of the classic audio-visual magazines Cinquième Saison and OU between 1958 and 1974, each issue containing recordings as well as texts, images, screenprints and multiples, brought together international contemporary writers and artists such as members of Lettrisme and Fluxus, Jiri Kolar, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Tom Phillips, Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs and many others, as well as bringing the work of survivors from earlier generations such as Raoul Hausmann and Marcel Janco to a fresh audience.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "From 1968 to 1986 Henri Chopin lived in Ingatestone, Essex, but with the death of his wife Jean in 1985, he moved back to France.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2001 with his health failing, he returned to England, living with his daughter and family at Dereham, Norfolk until his death on 3 January 2008.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Chopin's poesie sonore aesthetics included a deliberate cultivation of a barbarian approach in production, using raw or crude sound manipulations to explore the area between distortion and intelligibility. He avoided high-quality, professional recording machines, preferring to use very basic equipment and bricolage methods, such as sticking matchsticks in the erase heads of a second-hand tape recorder, or manually interfering with the tape path.",
"title": "Aesthetics"
}
]
| Henri Chopin was a French avant-garde poet and musician. | 2023-07-25T05:36:22Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Chopin |
|
13,764 | Hassium | Hassium is a chemical element; it has symbol Hs and atomic number 108. Hassium is highly radioactive: its most stable known isotopes have half-lives of approximately ten seconds. One of its isotopes, Hs, has magic numbers of both protons and neutrons for deformed nuclei, which gives it greater stability against spontaneous fission. Hassium is a superheavy element; it has been produced in a laboratory only in very small quantities by fusing heavy nuclei with lighter ones. Natural occurrences of the element have been hypothesised but never found.
In the periodic table of elements, hassium is a transactinide element, a member of the 7th period and group 8; it is thus the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that hassium behaves as the heavier homologue to osmium, reacting readily with oxygen to form a volatile tetroxide. The chemical properties of hassium have been only partly characterized, but they compare well with the chemistry of the other group 8 elements.
The principal innovation that led to the discovery of hassium was the technique of cold fusion, in which the fused nuclei did not differ by mass as much as in earlier techniques. It relied on greater stability of target nuclei, which in turn decreased excitation energy. This decreased the number of neutron ejections during synthesis, creating heavier, more stable resulting nuclei. The technique was first tested at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, in 1974. JINR used this technique to attempt synthesis of element 108 in 1978, in 1983, and in 1984; the latter experiment resulted in a claim that element 108 had been produced. Later in 1984, a synthesis claim followed from the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany. The 1993 report by the Transfermium Working Group, formed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, concluded that the report from Darmstadt was conclusive on its own whereas that from Dubna was not, and major credit was assigned to the German scientists. GSI formally announced they wished to name the element hassium after the German state of Hesse (Hassia in Latin), home to the facility in 1992; this name was accepted as final in 1997.
A superheavy atomic nucleus is created in a nuclear reaction that combines two other nuclei of unequal size into one; roughly, the more unequal the two nuclei in terms of mass, the greater the possibility that the two react. The material made of the heavier nuclei is made into a target, which is then bombarded by the beam of lighter nuclei. Two nuclei can only fuse into one if they approach each other closely enough; normally, nuclei (all positively charged) repel each other due to electrostatic repulsion. The strong interaction can overcome this repulsion but only within a very short distance from a nucleus; beam nuclei are thus greatly accelerated in order to make such repulsion insignificant compared to the velocity of the beam nucleus. The energy applied to the beam nuclei to accelerate them can cause them to reach speeds as high as one-tenth of the speed of light. However, if too much energy is applied, the beam nucleus can fall apart.
Coming close enough alone is not enough for two nuclei to fuse: when two nuclei approach each other, they usually remain together for approximately 10 seconds and then part ways (not necessarily in the same composition as before the reaction) rather than form a single nucleus. This happens because during the attempted formation of a single nucleus, electrostatic repulsion tears apart the nucleus that is being formed. Each pair of a target and a beam is characterized by its cross section—the probability that fusion will occur if two nuclei approach one another expressed in terms of the transverse area that the incident particle must hit in order for the fusion to occur. This fusion may occur as a result of the quantum effect in which nuclei can tunnel through electrostatic repulsion. If the two nuclei can stay close for past that phase, multiple nuclear interactions result in redistribution of energy and an energy equilibrium.
The resulting merger is an excited state—termed a compound nucleus—and thus it is very unstable. To reach a more stable state, the temporary merger may fission without formation of a more stable nucleus. Alternatively, the compound nucleus may eject a few neutrons, which would carry away the excitation energy; if the latter is not sufficient for a neutron expulsion, the merger would produce a gamma ray. This happens in approximately 10 seconds after the initial nuclear collision and results in creation of a more stable nucleus. The definition by the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) states that a chemical element can only be recognized as discovered if a nucleus of it has not decayed within 10 seconds. This value was chosen as an estimate of how long it takes a nucleus to acquire its outer electrons and thus display its chemical properties.
The beam passes through the target and reaches the next chamber, the separator; if a new nucleus is produced, it is carried with this beam. In the separator, the newly produced nucleus is separated from other nuclides (that of the original beam and any other reaction products) and transferred to a surface-barrier detector, which stops the nucleus. The exact location of the upcoming impact on the detector is marked; also marked are its energy and the time of the arrival. The transfer takes about 10 seconds; in order to be detected, the nucleus must survive this long. The nucleus is recorded again once its decay is registered, and the location, the energy, and the time of the decay are measured.
Stability of a nucleus is provided by the strong interaction. However, its range is very short; as nuclei become larger, its influence on the outermost nucleons (protons and neutrons) weakens. At the same time, the nucleus is torn apart by electrostatic repulsion between protons, and its range is not limited. Total binding energy provided by the strong interaction increases linearly with the number of nucleons, whereas electrostatic repulsion increases with the square of the atomic number, i.e. the latter grows faster and becomes increasingly important for heavy and superheavy nuclei. Superheavy nuclei are thus theoretically predicted and have so far been observed to predominantly decay via decay modes that are caused by such repulsion: alpha decay and spontaneous fission. Almost all alpha emitters have over 210 nucleons, and the lightest nuclide primarily undergoing spontaneous fission has 238. In both decay modes, nuclei are inhibited from decaying by corresponding energy barriers for each mode, but they can be tunnelled through.
Alpha particles are commonly produced in radioactive decays because mass of an alpha particle per nucleon is small enough to leave some energy for the alpha particle to be used as kinetic energy to leave the nucleus. Spontaneous fission is caused by electrostatic repulsion tearing the nucleus apart and produces various nuclei in different instances of identical nuclei fissioning. As the atomic number increases, spontaneous fission rapidly becomes more important: spontaneous fission partial half-lives decrease by 23 orders of magnitude from uranium (element 92) to nobelium (element 102), and by 30 orders of magnitude from thorium (element 90) to fermium (element 100). The earlier liquid drop model thus suggested that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly due to disappearance of the fission barrier for nuclei with about 280 nucleons. The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about 300 nucleons would form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives. Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional stability from shell effects. Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei, as well as those closer to the expected island, have shown greater than previously anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell effects on nuclei.
Alpha decays are registered by the emitted alpha particles, and the decay products are easy to determine before the actual decay; if such a decay or a series of consecutive decays produces a known nucleus, the original product of a reaction can be easily determined. (That all decays within a decay chain were indeed related to each other is established by the location of these decays, which must be in the same place.) The known nucleus can be recognized by the specific characteristics of decay it undergoes such as decay energy (or more specifically, the kinetic energy of the emitted particle). Spontaneous fission, however, produces various nuclei as products, so the original nuclide cannot be determined from its daughters.
Nuclear reactions used in the 1960s resulted in high excitation energies that required expulsion of four or five neutrons; these reactions used targets made of elements with high atomic numbers to maximize the size difference between the two nuclei in a reaction. While this increased the chance of fusion due to the lower electrostatic repulsion between the target and the projectile, the formed compound nuclei often broke apart and did not survive to form a new element. Moreover, fusion processes inevitably produce neutron-poor nuclei, as heavier elements require more neutrons per proton to maximize stability; therefore, the necessary ejection of neutrons results in final products with typically have shorter lifetimes. As such, light beams (six to ten protons) allowed synthesis of elements only up to 106.
To advance to heavier elements, Soviet physicist Yuri Oganessian at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, proposed a different mechanism, in which the bombarded nucleus would be lead-208, which has magic numbers of protons and neutrons, or another nucleus close to it. Each proton and neutron has a fixed value of rest energy; those of all protons are equal and so are those of all neutrons. In a nucleus, some of this energy is diverted to binding protons and neutrons; if a nucleus has a magic number of protons and/or neutrons, then even more of its rest energy is diverted, which gives the nuclide additional stability. This additional stability requires more energy for an external nucleus to break the existing one and penetrate it. More energy diverted to binding nucleons means less rest energy, which in turn means less mass (mass is proportional to rest energy). More equal atomic numbers of the reacting nuclei result in greater electrostatic repulsion between them, but the lower mass excess of the target nucleus balances it. This leaves less excitation energy for the newly created compound nucleus, which necessitates fewer neutron ejections to reach a stable state. Because of this energy difference, the former mechanism became known as "hot fusion" and the latter as "cold fusion".
Cold fusion was first declared successful in 1974 at JINR, when it was tested for synthesis of the yet-undiscovered element 106. These new nuclei were projected to decay via spontaneous fission. The physicists at JINR concluded element 106 was produced in the experiment because no fissioning nucleus known at the time showed parameters of fission similar to what was observed during the experiment and because changing either of the two nuclei in the reactions negated the observed effects. Physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL; originally Radiation Laboratory, RL, and later Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL) of the University of California in Berkeley, California, United States, also expressed great interest in the new technique. When asked about how far this new method could go and if lead targets were a physics' Klondike, Oganessian responded, "Klondike may be an exaggeration [...] But soon, we will try to get elements 107 ... 108 in these reactions."
The synthesis of element 108 was first attempted in 1978 by a research team led by Oganessian at the JINR. The team used a reaction that would generate element 108, specifically, the isotope 108, from fusion of radium (specifically, the isotope 88Ra) and calcium (20Ca). The researchers were uncertain in interpreting their data, and their paper did not unambiguously claim to have discovered the element. The same year, another team at JINR investigated the possibility of synthesis of element 108 in reactions between lead (82Pb) and iron (26Fe); they were uncertain in interpreting the data, suggesting the possibility that element 108 had not been created.
In 1983, new experiments were performed at JINR. The experiments probably resulted in the synthesis of element 108; bismuth (83Bi) was bombarded with manganese (25Mn) to obtain 108, lead (82Pb, 82Pb) was bombarded with iron (26Fe) to obtain 108, and californium (98Cf) was bombarded with neon (10Ne) to obtain 108. These experiments were not claimed as a discovery and Oganessian announced them in a conference rather than in a written report.
In 1984, JINR researchers in Dubna performed experiments set up identically to the previous ones; they bombarded bismuth and lead targets with ions of lighter elements manganese and iron, respectively. Twenty-one spontaneous fission events were recorded; the researchers concluded they were caused by 108.
Later in 1984, a research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI; Institute for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany, attempted to create element 108. The team bombarded a lead (82Pb) target with accelerated iron (26Fe) nuclei. GSI's experiment to create element 108 was delayed until after their creation of element 109 in 1982, as prior calculations had suggested that even–even isotopes of element 108 would have spontaneous fission half-lives of less than one microsecond, making them difficult to detect and identify. The element 108 experiment finally went ahead after 109 had been synthesized and was found to decay by alpha emission, suggesting that isotopes of element 108 would do likewise, and this was corroborated by an experiment aimed at synthesizing isotopes of element 106. GSI reported synthesis of three atoms of 108. Two years later, they reported synthesis of one atom of the even–even 108.
In 1985, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) formed the Transfermium Working Group (TWG) to assess discoveries and establish final names for elements with atomic numbers greater than 100. The party held meetings with delegates from the three competing institutes; in 1990, they established criteria for recognition of an element and in 1991, they finished the work of assessing discoveries and disbanded. These results were published in 1993.
According to the report, the 1984 works from JINR and GSI simultaneously and independently established synthesis of element 108. Of the two 1984 works, the one from GSI was said to be sufficient as a discovery on its own. The JINR work, which preceded the GSI one, "very probably" displayed synthesis of element 108. However, that was determined in retrospect given the work from Darmstadt; the JINR work focused on chemically identifying remote granddaughters of element 108 isotopes (which could not exclude the possibility that these daughter isotopes had other progenitors), while the GSI work clearly identified the decay path of those element 108 isotopes. The report concluded that the major credit should be awarded to GSI. In written responses to this ruling, both JINR and GSI agreed with its conclusions. In the same response, GSI confirmed that they and JINR were able to resolve all conflicts between them.
Historically, a newly discovered element was named by its discoverer. The first regulation came in 1947, when IUPAC decided naming required regulation in case there are conflicting names. These matters were to be resolved by the Commission of Inorganic Nomenclature and the Commission of Atomic Weights. They would review the names in case of a conflict and select one; the decision would be based on a number of factors, such as usage, and would not be an indicator of priority of a claim. The two commissions would recommend a name to the IUPAC Council, which would be the final authority. The discoverers held the right to name an element, but their name would be subject to approval by IUPAC. The Commission of Atomic Weights distanced itself from element naming in most cases.
Under Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, hassium would be known as "eka-osmium", as in "the first element below osmium in the periodic table" (from Sanskrit eka meaning "one"). In 1979, IUPAC published recommendations according to which the element was to be called "unniloctium" and assigned the corresponding symbol of "Uno", a systematic element name as a placeholder until the element was discovered and the discovery then confirmed, and a permanent name was decided. Although these recommendations were widely followed in the chemical community, the competing physicists in the field ignored them. They either called it "element 108", with the symbols E108, (108) or 108, or used the proposed name "hassium".
In 1990, in an attempt to break a deadlock in establishing priority of discovery and naming of several elements, IUPAC reaffirmed in its nomenclature of inorganic chemistry that after existence of an element was established, the discoverers could propose a name. (In addition, the Commission of Atomic Weights was excluded from the naming process.) The first publication on criteria for an element discovery, released in 1991, specified the need for recognition by TWG.
Armbruster and his colleagues, the officially recognized German discoverers, held a naming ceremony for the elements 107 through 109, which had all been recognized as discovered by GSI, on 7 September 1992. For element 108, the scientists proposed the name "hassium". It is derived from the Latin name Hassia for the German state of Hesse where the institute is located. This name was proposed to IUPAC in a written response to their ruling on priority of discovery claims of elements, signed 29 September 1992.
The process of naming of element 108 was a part of a larger process of naming a number of elements starting with element 101; three teams—JINR, GSI, and LBL—claimed discoveries of several elements and the right to name those elements. Sometimes, these claims clashed; since a discoverer was considered entitled to naming of an element, conflicts over priority of discovery often resulted in conflicts over names of these new elements. These conflicts became known as the Transfermium Wars. Different suggestions to name the whole set of elements from 101 onward and they occasionally assigned names suggested by one team to be used for elements discovered by another. However, not all suggestions were met with equal approval; the teams openly protested naming proposals on several occasions.
In 1994, IUPAC Commission on Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry recommended that element 108 be named "hahnium" (Hn) after the German physicist Otto Hahn so elements named after Hahn and Lise Meitner (it was recommended element 109 should be named meitnerium, following GSI's suggestion) would be next to each other, honouring their joint discovery of nuclear fission; IUPAC commented that they felt the German suggestion was obscure. GSI protested, saying this proposal contradicted the long-standing convention of giving the discoverer the right to suggest a name; the American Chemical Society supported GSI. The name "hahnium", albeit with the different symbol Ha, had already been proposed and used by the American scientists for element 105, for which they had a discovery dispute with JINR; they thus protested the confusing scrambling of names. Following the uproar, IUPAC formed an ad hoc committee of representatives from the national adhering organizations of the three countries home to the competing institutions; they produced a new set of names in 1995. Element 108 was again named hahnium; this proposal was also retracted. The final compromise was reached in 1996 and published in 1997; element 108 was named hassium (Hs). Simultaneously, the name dubnium (Db; from Dubna, the JINR location) was assigned to element 105, and the name hahnium was not used for any element.
The official justification for this naming, alongside that of darmstadtium for element 110, was that it completed a set of geographic names for the location of the GSI; this set had been initiated by 19th-century names europium and germanium. This set would serve as a response to earlier naming of americium, californium, and berkelium for elements discovered in Berkeley. Armbruster commented on this, "this bad tradition was established by Berkeley. We wanted to do it for Europe." Later, when commenting on the naming of element 112, Armbruster said, "I did everything to ensure that we do not continue with German scientists and German towns."
Hassium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. As of 2019, the quantity of all hassium ever produced was on the order of hundreds of atoms. Thirteen isotopes with mass numbers ranging from 263 to 277 (with the exceptions of 274 and 276) have been reported, four of which—hassium-265, -266, -267, and -277—have known metastable states, although that of hassium-277 is unconfirmed. Most of these isotopes decay predominantly through alpha decay; this is the most common for all isotopes for which comprehensive decay characteristics are available, the only exception being hassium-277, which undergoes spontaneous fission. Lighter isotopes were usually synthesized by direct fusion between two lighter nuclei, whereas heavier isotopes were typically observed as decay products of nuclei with larger atomic numbers.
Atomic nuclei have well-established nuclear shells, and the existence of these shells provides nuclei with additional stability. If a nucleus has certain numbers of protons or neutrons, called magic numbers, that complete certain nuclear shells, then the nucleus is even more stable against decay. The highest known magic numbers are 82 for protons and 126 for neutrons. This notion is sometimes expanded to include additional numbers between those magic numbers, which also provide some additional stability and indicate closure of "sub-shells". In contrast to the better-known lighter nuclei, superheavy nuclei are deformed. Until the 1960s, the liquid drop model was the dominant explanation for nuclear structure. It suggested that the fission barrier would disappear for nuclei with about 280 nucleons. It was thus thought that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly before nuclei could form a structure that could stabilize them; it appeared that nuclei with Z ≈ 103 were too heavy to exist for a considerable length of time.
The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about three hundred nucleons would form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives, and the next doubly magic nucleus (having magic numbers of both protons and neutrons) is expected to lie in the center of the island of stability in the vicinity of Z = 110–114 and the predicted magic neutron number N = 184. Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional stability from shell effects. The addition to the stability against the spontaneous fission should be particularly great against spontaneous fission, although increase in stability against the alpha decay would also be pronounced. The center of the region on a chart of nuclides that would correspond to this stability for deformed nuclei was determined as Hs, with 108 expected to be a magic number for protons for deformed nuclei—nuclei that are far from spherical—and 162 a magic number for neutrons for such nuclei. Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei, as well as those closer to the expected island, have shown greater than previously anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell effects on nuclei.
Theoretical models predict a region of instability for some hassium isotopes to lie around A = 275 and N = 168–170, which is between the predicted neutron shell closures at N = 162 for deformed nuclei and N = 184 for spherical nuclei. Nuclides within this region are predicted to have low fission barrier heights, resulting in short partial half-lives toward spontaneous fission. This prediction is supported by the observed eleven-millisecond half-life of Hs and the five-millisecond half-life of the neighbouring isobar Mt because the hindrance factors from the odd nucleon were shown to be much lower than otherwise expected. The measured half-lives are even lower than those originally predicted for the even–even Hs and Ds, which suggests a gap in stability away from the shell closures and perhaps a weakening of the shell closures in this region.
In 1991, Polish physicists Zygmunt Patyk and Adam Sobiczewski predicted that 108 is a proton magic number for deformed nuclei and 162 is a neutron magic number for such nuclei. This means such nuclei are permanently deformed in their ground state but have high, narrow fission barriers to further deformation and hence relatively long life-times toward spontaneous fission. Computational prospects for shell stabilization for Hs made it a promising candidate for a deformed doubly magic nucleus. Experimental data is scarce, but the existing data is interpreted by the researchers to support the assignment of N = 162 as a magic number. In particular, this conclusion was drawn from the decay data of Hs, Hs, and Hs. In 1997, Polish physicist Robert Smolańczuk calculated that the isotope Hs may be the most stable superheavy nucleus against alpha decay and spontaneous fission as a consequence of the predicted N = 184 shell closure.
Hassium is not known to occur naturally on Earth; the half-lives of all its known isotopes are short enough that no primordial hassium would have survived to the present day. This does not rule out the possibility of the existence of unknown, longer-lived isotopes or nuclear isomers, some of which could still exist in trace quantities if they are long-lived enough. As early as 1914, German physicist Richard Swinne proposed element 108 as a source of X-rays in the Greenland ice sheet. Although Swinne was unable to verify this observation and thus did not claim discovery, he proposed in 1931 the existence of "regions" of long-lived transuranic elements, including one around Z = 108.
In 1963, Soviet geologist and physicist Viktor Cherdyntsev, who had previously claimed the existence of primordial curium-247, claimed to have discovered element 108—specifically the 108 isotope, which supposedly had a half-life of 400 to 500 million years—in natural molybdenite and suggested the provisional name sergenium (symbol Sg); this name takes its origin from the name for the Silk Road and was explained as "coming from Kazakhstan" for it. His rationale for claiming that sergenium was the heavier homologue to osmium was that minerals supposedly containing sergenium formed volatile oxides when boiled in nitric acid, similarly to osmium.
Cherdyntsev's findings were criticized by Soviet physicist Vladimir Kulakov on the grounds that some of the properties Cherdyntsev claimed sergenium had were inconsistent with the then-current nuclear physics. The chief questions raised by Kulakov were that the claimed alpha decay energy of sergenium was many orders of magnitude lower than expected and the half-life given was eight orders of magnitude shorter than what would be predicted for a nuclide alpha-decaying with the claimed decay energy. At the same time, a corrected half-life in the region of 10 years would be impossible because it would imply the samples contained about a hundred milligrams of sergenium. In 2003, it was suggested that the observed alpha decay with energy 4.5 MeV could be due to a low-energy and strongly enhanced transition between different hyperdeformed states of a hassium isotope around Hs, thus suggesting that the existence of superheavy elements in nature was at least possible, although unlikely.
In 2006, Russian geologist Alexei Ivanov hypothesized that an isomer of Hs might have a half-life of around (2.5±0.5)×10 years, which would explain the observation of alpha particles with energies of around 4.4 MeV in some samples of molybdenite and osmiridium. This isomer of Hs could be produced from the beta decay of Bh and Sg, which, being homologous to rhenium and molybdenum respectively, should occur in molybdenite along with rhenium and molybdenum if they occurred in nature. Because hassium is homologous to osmium, it should occur along with osmium in osmiridium if it occurs in nature. The decay chains of Bh and Sg are hypothetical and the predicted half-life of this hypothetical hassium isomer is not long enough for any sufficient quantity to remain on Earth. It is possible that more Hs may be deposited on the Earth as the Solar System travels through the spiral arms of the Milky Way; this would explain excesses of plutonium-239 found on the ocean floors of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Finland. However, minerals enriched with Hs are predicted to have excesses of its daughters uranium-235 and lead-207; they would also have different proportions of elements that are formed during spontaneous fission, such as krypton, zirconium, and xenon. The natural occurrence of hassium in minerals such as molybdenite and osmiride is theoretically possible, but very unlikely.
In 2004, JINR started a search for natural hassium in the Modane Underground Laboratory in Modane, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France; this was done underground to avoid interference and false positives from cosmic rays. In 2008–09, an experiment run in the laboratory resulted in detection of several registered events of neutron multiplicity (number of emitted free neutrons after a nucleus hit has been hit by a neutron and fissioned) above three in natural osmium, and in 2012–13, these findings were reaffirmed in another experiment run in the laboratory. These results hinted natural hassium could potentially exist in nature in amounts that allow its detection by the means of analytical chemistry, but this conclusion is based on an explicit assumption that there is a long-lived hassium isotope to which the registered events could be attributed.
Since Hs may be particularly stable against alpha decay and spontaneous fission, it was considered as a candidate to exist in nature. This nuclide, however, is predicted to be very unstable toward beta decay and any beta-stable isotopes of hassium such as Hs would be too unstable in the other decay channels to be observed in nature. A 2012 search for Hs in nature along with its homologue osmium at the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory in Garching, Bavaria, Germany, was unsuccessful, setting an upper limit to its abundance at 3×10 grams of hassium per gram of osmium.
Various calculations suggest hassium should be the heaviest group 8 element so far, consistently with the periodic law. Its properties should generally match those expected for a heavier homologue of osmium; as is the case for all transactinides, a few deviations are expected to arise from relativistic effects.
Very few properties of hassium or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that hassium (and its parents) decays very quickly. A few singular chemistry-related properties have been measured, such as enthalpy of adsorption of hassium tetroxide, but properties of hassium metal remain unknown and only predictions are available.
Relativistic effects on hassium should arise due to the high charge of its nuclei, which causes the electrons around the nucleus to move faster—so fast their velocity becomes comparable to the speed of light. There are three main effects: the direct relativistic effect, the indirect relativistic effect, and spin–orbit splitting. (The existing calculations do not account for Breit interactions, but those are negligible, and their omission can only result in an uncertainty of the current calculations of no more than 2%.)
As atomic number increases, so does the electrostatic attraction between an electron and the nucleus. This causes the velocity of the electron to increase, which leads to an increase in its mass. This in turn leads to contraction of the atomic orbitals, most specifically the s and p1/2 orbitals. Their electrons become more closely attached to the atom and harder to pull from the nucleus. This is the direct relativistic effect. It was originally thought to be strong only for the innermost electrons, but was later established to significantly influence valence electrons as well.
Since the s and p1/2 orbitals are closer to the nucleus, they take a bigger portion of the electric charge of the nucleus on themselves ("shield" it). This leaves less charge for attraction of the remaining electrons, whose orbitals therefore expand, making them easier to pull from the nucleus. This is the indirect relativistic effect. As a result of the combination of the direct and indirect relativistic effects, the Hs ion, compared to the neutral atom, lacks a 6d electron, rather than a 7s electron. In comparison, Os lacks a 6s electron compared to the neutral atom. The ionic radius (in oxidation state +8) of hassium is greater than that of osmium because of the relativistic expansion of the 6p3/2 orbitals, which are the outermost orbitals for an Hs ion (although in practice such highly charged ions would be too polarised in chemical environments to have much reality).
There are several kinds of electronic orbitals, denoted by the letters s, p, d, and f (g orbitals are expected to start being chemically active among elements after element 120). Each of these corresponds to an azimuthal quantum number l: s to 0, p to 1, d to 2, and f to 3. Every electron also corresponds to a spin quantum number s, which may equal either +1/2 or −1/2. Thus, the total angular momentum quantum number j = l + s is equal to j = l ± 1/2 (except for l = 0, for which for both electrons in each orbital j = 0 + 1/2 = 1/2). Spin of an electron relativistically interacts with its orbit, and this interaction leads to a split of a subshell into two with different energies (the one with j = l − 1/2 is lower in energy and thus these electrons more difficult to extract): for instance, of the six 6p electrons, two become 6p1/2 and four become 6p3/2. This is the spin–orbit splitting (sometimes also referred to as subshell splitting or jj coupling). It is most visible with p electrons, which do not play an important role in the chemistry of hassium, but those for d and f electrons are within the same order of magnitude (quantitatively, spin–orbit splitting in expressed in energy units, such as electronvolts).
These relativistic effects are responsible for the expected increase of the ionization energy, decrease of the electron affinity, and increase of stability of the +8 oxidation state compared to osmium; without them, the trends would be reversed. Relativistic effects decrease the atomization energies of the compounds of hassium because the spin–orbit splitting of the d orbital lowers binding energy between electrons and the nucleus and because relativistic effects decrease ionic character in bonding.
The previous members of group 8 have relatively high melting points: Fe, 1538 °C; Ru, 2334 °C; Os, 3033 °C. Much like them, hassium is predicted to be a solid at room temperature although its melting point has not been precisely calculated. Hassium should crystallize in the hexagonal close-packed structure (/a = 1.59), similarly to its lighter congener osmium. Pure metallic hassium is calculated to have a bulk modulus (resistance to uniform compression) of 450 GPa, comparable with that of diamond, 442 GPa. Hassium is expected to be one of the densest of the 118 known elements, with a predicted density of 27–29 g/cm vs. the 22.59 g/cm measured for osmium.
The atomic radius of hassium is expected to be around 126 pm. Due to the relativistic stabilization of the 7s orbital and destabilization of the 6d orbital, the Hs ion is predicted to have an electron configuration of [Rn] 5f 6d 7s, giving up a 6d electron instead of a 7s electron, which is the opposite of the behaviour of its lighter homologues. The Hs ion is expected to have an electron configuration of [Rn] 5f 6d 7s, analogous to that calculated for the Os ion. In chemical compounds, hassium is calculated to display bonding characteristic for a d-block element, whose bonding will be primarily executed by 6d3/2 and 6d5/2 orbitals; compared to the elements from the previous periods, 7s, 6p1/2, 6p3/2, and 7p1/2 orbitals should be more important.
Hassium is the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals and is expected to be much like the platinum group metals. Some of these properties were confirmed by gas-phase chemistry experiments. The group 8 elements portray a wide variety of oxidation states but ruthenium and osmium readily portray their group oxidation state of +8; this state becomes more stable down the group. This oxidation state is extremely rare: among stable elements, only ruthenium, osmium, and xenon are able to attain it in reasonably stable compounds. Hassium is expected to follow its congeners and have a stable +8 state, but like them it should show lower stable oxidation states such as +6, +4, +3, and +2. Hassium(IV) is expected to be more stable than hassium(VIII) in aqueous solution. Hassium should be a rather noble metal. The standard reduction potential for the Hs/Hs couple is expected to be 0.4 V.
The group 8 elements show a distinctive oxide chemistry. All the lighter members have known or hypothetical tetroxides, MO4. Their oxidizing power decreases as one descends the group. FeO4 is not known due to its extraordinarily large electron affinity—the amount of energy released when an electron is added to a neutral atom or molecule to form a negative ion—which results in the formation of the well-known oxyanion ferrate(VI), FeO4. Ruthenium tetroxide, RuO4, which is formed by oxidation of ruthenium(VI) in acid, readily undergoes reduction to ruthenate(VI), RuO4. Oxidation of ruthenium metal in air forms the dioxide, RuO2. In contrast, osmium burns to form the stable tetroxide, OsO4, which complexes with the hydroxide ion to form an osmium(VIII) -ate complex, [OsO4(OH)2]. Therefore, hassium should behave as a heavier homologue of osmium by forming of a stable, very volatile tetroxide HsO4, which undergoes complexation with hydroxide to form a hassate(VIII), [HsO4(OH)2]. Ruthenium tetroxide and osmium tetroxide are both volatile due to their symmetrical tetrahedral molecular geometry and because they are charge-neutral; hassium tetroxide should similarly be a very volatile solid. The trend of the volatilities of the group 8 tetroxides is experimentally known to be RuO4 < OsO4 > HsO4, which confirms the calculated results. In particular, the calculated enthalpies of adsorption—the energy required for the adhesion of atoms, molecules, or ions from a gas, liquid, or dissolved solid to a surface—of HsO4, −(45.4 ± 1) kJ/mol on quartz, agrees very well with the experimental value of −(46 ± 2) kJ/mol.
The first goal for chemical investigation was the formation of the tetroxide; it was chosen because ruthenium and osmium form volatile tetroxides, being the only transition metals to display a stable compound in the +8 oxidation state. Despite this selection for gas-phase chemical studies being clear from the beginning, chemical characterization of hassium was considered a difficult task for a long time. Although hassium isotopes were first synthesized in 1984, it was not until 1996 that a hassium isotope long-lived enough to allow chemical studies was synthesized. Unfortunately, this hassium isotope, Hs, was synthesized indirectly from the decay of Cn; not only are indirect synthesis methods not favourable for chemical studies, but the reaction that produced the isotope Cn had a low yield—its cross section was only 1 pb—and thus did not provide enough hassium atoms for a chemical investigation. Direct synthesis of Hs and Hs in the reaction Cm(Mg,xn)Hs (x = 4 or 5) appeared more promising because the cross section for this reaction was somewhat larger at 7 pb. This yield was still around ten times lower than that for the reaction used for the chemical characterization of bohrium. New techniques for irradiation, separation, and detection had to be introduced before hassium could be successfully characterized chemically.
Ruthenium and osmium have very similar chemistry due to the lanthanide contraction but iron shows some differences from them; for example, although ruthenium and osmium form stable tetroxides in which the metal is in the +8 oxidation state, iron does not. In preparation for the chemical characterization of hassium, research focused on ruthenium and osmium rather than iron because hassium was expected to be similar to ruthenium and osmium, as the predicted data on hassium closely matched that of those two.
The first chemistry experiments were performed using gas thermochromatography in 2001, using the synthetic osmium radioisotopes Os and Os as a reference. During the experiment, seven hassium atoms were synthesized using the reactions Cm(Mg,5n)Hs and Cm(Mg,4n)Hs. They were then thermalized and oxidized in a mixture of helium and oxygen gases to form hassium tetroxide molecules.
The measured deposition temperature of hassium tetroxide was higher than that of osmium tetroxide, which indicated the former was the less volatile one, and this placed hassium firmly in group 8. The enthalpy of adsorption for HsO4 measured, −46±2 kJ/mol, was significantly lower than the predicted value, −36.7±1.5 kJ/mol, indicating OsO4 is more volatile than HsO4, contradicting earlier calculations that implied they should have very similar volatilities. For comparison, the value for OsO4 is −39±1 kJ/mol. (The calculations that yielded a closer match to the experimental data came after the experiment, in 2008.) It is possible hassium tetroxide interacts differently with silicon nitride than with silicon dioxide, the chemicals used for the detector; further research is required to establish whether there is a difference between such interactions and whether it has influenced the measurements. Such research would include more accurate measurements of the nuclear properties of Hs and comparisons with RuO4 in addition to OsO4.
In 2004, scientists reacted hassium tetroxide and sodium hydroxide to form sodium hassate(VIII), a reaction that is well known with osmium. This was the first acid-base reaction with a hassium compound, forming sodium hassate(VIII):
The team from the University of Mainz planned in 2008 to study the electrodeposition of hassium atoms using the new TASCA facility at GSI. Their aim was to use the reaction Ra(Ca,4n)Hs. Scientists at GSI were hoping to use TASCA to study the synthesis and properties of the hassium(II) compound hassocene, Hs(C5H5)2, using the reaction Ra(Ca,xn). This compound is analogous to the lighter compounds ferrocene, ruthenocene, and osmocene, and is expected to have the two cyclopentadienyl rings in an eclipsed conformation like ruthenocene and osmocene and not in a staggered conformation like ferrocene. Hassocene, which is expected to be a stable and highly volatile compound, was chosen because it has hassium in the low formal oxidation state of +2—although the bonding between the metal and the rings is mostly covalent in metallocenes—rather than the high +8 state that had previously been investigated, and relativistic effects were expected to be stronger in the lower oxidation state. The highly symmetrical structure of hassocene and its low number of atoms make relativistic calculations easier. As of 2021, there are no experimental reports of hassocene. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hassium is a chemical element; it has symbol Hs and atomic number 108. Hassium is highly radioactive: its most stable known isotopes have half-lives of approximately ten seconds. One of its isotopes, Hs, has magic numbers of both protons and neutrons for deformed nuclei, which gives it greater stability against spontaneous fission. Hassium is a superheavy element; it has been produced in a laboratory only in very small quantities by fusing heavy nuclei with lighter ones. Natural occurrences of the element have been hypothesised but never found.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In the periodic table of elements, hassium is a transactinide element, a member of the 7th period and group 8; it is thus the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that hassium behaves as the heavier homologue to osmium, reacting readily with oxygen to form a volatile tetroxide. The chemical properties of hassium have been only partly characterized, but they compare well with the chemistry of the other group 8 elements.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The principal innovation that led to the discovery of hassium was the technique of cold fusion, in which the fused nuclei did not differ by mass as much as in earlier techniques. It relied on greater stability of target nuclei, which in turn decreased excitation energy. This decreased the number of neutron ejections during synthesis, creating heavier, more stable resulting nuclei. The technique was first tested at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, in 1974. JINR used this technique to attempt synthesis of element 108 in 1978, in 1983, and in 1984; the latter experiment resulted in a claim that element 108 had been produced. Later in 1984, a synthesis claim followed from the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany. The 1993 report by the Transfermium Working Group, formed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, concluded that the report from Darmstadt was conclusive on its own whereas that from Dubna was not, and major credit was assigned to the German scientists. GSI formally announced they wished to name the element hassium after the German state of Hesse (Hassia in Latin), home to the facility in 1992; this name was accepted as final in 1997.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "A superheavy atomic nucleus is created in a nuclear reaction that combines two other nuclei of unequal size into one; roughly, the more unequal the two nuclei in terms of mass, the greater the possibility that the two react. The material made of the heavier nuclei is made into a target, which is then bombarded by the beam of lighter nuclei. Two nuclei can only fuse into one if they approach each other closely enough; normally, nuclei (all positively charged) repel each other due to electrostatic repulsion. The strong interaction can overcome this repulsion but only within a very short distance from a nucleus; beam nuclei are thus greatly accelerated in order to make such repulsion insignificant compared to the velocity of the beam nucleus. The energy applied to the beam nuclei to accelerate them can cause them to reach speeds as high as one-tenth of the speed of light. However, if too much energy is applied, the beam nucleus can fall apart.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Coming close enough alone is not enough for two nuclei to fuse: when two nuclei approach each other, they usually remain together for approximately 10 seconds and then part ways (not necessarily in the same composition as before the reaction) rather than form a single nucleus. This happens because during the attempted formation of a single nucleus, electrostatic repulsion tears apart the nucleus that is being formed. Each pair of a target and a beam is characterized by its cross section—the probability that fusion will occur if two nuclei approach one another expressed in terms of the transverse area that the incident particle must hit in order for the fusion to occur. This fusion may occur as a result of the quantum effect in which nuclei can tunnel through electrostatic repulsion. If the two nuclei can stay close for past that phase, multiple nuclear interactions result in redistribution of energy and an energy equilibrium.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The resulting merger is an excited state—termed a compound nucleus—and thus it is very unstable. To reach a more stable state, the temporary merger may fission without formation of a more stable nucleus. Alternatively, the compound nucleus may eject a few neutrons, which would carry away the excitation energy; if the latter is not sufficient for a neutron expulsion, the merger would produce a gamma ray. This happens in approximately 10 seconds after the initial nuclear collision and results in creation of a more stable nucleus. The definition by the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party (JWP) states that a chemical element can only be recognized as discovered if a nucleus of it has not decayed within 10 seconds. This value was chosen as an estimate of how long it takes a nucleus to acquire its outer electrons and thus display its chemical properties.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The beam passes through the target and reaches the next chamber, the separator; if a new nucleus is produced, it is carried with this beam. In the separator, the newly produced nucleus is separated from other nuclides (that of the original beam and any other reaction products) and transferred to a surface-barrier detector, which stops the nucleus. The exact location of the upcoming impact on the detector is marked; also marked are its energy and the time of the arrival. The transfer takes about 10 seconds; in order to be detected, the nucleus must survive this long. The nucleus is recorded again once its decay is registered, and the location, the energy, and the time of the decay are measured.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Stability of a nucleus is provided by the strong interaction. However, its range is very short; as nuclei become larger, its influence on the outermost nucleons (protons and neutrons) weakens. At the same time, the nucleus is torn apart by electrostatic repulsion between protons, and its range is not limited. Total binding energy provided by the strong interaction increases linearly with the number of nucleons, whereas electrostatic repulsion increases with the square of the atomic number, i.e. the latter grows faster and becomes increasingly important for heavy and superheavy nuclei. Superheavy nuclei are thus theoretically predicted and have so far been observed to predominantly decay via decay modes that are caused by such repulsion: alpha decay and spontaneous fission. Almost all alpha emitters have over 210 nucleons, and the lightest nuclide primarily undergoing spontaneous fission has 238. In both decay modes, nuclei are inhibited from decaying by corresponding energy barriers for each mode, but they can be tunnelled through.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Alpha particles are commonly produced in radioactive decays because mass of an alpha particle per nucleon is small enough to leave some energy for the alpha particle to be used as kinetic energy to leave the nucleus. Spontaneous fission is caused by electrostatic repulsion tearing the nucleus apart and produces various nuclei in different instances of identical nuclei fissioning. As the atomic number increases, spontaneous fission rapidly becomes more important: spontaneous fission partial half-lives decrease by 23 orders of magnitude from uranium (element 92) to nobelium (element 102), and by 30 orders of magnitude from thorium (element 90) to fermium (element 100). The earlier liquid drop model thus suggested that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly due to disappearance of the fission barrier for nuclei with about 280 nucleons. The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about 300 nucleons would form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives. Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional stability from shell effects. Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei, as well as those closer to the expected island, have shown greater than previously anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell effects on nuclei.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Alpha decays are registered by the emitted alpha particles, and the decay products are easy to determine before the actual decay; if such a decay or a series of consecutive decays produces a known nucleus, the original product of a reaction can be easily determined. (That all decays within a decay chain were indeed related to each other is established by the location of these decays, which must be in the same place.) The known nucleus can be recognized by the specific characteristics of decay it undergoes such as decay energy (or more specifically, the kinetic energy of the emitted particle). Spontaneous fission, however, produces various nuclei as products, so the original nuclide cannot be determined from its daughters.",
"title": "Introduction to the heaviest elements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Nuclear reactions used in the 1960s resulted in high excitation energies that required expulsion of four or five neutrons; these reactions used targets made of elements with high atomic numbers to maximize the size difference between the two nuclei in a reaction. While this increased the chance of fusion due to the lower electrostatic repulsion between the target and the projectile, the formed compound nuclei often broke apart and did not survive to form a new element. Moreover, fusion processes inevitably produce neutron-poor nuclei, as heavier elements require more neutrons per proton to maximize stability; therefore, the necessary ejection of neutrons results in final products with typically have shorter lifetimes. As such, light beams (six to ten protons) allowed synthesis of elements only up to 106.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "To advance to heavier elements, Soviet physicist Yuri Oganessian at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, proposed a different mechanism, in which the bombarded nucleus would be lead-208, which has magic numbers of protons and neutrons, or another nucleus close to it. Each proton and neutron has a fixed value of rest energy; those of all protons are equal and so are those of all neutrons. In a nucleus, some of this energy is diverted to binding protons and neutrons; if a nucleus has a magic number of protons and/or neutrons, then even more of its rest energy is diverted, which gives the nuclide additional stability. This additional stability requires more energy for an external nucleus to break the existing one and penetrate it. More energy diverted to binding nucleons means less rest energy, which in turn means less mass (mass is proportional to rest energy). More equal atomic numbers of the reacting nuclei result in greater electrostatic repulsion between them, but the lower mass excess of the target nucleus balances it. This leaves less excitation energy for the newly created compound nucleus, which necessitates fewer neutron ejections to reach a stable state. Because of this energy difference, the former mechanism became known as \"hot fusion\" and the latter as \"cold fusion\".",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Cold fusion was first declared successful in 1974 at JINR, when it was tested for synthesis of the yet-undiscovered element 106. These new nuclei were projected to decay via spontaneous fission. The physicists at JINR concluded element 106 was produced in the experiment because no fissioning nucleus known at the time showed parameters of fission similar to what was observed during the experiment and because changing either of the two nuclei in the reactions negated the observed effects. Physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL; originally Radiation Laboratory, RL, and later Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL) of the University of California in Berkeley, California, United States, also expressed great interest in the new technique. When asked about how far this new method could go and if lead targets were a physics' Klondike, Oganessian responded, \"Klondike may be an exaggeration [...] But soon, we will try to get elements 107 ... 108 in these reactions.\"",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The synthesis of element 108 was first attempted in 1978 by a research team led by Oganessian at the JINR. The team used a reaction that would generate element 108, specifically, the isotope 108, from fusion of radium (specifically, the isotope 88Ra) and calcium (20Ca). The researchers were uncertain in interpreting their data, and their paper did not unambiguously claim to have discovered the element. The same year, another team at JINR investigated the possibility of synthesis of element 108 in reactions between lead (82Pb) and iron (26Fe); they were uncertain in interpreting the data, suggesting the possibility that element 108 had not been created.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1983, new experiments were performed at JINR. The experiments probably resulted in the synthesis of element 108; bismuth (83Bi) was bombarded with manganese (25Mn) to obtain 108, lead (82Pb, 82Pb) was bombarded with iron (26Fe) to obtain 108, and californium (98Cf) was bombarded with neon (10Ne) to obtain 108. These experiments were not claimed as a discovery and Oganessian announced them in a conference rather than in a written report.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1984, JINR researchers in Dubna performed experiments set up identically to the previous ones; they bombarded bismuth and lead targets with ions of lighter elements manganese and iron, respectively. Twenty-one spontaneous fission events were recorded; the researchers concluded they were caused by 108.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Later in 1984, a research team led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI; Institute for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany, attempted to create element 108. The team bombarded a lead (82Pb) target with accelerated iron (26Fe) nuclei. GSI's experiment to create element 108 was delayed until after their creation of element 109 in 1982, as prior calculations had suggested that even–even isotopes of element 108 would have spontaneous fission half-lives of less than one microsecond, making them difficult to detect and identify. The element 108 experiment finally went ahead after 109 had been synthesized and was found to decay by alpha emission, suggesting that isotopes of element 108 would do likewise, and this was corroborated by an experiment aimed at synthesizing isotopes of element 106. GSI reported synthesis of three atoms of 108. Two years later, they reported synthesis of one atom of the even–even 108.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1985, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) formed the Transfermium Working Group (TWG) to assess discoveries and establish final names for elements with atomic numbers greater than 100. The party held meetings with delegates from the three competing institutes; in 1990, they established criteria for recognition of an element and in 1991, they finished the work of assessing discoveries and disbanded. These results were published in 1993.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "According to the report, the 1984 works from JINR and GSI simultaneously and independently established synthesis of element 108. Of the two 1984 works, the one from GSI was said to be sufficient as a discovery on its own. The JINR work, which preceded the GSI one, \"very probably\" displayed synthesis of element 108. However, that was determined in retrospect given the work from Darmstadt; the JINR work focused on chemically identifying remote granddaughters of element 108 isotopes (which could not exclude the possibility that these daughter isotopes had other progenitors), while the GSI work clearly identified the decay path of those element 108 isotopes. The report concluded that the major credit should be awarded to GSI. In written responses to this ruling, both JINR and GSI agreed with its conclusions. In the same response, GSI confirmed that they and JINR were able to resolve all conflicts between them.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Historically, a newly discovered element was named by its discoverer. The first regulation came in 1947, when IUPAC decided naming required regulation in case there are conflicting names. These matters were to be resolved by the Commission of Inorganic Nomenclature and the Commission of Atomic Weights. They would review the names in case of a conflict and select one; the decision would be based on a number of factors, such as usage, and would not be an indicator of priority of a claim. The two commissions would recommend a name to the IUPAC Council, which would be the final authority. The discoverers held the right to name an element, but their name would be subject to approval by IUPAC. The Commission of Atomic Weights distanced itself from element naming in most cases.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Under Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, hassium would be known as \"eka-osmium\", as in \"the first element below osmium in the periodic table\" (from Sanskrit eka meaning \"one\"). In 1979, IUPAC published recommendations according to which the element was to be called \"unniloctium\" and assigned the corresponding symbol of \"Uno\", a systematic element name as a placeholder until the element was discovered and the discovery then confirmed, and a permanent name was decided. Although these recommendations were widely followed in the chemical community, the competing physicists in the field ignored them. They either called it \"element 108\", with the symbols E108, (108) or 108, or used the proposed name \"hassium\".",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1990, in an attempt to break a deadlock in establishing priority of discovery and naming of several elements, IUPAC reaffirmed in its nomenclature of inorganic chemistry that after existence of an element was established, the discoverers could propose a name. (In addition, the Commission of Atomic Weights was excluded from the naming process.) The first publication on criteria for an element discovery, released in 1991, specified the need for recognition by TWG.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Armbruster and his colleagues, the officially recognized German discoverers, held a naming ceremony for the elements 107 through 109, which had all been recognized as discovered by GSI, on 7 September 1992. For element 108, the scientists proposed the name \"hassium\". It is derived from the Latin name Hassia for the German state of Hesse where the institute is located. This name was proposed to IUPAC in a written response to their ruling on priority of discovery claims of elements, signed 29 September 1992.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The process of naming of element 108 was a part of a larger process of naming a number of elements starting with element 101; three teams—JINR, GSI, and LBL—claimed discoveries of several elements and the right to name those elements. Sometimes, these claims clashed; since a discoverer was considered entitled to naming of an element, conflicts over priority of discovery often resulted in conflicts over names of these new elements. These conflicts became known as the Transfermium Wars. Different suggestions to name the whole set of elements from 101 onward and they occasionally assigned names suggested by one team to be used for elements discovered by another. However, not all suggestions were met with equal approval; the teams openly protested naming proposals on several occasions.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1994, IUPAC Commission on Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry recommended that element 108 be named \"hahnium\" (Hn) after the German physicist Otto Hahn so elements named after Hahn and Lise Meitner (it was recommended element 109 should be named meitnerium, following GSI's suggestion) would be next to each other, honouring their joint discovery of nuclear fission; IUPAC commented that they felt the German suggestion was obscure. GSI protested, saying this proposal contradicted the long-standing convention of giving the discoverer the right to suggest a name; the American Chemical Society supported GSI. The name \"hahnium\", albeit with the different symbol Ha, had already been proposed and used by the American scientists for element 105, for which they had a discovery dispute with JINR; they thus protested the confusing scrambling of names. Following the uproar, IUPAC formed an ad hoc committee of representatives from the national adhering organizations of the three countries home to the competing institutions; they produced a new set of names in 1995. Element 108 was again named hahnium; this proposal was also retracted. The final compromise was reached in 1996 and published in 1997; element 108 was named hassium (Hs). Simultaneously, the name dubnium (Db; from Dubna, the JINR location) was assigned to element 105, and the name hahnium was not used for any element.",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The official justification for this naming, alongside that of darmstadtium for element 110, was that it completed a set of geographic names for the location of the GSI; this set had been initiated by 19th-century names europium and germanium. This set would serve as a response to earlier naming of americium, californium, and berkelium for elements discovered in Berkeley. Armbruster commented on this, \"this bad tradition was established by Berkeley. We wanted to do it for Europe.\" Later, when commenting on the naming of element 112, Armbruster said, \"I did everything to ensure that we do not continue with German scientists and German towns.\"",
"title": "Discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Hassium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. As of 2019, the quantity of all hassium ever produced was on the order of hundreds of atoms. Thirteen isotopes with mass numbers ranging from 263 to 277 (with the exceptions of 274 and 276) have been reported, four of which—hassium-265, -266, -267, and -277—have known metastable states, although that of hassium-277 is unconfirmed. Most of these isotopes decay predominantly through alpha decay; this is the most common for all isotopes for which comprehensive decay characteristics are available, the only exception being hassium-277, which undergoes spontaneous fission. Lighter isotopes were usually synthesized by direct fusion between two lighter nuclei, whereas heavier isotopes were typically observed as decay products of nuclei with larger atomic numbers.",
"title": "Isotopes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Atomic nuclei have well-established nuclear shells, and the existence of these shells provides nuclei with additional stability. If a nucleus has certain numbers of protons or neutrons, called magic numbers, that complete certain nuclear shells, then the nucleus is even more stable against decay. The highest known magic numbers are 82 for protons and 126 for neutrons. This notion is sometimes expanded to include additional numbers between those magic numbers, which also provide some additional stability and indicate closure of \"sub-shells\". In contrast to the better-known lighter nuclei, superheavy nuclei are deformed. Until the 1960s, the liquid drop model was the dominant explanation for nuclear structure. It suggested that the fission barrier would disappear for nuclei with about 280 nucleons. It was thus thought that spontaneous fission would occur nearly instantly before nuclei could form a structure that could stabilize them; it appeared that nuclei with Z ≈ 103 were too heavy to exist for a considerable length of time.",
"title": "Isotopes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The later nuclear shell model suggested that nuclei with about three hundred nucleons would form an island of stability in which nuclei will be more resistant to spontaneous fission and will primarily undergo alpha decay with longer half-lives, and the next doubly magic nucleus (having magic numbers of both protons and neutrons) is expected to lie in the center of the island of stability in the vicinity of Z = 110–114 and the predicted magic neutron number N = 184. Subsequent discoveries suggested that the predicted island might be further than originally anticipated; they also showed that nuclei intermediate between the long-lived actinides and the predicted island are deformed, and gain additional stability from shell effects. The addition to the stability against the spontaneous fission should be particularly great against spontaneous fission, although increase in stability against the alpha decay would also be pronounced. The center of the region on a chart of nuclides that would correspond to this stability for deformed nuclei was determined as Hs, with 108 expected to be a magic number for protons for deformed nuclei—nuclei that are far from spherical—and 162 a magic number for neutrons for such nuclei. Experiments on lighter superheavy nuclei, as well as those closer to the expected island, have shown greater than previously anticipated stability against spontaneous fission, showing the importance of shell effects on nuclei.",
"title": "Isotopes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Theoretical models predict a region of instability for some hassium isotopes to lie around A = 275 and N = 168–170, which is between the predicted neutron shell closures at N = 162 for deformed nuclei and N = 184 for spherical nuclei. Nuclides within this region are predicted to have low fission barrier heights, resulting in short partial half-lives toward spontaneous fission. This prediction is supported by the observed eleven-millisecond half-life of Hs and the five-millisecond half-life of the neighbouring isobar Mt because the hindrance factors from the odd nucleon were shown to be much lower than otherwise expected. The measured half-lives are even lower than those originally predicted for the even–even Hs and Ds, which suggests a gap in stability away from the shell closures and perhaps a weakening of the shell closures in this region.",
"title": "Isotopes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1991, Polish physicists Zygmunt Patyk and Adam Sobiczewski predicted that 108 is a proton magic number for deformed nuclei and 162 is a neutron magic number for such nuclei. This means such nuclei are permanently deformed in their ground state but have high, narrow fission barriers to further deformation and hence relatively long life-times toward spontaneous fission. Computational prospects for shell stabilization for Hs made it a promising candidate for a deformed doubly magic nucleus. Experimental data is scarce, but the existing data is interpreted by the researchers to support the assignment of N = 162 as a magic number. In particular, this conclusion was drawn from the decay data of Hs, Hs, and Hs. In 1997, Polish physicist Robert Smolańczuk calculated that the isotope Hs may be the most stable superheavy nucleus against alpha decay and spontaneous fission as a consequence of the predicted N = 184 shell closure.",
"title": "Isotopes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Hassium is not known to occur naturally on Earth; the half-lives of all its known isotopes are short enough that no primordial hassium would have survived to the present day. This does not rule out the possibility of the existence of unknown, longer-lived isotopes or nuclear isomers, some of which could still exist in trace quantities if they are long-lived enough. As early as 1914, German physicist Richard Swinne proposed element 108 as a source of X-rays in the Greenland ice sheet. Although Swinne was unable to verify this observation and thus did not claim discovery, he proposed in 1931 the existence of \"regions\" of long-lived transuranic elements, including one around Z = 108.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1963, Soviet geologist and physicist Viktor Cherdyntsev, who had previously claimed the existence of primordial curium-247, claimed to have discovered element 108—specifically the 108 isotope, which supposedly had a half-life of 400 to 500 million years—in natural molybdenite and suggested the provisional name sergenium (symbol Sg); this name takes its origin from the name for the Silk Road and was explained as \"coming from Kazakhstan\" for it. His rationale for claiming that sergenium was the heavier homologue to osmium was that minerals supposedly containing sergenium formed volatile oxides when boiled in nitric acid, similarly to osmium.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Cherdyntsev's findings were criticized by Soviet physicist Vladimir Kulakov on the grounds that some of the properties Cherdyntsev claimed sergenium had were inconsistent with the then-current nuclear physics. The chief questions raised by Kulakov were that the claimed alpha decay energy of sergenium was many orders of magnitude lower than expected and the half-life given was eight orders of magnitude shorter than what would be predicted for a nuclide alpha-decaying with the claimed decay energy. At the same time, a corrected half-life in the region of 10 years would be impossible because it would imply the samples contained about a hundred milligrams of sergenium. In 2003, it was suggested that the observed alpha decay with energy 4.5 MeV could be due to a low-energy and strongly enhanced transition between different hyperdeformed states of a hassium isotope around Hs, thus suggesting that the existence of superheavy elements in nature was at least possible, although unlikely.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 2006, Russian geologist Alexei Ivanov hypothesized that an isomer of Hs might have a half-life of around (2.5±0.5)×10 years, which would explain the observation of alpha particles with energies of around 4.4 MeV in some samples of molybdenite and osmiridium. This isomer of Hs could be produced from the beta decay of Bh and Sg, which, being homologous to rhenium and molybdenum respectively, should occur in molybdenite along with rhenium and molybdenum if they occurred in nature. Because hassium is homologous to osmium, it should occur along with osmium in osmiridium if it occurs in nature. The decay chains of Bh and Sg are hypothetical and the predicted half-life of this hypothetical hassium isomer is not long enough for any sufficient quantity to remain on Earth. It is possible that more Hs may be deposited on the Earth as the Solar System travels through the spiral arms of the Milky Way; this would explain excesses of plutonium-239 found on the ocean floors of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Finland. However, minerals enriched with Hs are predicted to have excesses of its daughters uranium-235 and lead-207; they would also have different proportions of elements that are formed during spontaneous fission, such as krypton, zirconium, and xenon. The natural occurrence of hassium in minerals such as molybdenite and osmiride is theoretically possible, but very unlikely.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 2004, JINR started a search for natural hassium in the Modane Underground Laboratory in Modane, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France; this was done underground to avoid interference and false positives from cosmic rays. In 2008–09, an experiment run in the laboratory resulted in detection of several registered events of neutron multiplicity (number of emitted free neutrons after a nucleus hit has been hit by a neutron and fissioned) above three in natural osmium, and in 2012–13, these findings were reaffirmed in another experiment run in the laboratory. These results hinted natural hassium could potentially exist in nature in amounts that allow its detection by the means of analytical chemistry, but this conclusion is based on an explicit assumption that there is a long-lived hassium isotope to which the registered events could be attributed.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Since Hs may be particularly stable against alpha decay and spontaneous fission, it was considered as a candidate to exist in nature. This nuclide, however, is predicted to be very unstable toward beta decay and any beta-stable isotopes of hassium such as Hs would be too unstable in the other decay channels to be observed in nature. A 2012 search for Hs in nature along with its homologue osmium at the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory in Garching, Bavaria, Germany, was unsuccessful, setting an upper limit to its abundance at 3×10 grams of hassium per gram of osmium.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Various calculations suggest hassium should be the heaviest group 8 element so far, consistently with the periodic law. Its properties should generally match those expected for a heavier homologue of osmium; as is the case for all transactinides, a few deviations are expected to arise from relativistic effects.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Very few properties of hassium or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that hassium (and its parents) decays very quickly. A few singular chemistry-related properties have been measured, such as enthalpy of adsorption of hassium tetroxide, but properties of hassium metal remain unknown and only predictions are available.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Relativistic effects on hassium should arise due to the high charge of its nuclei, which causes the electrons around the nucleus to move faster—so fast their velocity becomes comparable to the speed of light. There are three main effects: the direct relativistic effect, the indirect relativistic effect, and spin–orbit splitting. (The existing calculations do not account for Breit interactions, but those are negligible, and their omission can only result in an uncertainty of the current calculations of no more than 2%.)",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "As atomic number increases, so does the electrostatic attraction between an electron and the nucleus. This causes the velocity of the electron to increase, which leads to an increase in its mass. This in turn leads to contraction of the atomic orbitals, most specifically the s and p1/2 orbitals. Their electrons become more closely attached to the atom and harder to pull from the nucleus. This is the direct relativistic effect. It was originally thought to be strong only for the innermost electrons, but was later established to significantly influence valence electrons as well.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Since the s and p1/2 orbitals are closer to the nucleus, they take a bigger portion of the electric charge of the nucleus on themselves (\"shield\" it). This leaves less charge for attraction of the remaining electrons, whose orbitals therefore expand, making them easier to pull from the nucleus. This is the indirect relativistic effect. As a result of the combination of the direct and indirect relativistic effects, the Hs ion, compared to the neutral atom, lacks a 6d electron, rather than a 7s electron. In comparison, Os lacks a 6s electron compared to the neutral atom. The ionic radius (in oxidation state +8) of hassium is greater than that of osmium because of the relativistic expansion of the 6p3/2 orbitals, which are the outermost orbitals for an Hs ion (although in practice such highly charged ions would be too polarised in chemical environments to have much reality).",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "There are several kinds of electronic orbitals, denoted by the letters s, p, d, and f (g orbitals are expected to start being chemically active among elements after element 120). Each of these corresponds to an azimuthal quantum number l: s to 0, p to 1, d to 2, and f to 3. Every electron also corresponds to a spin quantum number s, which may equal either +1/2 or −1/2. Thus, the total angular momentum quantum number j = l + s is equal to j = l ± 1/2 (except for l = 0, for which for both electrons in each orbital j = 0 + 1/2 = 1/2). Spin of an electron relativistically interacts with its orbit, and this interaction leads to a split of a subshell into two with different energies (the one with j = l − 1/2 is lower in energy and thus these electrons more difficult to extract): for instance, of the six 6p electrons, two become 6p1/2 and four become 6p3/2. This is the spin–orbit splitting (sometimes also referred to as subshell splitting or jj coupling). It is most visible with p electrons, which do not play an important role in the chemistry of hassium, but those for d and f electrons are within the same order of magnitude (quantitatively, spin–orbit splitting in expressed in energy units, such as electronvolts).",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "These relativistic effects are responsible for the expected increase of the ionization energy, decrease of the electron affinity, and increase of stability of the +8 oxidation state compared to osmium; without them, the trends would be reversed. Relativistic effects decrease the atomization energies of the compounds of hassium because the spin–orbit splitting of the d orbital lowers binding energy between electrons and the nucleus and because relativistic effects decrease ionic character in bonding.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The previous members of group 8 have relatively high melting points: Fe, 1538 °C; Ru, 2334 °C; Os, 3033 °C. Much like them, hassium is predicted to be a solid at room temperature although its melting point has not been precisely calculated. Hassium should crystallize in the hexagonal close-packed structure (/a = 1.59), similarly to its lighter congener osmium. Pure metallic hassium is calculated to have a bulk modulus (resistance to uniform compression) of 450 GPa, comparable with that of diamond, 442 GPa. Hassium is expected to be one of the densest of the 118 known elements, with a predicted density of 27–29 g/cm vs. the 22.59 g/cm measured for osmium.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The atomic radius of hassium is expected to be around 126 pm. Due to the relativistic stabilization of the 7s orbital and destabilization of the 6d orbital, the Hs ion is predicted to have an electron configuration of [Rn] 5f 6d 7s, giving up a 6d electron instead of a 7s electron, which is the opposite of the behaviour of its lighter homologues. The Hs ion is expected to have an electron configuration of [Rn] 5f 6d 7s, analogous to that calculated for the Os ion. In chemical compounds, hassium is calculated to display bonding characteristic for a d-block element, whose bonding will be primarily executed by 6d3/2 and 6d5/2 orbitals; compared to the elements from the previous periods, 7s, 6p1/2, 6p3/2, and 7p1/2 orbitals should be more important.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Hassium is the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals and is expected to be much like the platinum group metals. Some of these properties were confirmed by gas-phase chemistry experiments. The group 8 elements portray a wide variety of oxidation states but ruthenium and osmium readily portray their group oxidation state of +8; this state becomes more stable down the group. This oxidation state is extremely rare: among stable elements, only ruthenium, osmium, and xenon are able to attain it in reasonably stable compounds. Hassium is expected to follow its congeners and have a stable +8 state, but like them it should show lower stable oxidation states such as +6, +4, +3, and +2. Hassium(IV) is expected to be more stable than hassium(VIII) in aqueous solution. Hassium should be a rather noble metal. The standard reduction potential for the Hs/Hs couple is expected to be 0.4 V.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The group 8 elements show a distinctive oxide chemistry. All the lighter members have known or hypothetical tetroxides, MO4. Their oxidizing power decreases as one descends the group. FeO4 is not known due to its extraordinarily large electron affinity—the amount of energy released when an electron is added to a neutral atom or molecule to form a negative ion—which results in the formation of the well-known oxyanion ferrate(VI), FeO4. Ruthenium tetroxide, RuO4, which is formed by oxidation of ruthenium(VI) in acid, readily undergoes reduction to ruthenate(VI), RuO4. Oxidation of ruthenium metal in air forms the dioxide, RuO2. In contrast, osmium burns to form the stable tetroxide, OsO4, which complexes with the hydroxide ion to form an osmium(VIII) -ate complex, [OsO4(OH)2]. Therefore, hassium should behave as a heavier homologue of osmium by forming of a stable, very volatile tetroxide HsO4, which undergoes complexation with hydroxide to form a hassate(VIII), [HsO4(OH)2]. Ruthenium tetroxide and osmium tetroxide are both volatile due to their symmetrical tetrahedral molecular geometry and because they are charge-neutral; hassium tetroxide should similarly be a very volatile solid. The trend of the volatilities of the group 8 tetroxides is experimentally known to be RuO4 < OsO4 > HsO4, which confirms the calculated results. In particular, the calculated enthalpies of adsorption—the energy required for the adhesion of atoms, molecules, or ions from a gas, liquid, or dissolved solid to a surface—of HsO4, −(45.4 ± 1) kJ/mol on quartz, agrees very well with the experimental value of −(46 ± 2) kJ/mol.",
"title": "Predicted properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The first goal for chemical investigation was the formation of the tetroxide; it was chosen because ruthenium and osmium form volatile tetroxides, being the only transition metals to display a stable compound in the +8 oxidation state. Despite this selection for gas-phase chemical studies being clear from the beginning, chemical characterization of hassium was considered a difficult task for a long time. Although hassium isotopes were first synthesized in 1984, it was not until 1996 that a hassium isotope long-lived enough to allow chemical studies was synthesized. Unfortunately, this hassium isotope, Hs, was synthesized indirectly from the decay of Cn; not only are indirect synthesis methods not favourable for chemical studies, but the reaction that produced the isotope Cn had a low yield—its cross section was only 1 pb—and thus did not provide enough hassium atoms for a chemical investigation. Direct synthesis of Hs and Hs in the reaction Cm(Mg,xn)Hs (x = 4 or 5) appeared more promising because the cross section for this reaction was somewhat larger at 7 pb. This yield was still around ten times lower than that for the reaction used for the chemical characterization of bohrium. New techniques for irradiation, separation, and detection had to be introduced before hassium could be successfully characterized chemically.",
"title": "Experimental chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Ruthenium and osmium have very similar chemistry due to the lanthanide contraction but iron shows some differences from them; for example, although ruthenium and osmium form stable tetroxides in which the metal is in the +8 oxidation state, iron does not. In preparation for the chemical characterization of hassium, research focused on ruthenium and osmium rather than iron because hassium was expected to be similar to ruthenium and osmium, as the predicted data on hassium closely matched that of those two.",
"title": "Experimental chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The first chemistry experiments were performed using gas thermochromatography in 2001, using the synthetic osmium radioisotopes Os and Os as a reference. During the experiment, seven hassium atoms were synthesized using the reactions Cm(Mg,5n)Hs and Cm(Mg,4n)Hs. They were then thermalized and oxidized in a mixture of helium and oxygen gases to form hassium tetroxide molecules.",
"title": "Experimental chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The measured deposition temperature of hassium tetroxide was higher than that of osmium tetroxide, which indicated the former was the less volatile one, and this placed hassium firmly in group 8. The enthalpy of adsorption for HsO4 measured, −46±2 kJ/mol, was significantly lower than the predicted value, −36.7±1.5 kJ/mol, indicating OsO4 is more volatile than HsO4, contradicting earlier calculations that implied they should have very similar volatilities. For comparison, the value for OsO4 is −39±1 kJ/mol. (The calculations that yielded a closer match to the experimental data came after the experiment, in 2008.) It is possible hassium tetroxide interacts differently with silicon nitride than with silicon dioxide, the chemicals used for the detector; further research is required to establish whether there is a difference between such interactions and whether it has influenced the measurements. Such research would include more accurate measurements of the nuclear properties of Hs and comparisons with RuO4 in addition to OsO4.",
"title": "Experimental chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 2004, scientists reacted hassium tetroxide and sodium hydroxide to form sodium hassate(VIII), a reaction that is well known with osmium. This was the first acid-base reaction with a hassium compound, forming sodium hassate(VIII):",
"title": "Experimental chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The team from the University of Mainz planned in 2008 to study the electrodeposition of hassium atoms using the new TASCA facility at GSI. Their aim was to use the reaction Ra(Ca,4n)Hs. Scientists at GSI were hoping to use TASCA to study the synthesis and properties of the hassium(II) compound hassocene, Hs(C5H5)2, using the reaction Ra(Ca,xn). This compound is analogous to the lighter compounds ferrocene, ruthenocene, and osmocene, and is expected to have the two cyclopentadienyl rings in an eclipsed conformation like ruthenocene and osmocene and not in a staggered conformation like ferrocene. Hassocene, which is expected to be a stable and highly volatile compound, was chosen because it has hassium in the low formal oxidation state of +2—although the bonding between the metal and the rings is mostly covalent in metallocenes—rather than the high +8 state that had previously been investigated, and relativistic effects were expected to be stronger in the lower oxidation state. The highly symmetrical structure of hassocene and its low number of atoms make relativistic calculations easier. As of 2021, there are no experimental reports of hassocene.",
"title": "Experimental chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Hassium is a chemical element; it has symbol Hs and atomic number 108. Hassium is highly radioactive: its most stable known isotopes have half-lives of approximately ten seconds. One of its isotopes, 270Hs, has magic numbers of both protons and neutrons for deformed nuclei, which gives it greater stability against spontaneous fission. Hassium is a superheavy element; it has been produced in a laboratory only in very small quantities by fusing heavy nuclei with lighter ones. Natural occurrences of the element have been hypothesised but never found. In the periodic table of elements, hassium is a transactinide element, a member of the 7th period and group 8; it is thus the sixth member of the 6d series of transition metals. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that hassium behaves as the heavier homologue to osmium, reacting readily with oxygen to form a volatile tetroxide. The chemical properties of hassium have been only partly characterized, but they compare well with the chemistry of the other group 8 elements. The principal innovation that led to the discovery of hassium was the technique of cold fusion, in which the fused nuclei did not differ by mass as much as in earlier techniques. It relied on greater stability of target nuclei, which in turn decreased excitation energy. This decreased the number of neutron ejections during synthesis, creating heavier, more stable resulting nuclei. The technique was first tested at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, in 1974. JINR used this technique to attempt synthesis of element 108 in 1978, in 1983, and in 1984; the latter experiment resulted in a claim that element 108 had been produced. Later in 1984, a synthesis claim followed from the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany. The 1993 report by the Transfermium Working Group, formed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, concluded that the report from Darmstadt was conclusive on its own whereas that from Dubna was not, and major credit was assigned to the German scientists. GSI formally announced they wished to name the element hassium after the German state of Hesse, home to the facility in 1992; this name was accepted as final in 1997. | 2001-09-15T13:30:53Z | 2023-12-31T14:24:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassium |
13,765 | Henry Kissinger | Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States secretary of state and national security advisor in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977.
Born in Germany, Kissinger came to the United States in 1938 as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and, after the war, was educated at Harvard University, where he excelled academically. He later became a professor of government at the university and earned an international reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. He frequently acted as a consultant to government agencies, think tanks, and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon before being appointed national security advisor.
Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated an opening of relations with China, engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. For his role in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, he was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances. A practitioner of a pragmatic approach to politics called Realpolitik, he has been widely considered by scholars to be an effective secretary of state.
Kissinger has also been associated with controversial U.S. policies, including its bombing of Cambodia, involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, support for Argentina's military junta in its Dirty War, support for Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor, and support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War and Bangladesh genocide. He was accused of war crimes for the civilian death toll of the policies he pursued, his role in facilitating U.S. support for dictatorial regimes, and willful ignorance towards human rights abuses committed by the United States and its allies.
After leaving government, Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. He authored over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations. His advice was sought by American presidents of both political parties.
Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of homemaker Paula (née Stern; 1901–1998), from Leutershausen, and Louis Kissinger (1887–1982), a schoolteacher. He had a younger brother, Walter (1924–2021), who was a businessman. Kissinger's family was German-Jewish. His great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb adopted "Kissinger" as his surname in 1817, taking it from the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. In his childhood, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer. He played for the youth team of SpVgg Fürth, which was one of the nation's best clubs at the time.
In a 2022 BBC interview, Kissinger vividly recalled being nine years old in 1933 and learning of Adolf Hitler's election as Chancellor of Germany, which proved to be a profound turning point for the Kissinger family. During Nazi rule, Kissinger and his friends were regularly harassed and beaten by Hitler Youth gangs. Kissinger sometimes defied the segregation imposed by Nazi racial laws by sneaking into soccer stadiums to watch matches, often resulting in beatings from security guards. As results of the Nazis' anti-Semitic laws, Kissinger was unable to gain admittance to the Gymnasium and his father was dismissed from his teaching job.
On August 20, 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old, he and his family fled Germany to avoid further Nazi persecution. The family briefly stopped in London before arriving in New York City on September 5. Kissinger later downplayed the influence his experiences of Nazi persecution had had on his policies, writing that the "Germany of my youth had a great deal of order and very little justice; it was not the sort of place likely to inspire devotion to order in the abstract." Nevertheless, many scholars, including Kissinger's biographer Walter Isaacson, have argued that his experiences influenced the formation of his realist approach to foreign policy.
Kissinger spent his high-school years in the German-Jewish community in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced German accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak. After his first year at George Washington High School, he began attending school at night while working in a shaving brush factory during the day.
Following high school, Kissinger studied accounting at the City College of New York, excelling academically as a part-time student while continuing to work. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army.
Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On June 19, 1943, at the age of 20, while stationed in South Carolina, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania under the Army Specialized Training Program, but the program was canceled and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow immigrant from Germany who noted Kissinger's fluency in German and his intellect and arranged for him to be assigned to the division's military intelligence. Kissinger saw combat with the division and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge. On April 10, 1945, he participated in the liberation of the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp, a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. At the time, Kissinger, wrote in his journal, "I had never seen people degraded to the level that people were in Ahlem. They barely looked human. They were skeletons." After the initial shock, however, Kissinger was relatively silent about his wartime service.
During the American advance into Germany, Kissinger, though only a private (the lowest military rank), was put in charge of the administration of the city of Krefeld because of a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Within eight days he had established a civilian administration. Kissinger was then reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), where he became a CIC Special Agent holding the enlisted rank of sergeant. He was given charge of a team in Hanover assigned to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star. Kissinger drew up a comprehensive list of all known Gestapo employees in the Bergstraße region, and had them rounded up. By the end of July, 12 men had been arrested. In March 1947, Fritz Girke, Hans Hellenbroich, Michael Raaf, and Karl Stattmann were subsequently caught and tried by the Dachau Military Tribunal for killing two American prisoners of war. The four men were all found guilty and sentenced to death. They were executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison in October 1948.
In June 1945, Kissinger was made commandant of the Bensheim metro CIC detachment, Bergstraße district of Hesse, with responsibility for denazification of the district. Although he possessed absolute authority and powers of arrest, Kissinger took care to avoid abuses against the local population by his command.
In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King and, as a civilian employee following his separation from the army, continued to serve in this role.
Kissinger recalled that his experience in the army "made me feel like an American".
Kissinger earned his Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in political science from Harvard College in 1950, where he lived in Adams House and studied under William Yandell Elliott. His senior undergraduate thesis, titled The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant, was over 400 pages long, and was the origin of the current limit on length (35,000 words). He earned his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still a graduate student at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, and founded a magazine, Confluence. At that time, he sought to work as a spy for the FBI.
Kissinger's doctoral dissertation was titled Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich). Stephen Graubard, Kissinger's friend, asserted that Kissinger primarily pursued such endeavor to instruct himself on the history of power play between European states in the 19th century. In his doctoral dissertation, Kissinger first introduced the concept of "legitimacy", which he defined as: "Legitimacy as used here should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy". An international order accepted by all of the major powers is "legitimate" whereas an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is "revolutionary" and hence dangerous. Thus, when after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the leaders of Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to co-operate in the Concert of Europe to preserve the peace after Austria, Prussia, and Russia participated in a series of three Partitions of Poland, in Kissinger's viewpoint this international system was "legitimate" because it was accepted by the leaders of all five of the Great Powers of Europe. Notably, Kissinger's Primat der Außenpolitik (Primacy of foreign policy) approach to diplomacy took it for granted that as long as the decision-makers in the major states were willing to accept the international order, then it is "legitimate" with questions of public opinion and morality dismissed as irrelevant. His dissertation also won him the Senator Charles Sumner Prize, an award given to the best dissertation "from the legal, political, historical, economic, social, or ethnic approach, dealing with any means or measures tending toward the prevention of war and the establishment of universal peace" by a student under the Harvard Department of Government. It was published in 1957 as A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–1822.
Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government where he served as the director of the Harvard International Seminar between 1951 and 1971. In 1955, he was a consultant to the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board. During 1955 and 1956, he was also study director in nuclear weapons and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He released his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy the following year. The book, which criticized the Eisenhower Administration's massive retaliation nuclear doctrine, caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. That same year, he published A World Restored, a study of balance-of-power politics in post-Napoleonic Europe.
From 1956 to 1958, Kissinger worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as director of its Special Studies Project. He served as the director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program between 1958 and 1971. In 1958, he also co-founded the Center for International Affairs with Robert R. Bowie where he served as its associate director. Outside of academia, he served as a consultant to several government agencies and think tanks, including the Operations Research Office, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Department of State, and the RAND Corporation.
Keen to have a greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, Kissinger became foreign policy advisor to the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller, supporting his bids for the Republican nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968. Kissinger first met Richard Nixon at a party hosted by Clare Boothe Luce in 1967, saying that he found him more "thoughtful" than he expected. During the Republican primaries in 1968, Kissinger again served as the foreign policy adviser to Rockefeller and in July 1968 called Nixon "the most dangerous of all the men running to have as president". Initially upset when Nixon won the Republican nomination, the ambitious Kissinger soon changed his mind about Nixon and contacted a Nixon campaign aide, Richard Allen, to state he was willing to do anything to help Nixon win. After Nixon became president in January 1969, Kissinger was appointed as National Security Advisor. By this time, he was arguably "one of the most important theorists about foreign policy ever to be produced by the United States of America", according to his official biographer Niall Ferguson.
Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon and continued as Secretary of State under Nixon's successor Gerald Ford. With the death of George Shultz in February 2021, Kissinger was the last surviving member of the Nixon administration Cabinet.
The relationship between Nixon and Kissinger was unusually close, and has been compared to the relationships of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, or Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins. In all three cases, the State Department was relegated to a backseat role in developing foreign policy. Kissinger and Nixon shared a penchant for secrecy and conducted numerous "backchannel" negotiations, such as that through the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that excluded State Department experts. Historian David Rothkopf has looked at the personalities of Nixon and Kissinger, saying:
They were a fascinating pair. In a way, they complemented each other perfectly. Kissinger was the charming and worldly Mr. Outside who provided the grace and intellectual-establishment respectability that Nixon lacked, disdained and aspired to. Kissinger was an international citizen. Nixon very much a classic American. Kissinger had a worldview and a facility for adjusting it to meet the times, Nixon had pragmatism and a strategic vision that provided the foundations for their policies. Kissinger would, of course, say that he was not political like Nixon—but in fact he was just as political as Nixon, just as calculating, just as relentlessly ambitious ... these self-made men were driven as much by their need for approval and their neuroses as by their strengths.
A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. In that period, he extended the policy of détente. This policy led to a significant relaxation in U.S.–Soviet tensions and played a crucial role in 1971 talks with People's Republic of China premier Zhou Enlai. The talks concluded with a rapprochement between the United States and the People's Republic of China, and the formation of a new strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alignment. He was jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Lê Đức Thọ for helping to establish a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The ceasefire, however, was not durable. Thọ declined to accept the award and Kissinger appeared deeply ambivalent about it—he donated his prize money to charity, did not attend the award ceremony, and later offered to return his prize medal. As National Security Advisor in 1974, Kissinger directed the much-debated National Security Study Memorandum 200.
Kissinger initially had little interest in China when he began his work as National Security Adviser in 1969, and the driving force behind the rapprochement with China was Nixon. In April 1970, both Nixon and Kissinger promised Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, that they would never abandon Taiwan or make any compromises with Mao Zedong, although Nixon did speak vaguely of his wish to improve relations with the People's Republic.
Kissinger made two trips to the People's Republic in July and October 1971 (the first of which was made in secret) to confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, then in charge of PRC foreign policy. During his visit to Beijing, the main issue turned out to be Taiwan, as Zhou demanded the United States recognize that Taiwan was a legitimate part of the PRC, pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan, and end military support for the Kuomintang regime. Kissinger gave way by promising to pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan, saying two-thirds would be pulled out when the Vietnam war ended and the rest to be pulled out as Sino-American relations improved.
In October 1971, as Kissinger was making his second trip to the People's Republic, the issue of which Chinese government deserved to be represented in the United Nations came up again. Out of concern to not be seen abandoning an ally, the United States tried to promote a compromise under which both Chinese regimes would be UN members, although Kissinger called it "an essentially doomed rearguard action". While American ambassador to the UN George H. W. Bush was lobbying for the "two Chinas" formula, Kissinger was removing favorable references to Taiwan from a speech that then Secretary of State William P. Rogers was preparing, as he expected the country to be expelled from the UN. During his second visit to Beijing, Kissinger told Zhou that according to a public opinion poll 62% of Americans wanted Taiwan to remain a UN member and asked him to consider the "two Chinas" compromise to avoid offending American public opinion. Zhou responded with his claim that the People's Republic was the legitimate government of all China, and no compromise was possible with the Taiwan issue. Kissinger said that the United States could not totally sever ties with Chiang, who had been an ally in World War II. Kissinger told Nixon that Bush was "too soft and not sophisticated" enough to properly represent the United States at the UN and expressed no anger when the UN General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and give China's seat on the UN Security Council to the People's Republic.
Kissinger's trips paved the way for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between Nixon, Zhou, and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility. The result was the formation of a tacit strategic anti-Soviet alliance between the PRC and the United States. Kissinger's diplomacy led to economic and cultural exchanges between the two sides and the establishment of "liaison offices" in the PRC and American capitals, though full normalization of relations with the PRC would not occur until 1979.
Kissinger discussed being involved in Indochina prior to his appointment as National Security Adviser to Nixon. According to Kissinger, his friend Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Ambassador to Saigon, employed Kissinger as a consultant, leading to Kissinger visiting Vietnam once in 1965 and twice in 1966, where Kissinger realized that the United States "knew neither how to win or how to conclude" the Vietnam War. Kissinger also stated that in 1967, he served as an intermediary for negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam, with him providing the American position, while two Frenchmen provided the North Vietnamese position.
When he came into office in 1969, Kissinger favored a negotiating strategy under which the United States and North Vietnam would sign an armistice and agreed to pull their troops out of South Vietnam while the South Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were to agree to a coalition government. Kissinger had doubts about Nixon's theory of "linkage", believing that this would give the Soviet Union leverage over the United States and unlike Nixon was less concerned about the ultimate fate of South Vietnam. Though Kissinger did not regard South Vietnam as important in its own right, he believed it was necessary to support South Vietnam to maintain the United States as a global power, believing that none of America's allies would trust the United States if South Vietnam were abandoned too quickly.
In early 1969, Kissinger was opposed to the plans for Operation Menu, the bombing of Cambodia, fearing that Nixon was acting rashly with no plans for the diplomatic fall-out, but on March 16, 1969, Nixon announced the bombing would start the next day. As he saw the president was committed, he became more supportive. Kissinger played a key role in bombing Cambodia to disrupt raids into South Vietnam from Cambodia, as well as the 1970 Cambodian campaign and subsequent widespread bombing of Khmer Rouge targets in Cambodia. The Paris peace talks had become stalemated by late 1969 owing to the obstructionism of the South Vietnamese delegation. The South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu did not want the United States to withdraw from Vietnam, and out of frustration with him, Kissinger decided to begin secret peace talks with Le Duc Thọ in Paris parallel to the official talks that the South Vietnamese were unaware of. In June 1971, Kissinger supported Nixon's effort to ban the Pentagon Papers saying the "hemorrhage of state secrets" to the media was making diplomacy impossible.
On August 1, 1972, Kissinger met Thọ again in Paris, and for first time, he seemed willing to compromise, saying that political and military terms of an armistice could be treated separately and hinted that his government was no longer willing to make the overthrow of Thiệu a precondition. On the evening of October 8, 1972, at a secret meeting of Kissinger and Thọ in Paris came the decisive breakthrough in the talks. Thọ began with "a very realistic and very simple proposal" for a ceasefire that would see the Americans pull all their forces out of Vietnam in exchange for the release of all the POWs in North Vietnam. Kissinger accepted Thọ's offer as the best deal possible, saying that the "mutual withdrawal formula" had to be abandoned as it been "unobtainable through ten years of war ... We could not make it a condition for a final settlement. We had long passed that threshold". In the fall of 1972, both Kissinger and Nixon were frustrated with Thiệu's refusal to accept any sort of peace deal calling for withdrawal of American forces. On October 21 Kissinger and the American ambassador Ellsworth Bunker arrived in Saigon to show Thiệu the peace agreement. Thiệu refused to sign the peace agreement and demanded very extensive amendments that Kissinger reported to Nixon "verge on insanity".
Though Nixon had initially supported Kissinger against Thiệu, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman urged him to reconsider, arguing that Thiệu's objections had merit. Nixon wanted 69 amendments to the draft peace agreement included in the final treaty and ordered Kissinger back to Paris to force Thọ to accept them. Kissinger regarded Nixon's 69 amendments as "preposterous" as he knew Thọ would never accept them. As expected, Thọ refused to consider any of the 69 amendments, and on December 13, 1972, left Paris for Hanoi. Kissinger by this stage was worked up into a state of fury after Thọ walked out of the Paris talks and told Nixon: "They're just a bunch of shits. Tawdry, filthy shits".
On January 8, 1973, Kissinger and Thọ met again in Paris and the next day reached an agreement, which in main points was essentially the same as the one Nixon had rejected in October with only cosmetic concessions to the Americans. Thiệu once again rejected the peace agreement, only to receive an ultimatum from Nixon which caused Thiệu to reluctantly accept the peace agreement. On January 27, 1973, Kissinger and Thọ signed a peace agreement that called for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Vietnam by March in exchange for North Vietnam freeing all the U.S. POWs. Along with Thọ, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1973, for their work in negotiating the ceasefires contained in the Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam", signed the previous January. According to Irwin Abrams in 2001, this prize was the most controversial to date. For the first time in the history of the Peace Prize, two members left the Nobel Committee in protest. Thọ rejected the award, telling Kissinger that peace had not been restored in South Vietnam. Kissinger wrote to the Nobel Committee that he accepted the award "with humility", and "donated the entire proceeds to the children of American service members killed or missing in action in Indochina". After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, Kissinger attempted to return the award.
By the summer of 1974, the U.S. embassy reported that morale in the ARVN had fallen to dangerously low levels and it was uncertain how much longer South Vietnam would last. In August 1974, the U.S. Congress passed a bill limiting American aid to South Vietnam to $700 million annually. By November 1974, Kissinger lobbied Leonid Brezhnev to end Soviet military aid to North Vietnam. The same month, he also lobbied Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai to end PRC military aid to North Vietnam. On April 15, 1975, Kissinger testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging Congress to increase the military aid budget to South Vietnam by another $700 million to save the ARVN as the PAVN was rapidly advancing on Saigon, which was refused. Kissinger maintained at the time, and until his death, that if only Congress had approved of his request for another $700 million South Vietnam would have been able to resist.
In November 1975, seven months after the Khmer Rouge took power, Kissinger told the Thai foreign minister: "You should tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs but we won't let that stand in our way." In a 1998 interview, Kissinger said: "some countries, the Chinese in particular supported Pol Pot as a counterweight to the Vietnamese supported people and We at least tolerated it." Kissinger said he did not approve of this due to the genocide and said he "would not have dealt with Pol Pot for any purpose whatsoever." He further said: "The Thais and the Chinese did not want a Vietnamese-dominated Indochina. We didn't want the Vietnamese to dominate. I don't believe we did anything for Pol Pot. But I suspect we closed our eyes when some others did something for Pol Pot."
On November 4, 1972, Kissinger agreed to an interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci. Kissinger, who rarely engaged in one-on-one interviews with the press and knew very little about Fallaci, accepted her request after reportedly being impressed with her 1969 interview with Võ Nguyên Giáp. The interview turned out to be a political and public relations disaster for Kissinger as he agreed that Vietnam was a "useless war", implied that he preferred to have dinner with Lê Đức Thọ over Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (in her 1976 book Interview with History, Fallaci recalled that Kissinger agreed with many of her negative sentiments towards Thiệu in a private discussion before the interview), and engaged in a now infamous exchange with the hard-pressing Fallaci, with Kissinger comparing himself to a cowboy leading the Nixon Administration:
Fallaci: I suppose that at the root of everything there's your success. I mean, like a chess player, you've made two or three good moves. China, first of all. People like chess players who checkmate the king.Kissinger: Yes, China has been a very important element in the mechanics of my success. And yet that's not the main point. The main point. ... Well, yes, I'll tell you. What do I care? The main point arises from the fact that I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western.Fallaci: I see. You see yourself as a kind of Henry Fonda, unarmed and ready to fight with his fists for honest ideals. Alone, courageous ...Kissinger: Not necessarily courageous. In fact, this cowboy doesn't have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone, to show others that he rides into the town and does everything by himself. This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique. Together with independence. Oh, that's very important in me and for me. And finally, conviction. I've always been convinced that I had to do whatever I've done. And people feel it, and believe in it. And I care about the fact that they believe in me when you sway or convince somebody, you shouldn't confuse them. Nor can you even simply calculate. Some people think that I carefully plan what are to be the consequences, for the public, of any of my initiatives or efforts. They think this preoccupation is always on my mind. Instead the consequences of what I do, I mean the public's judgment, have never bothered me. I don't ask for popularity, I'm not looking for popularity. On the contrary, if you really want to know, I care nothing about popularity. I'm not at all afraid of losing my public; I can allow myself to say what I think. I'm referring to what's genuine in me. If I were to let myself be disturbed by the reactions of the public, if I were to act solely on the basis of a calculated technique, I would accomplish nothing.
Nixon was enraged by the interview, in particular the comedic "cowboy" comparison which infuriated and offended Nixon. For several weeks afterwards, he refused to see Kissinger and even contemplated firing him. At one point, Kissinger, in desperation, drove up unannounced to Nixon's San Clemente residence only to be rejected by Secret Service personnel at the gates. Kissinger later claimed that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press". Fallaci described the interview with the evasive, monotonous, non-expressive Kissinger as the most uncomfortable and most difficult she ever did, criticizing Kissinger as a "intellectual adventurer" and a self-styled Metternich.
Nixon supported Pakistani dictator, General Yahya Khan, in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Kissinger sneered at people who "bleed" for "the dying Bengalis" and ignored the first telegram from the United States consul general in East Pakistan, Archer K. Blood, and 20 members of his staff, which informed the U.S. that their allies West Pakistan were undertaking, in Blood's words, "a selective genocide" targeting the Bengali intelligentsia, supporters of independence for East Pakistan, and the Hindu minority. In the second, more famous, Blood Telegram the word 'genocide' was again used to describe the events, and further that with its continuing support for West Pakistan the U.S. government had "evidenced ... moral bankruptcy". As a direct response to the dissent against U.S. policy, Kissinger and Nixon ended Archer Blood's tenure as United States consul general in East Pakistan and put him to work in the State Department's Personnel Office. Christopher Clary argues that Nixon and Kissinger were unconsciously biased, leading them to overestimate the likelihood of Pakistani victory against Bengali rebels.
Kissinger was particularly concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in the Indian subcontinent as a result of a treaty of friendship recently signed by India and the USSR, and sought to demonstrate to the People's Republic of China (Pakistan's ally and an enemy of both India and the USSR) the value of a tacit alliance with the United States.
Kissinger had also come under fire for private comments he made to Nixon during the Bangladesh–Pakistan War in which he described Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a "bitch" and a "witch". He also said "the Indians are bastards", shortly before the war. Kissinger later expressed his regret over the comments.
As National Security Adviser under Nixon, Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, seeking a relaxation in tensions between the two superpowers. As a part of this strategy, he negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (culminating in the SALT I treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Negotiations about strategic disarmament were originally supposed to start under the Johnson Administration but were postponed in protest upon the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
Nixon felt his administration had neglected relations with the Western European states in his first term and in September 1972 decided that if he was reelected that 1973 would be the "Year of Europe" as the United States would focus on relations with the states of the European Economic Community (EEC) which had emerged as a serious economic rival by 1970. Applying his favorite "linkage" concept, Nixon intended henceforward economic relations with Europe would not be severed from security relations, and if the EEC states wanted changes in American tariff and monetary policies, the price would be defense spending on their part. Kissinger in particular as part of the "Year of Europe" wanted to "revitalize" NATO, which he called a "decaying" alliance as he believed that there was nothing at present to stop the Red Army from overrunning Western Europe in a conventional forces conflict. The "linkage" concept more applied to the question of security as Kissinger noted that the United States was going to sacrifice NATO for the sake of "citrus fruits".
According to notes taken by H. R. Haldeman, Nixon "ordered his aides to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel", including Kissinger. One note quotes Nixon as saying "get K. [Kissinger] out of the play—Haig handle it".
In 1973, Kissinger did not feel that pressing the Soviet Union concerning the plight of Jews being persecuted there was in the interest of U.S. foreign policy. In conversation with Nixon shortly after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, Kissinger stated, "The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy, and if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern." He had a negative view of American Jews who lobbied for aid to Soviet Jews, calling them "bastards" and "self-serving". He went on to state that "If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic" and "any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong."
In September 1973, Nixon fired Rogers as Secretary of State and replaced him with Kissinger. He would later state he had not been given enough time to know the Middle East as he settled into the State Department. Kissinger later admitted that he was so engrossed with the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war that he and others in Washington missed the significance of the Egyptian-Saudi alliance. Sadat expelled Soviet advisors from Egypt in May 1972, attempting to signal to the US that he was open to disentangling Egypt from the Soviet sphere of influence; Kissinger in turn offered secret talks on a settlement for the Middle East, though nothing came of the offer. By March 1973, Sadat had moved back towards the Soviets, closing the largest arms package between Egypt and the USSR and allowing for the return of Soviet military personnel and advisors to Egypt.
Kissinger delayed telling President Richard Nixon about the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 in order to keep him from interfering in the nascent conflict. On October 6, 1973, the Israelis informed Kissinger about the attack at 6 am; Kissinger waited nearly 3+1⁄2 hours before he informed Nixon. According to Kissinger, he was notified at 6:30 a.m. (12:30 pm. Israel time) that war was imminent, and his urgent calls to the Soviets and Egyptians were ineffective. On October 12, under Nixon's direction, and against Kissinger's initial advice, while Kissinger was on his way to Moscow to discuss conditions for a cease-fire, Nixon sent a message to Brezhnev giving Kissinger full negotiating authority. Kissinger wanted to stall a ceasefire to gain more time for Israel to push across the Suez Canal to the African side, and wanted to be perceived as a mere presidential emissary who needed to consult the White House all the time as a stalling tactic.
Kissinger promised the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that the United States would replace its losses in equipment after the war, but sought initially to delay arms shipments to Israel, as he believed it would improve the odds of making peace along the lines of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. In 1973, Meir requested $850 million worth of American arms and equipment to replace its materiel losses. Nixon instead sent some $2 billion worth. The arms lift enraged King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and he retaliated on October 20, 1973, by placing a total embargo on oil shipments to the United States, to be joined by all of the other oil-producing Arab states except Iraq and Libya.
On November 7, 1973, Kissinger flew to Riyadh to meet King Faisal and to ask him to end the oil embargo in exchange for promising to be "even handed" in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Despite all of Kissinger's efforts to charm him, Faisal refused to lift the oil embargo. Only on March 19, 1974, did the king end the oil embargo, after Sadat reported to him that the United States was being more "even handed" and after Kissinger had promised to sell Saudi Arabia weapons that it had previously denied under the grounds that they might be used against Israel.
Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede some of the newly captured land back to its Arab neighbors, contributing to the first phases of Israeli–Egyptian non-aggression. In 1973–1974, Kissinger engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" flying between Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Damascus in a bid to make the armistice the basis of a permanent peace. Kissinger's first meeting with Hafez al-Assad lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes, causing the press to believe for a moment that he had been kidnapped by the Syrians. In his memoirs, Kissinger described how, during the course of his 28 meetings in Damascus in 1973–74, Assad "negotiated tenaciously and daringly like a riverboat gambler to make sure he had exacted the last sliver of available concessions". As for the others Kissinger negotiated with, Kissinger viewed the Israeli politicians as rigid, while he had a good relationship and was able to develop a sense of assurance with Sadat. Kissinger's efforts resulted in two ceasefires between Egypt and Israel, Sinai I in January 1974, and Sinai II in September 1975.
Kissinger had avoided involving France and the United Kingdom, the former European colonial powers of the Middle East, in the peace negotiations that followed the Yom Kippur, being primarily focused on minimising the Soviet Union's sway over the peace negotiations and on moderating the international influences on the Arab-Israeli conflict. President Pompidou of France was concerned and perturbed by this development, viewing it as an indication of the United States' ambitions of hegemonically domineering the region.
A major concern for Kissinger was the possibility of Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf. In April 1969, Iraq came into conflict with Iran when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi renounced the 1937 treaty governing the Shatt-al-Arab river. On December 1, 1971, after two years of skirmishes along the border, President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. In May 1972, Nixon and Kissinger visited Tehran to tell the Shah that there would be no "second-guessing of his requests" to buy American weapons. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger agreed to a plan of the Shah's that the United States together with Iran and Israel would support the Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas fighting for independence from Iraq. Kissinger later wrote that after Vietnam, there was no possibility of deploying American forces in the Middle East, and henceforward Iran was to act as America's surrogate in the Persian Gulf. Kissinger described the Baathist regime in Iraq as a potential threat to the United States and believed that building up Iran and supporting the peshmerga was the best counterweight.
Following a period of steady relations between the U.S. Government and the Greek military regime after 1967, Secretary of State Kissinger was faced with the coup by the Greek junta and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July and August 1974. In an August 1974 edition of The New York Times, it was revealed that Kissinger and State Department were informed in advance of the impending coup by the Greek junta in Cyprus. Indeed, according to the journalist, the official version of events as told by the State Department was that it felt it had to warn the Greek military regime not to carry out the coup.
Kissinger was a target of anti-American sentiment which was a significant feature of Greek public opinion at the time—particularly among young people—viewing the U.S. role in Cyprus as negative. In a demonstration by students in Heraklion, Crete, soon after the second phase of the Turkish invasion in August 1974, slogans such as "Kissinger, murderer", "Americans get out", "No to Partition" and "Cyprus is no Vietnam" were heard. Some years later, Kissinger expressed the opinion that the Cyprus issue was resolved in 1974. The New York Times and other major newspapers were highly critical, and even State Department officials did not hide their dissatisfaction with his alleged arrogance and ignorance of the basics.
Kissinger was reported to have said, "The Turkish tactics are right – grab what they want and then negotiate on the basis of possession".
However, Kissinger never felt comfortable with the way he handled the Cyprus issue. Journalist Alexis Papahelas stated that Kissinger's "facial expression changes markedly when someone—usually Greek or Cypriot—refers to the crisis". According to him, Kissinger had felt since the summer of 1974 that history would not treat him lightly in relation to his actions.
In 1970, Kissinger parroted to Nixon the United States Department of Defense's position that the country should maintain control over the Panama Canal, which was a reversal of the commitment by the Lyndon Johnson administration. Later, in the face of international pressure, Kissinger changed his stance, viewing the past hardline position in the Panama Canal issue as a hindrance to American relations with Latin America and an international setback that the Soviet Union would approve of. Kissinger in 1973 called for "new dialogue" between the United States and Latin America, then in 1974, Kissinger met Panama military leader Omar Torrijos and an agreement on eight operating principles for an eventual handover of the Panama Canal to Panama was made between Kissinger and Panamanian Foreign Minister Juan Antonio Tack, which angered the United States Congress, but ultimately provided a framework for the 1977 U.S.–Panama treaties.
Kissinger initially supported the normalization of United States–Cuba relations, broken since 1961 (all U.S.–Cuban trade was blocked in February 1962, a few weeks after the exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States because of U.S. pressure). However, he quickly changed his mind and followed Kennedy's policy. After the involvement of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces in the independence struggles in Angola and Mozambique, Kissinger said that unless Cuba withdrew its forces relations would not be normalized. Cuba refused.
Chilean Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality of 36.2 percent in 1970, causing serious concern in Washington, D.C., due to his openly socialist and pro-Cuban politics. The Nixon administration, with Kissinger's input, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to encourage a military coup that would prevent Allende's inauguration, but the plan was not successful.
On September 11, 1973, Allende died during an army attack on the presidential palace that was an element of a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who then became president. In September 1976, Orlando Letelier, a Chilean opponent of the new Pinochet regime, was assassinated in Washington, D.C., with a car bomb. Previously, Kissinger had helped secure his release from prison, and had chosen to cancel an official U.S. letter to Chile warning them against carrying out any political assassinations. This murder was part of Operation Condor, a covert program of political repression and assassination carried out by Southern Cone nations that Kissinger has been accused of being involved in.
On September 10, 2001, after recent declassification of documents, relatives and survivors of General René Schneider filed civil proceedings against Kissinger, in federal court in Washington, D.C., accusing him of collaborating in arranging Schneider's kidnapping which resulted in his death. The case was later dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, citing separation of powers: "The decision to support a coup of the Chilean government to prevent Dr. Allende from coming to power, and the means by which the United States Government sought to effect that goal, implicate policy makers in the murky realm of foreign affairs and national security best left to the political branches." Decades later, the CIA admitted its involvement in the kidnapping of General Schneider, but not his murder, and subsequently paid the group responsible for his death $35,000 "to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the goodwill of the group, and for humanitarian reasons".
Kissinger took a similar line as he had toward Chile when the Argentine Armed Forces, led by Jorge Videla, toppled the elected government of Isabel Perón in 1976 with a process called the National Reorganization Process by the military, with which they consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and "disappearances" against political opponents. An October 1987 investigative report in The Nation broke the story of how, in a June 1976 meeting in the Hotel Carrera in Santiago, Kissinger gave the military junta in neighboring Argentina the "green light" for their own clandestine repression against leftwing guerrillas and other dissidents, thousands of whom were kept in more than 400 secret concentration camps before they were executed. During a meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally but urged him to "get back to normal procedures" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.
As the article published in The Nation noted, as the state-sponsored terror mounted, conservative Republican U.S. Ambassador to Buenos Aires Robert C. Hill "'was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again,' recalled Juan de Onis, former reporter for The New York Times. 'Hill took a personal interest.' He went to the Interior Minister, a general with whom he had worked on drug cases, saying, 'Hey, what about this? We're interested in this case.' He questioned (Foreign Minister Cesar) Guzzetti and, finally, President Jorge Videla himself. 'All he got was stonewalling; he got nowhere.' de Onis said. 'His last year was marked by increasing disillusionment and dismay, and he backed his staff on human rights right to the hilt."
In a letter to The Nation editor Victor Navasky, protesting publication of the article, Kissinger claimed that: "At any rate, the notion of Hill as a passionate human rights advocate is news to all his former associates." Yet Kissinger aide Harry W. Shlaudeman later disagreed with Kissinger, telling the oral historian William E. Knight of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project: "It really came to a head when I was Assistant Secretary, or it began to come to a head, in the case of Argentina where the dirty war was in full flower. Bob Hill, who was Ambassador then in Buenos Aires, a very conservative Republican politician—by no means liberal or anything of the kind, began to report quite effectively about what was going on, this slaughter of innocent civilians, supposedly innocent civilians—this vicious war that they were conducting, underground war. He, at one time in fact, sent me a back-channel telegram saying that the Foreign Minister, who had just come for a visit to Washington and had returned to Buenos Aires, had gloated to him that Kissinger had said nothing to him about human rights. I don't know—I wasn't present at the interview."
Navasky later wrote in his book about being confronted by Kissinger, "'Tell me, Mr. Navasky,' [Kissinger] said in his famous guttural tones, 'how is it that a short article in an obscure journal such as yours about a conversation that was supposed to have taken place years ago about something that did or didn't happen in Argentina resulted in sixty people holding placards denouncing me a few months ago at the airport when I got off the plane in Copenhagen?'"
According to declassified state department files, Kissinger also hindered the Carter administration's efforts to halt the mass killings by the 1976–1983 military dictatorship by visiting the country as Videla's personal guest to attend the 1978 FIFA World Cup and praising the regime.
Kissinger was in favor of accommodating Brazil while it pursued a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s. Kissinger justified his position by arguing that Brazil was a U.S. ally and on the grounds that it would benefit private nuclear industry actors in the U.S. Kissinger's position on Brazil was out of sync with influential voices in the U.S. Congress, the State Department, and the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
In September 1976, Kissinger was actively involved in negotiations regarding the Rhodesian Bush War. Kissinger, along with South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, pressured Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith to hasten the transition to black majority rule in Rhodesia. With FRELIMO in control of Mozambique and even the apartheid regime of South Africa withdrawing its support, Rhodesia's isolation was nearly complete. According to Smith's autobiography, Kissinger told Smith of Mrs. Kissinger's admiration for him, but Smith stated that he thought Kissinger was asking him to sign Rhodesia's "death certificate". Kissinger, bringing the weight of the United States, and corralling other relevant parties to put pressure on Rhodesia, hastened the end of white minority rule.
In contrast to the unfriendly disposition of the previous Kennedy and Johnson administrations towards the Estado Novo regime of Portugal, particularly with regards to its attempts to maintain the Portuguese Colonial Empire by waging the Portuguese Colonial War against anti-colonial rebellions in defence of its empire, the Department of State under Kissinger adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards Portugal. In 1971, the administration of President Nixon successfully renewed the lease of the American military base in the Azores, despite condemnation from the Congressional Black Caucus and some members of the Senate. Though privately continuing to view Portugal contemptibly for its perceived atavistic foreign policy towards Africa, Kissinger publicly expressed thanks for Portugal's agreement to use its military base in Lajes in the Azores to resupply Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Following the fall of the far-right Portuguese regime in 1974, Kissinger worried that the new government's hasty decolonisation plan might benefit radical factions such as the MPLA in Angola. He also expressed concern that the inclusion of the Portuguese Communist Party in the new Portuguese government could legitimise communist parties in other NATO member states, such as Italy.
The Portuguese decolonization process brought U.S. attention to the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, which declared its independence in 1975. Indonesian president Suharto regarded East Timor as rightfully part of Indonesia. In December 1975, Suharto discussed invasion plans during a meeting with Kissinger and President Ford in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Both Ford and Kissinger made clear that U.S. relations with Indonesia would remain strong and that it would not object to the proposed annexation. They only wanted it done "fast" and proposed that it be delayed until after they had returned to Washington. Accordingly, Suharto delayed the operation for one day. Finally on December 7, Indonesian forces invaded the former Portuguese colony. U.S. arms sales to Indonesia continued, and Suharto went ahead with the annexation plan. According to Ben Kiernan, the invasion and occupation resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter of the Timorese population from 1975 to 1981.
During the 1970 Cienfuegos Crisis, in which the Soviet Navy was strongly suspected of building a submarine base in the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, Kissinger met with Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the United States, informing him that the United States government considered this act a violation of the agreements made in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, prompting the Soviets to halt construction of their planned base in Cienfuegos.
In February 1976, Kissinger considered launching air strikes against ports and military installations in Cuba, as well as deploying U.S. Marine Corps battalions based at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, in retaliation for Cuban President Fidel Castro's decision in late 1975 to send troops to newly independent Angola to help the MPLA in its fight against UNITA and South Africa during the start of the Angolan Civil War.
The Kissingerian doctrine endorsed the forced concession of Spanish Sahara to Morocco. At the height of the 1975 Sahara crisis, Kissinger misled Gerald Ford into thinking the International Court of Justice had ruled in favor of Morocco. Kissinger was aware in advance of the Moroccan plans for the invasion of the territory, materialized on November 6, 1975, in the so-called Green March.
Kissinger was involved in furthering cooperation between the U.S. and the Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and held multiple meetings with him. Kissinger later described these efforts as "one of our policy successes in Africa" and praised Mobutu as "courageous, politically astute" and "relatively honest in a country where governmental corruption is a way of life".
After Nixon was forced to resign in the Watergate scandal, Kissinger's influence in the new presidential administration of Gerald R. Ford was diminished after he was replaced by Brent Scowcroft as National Security Advisor during the "Halloween Massacre" cabinet reshuffle of November 1975. Kissinger left office as Secretary of State when Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated Republican Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential elections.
Kissinger continued to participate in policy groups, such as the Trilateral Commission, and to maintain political consulting, speaking, and writing engagements. In 1978, he was secretly involved in thwarting efforts by the Carter administration to indict three Chilean intelligence agents for masterminding the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier. Kissinger was critical of the foreign policy of the Jimmy Carter administration, saying in 1980 that "has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War."
After Kissinger left office in 1977, he was offered an endowed chair at Columbia University, which met with student opposition. Kissinger instead accepted a position at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies. He taught at Georgetown's Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service for several years in the late 1970s. In 1982, with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus and Company, Kissinger founded a consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, and was a partner in affiliate Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. He also served on the board of directors of Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group, and as of March 1999, was a director of Gulfstream Aerospace.
In September 1989, The Wall Street Journal's John Fialka disclosed that Kissinger took a direct economic interest in US-China relations in March 1989 with the establishment of China Ventures, Inc., a Delaware limited partnership, of which he was chairman of the board and chief executive officer. A US $75 million investment in a joint venture with the Communist Party government's primary commercial vehicle at the time, China International Trust & Investment Corporation (CITIC), was its purpose. Board members were major clients of Kissinger Associates. Kissinger was criticized for not disclosing his role in the venture when called upon by ABC's Peter Jennings to comment the morning after the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre. Kissinger's position was generally supportive of Deng Xiaoping's decision to use the military against the demonstrating students and he opposed economic sanctions.
From 1995 to 2001, Kissinger served on the board of directors for Freeport-McMoRan, a multinational copper and gold producer with significant mining and milling operations in Papua, Indonesia. In February 2000, president of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid appointed Kissinger as a political advisor. He also served as an honorary advisor to the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.
In 1998, in response to the 2002 Winter Olympic bid scandal, the International Olympic Committee formed a commission, called the "2000 Commission", to recommend reforms, which Kissinger served on. This service led in 2000 to his appointment as one of five IOC "honor members", a category the organization described as granted to "eminent personalities from outside the IOC who have rendered particularly outstanding services to it".
Kissinger served as the 22nd Chancellor of the College of William and Mary from 2000 to 2005. He was preceded by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and succeeded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The College of William & Mary also own a painted portrait of Kissinger that was painted by Ned Bittinger.
From 2000 to 2006, Kissinger served as chairman of the board of trustees of Eisenhower Fellowships. In 2006, upon his departure from Eisenhower Fellowships, he received the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service.
In November 2002, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to chair the newly established National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to investigate the September 11 attacks. Kissinger stepped down as chairman on December 13, 2002, rather than reveal his business client list, when queried about potential conflicts of interest.
In the Rio Tinto espionage case of 2009–2010, Kissinger was paid $5 million to advise the multinational mining company how to distance itself from an employee who had been arrested in China for bribery.
Kissinger—along with William Perry, Sam Nunn, and George Shultz—called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and in three op-eds in The Wall Street Journal proposed an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end. The four created the Nuclear Threat Initiative to advance this agenda. In 2010, the four were featured in a documentary film entitled Nuclear Tipping Point. The film is a visual and historical depiction of the ideas laid forth in The Wall Street Journal op-eds and reinforces their commitment to a world without nuclear weapons and the steps that can be taken to reach that goal.
On November 17, 2016, Kissinger met with President-elect Donald Trump during which they discussed global affairs. Kissinger also met with President Trump at the White House in May 2017.
In an interview with Charlie Rose on August 17, 2017, Kissinger said about President Trump: "I'm hoping for an Augustinian moment, for St. Augustine ... who in his early life followed a pattern that was quite incompatible with later on when he had a vision, and rose to sainthood. One does not expect the president to become that, but it's conceivable". Kissinger also argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to weaken Hillary Clinton, not elect Donald Trump. Kissinger said that Putin "thought—wrongly incidentally—that she would be extremely confrontational ... I think he tried to weaken the incoming president [Clinton]".
In several articles of his and interviews that he gave during the Yugoslav Wars, he criticized the United States' policies in Southeast Europe, among other things for the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state, which he described as a foolish act. Most importantly he dismissed the notion of Serbs and Croats being aggressors or separatist, saying that "they can't be separating from something that has never existed". In addition, he repeatedly warned the West against inserting itself into a conflict that has its roots at least hundreds of years back in time, and said that the West would do better if it allowed the Serbs and Croats to join their respective countries. Kissinger shared similarly critical views on Western involvement in Kosovo. In particular, he held a disparaging view of the Rambouillet Agreement:
The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that any Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form.
However, as the Serbs did not accept the Rambouillet text and NATO bombings started, he opted for a continuation of the bombing as NATO's credibility was now at stake, but dismissed the use of ground forces, claiming that it was not worth it.
In 2006, it was reported in the book State of Denial by Bob Woodward that Kissinger met regularly with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offer advice on the Iraq War. Kissinger confirmed in recorded interviews with Woodward that the advice was the same as he had given in a column in The Washington Post on August 12, 2005: "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy." Kissinger also frequently met with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom he warned that Coalition Provisional Authority Director L. Paul Bremer was "a control freak".
In an interview on the BBC's Sunday AM on November 19, 2006, Kissinger was asked whether there was any hope left for a clear military victory in Iraq and responded, "If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible. ... I think we have to redefine the course. But I don't believe that the alternative is between military victory as it had been defined previously, or total withdrawal."
In an interview with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution on April 3, 2008, Kissinger reiterated that even though he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he thought that the George W. Bush administration rested too much of its case for war on Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Robinson noted that Kissinger had criticized the administration for invading with too few troops, for disbanding the Iraqi Army as part of de-Baathification, and for mishandling relations with certain allies.
Kissinger said in April 2008 that "India has parallel objectives to the United States", and he called the nation an ally of the U.S.
Kissinger attended the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. A few months before the Games opened, as controversy over China's human rights record was intensifying due to criticism by Amnesty International and other groups of the widespread use of the death penalty and other issues, Kissinger told the PRC's official press agency Xinhua: "I think one should separate Olympics as a sporting event from whatever political disagreements people may have had with China. I expect that the games will proceed in the spirit for which they were designed, which is friendship among nations, and that other issues are discussed in other forums." He said China had made huge efforts to stage the Games. "Friends of China should not use the Olympics to pressure China now." He added that he would bring two of his grandchildren to watch the Games and planned to attend the opening ceremony. During the Games, he participated with Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, film star Jackie Chan, and former British PM Tony Blair at a Peking University forum on the qualities that make a champion. He sat with his wife Nancy Kissinger, President George W. Bush, former President George H. W. Bush, and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the men's basketball game between China and the U.S.
In 2011, Kissinger published On China, chronicling the evolution of Sino-American relations and laying out the challenges to a partnership of "genuine strategic trust" between the U.S. and China. In this book On China and his 2014 book World Order, as well as in his 2018 interview with Financial Times, Kissinger consistently stated that he believed that China wants to restore its historic role as the Middle Kingdom and be "the principal adviser to all humanity".
In 2020, during a period of worsening Sino-American relations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hong Kong protests, and the U.S.–China trade war, Kissinger expressed concerns that the United States and China are entering a Second Cold War and will eventually become embroiled in a military conflict similar to World War I. He called for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the incoming U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to take a less confrontational foreign policy. Kissinger previously said that a potential war between China and the United States would be "worse than the world wars that ruined European civilization".
In July 2023, Kissinger travelled to Beijing to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2018 for engaging in the purchase of combat aircraft from a Russian arms exporter. Kissinger emphasized Sino-American relations in the meeting, stating that "the United States and China should eliminate misunderstandings, coexist peacefully, and avoid confrontation". Later that trip, Kissinger met with Xi with the intention of defrosting relations between the U.S. and China.
Kissinger's position on this issue of U.S.–Iran talks was reported by the Tehran Times to be that "Any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of state meet." In 2016, Kissinger said that the biggest challenge facing the Middle East is the "potential domination of the region by an Iran that is both imperial and jihadist". He further wrote in August 2017 that if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran and its Shiite allies were allowed to fill the territorial vacuum left by a militarily defeated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the region would be left with a land corridor extending from Iran to the Levant "which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire". Commenting on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Kissinger said that he would not have agreed to it, but that Trump's plan to end the agreement after it was signed would "enable the Iranians to do more than us".
On March 5, 2014, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Kissinger, 11 days before the Crimean referendum on whether Autonomous Republic of Crimea should officially rejoin Ukraine or join neighboring Russia. In it, he attempted to balance the Ukrainian, Russian and Western desires for a functional state. He made four main points:
Kissinger also wrote: "The west speaks Ukrainian; the east speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other—as has been the pattern—would lead eventually to civil war or break up."
Following the publication of his book titled World Order, Kissinger participated in an interview with Charlie Rose and updated his position on Ukraine, which he sees as a possible geographical mediator between Russia and the West. In a question he posed to himself for illustration regarding re-conceiving policy regarding Ukraine, Kissinger stated: "If Ukraine is considered an outpost, then the situation is that its eastern border is the NATO strategic line, and NATO will be within 200 miles (320 km) of Volgograd. That will never be accepted by Russia. On the other hand, if the Russian western line is at the border of Poland, Europe will be permanently disquieted. The Strategic objective should have been to see whether one can build Ukraine as a bridge between East and West, and whether one can do it as a kind of a joint effort."
In December 2016, Kissinger advised President-elect Donald Trump to accept "Crimea as a part of Russia" in an attempt to secure a rapprochement between the United States and Russia, whose relations soured as a result of the Crimean crisis. When asked if he explicitly considered Russia's sovereignty over Crimea legitimate, Kissinger answered in the affirmative, reversing the position he took in his Washington Post op-ed.
In 2019, Kissinger wrote about the increasing tendency to give control of nuclear weapons to computers operating with artificial intelligence (AI) that: "Adversaries' ignorance of AI-developed configurations will become a strategic advantage". Kissinger argued that giving power to launch nuclear weapons to computers using algorithms to make decisions would eliminate the human factor and give the advantage to the state that had the most effective AI system as a computer can make decisions about war and peace far faster than any human ever could. Just as an AI-enhanced computer can win chess games by anticipating human decision-making, an AI-enhanced computer could be useful in a crisis as in a nuclear war, the side that strikes first would have the advantage by destroying the opponent's nuclear capacity. Kissinger also noted there was always the danger that a computer could make a decision to start a nuclear war before diplomacy had been exhausted, or for a reason that would not be understandable to the operators. Kissinger also warned the use of AI to control nuclear weapons would impose "opacity" on the decision-making process as the algorithms that control the AI system are not readily understandable, destabilizing the decision-making process:
grand strategy requires an understanding of the capabilities and military deployments of potential adversaries. But if more and more intelligence becomes opaque, how will policy makers understand the views and abilities of their adversaries and perhaps even allies? Will many different internets emerge or, in the end, only one? What will be the implications for cooperation? For confrontation? As AI becomes ubiquitous, new concepts for its security need to emerge.
On April 3, 2020, Kissinger shared his diagnostic view of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that it threatens the "liberal world order". Kissinger added that the virus does not know borders although global leaders are trying to address the crisis on a mainly national basis. He stressed that the key is not a purely national effort but greater international cooperation.
In May 2022, speaking to the World Economic Forum on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kissinger advocated for a diplomatic settlement that would restore the status quo ante bellum, effectively ceding Crimea and parts of Donbas to Russian control. Kissinger urged Ukrainians to "match the heroism they have shown with wisdom", arguing that "[p]ursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself." He spoke to Edward Luce and a Financial Times audience in the same month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected Kissinger's suggestions, saying Ukraine would not agree to peace until Russia agreed to return Crimea and the Donbas region to Ukraine.
On a book tour to sell Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy in July 2022 he spoke to Judy Woodruff of PBS and he was still of the opinion that "a negotiation is desirable" and clarified his earlier statements, saying that he supported a ceasefire line on the borders of February 24 and that "Russia should not gain anything from the war... Ukraine above all cannot give up territory that it had when the war started because this would be symbolically dangerous."
On January 18, 2023, Kissinger was interviewed by Graham Allison for a World Economic Forum audience; he said that US support should be intensified until either the February 24 borders are reached or the February 24 borders are recognized, upon which time under a ceasefire agreement negotiations would begin. Kissinger felt that Russia needs to be given an opportunity to rejoin the comity of nations while the sanctions are maintained until final settlement is reached. He expressed his admiration for President Zelenskyy and lauded the heroic conduct of the Ukrainian people. Kissinger felt that the invasion has ipso facto its logical outcome pointed to NATO membership for Ukraine at the end of the peace process.
In September 2023, Kissinger met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York City, on which occasion they discussed his change in position on Ukraine's NATO membership ambitions.
In a statement made a month before his death, Kissinger responded to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war by saying that the goals of Hamas "can only be to mobilize the Arab world against Israel and to get off the track of peaceful negotiations". In response to celebrations of the attack by some Arabs in Germany, he issued a statement denouncing Muslim immigration into Germany: "It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that."
A 2014 poll of American international relations scholars conducted by the College of William & Mary ranked Kissinger as the most effective Secretary of State in the 50 years prior to 2015. In 1972, Time commented that "a streak of suspicion seems to underlie all that he does" and "His jokes about his paranoia have an uncomfortable edge of truth". He was so often seen escorting Hollywood starlets that the Village Voice charged he was "a secret square posing as a swinger". The insight, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac", is widely attributed to him, although Kissinger was paraphrasing Napoleon Bonaparte. Critics on the right, such as Ray Takeyh, have faulted Kissinger for his role in the Nixon administration's opening to China and secret negotiations with North Vietnam. Takeyh writes that while rapprochement with China was a worthy goal, the Nixon administration failed to achieve any meaningful concessions from Chinese officials in return, as China continued to support North Vietnam and various "revolutionary forces throughout the Third World", "nor does there appear to be even a remote, indirect connection between Nixon and Kissinger's diplomacy and the communist leadership's decision, after Mao's bloody rule, to move away from a communist economy towards state capitalism."
Historian Jeffrey Kimball developed the theory that Kissinger and the Nixon administration accepted a South Vietnamese collapse provided a face-saving decent interval passed between American withdrawal and defeat. In his first meeting with Zhou Enlai in 1971, Kissinger "laid out in detail the settlement terms that would produce such a delayed defeat: total American withdrawal, return of all American POWs, and a ceasefire-in-place for '18 months or some period'", in the words of historian Ken Hughes. On October 6, 1972, Kissinger told Nixon twice that the terms of the Paris Peace Accords would probably destroy South Vietnam: "I also think that Thieu is right, that our terms will eventually destroy him." However, Kissinger denied using a "decent interval" strategy, writing "All of us who negotiated the agreement of October 12 were convinced that we had vindicated the anguish of a decade not by a 'decent interval' but by a decent settlement." Johannes Kadura offers a positive assessment of Nixon and Kissinger's strategy, arguing that the two men "simultaneously maintained a Plan A of further supporting Saigon and a Plan B of shielding Washington should their maneuvers prove futile." According to Kadura, the "decent interval" concept has been "largely misrepresented", in that Nixon and Kissinger "sought to gain time, make the North turn inward, and create a perpetual equilibrium" rather than acquiescing in the collapse of South Vietnam.
Kissinger's record was brought up during the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton had cultivated a close relationship with Kissinger, describing him as a "friend" and a source of "counsel". During the Democratic primary debates, Clinton touted Kissinger's praise for her record as secretary of state. In response, candidate Bernie Sanders criticized Kissinger and said: "I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger."
Kissinger was an immensely beloved figure within China, with China News Service describing him in his obituary as someone "who had a sharp vision and a thorough understanding of world affairs".
Kissinger has generally received a polarizing reception; some have portrayed him as a strategic genius who was willing to act in a utilitarian manner, others have portrayed his foreign policy decisions as immoral and profoundly damaging in the long run.
Historian Niall Ferguson has argued that Kissinger is one of the most effective secretaries of state in American history.
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal stated in the aftermath of his death "Kissinger was a target of both the right and left in those perilous Cold War years, often unfairly..." The article noted that he was often criticized by American conservatives for overlooking human rights in China, while saying "he had no illusions about the Communist Party or its nationalist ambitions. His view was that the U.S. and China had to achieve some modus vivendi to avoid war despite their profound cultural and political differences" while claiming that "the alternatives then, as now, weren't usually [democracy advocates] of the left's imagining. They were often Communists who would have aligned themselves with the Soviets... The U.S. provided covert aid to Allende's political opponents, but declassified briefings from the time show the U.S. was unaware of the military coup that deposed him. Kissinger wasn't responsible for Augusto Pinochet's coup or its bloody excesses. Chile eventually became a democracy... Cuba remains a dictatorship."
A number of journalists, activists, and human rights lawyers accused Kissinger of being responsible for war crimes during his tenure in government. Some sought civil and even criminal penalties against Kissinger, but none of these attempts were successful.
In September 2001, relatives and survivors of General Rene Schneider filed civil proceedings in federal court in Washington, DC. The suit was later dismissed. In April 2002, a petition for Kissinger's arrest was filed in the High Court in London by human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, citing the destruction of civilian populations and the environment in Indochina during the years 1969–1975. The petition was rejected one day after filing.
One of his most prominent critics was American-British journalist and author Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens authored The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in which he called for the prosecution of Kissinger "for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture". American chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain wrote in A Cook's Tour: "Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands... Witness what [he] did... and you will never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."
Author Robert D. Kaplan and historian Niall Ferguson have disputed these notions and argued that there is a double standard in how Kissinger is judged in comparison to others. They have defended Kissinger by arguing that American power to advocate for human rights in other nations is often counterproductive and limited, that taking into consideration geopolitical realities is an inevitable part of any effective foreign policy, and that there are utilitarian reasons to defend most of the decisions of his tenure.
Several historians have rejected both prominent reputations of Kissinger. David Greenberg argued that each are exaggerated caricatures that overstate both his genius and immorality: "In fact, if there's a single word I'd apply to Kissinger, it's 'overrated.' He was overrated as a scholar (famous mainly for writing a very long dissertation). He was overrated as a strategist (he often gave bad advice, as he did in urging George W. Bush not to withdraw troops from Iraq). He was even overrated as a villain – the 'Christopher Hitchenses' of the world loved to call him a 'war criminal,' but this was a fundamentally unserious charge. The Defense Department, not the State Department, prosecutes wars, and the president oversees it – but the Hitchenses preferred to go after Kissinger rather than (Defense Secretaries) Mel Laird or James Schlesinger or even Nixon." Similarly, Mario Del Pero argued: "He was not particularly original or bold, once we scratch away from his writings the deliberately opaque and convoluted prose he often used, possibly to try to render more original thoughts and reflections that were in reality fairly conventional... In short, he wasn't a war criminal, he wasn't a very deep or sophisticated thinker, he rarely challenged the intellectual vogues of the time (even because it would have meant to challenge those in power, something he always was—and still is—reluctant to do), and once in government he displayed a certain intellectual laziness vis-à-vis the intricacies and complexities of a world that he still tended to see in black-and-white."
Kissinger married Anneliese "Ann" Fleischer (born November 6, 1925, in Fürth, Germany) on February 6, 1949. They had two children, Elizabeth and David, and divorced in 1964. In 1955, he met Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann during a symposium at Harvard; the two had a romantic relationship that lasted several years. On March 30, 1974, he married Nancy Maginnes. They lived in Kent, Connecticut, and in New York City. Kissinger's son David served as an executive with NBC Universal Television Studio before becoming head of Conaco, Conan O'Brien's production company, in 2005. In February 1982, at the age of 58, Henry Kissinger underwent coronary bypass surgery. On May 27, 2023, he turned 100.
Kissinger described Diplomacy as his favorite game in a 1973 interview.
Daryl Grove characterized Kissinger as one of the most influential people in the growth of soccer in the United States. Kissinger was named chairman of the North American Soccer League board of directors in 1978.
Since his childhood, Kissinger had been a fan of his hometown's soccer club, SpVgg Fürth (now SpVgg Greuther Fürth). Even during his time in office, the German Embassy informed him about the team's results every Monday morning. He was an honorary member with lifetime season tickets. In September 2012, Kissinger attended a home game in which Greuther Fürth lost 0–2 against Schalke, after promising years previously that he would attend a Greuther Fürth home game if they were promoted to the Bundesliga (the top football league in Germany) from the 2. Bundesliga.
Kissinger died at his home in Kent, Connecticut, on November 29, 2023, at the age of 100. At the time of his death, he was last living former U.S. Cabinet member who served in the Richard Nixon administration. He is survived by his wife, Nancy Maginnes Kissinger; two children, David and Elizabeth; and five grandchildren. His death was announced by Kissinger Associates, his consulting firm. Kissinger Associates announced that the funeral would be private, and would be followed by a memorial service in New York City.
Kissinger was widely admired within China and praised by the Chinese Communist Party. Government figures on state media uniformly released posts mourning his death. Chinese social media expressed widespread sorrow after news of his passing was released, and hashtags idolizing Kissinger became the most searched trend in China. China News Service stated in his obituary that "Today, this 'old friend of the Chinese people,' who had a sharp vision and a thorough understanding of world affairs, has completed his legendary life". China Central Television, the state broadcaster, called Kissinger a "legendary diplomat" and a "living fossil" who had witnessed the development of China-U.S. relations. Shortly before his death, Chinese president Xi Jinping stated: "The Chinese people never forget their old friends, and Sino-U.S. relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger".
Many British Prime Ministers mourned Kissinger. Tony Blair, the former Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, released a statement saying: "There is no-one like Henry Kissinger... From the first time I met him as a new Labour Party opposition leader in 1994, struggling to form views on foreign policy, to the last occasion when I visited him in New York and, later, he spoke at my institute's annual gathering, I was in awe of him... If it is possible for diplomacy, at its highest level, to be a form of art, Henry was an artist." David Cameron stated "He was a great statesman and a deeply respected diplomat who will be greatly missed on the world stage... Even at 100, his wisdom and thoughtfulness shone through". Boris Johnson said: "The world needs him now. If ever there was an author of peace and lover of concord, that man was Henry Kissinger".
European Council President Charles Michel called Kissinger a "strategist with attention to the smallest detail" and "a kind human and a brilliant mind who, over 100 years, shaped the [destinies] of some of the most important events of the century." Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in a telegram to Kissinger's widow Nancy that he was a "wise and farsighted statesman". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that he "had the privilege of meeting Dr. Kissinger on numerous occasions, the most recent being just two months ago in New York. Each meeting with him was not just a lesson in diplomacy but also a masterclass in statesmanship. His understanding of the complexities of international relations and his unique insights into the challenges facing our world were unparalleled." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated: "The world has lost a great diplomat".
Chile's ambassador to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdés, released a statement saying he possessed "brilliance" but also "profound moral wretchedness". This statement was reposted by President Gabriel Boric. The Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said that Kissinger did "inhumane things", adding that "he should have apologized to the people of Bangladesh for what he has done".
The announcement of Kissinger's death saw a widespread mix of tribute and criticism on American social media.
Joe Biden praised Kissinger's "fierce intellect" while noting that they often "disagreed strongly". Former President George W. Bush stated: "America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs with the passing of Henry Kissinger. I have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States Army". Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain, wrote: "Henry Kissinger was ever present in my late husband's life. While John was a prisoner of war, and in the later years, as a senator and statesman. The McCain family will miss his wit, charm, and intelligence terribly".
Many negative reactions to Kissinger's death argued his decisions in government violated American values. House of Representative members Jim McGovern, Gerry Connolly, and Greg Casar issued critical reactions to his death, with Connolly stating Kissinger's "indifference to human suffering will forever tarnish his name and shape his legacy". The front page of HuffPost labeled him "The Beltway Butcher", while another HuffPost article described him as "America's Most Notorious War Criminal". Teen Vogue mocked Kissinger with the headline: "War Criminal Responsible for Millions of Deaths Dies at 100", a statement similar to that of Nick Turse of The Intercept. A CNN op-ed by Peter Bergen entitled "Christopher Hitchens was right about Henry Kissinger" stated that to Kissinger "the ends almost always justified the means," referencing Hitchens's 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Socialist magazine Jacobin released a book-length anthology entitled The Good Die Young. The introduction by historian Greg Grandin notes "We all live now in the Kissingerian void."
Kissinger was defended by conservative commentator David Harsanyi in an op-ed on the New York Post, where he stated that "the left disgustingly dances on Kissinger's grave because it hates America". The New York Sun also defended Kissinger, describing him as "one of the most remarkable figures in American history". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States secretary of state and national security advisor in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Germany, Kissinger came to the United States in 1938 as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and, after the war, was educated at Harvard University, where he excelled academically. He later became a professor of government at the university and earned an international reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. He frequently acted as a consultant to government agencies, think tanks, and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon before being appointed national security advisor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated an opening of relations with China, engaged in \"shuttle diplomacy\" in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. For his role in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, he was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances. A practitioner of a pragmatic approach to politics called Realpolitik, he has been widely considered by scholars to be an effective secretary of state.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kissinger has also been associated with controversial U.S. policies, including its bombing of Cambodia, involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, support for Argentina's military junta in its Dirty War, support for Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor, and support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War and Bangladesh genocide. He was accused of war crimes for the civilian death toll of the policies he pursued, his role in facilitating U.S. support for dictatorial regimes, and willful ignorance towards human rights abuses committed by the United States and its allies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "After leaving government, Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. He authored over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations. His advice was sought by American presidents of both political parties.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany. He was the son of homemaker Paula (née Stern; 1901–1998), from Leutershausen, and Louis Kissinger (1887–1982), a schoolteacher. He had a younger brother, Walter (1924–2021), who was a businessman. Kissinger's family was German-Jewish. His great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb adopted \"Kissinger\" as his surname in 1817, taking it from the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. In his childhood, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer. He played for the youth team of SpVgg Fürth, which was one of the nation's best clubs at the time.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In a 2022 BBC interview, Kissinger vividly recalled being nine years old in 1933 and learning of Adolf Hitler's election as Chancellor of Germany, which proved to be a profound turning point for the Kissinger family. During Nazi rule, Kissinger and his friends were regularly harassed and beaten by Hitler Youth gangs. Kissinger sometimes defied the segregation imposed by Nazi racial laws by sneaking into soccer stadiums to watch matches, often resulting in beatings from security guards. As results of the Nazis' anti-Semitic laws, Kissinger was unable to gain admittance to the Gymnasium and his father was dismissed from his teaching job.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On August 20, 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old, he and his family fled Germany to avoid further Nazi persecution. The family briefly stopped in London before arriving in New York City on September 5. Kissinger later downplayed the influence his experiences of Nazi persecution had had on his policies, writing that the \"Germany of my youth had a great deal of order and very little justice; it was not the sort of place likely to inspire devotion to order in the abstract.\" Nevertheless, many scholars, including Kissinger's biographer Walter Isaacson, have argued that his experiences influenced the formation of his realist approach to foreign policy.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kissinger spent his high-school years in the German-Jewish community in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced German accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak. After his first year at George Washington High School, he began attending school at night while working in a shaving brush factory during the day.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Following high school, Kissinger studied accounting at the City College of New York, excelling academically as a part-time student while continuing to work. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On June 19, 1943, at the age of 20, while stationed in South Carolina, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania under the Army Specialized Training Program, but the program was canceled and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow immigrant from Germany who noted Kissinger's fluency in German and his intellect and arranged for him to be assigned to the division's military intelligence. Kissinger saw combat with the division and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge. On April 10, 1945, he participated in the liberation of the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp, a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. At the time, Kissinger, wrote in his journal, \"I had never seen people degraded to the level that people were in Ahlem. They barely looked human. They were skeletons.\" After the initial shock, however, Kissinger was relatively silent about his wartime service.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "During the American advance into Germany, Kissinger, though only a private (the lowest military rank), was put in charge of the administration of the city of Krefeld because of a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Within eight days he had established a civilian administration. Kissinger was then reassigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), where he became a CIC Special Agent holding the enlisted rank of sergeant. He was given charge of a team in Hanover assigned to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star. Kissinger drew up a comprehensive list of all known Gestapo employees in the Bergstraße region, and had them rounded up. By the end of July, 12 men had been arrested. In March 1947, Fritz Girke, Hans Hellenbroich, Michael Raaf, and Karl Stattmann were subsequently caught and tried by the Dachau Military Tribunal for killing two American prisoners of war. The four men were all found guilty and sentenced to death. They were executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison in October 1948.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In June 1945, Kissinger was made commandant of the Bensheim metro CIC detachment, Bergstraße district of Hesse, with responsibility for denazification of the district. Although he possessed absolute authority and powers of arrest, Kissinger took care to avoid abuses against the local population by his command.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King and, as a civilian employee following his separation from the army, continued to serve in this role.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Kissinger recalled that his experience in the army \"made me feel like an American\".",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kissinger earned his Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in political science from Harvard College in 1950, where he lived in Adams House and studied under William Yandell Elliott. His senior undergraduate thesis, titled The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant, was over 400 pages long, and was the origin of the current limit on length (35,000 words). He earned his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still a graduate student at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, and founded a magazine, Confluence. At that time, he sought to work as a spy for the FBI.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kissinger's doctoral dissertation was titled Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich). Stephen Graubard, Kissinger's friend, asserted that Kissinger primarily pursued such endeavor to instruct himself on the history of power play between European states in the 19th century. In his doctoral dissertation, Kissinger first introduced the concept of \"legitimacy\", which he defined as: \"Legitimacy as used here should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy\". An international order accepted by all of the major powers is \"legitimate\" whereas an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is \"revolutionary\" and hence dangerous. Thus, when after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the leaders of Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to co-operate in the Concert of Europe to preserve the peace after Austria, Prussia, and Russia participated in a series of three Partitions of Poland, in Kissinger's viewpoint this international system was \"legitimate\" because it was accepted by the leaders of all five of the Great Powers of Europe. Notably, Kissinger's Primat der Außenpolitik (Primacy of foreign policy) approach to diplomacy took it for granted that as long as the decision-makers in the major states were willing to accept the international order, then it is \"legitimate\" with questions of public opinion and morality dismissed as irrelevant. His dissertation also won him the Senator Charles Sumner Prize, an award given to the best dissertation \"from the legal, political, historical, economic, social, or ethnic approach, dealing with any means or measures tending toward the prevention of war and the establishment of universal peace\" by a student under the Harvard Department of Government. It was published in 1957 as A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–1822.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government where he served as the director of the Harvard International Seminar between 1951 and 1971. In 1955, he was a consultant to the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board. During 1955 and 1956, he was also study director in nuclear weapons and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He released his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy the following year. The book, which criticized the Eisenhower Administration's massive retaliation nuclear doctrine, caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. That same year, he published A World Restored, a study of balance-of-power politics in post-Napoleonic Europe.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "From 1956 to 1958, Kissinger worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as director of its Special Studies Project. He served as the director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program between 1958 and 1971. In 1958, he also co-founded the Center for International Affairs with Robert R. Bowie where he served as its associate director. Outside of academia, he served as a consultant to several government agencies and think tanks, including the Operations Research Office, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Department of State, and the RAND Corporation.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Keen to have a greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, Kissinger became foreign policy advisor to the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller, supporting his bids for the Republican nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968. Kissinger first met Richard Nixon at a party hosted by Clare Boothe Luce in 1967, saying that he found him more \"thoughtful\" than he expected. During the Republican primaries in 1968, Kissinger again served as the foreign policy adviser to Rockefeller and in July 1968 called Nixon \"the most dangerous of all the men running to have as president\". Initially upset when Nixon won the Republican nomination, the ambitious Kissinger soon changed his mind about Nixon and contacted a Nixon campaign aide, Richard Allen, to state he was willing to do anything to help Nixon win. After Nixon became president in January 1969, Kissinger was appointed as National Security Advisor. By this time, he was arguably \"one of the most important theorists about foreign policy ever to be produced by the United States of America\", according to his official biographer Niall Ferguson.",
"title": "Academic career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon and continued as Secretary of State under Nixon's successor Gerald Ford. With the death of George Shultz in February 2021, Kissinger was the last surviving member of the Nixon administration Cabinet.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The relationship between Nixon and Kissinger was unusually close, and has been compared to the relationships of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, or Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins. In all three cases, the State Department was relegated to a backseat role in developing foreign policy. Kissinger and Nixon shared a penchant for secrecy and conducted numerous \"backchannel\" negotiations, such as that through the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that excluded State Department experts. Historian David Rothkopf has looked at the personalities of Nixon and Kissinger, saying:",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "They were a fascinating pair. In a way, they complemented each other perfectly. Kissinger was the charming and worldly Mr. Outside who provided the grace and intellectual-establishment respectability that Nixon lacked, disdained and aspired to. Kissinger was an international citizen. Nixon very much a classic American. Kissinger had a worldview and a facility for adjusting it to meet the times, Nixon had pragmatism and a strategic vision that provided the foundations for their policies. Kissinger would, of course, say that he was not political like Nixon—but in fact he was just as political as Nixon, just as calculating, just as relentlessly ambitious ... these self-made men were driven as much by their need for approval and their neuroses as by their strengths.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. In that period, he extended the policy of détente. This policy led to a significant relaxation in U.S.–Soviet tensions and played a crucial role in 1971 talks with People's Republic of China premier Zhou Enlai. The talks concluded with a rapprochement between the United States and the People's Republic of China, and the formation of a new strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alignment. He was jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Lê Đức Thọ for helping to establish a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The ceasefire, however, was not durable. Thọ declined to accept the award and Kissinger appeared deeply ambivalent about it—he donated his prize money to charity, did not attend the award ceremony, and later offered to return his prize medal. As National Security Advisor in 1974, Kissinger directed the much-debated National Security Study Memorandum 200.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Kissinger initially had little interest in China when he began his work as National Security Adviser in 1969, and the driving force behind the rapprochement with China was Nixon. In April 1970, both Nixon and Kissinger promised Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, that they would never abandon Taiwan or make any compromises with Mao Zedong, although Nixon did speak vaguely of his wish to improve relations with the People's Republic.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Kissinger made two trips to the People's Republic in July and October 1971 (the first of which was made in secret) to confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, then in charge of PRC foreign policy. During his visit to Beijing, the main issue turned out to be Taiwan, as Zhou demanded the United States recognize that Taiwan was a legitimate part of the PRC, pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan, and end military support for the Kuomintang regime. Kissinger gave way by promising to pull U.S. forces out of Taiwan, saying two-thirds would be pulled out when the Vietnam war ended and the rest to be pulled out as Sino-American relations improved.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In October 1971, as Kissinger was making his second trip to the People's Republic, the issue of which Chinese government deserved to be represented in the United Nations came up again. Out of concern to not be seen abandoning an ally, the United States tried to promote a compromise under which both Chinese regimes would be UN members, although Kissinger called it \"an essentially doomed rearguard action\". While American ambassador to the UN George H. W. Bush was lobbying for the \"two Chinas\" formula, Kissinger was removing favorable references to Taiwan from a speech that then Secretary of State William P. Rogers was preparing, as he expected the country to be expelled from the UN. During his second visit to Beijing, Kissinger told Zhou that according to a public opinion poll 62% of Americans wanted Taiwan to remain a UN member and asked him to consider the \"two Chinas\" compromise to avoid offending American public opinion. Zhou responded with his claim that the People's Republic was the legitimate government of all China, and no compromise was possible with the Taiwan issue. Kissinger said that the United States could not totally sever ties with Chiang, who had been an ally in World War II. Kissinger told Nixon that Bush was \"too soft and not sophisticated\" enough to properly represent the United States at the UN and expressed no anger when the UN General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and give China's seat on the UN Security Council to the People's Republic.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kissinger's trips paved the way for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between Nixon, Zhou, and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility. The result was the formation of a tacit strategic anti-Soviet alliance between the PRC and the United States. Kissinger's diplomacy led to economic and cultural exchanges between the two sides and the establishment of \"liaison offices\" in the PRC and American capitals, though full normalization of relations with the PRC would not occur until 1979.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Kissinger discussed being involved in Indochina prior to his appointment as National Security Adviser to Nixon. According to Kissinger, his friend Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Ambassador to Saigon, employed Kissinger as a consultant, leading to Kissinger visiting Vietnam once in 1965 and twice in 1966, where Kissinger realized that the United States \"knew neither how to win or how to conclude\" the Vietnam War. Kissinger also stated that in 1967, he served as an intermediary for negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam, with him providing the American position, while two Frenchmen provided the North Vietnamese position.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "When he came into office in 1969, Kissinger favored a negotiating strategy under which the United States and North Vietnam would sign an armistice and agreed to pull their troops out of South Vietnam while the South Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were to agree to a coalition government. Kissinger had doubts about Nixon's theory of \"linkage\", believing that this would give the Soviet Union leverage over the United States and unlike Nixon was less concerned about the ultimate fate of South Vietnam. Though Kissinger did not regard South Vietnam as important in its own right, he believed it was necessary to support South Vietnam to maintain the United States as a global power, believing that none of America's allies would trust the United States if South Vietnam were abandoned too quickly.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In early 1969, Kissinger was opposed to the plans for Operation Menu, the bombing of Cambodia, fearing that Nixon was acting rashly with no plans for the diplomatic fall-out, but on March 16, 1969, Nixon announced the bombing would start the next day. As he saw the president was committed, he became more supportive. Kissinger played a key role in bombing Cambodia to disrupt raids into South Vietnam from Cambodia, as well as the 1970 Cambodian campaign and subsequent widespread bombing of Khmer Rouge targets in Cambodia. The Paris peace talks had become stalemated by late 1969 owing to the obstructionism of the South Vietnamese delegation. The South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu did not want the United States to withdraw from Vietnam, and out of frustration with him, Kissinger decided to begin secret peace talks with Le Duc Thọ in Paris parallel to the official talks that the South Vietnamese were unaware of. In June 1971, Kissinger supported Nixon's effort to ban the Pentagon Papers saying the \"hemorrhage of state secrets\" to the media was making diplomacy impossible.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On August 1, 1972, Kissinger met Thọ again in Paris, and for first time, he seemed willing to compromise, saying that political and military terms of an armistice could be treated separately and hinted that his government was no longer willing to make the overthrow of Thiệu a precondition. On the evening of October 8, 1972, at a secret meeting of Kissinger and Thọ in Paris came the decisive breakthrough in the talks. Thọ began with \"a very realistic and very simple proposal\" for a ceasefire that would see the Americans pull all their forces out of Vietnam in exchange for the release of all the POWs in North Vietnam. Kissinger accepted Thọ's offer as the best deal possible, saying that the \"mutual withdrawal formula\" had to be abandoned as it been \"unobtainable through ten years of war ... We could not make it a condition for a final settlement. We had long passed that threshold\". In the fall of 1972, both Kissinger and Nixon were frustrated with Thiệu's refusal to accept any sort of peace deal calling for withdrawal of American forces. On October 21 Kissinger and the American ambassador Ellsworth Bunker arrived in Saigon to show Thiệu the peace agreement. Thiệu refused to sign the peace agreement and demanded very extensive amendments that Kissinger reported to Nixon \"verge on insanity\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Though Nixon had initially supported Kissinger against Thiệu, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman urged him to reconsider, arguing that Thiệu's objections had merit. Nixon wanted 69 amendments to the draft peace agreement included in the final treaty and ordered Kissinger back to Paris to force Thọ to accept them. Kissinger regarded Nixon's 69 amendments as \"preposterous\" as he knew Thọ would never accept them. As expected, Thọ refused to consider any of the 69 amendments, and on December 13, 1972, left Paris for Hanoi. Kissinger by this stage was worked up into a state of fury after Thọ walked out of the Paris talks and told Nixon: \"They're just a bunch of shits. Tawdry, filthy shits\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On January 8, 1973, Kissinger and Thọ met again in Paris and the next day reached an agreement, which in main points was essentially the same as the one Nixon had rejected in October with only cosmetic concessions to the Americans. Thiệu once again rejected the peace agreement, only to receive an ultimatum from Nixon which caused Thiệu to reluctantly accept the peace agreement. On January 27, 1973, Kissinger and Thọ signed a peace agreement that called for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Vietnam by March in exchange for North Vietnam freeing all the U.S. POWs. Along with Thọ, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1973, for their work in negotiating the ceasefires contained in the Paris Peace Accords on \"Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam\", signed the previous January. According to Irwin Abrams in 2001, this prize was the most controversial to date. For the first time in the history of the Peace Prize, two members left the Nobel Committee in protest. Thọ rejected the award, telling Kissinger that peace had not been restored in South Vietnam. Kissinger wrote to the Nobel Committee that he accepted the award \"with humility\", and \"donated the entire proceeds to the children of American service members killed or missing in action in Indochina\". After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, Kissinger attempted to return the award.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "By the summer of 1974, the U.S. embassy reported that morale in the ARVN had fallen to dangerously low levels and it was uncertain how much longer South Vietnam would last. In August 1974, the U.S. Congress passed a bill limiting American aid to South Vietnam to $700 million annually. By November 1974, Kissinger lobbied Leonid Brezhnev to end Soviet military aid to North Vietnam. The same month, he also lobbied Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai to end PRC military aid to North Vietnam. On April 15, 1975, Kissinger testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging Congress to increase the military aid budget to South Vietnam by another $700 million to save the ARVN as the PAVN was rapidly advancing on Saigon, which was refused. Kissinger maintained at the time, and until his death, that if only Congress had approved of his request for another $700 million South Vietnam would have been able to resist.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In November 1975, seven months after the Khmer Rouge took power, Kissinger told the Thai foreign minister: \"You should tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs but we won't let that stand in our way.\" In a 1998 interview, Kissinger said: \"some countries, the Chinese in particular supported Pol Pot as a counterweight to the Vietnamese supported people and We at least tolerated it.\" Kissinger said he did not approve of this due to the genocide and said he \"would not have dealt with Pol Pot for any purpose whatsoever.\" He further said: \"The Thais and the Chinese did not want a Vietnamese-dominated Indochina. We didn't want the Vietnamese to dominate. I don't believe we did anything for Pol Pot. But I suspect we closed our eyes when some others did something for Pol Pot.\"",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On November 4, 1972, Kissinger agreed to an interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci. Kissinger, who rarely engaged in one-on-one interviews with the press and knew very little about Fallaci, accepted her request after reportedly being impressed with her 1969 interview with Võ Nguyên Giáp. The interview turned out to be a political and public relations disaster for Kissinger as he agreed that Vietnam was a \"useless war\", implied that he preferred to have dinner with Lê Đức Thọ over Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (in her 1976 book Interview with History, Fallaci recalled that Kissinger agreed with many of her negative sentiments towards Thiệu in a private discussion before the interview), and engaged in a now infamous exchange with the hard-pressing Fallaci, with Kissinger comparing himself to a cowboy leading the Nixon Administration:",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Fallaci: I suppose that at the root of everything there's your success. I mean, like a chess player, you've made two or three good moves. China, first of all. People like chess players who checkmate the king.Kissinger: Yes, China has been a very important element in the mechanics of my success. And yet that's not the main point. The main point. ... Well, yes, I'll tell you. What do I care? The main point arises from the fact that I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western.Fallaci: I see. You see yourself as a kind of Henry Fonda, unarmed and ready to fight with his fists for honest ideals. Alone, courageous ...Kissinger: Not necessarily courageous. In fact, this cowboy doesn't have to be courageous. All he needs is to be alone, to show others that he rides into the town and does everything by himself. This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique. Together with independence. Oh, that's very important in me and for me. And finally, conviction. I've always been convinced that I had to do whatever I've done. And people feel it, and believe in it. And I care about the fact that they believe in me when you sway or convince somebody, you shouldn't confuse them. Nor can you even simply calculate. Some people think that I carefully plan what are to be the consequences, for the public, of any of my initiatives or efforts. They think this preoccupation is always on my mind. Instead the consequences of what I do, I mean the public's judgment, have never bothered me. I don't ask for popularity, I'm not looking for popularity. On the contrary, if you really want to know, I care nothing about popularity. I'm not at all afraid of losing my public; I can allow myself to say what I think. I'm referring to what's genuine in me. If I were to let myself be disturbed by the reactions of the public, if I were to act solely on the basis of a calculated technique, I would accomplish nothing.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Nixon was enraged by the interview, in particular the comedic \"cowboy\" comparison which infuriated and offended Nixon. For several weeks afterwards, he refused to see Kissinger and even contemplated firing him. At one point, Kissinger, in desperation, drove up unannounced to Nixon's San Clemente residence only to be rejected by Secret Service personnel at the gates. Kissinger later claimed that it was \"the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press\". Fallaci described the interview with the evasive, monotonous, non-expressive Kissinger as the most uncomfortable and most difficult she ever did, criticizing Kissinger as a \"intellectual adventurer\" and a self-styled Metternich.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Nixon supported Pakistani dictator, General Yahya Khan, in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Kissinger sneered at people who \"bleed\" for \"the dying Bengalis\" and ignored the first telegram from the United States consul general in East Pakistan, Archer K. Blood, and 20 members of his staff, which informed the U.S. that their allies West Pakistan were undertaking, in Blood's words, \"a selective genocide\" targeting the Bengali intelligentsia, supporters of independence for East Pakistan, and the Hindu minority. In the second, more famous, Blood Telegram the word 'genocide' was again used to describe the events, and further that with its continuing support for West Pakistan the U.S. government had \"evidenced ... moral bankruptcy\". As a direct response to the dissent against U.S. policy, Kissinger and Nixon ended Archer Blood's tenure as United States consul general in East Pakistan and put him to work in the State Department's Personnel Office. Christopher Clary argues that Nixon and Kissinger were unconsciously biased, leading them to overestimate the likelihood of Pakistani victory against Bengali rebels.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Kissinger was particularly concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in the Indian subcontinent as a result of a treaty of friendship recently signed by India and the USSR, and sought to demonstrate to the People's Republic of China (Pakistan's ally and an enemy of both India and the USSR) the value of a tacit alliance with the United States.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Kissinger had also come under fire for private comments he made to Nixon during the Bangladesh–Pakistan War in which he described Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a \"bitch\" and a \"witch\". He also said \"the Indians are bastards\", shortly before the war. Kissinger later expressed his regret over the comments.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "As National Security Adviser under Nixon, Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, seeking a relaxation in tensions between the two superpowers. As a part of this strategy, he negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (culminating in the SALT I treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Negotiations about strategic disarmament were originally supposed to start under the Johnson Administration but were postponed in protest upon the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Nixon felt his administration had neglected relations with the Western European states in his first term and in September 1972 decided that if he was reelected that 1973 would be the \"Year of Europe\" as the United States would focus on relations with the states of the European Economic Community (EEC) which had emerged as a serious economic rival by 1970. Applying his favorite \"linkage\" concept, Nixon intended henceforward economic relations with Europe would not be severed from security relations, and if the EEC states wanted changes in American tariff and monetary policies, the price would be defense spending on their part. Kissinger in particular as part of the \"Year of Europe\" wanted to \"revitalize\" NATO, which he called a \"decaying\" alliance as he believed that there was nothing at present to stop the Red Army from overrunning Western Europe in a conventional forces conflict. The \"linkage\" concept more applied to the question of security as Kissinger noted that the United States was going to sacrifice NATO for the sake of \"citrus fruits\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "According to notes taken by H. R. Haldeman, Nixon \"ordered his aides to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel\", including Kissinger. One note quotes Nixon as saying \"get K. [Kissinger] out of the play—Haig handle it\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1973, Kissinger did not feel that pressing the Soviet Union concerning the plight of Jews being persecuted there was in the interest of U.S. foreign policy. In conversation with Nixon shortly after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, Kissinger stated, \"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy, and if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.\" He had a negative view of American Jews who lobbied for aid to Soviet Jews, calling them \"bastards\" and \"self-serving\". He went on to state that \"If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic\" and \"any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.\"",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In September 1973, Nixon fired Rogers as Secretary of State and replaced him with Kissinger. He would later state he had not been given enough time to know the Middle East as he settled into the State Department. Kissinger later admitted that he was so engrossed with the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war that he and others in Washington missed the significance of the Egyptian-Saudi alliance. Sadat expelled Soviet advisors from Egypt in May 1972, attempting to signal to the US that he was open to disentangling Egypt from the Soviet sphere of influence; Kissinger in turn offered secret talks on a settlement for the Middle East, though nothing came of the offer. By March 1973, Sadat had moved back towards the Soviets, closing the largest arms package between Egypt and the USSR and allowing for the return of Soviet military personnel and advisors to Egypt.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Kissinger delayed telling President Richard Nixon about the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 in order to keep him from interfering in the nascent conflict. On October 6, 1973, the Israelis informed Kissinger about the attack at 6 am; Kissinger waited nearly 3+1⁄2 hours before he informed Nixon. According to Kissinger, he was notified at 6:30 a.m. (12:30 pm. Israel time) that war was imminent, and his urgent calls to the Soviets and Egyptians were ineffective. On October 12, under Nixon's direction, and against Kissinger's initial advice, while Kissinger was on his way to Moscow to discuss conditions for a cease-fire, Nixon sent a message to Brezhnev giving Kissinger full negotiating authority. Kissinger wanted to stall a ceasefire to gain more time for Israel to push across the Suez Canal to the African side, and wanted to be perceived as a mere presidential emissary who needed to consult the White House all the time as a stalling tactic.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kissinger promised the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that the United States would replace its losses in equipment after the war, but sought initially to delay arms shipments to Israel, as he believed it would improve the odds of making peace along the lines of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. In 1973, Meir requested $850 million worth of American arms and equipment to replace its materiel losses. Nixon instead sent some $2 billion worth. The arms lift enraged King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and he retaliated on October 20, 1973, by placing a total embargo on oil shipments to the United States, to be joined by all of the other oil-producing Arab states except Iraq and Libya.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On November 7, 1973, Kissinger flew to Riyadh to meet King Faisal and to ask him to end the oil embargo in exchange for promising to be \"even handed\" in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Despite all of Kissinger's efforts to charm him, Faisal refused to lift the oil embargo. Only on March 19, 1974, did the king end the oil embargo, after Sadat reported to him that the United States was being more \"even handed\" and after Kissinger had promised to sell Saudi Arabia weapons that it had previously denied under the grounds that they might be used against Israel.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede some of the newly captured land back to its Arab neighbors, contributing to the first phases of Israeli–Egyptian non-aggression. In 1973–1974, Kissinger engaged in \"shuttle diplomacy\" flying between Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Damascus in a bid to make the armistice the basis of a permanent peace. Kissinger's first meeting with Hafez al-Assad lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes, causing the press to believe for a moment that he had been kidnapped by the Syrians. In his memoirs, Kissinger described how, during the course of his 28 meetings in Damascus in 1973–74, Assad \"negotiated tenaciously and daringly like a riverboat gambler to make sure he had exacted the last sliver of available concessions\". As for the others Kissinger negotiated with, Kissinger viewed the Israeli politicians as rigid, while he had a good relationship and was able to develop a sense of assurance with Sadat. Kissinger's efforts resulted in two ceasefires between Egypt and Israel, Sinai I in January 1974, and Sinai II in September 1975.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Kissinger had avoided involving France and the United Kingdom, the former European colonial powers of the Middle East, in the peace negotiations that followed the Yom Kippur, being primarily focused on minimising the Soviet Union's sway over the peace negotiations and on moderating the international influences on the Arab-Israeli conflict. President Pompidou of France was concerned and perturbed by this development, viewing it as an indication of the United States' ambitions of hegemonically domineering the region.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "A major concern for Kissinger was the possibility of Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf. In April 1969, Iraq came into conflict with Iran when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi renounced the 1937 treaty governing the Shatt-al-Arab river. On December 1, 1971, after two years of skirmishes along the border, President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. In May 1972, Nixon and Kissinger visited Tehran to tell the Shah that there would be no \"second-guessing of his requests\" to buy American weapons. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger agreed to a plan of the Shah's that the United States together with Iran and Israel would support the Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas fighting for independence from Iraq. Kissinger later wrote that after Vietnam, there was no possibility of deploying American forces in the Middle East, and henceforward Iran was to act as America's surrogate in the Persian Gulf. Kissinger described the Baathist regime in Iraq as a potential threat to the United States and believed that building up Iran and supporting the peshmerga was the best counterweight.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Following a period of steady relations between the U.S. Government and the Greek military regime after 1967, Secretary of State Kissinger was faced with the coup by the Greek junta and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July and August 1974. In an August 1974 edition of The New York Times, it was revealed that Kissinger and State Department were informed in advance of the impending coup by the Greek junta in Cyprus. Indeed, according to the journalist, the official version of events as told by the State Department was that it felt it had to warn the Greek military regime not to carry out the coup.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Kissinger was a target of anti-American sentiment which was a significant feature of Greek public opinion at the time—particularly among young people—viewing the U.S. role in Cyprus as negative. In a demonstration by students in Heraklion, Crete, soon after the second phase of the Turkish invasion in August 1974, slogans such as \"Kissinger, murderer\", \"Americans get out\", \"No to Partition\" and \"Cyprus is no Vietnam\" were heard. Some years later, Kissinger expressed the opinion that the Cyprus issue was resolved in 1974. The New York Times and other major newspapers were highly critical, and even State Department officials did not hide their dissatisfaction with his alleged arrogance and ignorance of the basics.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Kissinger was reported to have said, \"The Turkish tactics are right – grab what they want and then negotiate on the basis of possession\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "However, Kissinger never felt comfortable with the way he handled the Cyprus issue. Journalist Alexis Papahelas stated that Kissinger's \"facial expression changes markedly when someone—usually Greek or Cypriot—refers to the crisis\". According to him, Kissinger had felt since the summer of 1974 that history would not treat him lightly in relation to his actions.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1970, Kissinger parroted to Nixon the United States Department of Defense's position that the country should maintain control over the Panama Canal, which was a reversal of the commitment by the Lyndon Johnson administration. Later, in the face of international pressure, Kissinger changed his stance, viewing the past hardline position in the Panama Canal issue as a hindrance to American relations with Latin America and an international setback that the Soviet Union would approve of. Kissinger in 1973 called for \"new dialogue\" between the United States and Latin America, then in 1974, Kissinger met Panama military leader Omar Torrijos and an agreement on eight operating principles for an eventual handover of the Panama Canal to Panama was made between Kissinger and Panamanian Foreign Minister Juan Antonio Tack, which angered the United States Congress, but ultimately provided a framework for the 1977 U.S.–Panama treaties.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Kissinger initially supported the normalization of United States–Cuba relations, broken since 1961 (all U.S.–Cuban trade was blocked in February 1962, a few weeks after the exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States because of U.S. pressure). However, he quickly changed his mind and followed Kennedy's policy. After the involvement of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces in the independence struggles in Angola and Mozambique, Kissinger said that unless Cuba withdrew its forces relations would not be normalized. Cuba refused.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Chilean Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a plurality of 36.2 percent in 1970, causing serious concern in Washington, D.C., due to his openly socialist and pro-Cuban politics. The Nixon administration, with Kissinger's input, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to encourage a military coup that would prevent Allende's inauguration, but the plan was not successful.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "On September 11, 1973, Allende died during an army attack on the presidential palace that was an element of a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who then became president. In September 1976, Orlando Letelier, a Chilean opponent of the new Pinochet regime, was assassinated in Washington, D.C., with a car bomb. Previously, Kissinger had helped secure his release from prison, and had chosen to cancel an official U.S. letter to Chile warning them against carrying out any political assassinations. This murder was part of Operation Condor, a covert program of political repression and assassination carried out by Southern Cone nations that Kissinger has been accused of being involved in.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "On September 10, 2001, after recent declassification of documents, relatives and survivors of General René Schneider filed civil proceedings against Kissinger, in federal court in Washington, D.C., accusing him of collaborating in arranging Schneider's kidnapping which resulted in his death. The case was later dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, citing separation of powers: \"The decision to support a coup of the Chilean government to prevent Dr. Allende from coming to power, and the means by which the United States Government sought to effect that goal, implicate policy makers in the murky realm of foreign affairs and national security best left to the political branches.\" Decades later, the CIA admitted its involvement in the kidnapping of General Schneider, but not his murder, and subsequently paid the group responsible for his death $35,000 \"to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the goodwill of the group, and for humanitarian reasons\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Kissinger took a similar line as he had toward Chile when the Argentine Armed Forces, led by Jorge Videla, toppled the elected government of Isabel Perón in 1976 with a process called the National Reorganization Process by the military, with which they consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and \"disappearances\" against political opponents. An October 1987 investigative report in The Nation broke the story of how, in a June 1976 meeting in the Hotel Carrera in Santiago, Kissinger gave the military junta in neighboring Argentina the \"green light\" for their own clandestine repression against leftwing guerrillas and other dissidents, thousands of whom were kept in more than 400 secret concentration camps before they were executed. During a meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally but urged him to \"get back to normal procedures\" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "As the article published in The Nation noted, as the state-sponsored terror mounted, conservative Republican U.S. Ambassador to Buenos Aires Robert C. Hill \"'was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again,' recalled Juan de Onis, former reporter for The New York Times. 'Hill took a personal interest.' He went to the Interior Minister, a general with whom he had worked on drug cases, saying, 'Hey, what about this? We're interested in this case.' He questioned (Foreign Minister Cesar) Guzzetti and, finally, President Jorge Videla himself. 'All he got was stonewalling; he got nowhere.' de Onis said. 'His last year was marked by increasing disillusionment and dismay, and he backed his staff on human rights right to the hilt.\"",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In a letter to The Nation editor Victor Navasky, protesting publication of the article, Kissinger claimed that: \"At any rate, the notion of Hill as a passionate human rights advocate is news to all his former associates.\" Yet Kissinger aide Harry W. Shlaudeman later disagreed with Kissinger, telling the oral historian William E. Knight of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project: \"It really came to a head when I was Assistant Secretary, or it began to come to a head, in the case of Argentina where the dirty war was in full flower. Bob Hill, who was Ambassador then in Buenos Aires, a very conservative Republican politician—by no means liberal or anything of the kind, began to report quite effectively about what was going on, this slaughter of innocent civilians, supposedly innocent civilians—this vicious war that they were conducting, underground war. He, at one time in fact, sent me a back-channel telegram saying that the Foreign Minister, who had just come for a visit to Washington and had returned to Buenos Aires, had gloated to him that Kissinger had said nothing to him about human rights. I don't know—I wasn't present at the interview.\"",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Navasky later wrote in his book about being confronted by Kissinger, \"'Tell me, Mr. Navasky,' [Kissinger] said in his famous guttural tones, 'how is it that a short article in an obscure journal such as yours about a conversation that was supposed to have taken place years ago about something that did or didn't happen in Argentina resulted in sixty people holding placards denouncing me a few months ago at the airport when I got off the plane in Copenhagen?'\"",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "According to declassified state department files, Kissinger also hindered the Carter administration's efforts to halt the mass killings by the 1976–1983 military dictatorship by visiting the country as Videla's personal guest to attend the 1978 FIFA World Cup and praising the regime.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Kissinger was in favor of accommodating Brazil while it pursued a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s. Kissinger justified his position by arguing that Brazil was a U.S. ally and on the grounds that it would benefit private nuclear industry actors in the U.S. Kissinger's position on Brazil was out of sync with influential voices in the U.S. Congress, the State Department, and the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In September 1976, Kissinger was actively involved in negotiations regarding the Rhodesian Bush War. Kissinger, along with South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, pressured Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith to hasten the transition to black majority rule in Rhodesia. With FRELIMO in control of Mozambique and even the apartheid regime of South Africa withdrawing its support, Rhodesia's isolation was nearly complete. According to Smith's autobiography, Kissinger told Smith of Mrs. Kissinger's admiration for him, but Smith stated that he thought Kissinger was asking him to sign Rhodesia's \"death certificate\". Kissinger, bringing the weight of the United States, and corralling other relevant parties to put pressure on Rhodesia, hastened the end of white minority rule.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In contrast to the unfriendly disposition of the previous Kennedy and Johnson administrations towards the Estado Novo regime of Portugal, particularly with regards to its attempts to maintain the Portuguese Colonial Empire by waging the Portuguese Colonial War against anti-colonial rebellions in defence of its empire, the Department of State under Kissinger adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards Portugal. In 1971, the administration of President Nixon successfully renewed the lease of the American military base in the Azores, despite condemnation from the Congressional Black Caucus and some members of the Senate. Though privately continuing to view Portugal contemptibly for its perceived atavistic foreign policy towards Africa, Kissinger publicly expressed thanks for Portugal's agreement to use its military base in Lajes in the Azores to resupply Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Following the fall of the far-right Portuguese regime in 1974, Kissinger worried that the new government's hasty decolonisation plan might benefit radical factions such as the MPLA in Angola. He also expressed concern that the inclusion of the Portuguese Communist Party in the new Portuguese government could legitimise communist parties in other NATO member states, such as Italy.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The Portuguese decolonization process brought U.S. attention to the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, which declared its independence in 1975. Indonesian president Suharto regarded East Timor as rightfully part of Indonesia. In December 1975, Suharto discussed invasion plans during a meeting with Kissinger and President Ford in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Both Ford and Kissinger made clear that U.S. relations with Indonesia would remain strong and that it would not object to the proposed annexation. They only wanted it done \"fast\" and proposed that it be delayed until after they had returned to Washington. Accordingly, Suharto delayed the operation for one day. Finally on December 7, Indonesian forces invaded the former Portuguese colony. U.S. arms sales to Indonesia continued, and Suharto went ahead with the annexation plan. According to Ben Kiernan, the invasion and occupation resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter of the Timorese population from 1975 to 1981.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "During the 1970 Cienfuegos Crisis, in which the Soviet Navy was strongly suspected of building a submarine base in the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, Kissinger met with Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the United States, informing him that the United States government considered this act a violation of the agreements made in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, prompting the Soviets to halt construction of their planned base in Cienfuegos.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In February 1976, Kissinger considered launching air strikes against ports and military installations in Cuba, as well as deploying U.S. Marine Corps battalions based at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, in retaliation for Cuban President Fidel Castro's decision in late 1975 to send troops to newly independent Angola to help the MPLA in its fight against UNITA and South Africa during the start of the Angolan Civil War.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Kissingerian doctrine endorsed the forced concession of Spanish Sahara to Morocco. At the height of the 1975 Sahara crisis, Kissinger misled Gerald Ford into thinking the International Court of Justice had ruled in favor of Morocco. Kissinger was aware in advance of the Moroccan plans for the invasion of the territory, materialized on November 6, 1975, in the so-called Green March.",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Kissinger was involved in furthering cooperation between the U.S. and the Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and held multiple meetings with him. Kissinger later described these efforts as \"one of our policy successes in Africa\" and praised Mobutu as \"courageous, politically astute\" and \"relatively honest in a country where governmental corruption is a way of life\".",
"title": "Foreign policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "After Nixon was forced to resign in the Watergate scandal, Kissinger's influence in the new presidential administration of Gerald R. Ford was diminished after he was replaced by Brent Scowcroft as National Security Advisor during the \"Halloween Massacre\" cabinet reshuffle of November 1975. Kissinger left office as Secretary of State when Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated Republican Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential elections.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Kissinger continued to participate in policy groups, such as the Trilateral Commission, and to maintain political consulting, speaking, and writing engagements. In 1978, he was secretly involved in thwarting efforts by the Carter administration to indict three Chilean intelligence agents for masterminding the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier. Kissinger was critical of the foreign policy of the Jimmy Carter administration, saying in 1980 that \"has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.\"",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "After Kissinger left office in 1977, he was offered an endowed chair at Columbia University, which met with student opposition. Kissinger instead accepted a position at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies. He taught at Georgetown's Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service for several years in the late 1970s. In 1982, with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus and Company, Kissinger founded a consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, and was a partner in affiliate Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. He also served on the board of directors of Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group, and as of March 1999, was a director of Gulfstream Aerospace.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In September 1989, The Wall Street Journal's John Fialka disclosed that Kissinger took a direct economic interest in US-China relations in March 1989 with the establishment of China Ventures, Inc., a Delaware limited partnership, of which he was chairman of the board and chief executive officer. A US $75 million investment in a joint venture with the Communist Party government's primary commercial vehicle at the time, China International Trust & Investment Corporation (CITIC), was its purpose. Board members were major clients of Kissinger Associates. Kissinger was criticized for not disclosing his role in the venture when called upon by ABC's Peter Jennings to comment the morning after the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre. Kissinger's position was generally supportive of Deng Xiaoping's decision to use the military against the demonstrating students and he opposed economic sanctions.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "From 1995 to 2001, Kissinger served on the board of directors for Freeport-McMoRan, a multinational copper and gold producer with significant mining and milling operations in Papua, Indonesia. In February 2000, president of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid appointed Kissinger as a political advisor. He also served as an honorary advisor to the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In 1998, in response to the 2002 Winter Olympic bid scandal, the International Olympic Committee formed a commission, called the \"2000 Commission\", to recommend reforms, which Kissinger served on. This service led in 2000 to his appointment as one of five IOC \"honor members\", a category the organization described as granted to \"eminent personalities from outside the IOC who have rendered particularly outstanding services to it\".",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Kissinger served as the 22nd Chancellor of the College of William and Mary from 2000 to 2005. He was preceded by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and succeeded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The College of William & Mary also own a painted portrait of Kissinger that was painted by Ned Bittinger.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "From 2000 to 2006, Kissinger served as chairman of the board of trustees of Eisenhower Fellowships. In 2006, upon his departure from Eisenhower Fellowships, he received the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In November 2002, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to chair the newly established National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to investigate the September 11 attacks. Kissinger stepped down as chairman on December 13, 2002, rather than reveal his business client list, when queried about potential conflicts of interest.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In the Rio Tinto espionage case of 2009–2010, Kissinger was paid $5 million to advise the multinational mining company how to distance itself from an employee who had been arrested in China for bribery.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Kissinger—along with William Perry, Sam Nunn, and George Shultz—called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and in three op-eds in The Wall Street Journal proposed an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end. The four created the Nuclear Threat Initiative to advance this agenda. In 2010, the four were featured in a documentary film entitled Nuclear Tipping Point. The film is a visual and historical depiction of the ideas laid forth in The Wall Street Journal op-eds and reinforces their commitment to a world without nuclear weapons and the steps that can be taken to reach that goal.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "On November 17, 2016, Kissinger met with President-elect Donald Trump during which they discussed global affairs. Kissinger also met with President Trump at the White House in May 2017.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In an interview with Charlie Rose on August 17, 2017, Kissinger said about President Trump: \"I'm hoping for an Augustinian moment, for St. Augustine ... who in his early life followed a pattern that was quite incompatible with later on when he had a vision, and rose to sainthood. One does not expect the president to become that, but it's conceivable\". Kissinger also argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to weaken Hillary Clinton, not elect Donald Trump. Kissinger said that Putin \"thought—wrongly incidentally—that she would be extremely confrontational ... I think he tried to weaken the incoming president [Clinton]\".",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In several articles of his and interviews that he gave during the Yugoslav Wars, he criticized the United States' policies in Southeast Europe, among other things for the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state, which he described as a foolish act. Most importantly he dismissed the notion of Serbs and Croats being aggressors or separatist, saying that \"they can't be separating from something that has never existed\". In addition, he repeatedly warned the West against inserting itself into a conflict that has its roots at least hundreds of years back in time, and said that the West would do better if it allowed the Serbs and Croats to join their respective countries. Kissinger shared similarly critical views on Western involvement in Kosovo. In particular, he held a disparaging view of the Rambouillet Agreement:",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that any Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "However, as the Serbs did not accept the Rambouillet text and NATO bombings started, he opted for a continuation of the bombing as NATO's credibility was now at stake, but dismissed the use of ground forces, claiming that it was not worth it.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In 2006, it was reported in the book State of Denial by Bob Woodward that Kissinger met regularly with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offer advice on the Iraq War. Kissinger confirmed in recorded interviews with Woodward that the advice was the same as he had given in a column in The Washington Post on August 12, 2005: \"Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy.\" Kissinger also frequently met with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom he warned that Coalition Provisional Authority Director L. Paul Bremer was \"a control freak\".",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In an interview on the BBC's Sunday AM on November 19, 2006, Kissinger was asked whether there was any hope left for a clear military victory in Iraq and responded, \"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible. ... I think we have to redefine the course. But I don't believe that the alternative is between military victory as it had been defined previously, or total withdrawal.\"",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In an interview with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution on April 3, 2008, Kissinger reiterated that even though he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he thought that the George W. Bush administration rested too much of its case for war on Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Robinson noted that Kissinger had criticized the administration for invading with too few troops, for disbanding the Iraqi Army as part of de-Baathification, and for mishandling relations with certain allies.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Kissinger said in April 2008 that \"India has parallel objectives to the United States\", and he called the nation an ally of the U.S.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Kissinger attended the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. A few months before the Games opened, as controversy over China's human rights record was intensifying due to criticism by Amnesty International and other groups of the widespread use of the death penalty and other issues, Kissinger told the PRC's official press agency Xinhua: \"I think one should separate Olympics as a sporting event from whatever political disagreements people may have had with China. I expect that the games will proceed in the spirit for which they were designed, which is friendship among nations, and that other issues are discussed in other forums.\" He said China had made huge efforts to stage the Games. \"Friends of China should not use the Olympics to pressure China now.\" He added that he would bring two of his grandchildren to watch the Games and planned to attend the opening ceremony. During the Games, he participated with Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, film star Jackie Chan, and former British PM Tony Blair at a Peking University forum on the qualities that make a champion. He sat with his wife Nancy Kissinger, President George W. Bush, former President George H. W. Bush, and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the men's basketball game between China and the U.S.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In 2011, Kissinger published On China, chronicling the evolution of Sino-American relations and laying out the challenges to a partnership of \"genuine strategic trust\" between the U.S. and China. In this book On China and his 2014 book World Order, as well as in his 2018 interview with Financial Times, Kissinger consistently stated that he believed that China wants to restore its historic role as the Middle Kingdom and be \"the principal adviser to all humanity\".",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In 2020, during a period of worsening Sino-American relations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hong Kong protests, and the U.S.–China trade war, Kissinger expressed concerns that the United States and China are entering a Second Cold War and will eventually become embroiled in a military conflict similar to World War I. He called for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the incoming U.S. President-elect Joe Biden to take a less confrontational foreign policy. Kissinger previously said that a potential war between China and the United States would be \"worse than the world wars that ruined European civilization\".",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In July 2023, Kissinger travelled to Beijing to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2018 for engaging in the purchase of combat aircraft from a Russian arms exporter. Kissinger emphasized Sino-American relations in the meeting, stating that \"the United States and China should eliminate misunderstandings, coexist peacefully, and avoid confrontation\". Later that trip, Kissinger met with Xi with the intention of defrosting relations between the U.S. and China.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Kissinger's position on this issue of U.S.–Iran talks was reported by the Tehran Times to be that \"Any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of state meet.\" In 2016, Kissinger said that the biggest challenge facing the Middle East is the \"potential domination of the region by an Iran that is both imperial and jihadist\". He further wrote in August 2017 that if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran and its Shiite allies were allowed to fill the territorial vacuum left by a militarily defeated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the region would be left with a land corridor extending from Iran to the Levant \"which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire\". Commenting on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Kissinger said that he would not have agreed to it, but that Trump's plan to end the agreement after it was signed would \"enable the Iranians to do more than us\".",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "On March 5, 2014, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Kissinger, 11 days before the Crimean referendum on whether Autonomous Republic of Crimea should officially rejoin Ukraine or join neighboring Russia. In it, he attempted to balance the Ukrainian, Russian and Western desires for a functional state. He made four main points:",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Kissinger also wrote: \"The west speaks Ukrainian; the east speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other—as has been the pattern—would lead eventually to civil war or break up.\"",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Following the publication of his book titled World Order, Kissinger participated in an interview with Charlie Rose and updated his position on Ukraine, which he sees as a possible geographical mediator between Russia and the West. In a question he posed to himself for illustration regarding re-conceiving policy regarding Ukraine, Kissinger stated: \"If Ukraine is considered an outpost, then the situation is that its eastern border is the NATO strategic line, and NATO will be within 200 miles (320 km) of Volgograd. That will never be accepted by Russia. On the other hand, if the Russian western line is at the border of Poland, Europe will be permanently disquieted. The Strategic objective should have been to see whether one can build Ukraine as a bridge between East and West, and whether one can do it as a kind of a joint effort.\"",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "In December 2016, Kissinger advised President-elect Donald Trump to accept \"Crimea as a part of Russia\" in an attempt to secure a rapprochement between the United States and Russia, whose relations soured as a result of the Crimean crisis. When asked if he explicitly considered Russia's sovereignty over Crimea legitimate, Kissinger answered in the affirmative, reversing the position he took in his Washington Post op-ed.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In 2019, Kissinger wrote about the increasing tendency to give control of nuclear weapons to computers operating with artificial intelligence (AI) that: \"Adversaries' ignorance of AI-developed configurations will become a strategic advantage\". Kissinger argued that giving power to launch nuclear weapons to computers using algorithms to make decisions would eliminate the human factor and give the advantage to the state that had the most effective AI system as a computer can make decisions about war and peace far faster than any human ever could. Just as an AI-enhanced computer can win chess games by anticipating human decision-making, an AI-enhanced computer could be useful in a crisis as in a nuclear war, the side that strikes first would have the advantage by destroying the opponent's nuclear capacity. Kissinger also noted there was always the danger that a computer could make a decision to start a nuclear war before diplomacy had been exhausted, or for a reason that would not be understandable to the operators. Kissinger also warned the use of AI to control nuclear weapons would impose \"opacity\" on the decision-making process as the algorithms that control the AI system are not readily understandable, destabilizing the decision-making process:",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "grand strategy requires an understanding of the capabilities and military deployments of potential adversaries. But if more and more intelligence becomes opaque, how will policy makers understand the views and abilities of their adversaries and perhaps even allies? Will many different internets emerge or, in the end, only one? What will be the implications for cooperation? For confrontation? As AI becomes ubiquitous, new concepts for its security need to emerge.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "On April 3, 2020, Kissinger shared his diagnostic view of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that it threatens the \"liberal world order\". Kissinger added that the virus does not know borders although global leaders are trying to address the crisis on a mainly national basis. He stressed that the key is not a purely national effort but greater international cooperation.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In May 2022, speaking to the World Economic Forum on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kissinger advocated for a diplomatic settlement that would restore the status quo ante bellum, effectively ceding Crimea and parts of Donbas to Russian control. Kissinger urged Ukrainians to \"match the heroism they have shown with wisdom\", arguing that \"[p]ursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.\" He spoke to Edward Luce and a Financial Times audience in the same month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected Kissinger's suggestions, saying Ukraine would not agree to peace until Russia agreed to return Crimea and the Donbas region to Ukraine.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "On a book tour to sell Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy in July 2022 he spoke to Judy Woodruff of PBS and he was still of the opinion that \"a negotiation is desirable\" and clarified his earlier statements, saying that he supported a ceasefire line on the borders of February 24 and that \"Russia should not gain anything from the war... Ukraine above all cannot give up territory that it had when the war started because this would be symbolically dangerous.\"",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "On January 18, 2023, Kissinger was interviewed by Graham Allison for a World Economic Forum audience; he said that US support should be intensified until either the February 24 borders are reached or the February 24 borders are recognized, upon which time under a ceasefire agreement negotiations would begin. Kissinger felt that Russia needs to be given an opportunity to rejoin the comity of nations while the sanctions are maintained until final settlement is reached. He expressed his admiration for President Zelenskyy and lauded the heroic conduct of the Ukrainian people. Kissinger felt that the invasion has ipso facto its logical outcome pointed to NATO membership for Ukraine at the end of the peace process.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In September 2023, Kissinger met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York City, on which occasion they discussed his change in position on Ukraine's NATO membership ambitions.",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In a statement made a month before his death, Kissinger responded to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war by saying that the goals of Hamas \"can only be to mobilize the Arab world against Israel and to get off the track of peaceful negotiations\". In response to celebrations of the attack by some Arabs in Germany, he issued a statement denouncing Muslim immigration into Germany: \"It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that.\"",
"title": "Later roles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "A 2014 poll of American international relations scholars conducted by the College of William & Mary ranked Kissinger as the most effective Secretary of State in the 50 years prior to 2015. In 1972, Time commented that \"a streak of suspicion seems to underlie all that he does\" and \"His jokes about his paranoia have an uncomfortable edge of truth\". He was so often seen escorting Hollywood starlets that the Village Voice charged he was \"a secret square posing as a swinger\". The insight, \"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac\", is widely attributed to him, although Kissinger was paraphrasing Napoleon Bonaparte. Critics on the right, such as Ray Takeyh, have faulted Kissinger for his role in the Nixon administration's opening to China and secret negotiations with North Vietnam. Takeyh writes that while rapprochement with China was a worthy goal, the Nixon administration failed to achieve any meaningful concessions from Chinese officials in return, as China continued to support North Vietnam and various \"revolutionary forces throughout the Third World\", \"nor does there appear to be even a remote, indirect connection between Nixon and Kissinger's diplomacy and the communist leadership's decision, after Mao's bloody rule, to move away from a communist economy towards state capitalism.\"",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Historian Jeffrey Kimball developed the theory that Kissinger and the Nixon administration accepted a South Vietnamese collapse provided a face-saving decent interval passed between American withdrawal and defeat. In his first meeting with Zhou Enlai in 1971, Kissinger \"laid out in detail the settlement terms that would produce such a delayed defeat: total American withdrawal, return of all American POWs, and a ceasefire-in-place for '18 months or some period'\", in the words of historian Ken Hughes. On October 6, 1972, Kissinger told Nixon twice that the terms of the Paris Peace Accords would probably destroy South Vietnam: \"I also think that Thieu is right, that our terms will eventually destroy him.\" However, Kissinger denied using a \"decent interval\" strategy, writing \"All of us who negotiated the agreement of October 12 were convinced that we had vindicated the anguish of a decade not by a 'decent interval' but by a decent settlement.\" Johannes Kadura offers a positive assessment of Nixon and Kissinger's strategy, arguing that the two men \"simultaneously maintained a Plan A of further supporting Saigon and a Plan B of shielding Washington should their maneuvers prove futile.\" According to Kadura, the \"decent interval\" concept has been \"largely misrepresented\", in that Nixon and Kissinger \"sought to gain time, make the North turn inward, and create a perpetual equilibrium\" rather than acquiescing in the collapse of South Vietnam.",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Kissinger's record was brought up during the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton had cultivated a close relationship with Kissinger, describing him as a \"friend\" and a source of \"counsel\". During the Democratic primary debates, Clinton touted Kissinger's praise for her record as secretary of state. In response, candidate Bernie Sanders criticized Kissinger and said: \"I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger.\"",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Kissinger was an immensely beloved figure within China, with China News Service describing him in his obituary as someone \"who had a sharp vision and a thorough understanding of world affairs\".",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Kissinger has generally received a polarizing reception; some have portrayed him as a strategic genius who was willing to act in a utilitarian manner, others have portrayed his foreign policy decisions as immoral and profoundly damaging in the long run.",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Historian Niall Ferguson has argued that Kissinger is one of the most effective secretaries of state in American history.",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal stated in the aftermath of his death \"Kissinger was a target of both the right and left in those perilous Cold War years, often unfairly...\" The article noted that he was often criticized by American conservatives for overlooking human rights in China, while saying \"he had no illusions about the Communist Party or its nationalist ambitions. His view was that the U.S. and China had to achieve some modus vivendi to avoid war despite their profound cultural and political differences\" while claiming that \"the alternatives then, as now, weren't usually [democracy advocates] of the left's imagining. They were often Communists who would have aligned themselves with the Soviets... The U.S. provided covert aid to Allende's political opponents, but declassified briefings from the time show the U.S. was unaware of the military coup that deposed him. Kissinger wasn't responsible for Augusto Pinochet's coup or its bloody excesses. Chile eventually became a democracy... Cuba remains a dictatorship.\"",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "A number of journalists, activists, and human rights lawyers accused Kissinger of being responsible for war crimes during his tenure in government. Some sought civil and even criminal penalties against Kissinger, but none of these attempts were successful.",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "In September 2001, relatives and survivors of General Rene Schneider filed civil proceedings in federal court in Washington, DC. The suit was later dismissed. In April 2002, a petition for Kissinger's arrest was filed in the High Court in London by human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, citing the destruction of civilian populations and the environment in Indochina during the years 1969–1975. The petition was rejected one day after filing.",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "One of his most prominent critics was American-British journalist and author Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens authored The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in which he called for the prosecution of Kissinger \"for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture\". American chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain wrote in A Cook's Tour: \"Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands... Witness what [he] did... and you will never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.\"",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Author Robert D. Kaplan and historian Niall Ferguson have disputed these notions and argued that there is a double standard in how Kissinger is judged in comparison to others. They have defended Kissinger by arguing that American power to advocate for human rights in other nations is often counterproductive and limited, that taking into consideration geopolitical realities is an inevitable part of any effective foreign policy, and that there are utilitarian reasons to defend most of the decisions of his tenure.",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Several historians have rejected both prominent reputations of Kissinger. David Greenberg argued that each are exaggerated caricatures that overstate both his genius and immorality: \"In fact, if there's a single word I'd apply to Kissinger, it's 'overrated.' He was overrated as a scholar (famous mainly for writing a very long dissertation). He was overrated as a strategist (he often gave bad advice, as he did in urging George W. Bush not to withdraw troops from Iraq). He was even overrated as a villain – the 'Christopher Hitchenses' of the world loved to call him a 'war criminal,' but this was a fundamentally unserious charge. The Defense Department, not the State Department, prosecutes wars, and the president oversees it – but the Hitchenses preferred to go after Kissinger rather than (Defense Secretaries) Mel Laird or James Schlesinger or even Nixon.\" Similarly, Mario Del Pero argued: \"He was not particularly original or bold, once we scratch away from his writings the deliberately opaque and convoluted prose he often used, possibly to try to render more original thoughts and reflections that were in reality fairly conventional... In short, he wasn't a war criminal, he wasn't a very deep or sophisticated thinker, he rarely challenged the intellectual vogues of the time (even because it would have meant to challenge those in power, something he always was—and still is—reluctant to do), and once in government he displayed a certain intellectual laziness vis-à-vis the intricacies and complexities of a world that he still tended to see in black-and-white.\"",
"title": "Public perception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Kissinger married Anneliese \"Ann\" Fleischer (born November 6, 1925, in Fürth, Germany) on February 6, 1949. They had two children, Elizabeth and David, and divorced in 1964. In 1955, he met Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann during a symposium at Harvard; the two had a romantic relationship that lasted several years. On March 30, 1974, he married Nancy Maginnes. They lived in Kent, Connecticut, and in New York City. Kissinger's son David served as an executive with NBC Universal Television Studio before becoming head of Conaco, Conan O'Brien's production company, in 2005. In February 1982, at the age of 58, Henry Kissinger underwent coronary bypass surgery. On May 27, 2023, he turned 100.",
"title": "Family and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Kissinger described Diplomacy as his favorite game in a 1973 interview.",
"title": "Family and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Daryl Grove characterized Kissinger as one of the most influential people in the growth of soccer in the United States. Kissinger was named chairman of the North American Soccer League board of directors in 1978.",
"title": "Family and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Since his childhood, Kissinger had been a fan of his hometown's soccer club, SpVgg Fürth (now SpVgg Greuther Fürth). Even during his time in office, the German Embassy informed him about the team's results every Monday morning. He was an honorary member with lifetime season tickets. In September 2012, Kissinger attended a home game in which Greuther Fürth lost 0–2 against Schalke, after promising years previously that he would attend a Greuther Fürth home game if they were promoted to the Bundesliga (the top football league in Germany) from the 2. Bundesliga.",
"title": "Family and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Kissinger died at his home in Kent, Connecticut, on November 29, 2023, at the age of 100. At the time of his death, he was last living former U.S. Cabinet member who served in the Richard Nixon administration. He is survived by his wife, Nancy Maginnes Kissinger; two children, David and Elizabeth; and five grandchildren. His death was announced by Kissinger Associates, his consulting firm. Kissinger Associates announced that the funeral would be private, and would be followed by a memorial service in New York City.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Kissinger was widely admired within China and praised by the Chinese Communist Party. Government figures on state media uniformly released posts mourning his death. Chinese social media expressed widespread sorrow after news of his passing was released, and hashtags idolizing Kissinger became the most searched trend in China. China News Service stated in his obituary that \"Today, this 'old friend of the Chinese people,' who had a sharp vision and a thorough understanding of world affairs, has completed his legendary life\". China Central Television, the state broadcaster, called Kissinger a \"legendary diplomat\" and a \"living fossil\" who had witnessed the development of China-U.S. relations. Shortly before his death, Chinese president Xi Jinping stated: \"The Chinese people never forget their old friends, and Sino-U.S. relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Many British Prime Ministers mourned Kissinger. Tony Blair, the former Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, released a statement saying: \"There is no-one like Henry Kissinger... From the first time I met him as a new Labour Party opposition leader in 1994, struggling to form views on foreign policy, to the last occasion when I visited him in New York and, later, he spoke at my institute's annual gathering, I was in awe of him... If it is possible for diplomacy, at its highest level, to be a form of art, Henry was an artist.\" David Cameron stated \"He was a great statesman and a deeply respected diplomat who will be greatly missed on the world stage... Even at 100, his wisdom and thoughtfulness shone through\". Boris Johnson said: \"The world needs him now. If ever there was an author of peace and lover of concord, that man was Henry Kissinger\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "European Council President Charles Michel called Kissinger a \"strategist with attention to the smallest detail\" and \"a kind human and a brilliant mind who, over 100 years, shaped the [destinies] of some of the most important events of the century.\" Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in a telegram to Kissinger's widow Nancy that he was a \"wise and farsighted statesman\". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that he \"had the privilege of meeting Dr. Kissinger on numerous occasions, the most recent being just two months ago in New York. Each meeting with him was not just a lesson in diplomacy but also a masterclass in statesmanship. His understanding of the complexities of international relations and his unique insights into the challenges facing our world were unparalleled.\" German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated: \"The world has lost a great diplomat\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Chile's ambassador to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdés, released a statement saying he possessed \"brilliance\" but also \"profound moral wretchedness\". This statement was reposted by President Gabriel Boric. The Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said that Kissinger did \"inhumane things\", adding that \"he should have apologized to the people of Bangladesh for what he has done\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "The announcement of Kissinger's death saw a widespread mix of tribute and criticism on American social media.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Joe Biden praised Kissinger's \"fierce intellect\" while noting that they often \"disagreed strongly\". Former President George W. Bush stated: \"America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs with the passing of Henry Kissinger. I have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States Army\". Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain, wrote: \"Henry Kissinger was ever present in my late husband's life. While John was a prisoner of war, and in the later years, as a senator and statesman. The McCain family will miss his wit, charm, and intelligence terribly\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Many negative reactions to Kissinger's death argued his decisions in government violated American values. House of Representative members Jim McGovern, Gerry Connolly, and Greg Casar issued critical reactions to his death, with Connolly stating Kissinger's \"indifference to human suffering will forever tarnish his name and shape his legacy\". The front page of HuffPost labeled him \"The Beltway Butcher\", while another HuffPost article described him as \"America's Most Notorious War Criminal\". Teen Vogue mocked Kissinger with the headline: \"War Criminal Responsible for Millions of Deaths Dies at 100\", a statement similar to that of Nick Turse of The Intercept. A CNN op-ed by Peter Bergen entitled \"Christopher Hitchens was right about Henry Kissinger\" stated that to Kissinger \"the ends almost always justified the means,\" referencing Hitchens's 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Socialist magazine Jacobin released a book-length anthology entitled The Good Die Young. The introduction by historian Greg Grandin notes \"We all live now in the Kissingerian void.\"",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Kissinger was defended by conservative commentator David Harsanyi in an op-ed on the New York Post, where he stated that \"the left disgustingly dances on Kissinger's grave because it hates America\". The New York Sun also defended Kissinger, describing him as \"one of the most remarkable figures in American history\".",
"title": "Death"
}
]
| Henry Alfred Kissinger was an American diplomat, political scientist, geopolitical consultant, and politician who served as the United States secretary of state and national security advisor in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977. Born in Germany, Kissinger came to the United States in 1938 as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and, after the war, was educated at Harvard University, where he excelled academically. He later became a professor of government at the university and earned an international reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. He frequently acted as a consultant to government agencies, think tanks, and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon before being appointed national security advisor. Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated an opening of relations with China, engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East to end the Yom Kippur War, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, which ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. For his role in negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, he was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances. A practitioner of a pragmatic approach to politics called Realpolitik, he has been widely considered by scholars to be an effective secretary of state. Kissinger has also been associated with controversial U.S. policies, including its bombing of Cambodia, involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, support for Argentina's military junta in its Dirty War, support for Indonesia in its invasion of East Timor, and support for Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War and Bangladesh genocide. He was accused of war crimes for the civilian death toll of the policies he pursued, his role in facilitating U.S. support for dictatorial regimes, and willful ignorance towards human rights abuses committed by the United States and its allies. After leaving government, Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm. He authored over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations. His advice was sought by American presidents of both political parties. | 2001-10-19T19:51:02Z | 2023-12-28T18:30:00Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger |
13,767 | Hydra (genus) | Hydra (/ˈhaɪdrə/ HY-drə) is a genus of small freshwater hydrozoans of the phylum Cnidaria. They are native to the temperate and tropical regions. The genus was named by Linnaeus in 1758 after the Hydra, which was the many-headed beast of myth defeated by Heracles, as when the animal had a part severed, it would regenerate much like the mythical hydra’s heads. Biologists are especially interested in Hydra because of their regenerative ability; they do not appear to die of old age, or to age at all.
Hydra has a tubular, radially symmetric body up to 10 mm (0.39 in) long when extended, secured by a simple adhesive foot known as the basal disc. Gland cells in the basal disc secrete a sticky fluid that accounts for its adhesive properties.
At the free end of the body is a mouth opening surrounded by one to twelve thin, mobile tentacles. Each tentacle, or cnida (plural: cnidae), is clothed with highly specialised stinging cells called cnidocytes. Cnidocytes contain specialized structures called nematocysts, which look like miniature light bulbs with a coiled thread inside. At the narrow outer edge of the cnidocyte is a short trigger hair called a cnidocil. Upon contact with prey, the contents of the nematocyst are explosively discharged, firing a dart-like thread containing neurotoxins into whatever triggered the release. This can paralyze the prey, especially if many hundreds of nematocysts are fired.
Hydra has two main body layers, which makes it "diploblastic". The layers are separated by mesoglea, a gel-like substance. The outer layer is the epidermis, and the inner layer is called the gastrodermis, because it lines the stomach. The cells making up these two body layers are relatively simple. Hydramacin is a bactericide recently discovered in Hydra; it protects the outer layer against infection. A single Hydra is composed of 50,000 to 100,000 cells which consist of three specific stem cell populations that create many different cell types. These stem cells continually renew themselves in the body column. Hydras have two significant structures on their body: the "head" and the "foot". When a Hydra is cut in half, each half regenerates and forms into a small Hydra; the "head" regenerates a "foot" and the "foot" regenerates a "head". If the Hydra is sliced into many segments then the middle slices form both a "head" and a "foot".
Respiration and excretion occur by diffusion throughout the surface of the epidermis, while larger excreta are discharged through the mouth.
The nervous system of Hydra is a nerve net, which is structurally simple compared to more derived animal nervous systems. Hydra does not have a recognizable brain or true muscles. Nerve nets connect sensory photoreceptors and touch-sensitive nerve cells located in the body wall and tentacles.
The structure of the nerve net has two levels:
Some have only two sheets of neurons.
If Hydra are alarmed or attacked, the tentacles can be retracted to small buds, and the body column itself can be retracted to a small gelatinous sphere. Hydra generally react in the same way regardless of the direction of the stimulus, and this may be due to the simplicity of the nerve nets.
Hydra are generally sedentary or sessile, but do occasionally move quite readily, especially when hunting. They have two distinct methods for moving – 'looping' and 'somersaulting'. They do this by bending over and attaching themselves to the substrate with the mouth and tentacles and then relocate the foot, which provides the usual attachment, this process is called looping. In somersaulting, the body then bends over and makes a new place of attachment with the foot. By this process of "looping" or "somersaulting", a Hydra can move several inches (c. 100 mm) in a day. Hydra may also move by amoeboid motion of their bases or by detaching from the substrate and floating away in the current.
When food is plentiful, many Hydra reproduce asexually by budding. The buds form from the body wall, grow into miniature adults and break away when mature.
When a hydra is well fed, a new bud can form every two days. When conditions are harsh, often before winter or in poor feeding conditions, sexual reproduction occurs in some Hydra. Swellings in the body wall develop into either ovaries or testes. The testes release free-swimming gametes into the water, and these can fertilize the egg in the ovary of another individual. The fertilized eggs secrete a tough outer coating, and, as the adult dies (due to starvation or cold), these resting eggs fall to the bottom of the lake or pond to await better conditions, whereupon they hatch into nymph Hydra. Some Hydra species, like Hydra circumcincta and Hydra viridissima, are hermaphrodites and may produce both testes and ovaries at the same time.
Many members of the Hydrozoa go through a body change from a polyp to an adult form called a medusa, which is usually the life stage where sexual reproduction occurs, but Hydra do not progress beyond the polyp phase.
Hydra mainly feed on aquatic invertebrates such as Daphnia and Cyclops.
While feeding, Hydra extend their body to maximum length and then slowly extend their tentacles. Despite their simple construction, the tentacles of Hydra are extraordinarily extensible and can be four to five times the length of the body. Once fully extended, the tentacles are slowly maneuvered around waiting for contact with a suitable prey animal. Upon contact, nematocysts on the tentacle fire into the prey, and the tentacle itself coils around the prey. Most of the tentacles join in the attack within 30 seconds to subdue the struggling prey. Within two minutes, the tentacles surround the prey and move it into the open mouth aperture. Within ten minutes, the prey is engulfed within the body cavity, and digestion commences. Hydra can stretch their body wall considerably in
The feeding behaviour of Hydra demonstrates the sophistication of what appears to be a simple nervous system.
Some species of Hydra exist in a mutual relationship with various types of unicellular algae. The algae are protected from predators by Hydra; in return, photosynthetic products from the algae are beneficial as a food source to Hydra, and even help to maintain the Hydra microbiome.
The feeding response in Hydra is induced by glutathione (specifically in the reduced state as GSH) released from damaged tissue of injured prey. There are several methods conventionally used for quantification of the feeding response. In some, the duration for which the mouth remains open is measured. Other methods rely on counting the number of Hydra among a small population showing the feeding response after addition of glutathione. Recently, an assay for measuring the feeding response in hydra has been developed. In this method, the linear two-dimensional distance between the tip of the tentacle and the mouth of hydra was shown to be a direct measure of the extent of the feeding response. This method has been validated using a starvation model, as starvation is known to cause enhancement of the Hydra feeding response.
The species Hydra oligactis is preyed upon by the flatworm Microstomum lineare.
Hydras undergo morphallaxis (tissue regeneration) when injured or severed. Typically, Hydras reproduce by just budding off a whole new individual; the bud occurs around two-thirds of the way down the body axis. When a Hydra is cut in half, each half regenerates and forms into a small Hydra; the "head" regenerates a "foot" and the "foot" regenerates a "head". This regeneration occurs without cell division. If the Hydra is sliced into many segments, the middle slices form both a "head" and a "foot". The polarity of the regeneration is explained by two pairs of positional value gradients. There is both a head and foot activation and inhibition gradient. The head activation and inhibition works in an opposite direction of the pair of foot gradients. The evidence for these gradients was shown in the early 1900s with grafting experiments. The inhibitors for both gradients have shown to be important to block the bud formation. The location where the bud forms is where the gradients are low for both the head and foot.
Hydras are capable of regenerating from pieces of tissue from the body and additionally after tissue dissociation from reaggregates. This process takes place not only in the pieces of tissue excised from the body column, but also from re-aggregates of dissociated single cells. It was found that in these aggregates, cells initially distributed randomly undergo sorting and form two epithelial cell layers, in which the endodermal epithelial cells play more active roles in the process. Active mobility of these endodermal epithelial cells forms two layers in both the re-aggregate and the re-generating tip of the excised tissue. As these two layers are established, a patterning process takes place to form heads and feet.
Daniel Martinez claimed in a 1998 article in Experimental Gerontology that Hydra are biologically immortal. This publication has been widely cited as evidence that Hydra do not senesce (do not age), and that they are proof of the existence of non-senescing organisms generally. In 2010, Preston Estep published (also in Experimental Gerontology) a letter to the editor arguing that the Martinez data refutes the hypothesis that Hydra do not senesce.
The controversial unlimited lifespan of Hydra has attracted much attention from scientists. Research today appears to confirm Martinez' study. Hydra stem cells have a capacity for indefinite self-renewal. The transcription factor "forkhead box O" (FoxO) has been identified as a critical driver of the continuous self-renewal of Hydra. In experiments, a drastically reduced population growth resulted from FoxO down-regulation.
In bilaterally symmetrical organisms (Bilateria), the transcription factor FoxO affects stress response, lifespan, and increase in stem cells. If this transcription factor is knocked down in bilaterian model organisms, such as fruit flies and nematodes, their lifespan is significantly decreased. In experiments on H. vulgaris (a radially symmetrical member of phylum Cnidaria), when FoxO levels were decreased, there was a negative effect on many key features of the Hydra, but no death was observed, thus it is believed other factors may contribute to the apparent lack of aging in these creatures.
Hydra are capable of two types of DNA repair: nucleotide excision repair and base excision repair. These repair pathways facilitate DNA replication by removing DNA damages. The identification of these pathways in hydra was based, in part, on the presence in the hydra genome of genes homologous to genes in other genetically well studied species that have been demonstrated to play key roles in these DNA repair pathways.
An ortholog comparison analysis done within the last decade demonstrated that Hydra share a minimum of 6,071 genes with humans. Hydra is becoming an increasingly better model system as more genetic approaches become available. Transgenic hydra have become attractive model organisms to study the evolution of immunity. A draft of the genome of Hydra magnipapillata was reported in 2010.
The genomes of cnidarians are usually less than 500 MB in size, as in the Hydra viridissima, which has a genome size of approximately 300 MB. In contrast, the genomes of brown hydras are approximately 1 GB in size. This is because the brown hydra genome is the result of an expansion event involving LINEs, a type of transposable elements, in particular, a single family of the CR1 class. This expansion is unique to this subgroup of the genus Hydra and is absent in the green hydra, which has a repeating landscape similar to other cnidarians. These genome characteristics make Hydra attractive for studies of transposon-driven speciations and genome expansions.
Due to the simplicity of their life cycle when compared to other hydrozoans, hydras have lost many genes that correspond to cell types or metabolic pathways of which the ancestral function is still unknown.
Hydra genome shows a preference towards proximal promoters. Thanks to this feature, many reporter cell lines have been created with regions around 500 to 2000 bases upstream of the gene of interest. Its cis-regulatory elements (CRE) are mostly located less than 2000 base pairs upstream from the closest transcription initiation site, but there are CREs located further away.
Its chromatin has a Rabl configuration. There are interactions between the centromeres of different chromosomes and the centromeres and telomeres of the same chromosome. It presents a great number of intercentromeric interactions when compared to other cnidarians, probably due to the loss of multiple subunits of condensin II. It is organized in domains that span dozens to hundreds of megabases, containing epigenetically co-regulated genes and flanked by boundaries located within heterochromatin.
Different Hydra cell types express gene families of different evolutionary ages. Progenitor cells (stem cells, neuron and nematocyst precursors, and germ cells) express genes from families that predate metazoans. Among differentiated cells some express genes from families that date from the base of metazoans, like gland and neuronal cells, and others express genes from newer families, originating from the base of cnidaria or medusozoa, like nematocysts. Interstitial cells contain translation factors with a function that has been conserved for at least 400 million years. | [
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"text": "Hydra (/ˈhaɪdrə/ HY-drə) is a genus of small freshwater hydrozoans of the phylum Cnidaria. They are native to the temperate and tropical regions. The genus was named by Linnaeus in 1758 after the Hydra, which was the many-headed beast of myth defeated by Heracles, as when the animal had a part severed, it would regenerate much like the mythical hydra’s heads. Biologists are especially interested in Hydra because of their regenerative ability; they do not appear to die of old age, or to age at all.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hydra has a tubular, radially symmetric body up to 10 mm (0.39 in) long when extended, secured by a simple adhesive foot known as the basal disc. Gland cells in the basal disc secrete a sticky fluid that accounts for its adhesive properties.",
"title": "Morphology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "At the free end of the body is a mouth opening surrounded by one to twelve thin, mobile tentacles. Each tentacle, or cnida (plural: cnidae), is clothed with highly specialised stinging cells called cnidocytes. Cnidocytes contain specialized structures called nematocysts, which look like miniature light bulbs with a coiled thread inside. At the narrow outer edge of the cnidocyte is a short trigger hair called a cnidocil. Upon contact with prey, the contents of the nematocyst are explosively discharged, firing a dart-like thread containing neurotoxins into whatever triggered the release. This can paralyze the prey, especially if many hundreds of nematocysts are fired.",
"title": "Morphology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hydra has two main body layers, which makes it \"diploblastic\". The layers are separated by mesoglea, a gel-like substance. The outer layer is the epidermis, and the inner layer is called the gastrodermis, because it lines the stomach. The cells making up these two body layers are relatively simple. Hydramacin is a bactericide recently discovered in Hydra; it protects the outer layer against infection. A single Hydra is composed of 50,000 to 100,000 cells which consist of three specific stem cell populations that create many different cell types. These stem cells continually renew themselves in the body column. Hydras have two significant structures on their body: the \"head\" and the \"foot\". When a Hydra is cut in half, each half regenerates and forms into a small Hydra; the \"head\" regenerates a \"foot\" and the \"foot\" regenerates a \"head\". If the Hydra is sliced into many segments then the middle slices form both a \"head\" and a \"foot\".",
"title": "Morphology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Respiration and excretion occur by diffusion throughout the surface of the epidermis, while larger excreta are discharged through the mouth.",
"title": "Morphology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The nervous system of Hydra is a nerve net, which is structurally simple compared to more derived animal nervous systems. Hydra does not have a recognizable brain or true muscles. Nerve nets connect sensory photoreceptors and touch-sensitive nerve cells located in the body wall and tentacles.",
"title": "Nervous system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The structure of the nerve net has two levels:",
"title": "Nervous system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Some have only two sheets of neurons.",
"title": "Nervous system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "If Hydra are alarmed or attacked, the tentacles can be retracted to small buds, and the body column itself can be retracted to a small gelatinous sphere. Hydra generally react in the same way regardless of the direction of the stimulus, and this may be due to the simplicity of the nerve nets.",
"title": "Motion and locomotion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hydra are generally sedentary or sessile, but do occasionally move quite readily, especially when hunting. They have two distinct methods for moving – 'looping' and 'somersaulting'. They do this by bending over and attaching themselves to the substrate with the mouth and tentacles and then relocate the foot, which provides the usual attachment, this process is called looping. In somersaulting, the body then bends over and makes a new place of attachment with the foot. By this process of \"looping\" or \"somersaulting\", a Hydra can move several inches (c. 100 mm) in a day. Hydra may also move by amoeboid motion of their bases or by detaching from the substrate and floating away in the current.",
"title": "Motion and locomotion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "When food is plentiful, many Hydra reproduce asexually by budding. The buds form from the body wall, grow into miniature adults and break away when mature.",
"title": "Reproduction and life cycle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "When a hydra is well fed, a new bud can form every two days. When conditions are harsh, often before winter or in poor feeding conditions, sexual reproduction occurs in some Hydra. Swellings in the body wall develop into either ovaries or testes. The testes release free-swimming gametes into the water, and these can fertilize the egg in the ovary of another individual. The fertilized eggs secrete a tough outer coating, and, as the adult dies (due to starvation or cold), these resting eggs fall to the bottom of the lake or pond to await better conditions, whereupon they hatch into nymph Hydra. Some Hydra species, like Hydra circumcincta and Hydra viridissima, are hermaphrodites and may produce both testes and ovaries at the same time.",
"title": "Reproduction and life cycle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Many members of the Hydrozoa go through a body change from a polyp to an adult form called a medusa, which is usually the life stage where sexual reproduction occurs, but Hydra do not progress beyond the polyp phase.",
"title": "Reproduction and life cycle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Hydra mainly feed on aquatic invertebrates such as Daphnia and Cyclops.",
"title": "Feeding"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "While feeding, Hydra extend their body to maximum length and then slowly extend their tentacles. Despite their simple construction, the tentacles of Hydra are extraordinarily extensible and can be four to five times the length of the body. Once fully extended, the tentacles are slowly maneuvered around waiting for contact with a suitable prey animal. Upon contact, nematocysts on the tentacle fire into the prey, and the tentacle itself coils around the prey. Most of the tentacles join in the attack within 30 seconds to subdue the struggling prey. Within two minutes, the tentacles surround the prey and move it into the open mouth aperture. Within ten minutes, the prey is engulfed within the body cavity, and digestion commences. Hydra can stretch their body wall considerably in",
"title": "Feeding"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The feeding behaviour of Hydra demonstrates the sophistication of what appears to be a simple nervous system.",
"title": "Feeding"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Some species of Hydra exist in a mutual relationship with various types of unicellular algae. The algae are protected from predators by Hydra; in return, photosynthetic products from the algae are beneficial as a food source to Hydra, and even help to maintain the Hydra microbiome.",
"title": "Feeding"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The feeding response in Hydra is induced by glutathione (specifically in the reduced state as GSH) released from damaged tissue of injured prey. There are several methods conventionally used for quantification of the feeding response. In some, the duration for which the mouth remains open is measured. Other methods rely on counting the number of Hydra among a small population showing the feeding response after addition of glutathione. Recently, an assay for measuring the feeding response in hydra has been developed. In this method, the linear two-dimensional distance between the tip of the tentacle and the mouth of hydra was shown to be a direct measure of the extent of the feeding response. This method has been validated using a starvation model, as starvation is known to cause enhancement of the Hydra feeding response.",
"title": "Feeding"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The species Hydra oligactis is preyed upon by the flatworm Microstomum lineare.",
"title": "Predators"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Hydras undergo morphallaxis (tissue regeneration) when injured or severed. Typically, Hydras reproduce by just budding off a whole new individual; the bud occurs around two-thirds of the way down the body axis. When a Hydra is cut in half, each half regenerates and forms into a small Hydra; the \"head\" regenerates a \"foot\" and the \"foot\" regenerates a \"head\". This regeneration occurs without cell division. If the Hydra is sliced into many segments, the middle slices form both a \"head\" and a \"foot\". The polarity of the regeneration is explained by two pairs of positional value gradients. There is both a head and foot activation and inhibition gradient. The head activation and inhibition works in an opposite direction of the pair of foot gradients. The evidence for these gradients was shown in the early 1900s with grafting experiments. The inhibitors for both gradients have shown to be important to block the bud formation. The location where the bud forms is where the gradients are low for both the head and foot.",
"title": "Tissue regeneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Hydras are capable of regenerating from pieces of tissue from the body and additionally after tissue dissociation from reaggregates. This process takes place not only in the pieces of tissue excised from the body column, but also from re-aggregates of dissociated single cells. It was found that in these aggregates, cells initially distributed randomly undergo sorting and form two epithelial cell layers, in which the endodermal epithelial cells play more active roles in the process. Active mobility of these endodermal epithelial cells forms two layers in both the re-aggregate and the re-generating tip of the excised tissue. As these two layers are established, a patterning process takes place to form heads and feet.",
"title": "Tissue regeneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Daniel Martinez claimed in a 1998 article in Experimental Gerontology that Hydra are biologically immortal. This publication has been widely cited as evidence that Hydra do not senesce (do not age), and that they are proof of the existence of non-senescing organisms generally. In 2010, Preston Estep published (also in Experimental Gerontology) a letter to the editor arguing that the Martinez data refutes the hypothesis that Hydra do not senesce.",
"title": "Non-senescence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The controversial unlimited lifespan of Hydra has attracted much attention from scientists. Research today appears to confirm Martinez' study. Hydra stem cells have a capacity for indefinite self-renewal. The transcription factor \"forkhead box O\" (FoxO) has been identified as a critical driver of the continuous self-renewal of Hydra. In experiments, a drastically reduced population growth resulted from FoxO down-regulation.",
"title": "Non-senescence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In bilaterally symmetrical organisms (Bilateria), the transcription factor FoxO affects stress response, lifespan, and increase in stem cells. If this transcription factor is knocked down in bilaterian model organisms, such as fruit flies and nematodes, their lifespan is significantly decreased. In experiments on H. vulgaris (a radially symmetrical member of phylum Cnidaria), when FoxO levels were decreased, there was a negative effect on many key features of the Hydra, but no death was observed, thus it is believed other factors may contribute to the apparent lack of aging in these creatures.",
"title": "Non-senescence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Hydra are capable of two types of DNA repair: nucleotide excision repair and base excision repair. These repair pathways facilitate DNA replication by removing DNA damages. The identification of these pathways in hydra was based, in part, on the presence in the hydra genome of genes homologous to genes in other genetically well studied species that have been demonstrated to play key roles in these DNA repair pathways.",
"title": "DNA repair"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "An ortholog comparison analysis done within the last decade demonstrated that Hydra share a minimum of 6,071 genes with humans. Hydra is becoming an increasingly better model system as more genetic approaches become available. Transgenic hydra have become attractive model organisms to study the evolution of immunity. A draft of the genome of Hydra magnipapillata was reported in 2010.",
"title": "Genomics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The genomes of cnidarians are usually less than 500 MB in size, as in the Hydra viridissima, which has a genome size of approximately 300 MB. In contrast, the genomes of brown hydras are approximately 1 GB in size. This is because the brown hydra genome is the result of an expansion event involving LINEs, a type of transposable elements, in particular, a single family of the CR1 class. This expansion is unique to this subgroup of the genus Hydra and is absent in the green hydra, which has a repeating landscape similar to other cnidarians. These genome characteristics make Hydra attractive for studies of transposon-driven speciations and genome expansions.",
"title": "Genomics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Due to the simplicity of their life cycle when compared to other hydrozoans, hydras have lost many genes that correspond to cell types or metabolic pathways of which the ancestral function is still unknown.",
"title": "Genomics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Hydra genome shows a preference towards proximal promoters. Thanks to this feature, many reporter cell lines have been created with regions around 500 to 2000 bases upstream of the gene of interest. Its cis-regulatory elements (CRE) are mostly located less than 2000 base pairs upstream from the closest transcription initiation site, but there are CREs located further away.",
"title": "Genomics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Its chromatin has a Rabl configuration. There are interactions between the centromeres of different chromosomes and the centromeres and telomeres of the same chromosome. It presents a great number of intercentromeric interactions when compared to other cnidarians, probably due to the loss of multiple subunits of condensin II. It is organized in domains that span dozens to hundreds of megabases, containing epigenetically co-regulated genes and flanked by boundaries located within heterochromatin.",
"title": "Genomics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Different Hydra cell types express gene families of different evolutionary ages. Progenitor cells (stem cells, neuron and nematocyst precursors, and germ cells) express genes from families that predate metazoans. Among differentiated cells some express genes from families that date from the base of metazoans, like gland and neuronal cells, and others express genes from newer families, originating from the base of cnidaria or medusozoa, like nematocysts. Interstitial cells contain translation factors with a function that has been conserved for at least 400 million years.",
"title": "Transcriptomics"
}
]
| Hydra is a genus of small freshwater hydrozoans of the phylum Cnidaria. They are native to the temperate and tropical regions. The genus was named by Linnaeus in 1758 after the Hydra, which was the many-headed beast of myth defeated by Heracles, as when the animal had a part severed, it would regenerate much like the mythical hydra’s heads. Biologists are especially interested in Hydra because of their regenerative ability; they do not appear to die of old age, or to age at all. | 2001-10-28T07:25:09Z | 2023-12-29T03:20:52Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus) |
13,768 | Hydrus | Hydrus /ˈhaɪdrəs/ is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. Its name means "male water snake", as opposed to Hydra, a much larger constellation that represents a female water snake. It remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers.
The brightest star is the 2.8-magnitude Beta Hydri, also the closest reasonably bright star to the south celestial pole. Pulsating between magnitude 3.26 and 3.33, Gamma Hydri is a variable red giant 60 times the diameter of the Sun. Lying near it is VW Hydri, one of the brightest dwarf novae in the heavens. Four star systems in Hydrus have been found to have exoplanets to date, including HD 10180, which could bear up to nine planetary companions.
Hydrus was one of the twelve constellations established by the Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius from the observations of the southern sky by the Dutch explorers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in the German cartographer Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue the same year under the Dutch name De Waterslang, "The Water Snake", it representing a type of snake encountered on the expedition rather than a mythical creature. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille called it l’Hydre Mâle on the 1756 version of his planisphere of the southern skies, distinguishing it from the feminine Hydra. The French name was retained by Jean Fortin in 1776 for his Atlas Céleste, while Lacaille Latinised the name to Hydrus for his revised Coelum Australe Stelliferum in 1763.
Irregular in shape, Hydrus is bordered by Mensa to the southeast, Eridanus to the east, Horologium and Reticulum to the northeast, Phoenix to the north, Tucana to the northwest and west, and Octans to the south; Lacaille had shortened Hydrus' tail to make space for this last constellation he had drawn up. Covering 243 square degrees and 0.589% of the night sky, it ranks 61st of the 88 constellations in size. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Hyi". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 12 segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 00 06.1 and 04 35.1 , while the declination coordinates are between −57.85° and −82.06°. As one of the deep southern constellations, it remains below the horizon at latitudes north of the 30th parallel in the Northern Hemisphere, and is circumpolar at latitudes south of the 50th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere. Herman Melville mentions it and Argo Navis in Moby Dick "beneath effulgent Antarctic Skies", highlighting his knowledge of the southern constellations from whaling voyages. A line drawn between the long axis of the Southern Cross to Beta Hydri and then extended 4.5 times will mark a point due south. Hydrus culminates at midnight around 26 October.
Keyzer and de Houtman assigned fifteen stars to the constellation in their Malay and Madagascan vocabulary, with a star that would be later designated as Alpha Hydri marking the head, Gamma the chest and a number of stars that were later allocated to Tucana, Reticulum, Mensa and Horologium marking the body and tail. Lacaille charted and designated 20 stars with the Bayer designations Alpha through to Tau in 1756. Of these, he used the designations Eta, Pi and Tau twice each, for three sets of two stars close together, and omitted Omicron and Xi. He assigned Rho to a star that subsequent astronomers were unable to find.
Beta Hydri, the brightest star in Hydrus, is a yellow star of apparent magnitude 2.8, lying 24 light-years from Earth. It has about 104% of the mass of the Sun and 181% of the Sun's radius, with more than three times the Sun's luminosity. The spectrum of this star matches a stellar classification of G2 IV, with the luminosity class of 'IV' indicating this is a subgiant star. As such, it is a slightly more evolved star than the Sun, with the supply of hydrogen fuel at its core becoming exhausted. It is the nearest subgiant star to the Sun and one of the oldest stars in the solar neighbourhood. Thought to be between 6.4 and 7.1 billion years old, this star bears some resemblance to what the Sun may look like in the far distant future, making it an object of interest to astronomers. It is also the closest bright star to the south celestial pole.
Located at the northern edge of the constellation and just southwest of Achernar is Alpha Hydri, a white sub-giant star of magnitude 2.9, situated 72 light-years from Earth. Of spectral type F0IV, it is beginning to cool and enlarge as it uses up its supply of hydrogen. It is twice as massive and 3.3 times as wide as the Sun and 26 times more luminous. A line drawn between Alpha Hydri and Beta Centauri is bisected by the south celestial pole.
In the southeastern corner of the constellation is Gamma Hydri, a red giant of spectral type M2III located 214 light-years from Earth. It is a semi-regular variable star, pulsating between magnitudes 3.26 and 3.33. Observations over five years were not able to establish its periodicity. It is around 1.5 to 2 times as massive as the Sun, and has expanded to about 60 times the Sun's diameter. It shines with about 655 times the luminosity of the Sun. Located 3° northeast of Gamma is the VW Hydri, a dwarf nova of the SU Ursae Majoris type. It is a close binary system that consists of a white dwarf and another star, the former drawing off matter from the latter into a bright accretion disk. These systems are characterised by frequent eruptions and less frequent supereruptions. The former are smooth, while the latter exhibit short "superhumps" of heightened activity. One of the brightest dwarf novae in the sky, it has a baseline magnitude of 14.4 and can brighten to magnitude 8.4 during peak activity. BL Hydri is another close binary system composed of a low-mass star and a strongly magnetic white dwarf. Known as a polar or AM Herculis variable, these produce polarized optical and infrared emissions and intense soft and hard X-ray emissions to the frequency of the white dwarf's rotation period—in this case 113.6 minutes.
There are two notable optical double stars in Hydrus. Pi Hydri, composed of Pi Hydri and Pi Hydri, is divisible in binoculars. Around 476 light-years distant, Pi is a red giant of spectral type M1III that varies between magnitudes 5.52 and 5.58. Pi is an orange giant of spectral type K2III and shining with a magnitude of 5.7, around 488 light-years from Earth.
Eta Hydri is the other optical double, composed of Eta and Eta. Eta is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B9V that was suspected of being variable, and is located just over 700 light-years away. Eta has a magnitude of 4.7 and is a yellow giant star of spectral type G8.5III around 218 light-years distant, which has evolved off the main sequence and is expanding and cooling on its way to becoming a red giant. Calculations of its mass indicate it was most likely a white A-type main sequence star for most of its existence, around twice the mass of the Sun. A planet, Eta2 Hydri b, greater than 6.5 times the mass of Jupiter was discovered in 2005, orbiting around Eta every 711 days at a distance of 1.93 astronomical units (AU).
Three other systems have been found to have planets, most notably the Sun-like star HD 10180, which has seven planets, plus possibly an additional two for a total of nine—as of 2012 more than any other system to date, including the Solar System. Lying around 127 light-years (39 parsecs) from the Earth, it has an apparent magnitude of 7.33.
GJ 3021 is a solar twin—a star very like the Sun—around 57 light-years distant with a spectral type G8V and magnitude of 6.7. It has a Jovian planet companion (GJ 3021 b). Orbiting about 0.5 AU from its star, it has a minimum mass 3.37 times that of Jupiter and a period of around 133 days. The system is a complex one as the faint star GJ 3021B orbits at a distance of 68 AU; it is a red dwarf of spectral type M4V.
HD 20003 is a star of magnitude 8.37. It is a yellow main sequence star of spectral type G8V a little cooler and smaller than the Sun around 143 light-years away. It has two planets that are around 12 and 13.5 times as massive as the Earth with periods of just under 12 and 34 days respectively.
Hydrus contains only faint deep-sky objects. IC 1717 was a deep-sky object discovered by the Danish astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer in the late 19th century. The object at the coordinate Dreyer observed is no longer there, and is now a mystery. It was very likely to have been a faint comet. PGC 6240, known as the White Rose Galaxy, is a giant spiral galaxy surrounded by shells resembling rose petals, located around 345 million light years from the Solar System. Unusually, it has cohorts of globular clusters of three distinct ages suggesting bouts of post-starburst formation following a merger with another galaxy. The constellation also contains a spiral galaxy, NGC 1511, which lies edge on to observers on Earth and is readily viewed in amateur telescopes.
Located mostly in Dorado, the Large Magellanic Cloud extends into Hydrus. The globular cluster NGC 1466 is an outlying component of the galaxy, and contains many RR Lyrae-type variable stars. It has a magnitude of 11.59 and is thought to be over 12 billion years old. Two stars, HD 24188 of magnitude 6.3 and HD 24115 of magnitude 9.0, lie nearby in its foreground. NGC 602 is composed of an emission nebula and a young, bright open cluster of stars that is an outlying component on the eastern edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Most of the cloud is located in the neighbouring constellation Tucana. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hydrus /ˈhaɪdrəs/ is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. Its name means \"male water snake\", as opposed to Hydra, a much larger constellation that represents a female water snake. It remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The brightest star is the 2.8-magnitude Beta Hydri, also the closest reasonably bright star to the south celestial pole. Pulsating between magnitude 3.26 and 3.33, Gamma Hydri is a variable red giant 60 times the diameter of the Sun. Lying near it is VW Hydri, one of the brightest dwarf novae in the heavens. Four star systems in Hydrus have been found to have exoplanets to date, including HD 10180, which could bear up to nine planetary companions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hydrus was one of the twelve constellations established by the Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius from the observations of the southern sky by the Dutch explorers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East Indies. It first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in the German cartographer Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. De Houtman included it in his southern star catalogue the same year under the Dutch name De Waterslang, \"The Water Snake\", it representing a type of snake encountered on the expedition rather than a mythical creature. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille called it l’Hydre Mâle on the 1756 version of his planisphere of the southern skies, distinguishing it from the feminine Hydra. The French name was retained by Jean Fortin in 1776 for his Atlas Céleste, while Lacaille Latinised the name to Hydrus for his revised Coelum Australe Stelliferum in 1763.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Irregular in shape, Hydrus is bordered by Mensa to the southeast, Eridanus to the east, Horologium and Reticulum to the northeast, Phoenix to the north, Tucana to the northwest and west, and Octans to the south; Lacaille had shortened Hydrus' tail to make space for this last constellation he had drawn up. Covering 243 square degrees and 0.589% of the night sky, it ranks 61st of the 88 constellations in size. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is \"Hyi\". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 12 segments. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 00 06.1 and 04 35.1 , while the declination coordinates are between −57.85° and −82.06°. As one of the deep southern constellations, it remains below the horizon at latitudes north of the 30th parallel in the Northern Hemisphere, and is circumpolar at latitudes south of the 50th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere. Herman Melville mentions it and Argo Navis in Moby Dick \"beneath effulgent Antarctic Skies\", highlighting his knowledge of the southern constellations from whaling voyages. A line drawn between the long axis of the Southern Cross to Beta Hydri and then extended 4.5 times will mark a point due south. Hydrus culminates at midnight around 26 October.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Keyzer and de Houtman assigned fifteen stars to the constellation in their Malay and Madagascan vocabulary, with a star that would be later designated as Alpha Hydri marking the head, Gamma the chest and a number of stars that were later allocated to Tucana, Reticulum, Mensa and Horologium marking the body and tail. Lacaille charted and designated 20 stars with the Bayer designations Alpha through to Tau in 1756. Of these, he used the designations Eta, Pi and Tau twice each, for three sets of two stars close together, and omitted Omicron and Xi. He assigned Rho to a star that subsequent astronomers were unable to find.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Beta Hydri, the brightest star in Hydrus, is a yellow star of apparent magnitude 2.8, lying 24 light-years from Earth. It has about 104% of the mass of the Sun and 181% of the Sun's radius, with more than three times the Sun's luminosity. The spectrum of this star matches a stellar classification of G2 IV, with the luminosity class of 'IV' indicating this is a subgiant star. As such, it is a slightly more evolved star than the Sun, with the supply of hydrogen fuel at its core becoming exhausted. It is the nearest subgiant star to the Sun and one of the oldest stars in the solar neighbourhood. Thought to be between 6.4 and 7.1 billion years old, this star bears some resemblance to what the Sun may look like in the far distant future, making it an object of interest to astronomers. It is also the closest bright star to the south celestial pole.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Located at the northern edge of the constellation and just southwest of Achernar is Alpha Hydri, a white sub-giant star of magnitude 2.9, situated 72 light-years from Earth. Of spectral type F0IV, it is beginning to cool and enlarge as it uses up its supply of hydrogen. It is twice as massive and 3.3 times as wide as the Sun and 26 times more luminous. A line drawn between Alpha Hydri and Beta Centauri is bisected by the south celestial pole.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the southeastern corner of the constellation is Gamma Hydri, a red giant of spectral type M2III located 214 light-years from Earth. It is a semi-regular variable star, pulsating between magnitudes 3.26 and 3.33. Observations over five years were not able to establish its periodicity. It is around 1.5 to 2 times as massive as the Sun, and has expanded to about 60 times the Sun's diameter. It shines with about 655 times the luminosity of the Sun. Located 3° northeast of Gamma is the VW Hydri, a dwarf nova of the SU Ursae Majoris type. It is a close binary system that consists of a white dwarf and another star, the former drawing off matter from the latter into a bright accretion disk. These systems are characterised by frequent eruptions and less frequent supereruptions. The former are smooth, while the latter exhibit short \"superhumps\" of heightened activity. One of the brightest dwarf novae in the sky, it has a baseline magnitude of 14.4 and can brighten to magnitude 8.4 during peak activity. BL Hydri is another close binary system composed of a low-mass star and a strongly magnetic white dwarf. Known as a polar or AM Herculis variable, these produce polarized optical and infrared emissions and intense soft and hard X-ray emissions to the frequency of the white dwarf's rotation period—in this case 113.6 minutes.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "There are two notable optical double stars in Hydrus. Pi Hydri, composed of Pi Hydri and Pi Hydri, is divisible in binoculars. Around 476 light-years distant, Pi is a red giant of spectral type M1III that varies between magnitudes 5.52 and 5.58. Pi is an orange giant of spectral type K2III and shining with a magnitude of 5.7, around 488 light-years from Earth.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Eta Hydri is the other optical double, composed of Eta and Eta. Eta is a blue-white main sequence star of spectral type B9V that was suspected of being variable, and is located just over 700 light-years away. Eta has a magnitude of 4.7 and is a yellow giant star of spectral type G8.5III around 218 light-years distant, which has evolved off the main sequence and is expanding and cooling on its way to becoming a red giant. Calculations of its mass indicate it was most likely a white A-type main sequence star for most of its existence, around twice the mass of the Sun. A planet, Eta2 Hydri b, greater than 6.5 times the mass of Jupiter was discovered in 2005, orbiting around Eta every 711 days at a distance of 1.93 astronomical units (AU).",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Three other systems have been found to have planets, most notably the Sun-like star HD 10180, which has seven planets, plus possibly an additional two for a total of nine—as of 2012 more than any other system to date, including the Solar System. Lying around 127 light-years (39 parsecs) from the Earth, it has an apparent magnitude of 7.33.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "GJ 3021 is a solar twin—a star very like the Sun—around 57 light-years distant with a spectral type G8V and magnitude of 6.7. It has a Jovian planet companion (GJ 3021 b). Orbiting about 0.5 AU from its star, it has a minimum mass 3.37 times that of Jupiter and a period of around 133 days. The system is a complex one as the faint star GJ 3021B orbits at a distance of 68 AU; it is a red dwarf of spectral type M4V.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "HD 20003 is a star of magnitude 8.37. It is a yellow main sequence star of spectral type G8V a little cooler and smaller than the Sun around 143 light-years away. It has two planets that are around 12 and 13.5 times as massive as the Earth with periods of just under 12 and 34 days respectively.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Hydrus contains only faint deep-sky objects. IC 1717 was a deep-sky object discovered by the Danish astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer in the late 19th century. The object at the coordinate Dreyer observed is no longer there, and is now a mystery. It was very likely to have been a faint comet. PGC 6240, known as the White Rose Galaxy, is a giant spiral galaxy surrounded by shells resembling rose petals, located around 345 million light years from the Solar System. Unusually, it has cohorts of globular clusters of three distinct ages suggesting bouts of post-starburst formation following a merger with another galaxy. The constellation also contains a spiral galaxy, NGC 1511, which lies edge on to observers on Earth and is readily viewed in amateur telescopes.",
"title": "Features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Located mostly in Dorado, the Large Magellanic Cloud extends into Hydrus. The globular cluster NGC 1466 is an outlying component of the galaxy, and contains many RR Lyrae-type variable stars. It has a magnitude of 11.59 and is thought to be over 12 billion years old. Two stars, HD 24188 of magnitude 6.3 and HD 24115 of magnitude 9.0, lie nearby in its foreground. NGC 602 is composed of an emission nebula and a young, bright open cluster of stars that is an outlying component on the eastern edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Most of the cloud is located in the neighbouring constellation Tucana.",
"title": "Features"
}
]
| Hydrus is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. Its name means "male water snake", as opposed to Hydra, a much larger constellation that represents a female water snake. It remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers. The brightest star is the 2.8-magnitude Beta Hydri, also the closest reasonably bright star to the south celestial pole. Pulsating between magnitude 3.26 and 3.33, Gamma Hydri is a variable red giant 60 times the diameter of the Sun. Lying near it is VW Hydri, one of the brightest dwarf novae in the heavens. Four star systems in Hydrus have been found to have exoplanets to date, including HD 10180, which could bear up to nine planetary companions. | 2001-09-16T12:35:19Z | 2023-09-01T22:11:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrus |
13,770 | Hercules | Hercules (/ˈhɜːrkjʊˌliːz/, US: /-kjə-/) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures.
The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules is a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him. This article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the later tradition.
In Roman mythology, although Hercules was seen as the champion of the weak and a great protector, his personal problems started at birth. Juno sent two witches to prevent the birth, but they were tricked by one of Alcmene's servants and sent to another room. Juno then sent serpents to kill him in his cradle, but Hercules strangled them both. In one version of the myth, Alcmene abandoned her baby in the woods in order to protect him from Juno's wrath, but he was found by the goddess Minerva who brought him to Juno, claiming he was an orphan child left in the woods who needed nourishment. Juno suckled Hercules at her own breast until the infant bit her nipple, at which point she pushed him away, spilling her milk across the night sky and so forming the Milky Way. She then gave the infant back to Minerva and told her to take care of the baby herself. In feeding the child from her own breast, the goddess inadvertently imbued him with further strength and power.
The Latin name Hercules was borrowed through Etruscan, where it is represented variously as Heracle, Hercle, and other forms. Hercules was a favorite subject for Etruscan art, and appears often on bronze mirrors. The Etruscan form Herceler derives from the Greek Heracles via syncope. A mild oath invoking Hercules (Hercule! or Mehercle!) was a common interjection in Classical Latin.
Hercules had a number of myths that were distinctly Roman. One of these is Hercules' defeat of Cacus, who was terrorizing the countryside of Rome. The hero was associated with the Aventine Hill through his son Aventinus. Mark Antony considered him a personal patron god, as did the emperor Commodus. Hercules received various forms of religious veneration, including as a deity concerned with children and childbirth, in part because of myths about his precocious infancy, and in part because he fathered countless children. Roman brides wore a special belt tied with the "knot of Hercules", which was supposed to be hard to untie. The comic playwright Plautus presents the myth of Hercules' conception as a sex comedy in his play Amphitryon; Seneca wrote the tragedy Hercules Furens about his bout with madness. During the Roman Imperial era, Hercules was worshipped locally from Hispania through Gaul.
Tacitus records a special affinity of the Germanic peoples for Hercules. In chapter 3 of his Germania, Tacitus states:
... they say that Hercules, too, once visited them; and when going into battle, they sang of him first of all heroes. They have also those songs of theirs, by the recital of this barditus as they call it, they rouse their courage, while from the note they augur the result of the approaching conflict. For, as their line shouts, they inspire or feel alarm.
Some have taken this as Tacitus equating the Germanic Þunraz with Hercules by way of interpretatio romana.
In the Roman era Hercules' Club amulets appear from the 2nd to 3rd century, distributed over the empire (including Roman Britain, c.f. Cool 1986), mostly made of gold, shaped like wooden clubs. A specimen found in Köln-Nippes bears the inscription "DEO HER[culi]", confirming the association with Hercules.
In the 5th to 7th centuries, during the Migration Period, the amulet is theorized to have rapidly spread from the Elbe Germanic area across Europe. These Germanic "Donar's Clubs" were made from deer antler, bone or wood, more rarely also from bronze or precious metals. The amulet type is replaced by the Viking Age Thor's hammer pendants in the course of the Christianization of Scandinavia from the 8th to 9th century.
After the Roman Empire became Christianized, mythological narratives were often reinterpreted as allegory, influenced by the philosophy of late antiquity. In the 4th century, Servius had described Hercules' return from the underworld as representing his ability to overcome earthly desires and vices, or the earth itself as a consumer of bodies. In medieval mythography, Hercules was one of the heroes seen as a strong role model who demonstrated both valor and wisdom, while the monsters he battles were regarded as moral obstacles. One glossator noted that when Hercules became a constellation, he showed that strength was necessary to gain entrance to Heaven.
Medieval mythography was written almost entirely in Latin, and original Greek texts were little used as sources for Hercules' myths.
The Renaissance and the invention of the printing press brought a renewed interest in and publication of Greek literature. Renaissance mythography drew more extensively on the Greek tradition of Heracles, typically under the Romanized name Hercules, or the alternate name Alcides. In a chapter of his book Mythologiae (1567), the influential mythographer Natale Conti collected and summarized an extensive range of myths concerning the birth, adventures, and death of the hero under his Roman name Hercules. Conti begins his lengthy chapter on Hercules with an overview description that continues the moralizing impulse of the Middle Ages:
Hercules, who subdued and destroyed monsters, bandits, and criminals, was justly famous and renowned for his great courage. His great and glorious reputation was worldwide, and so firmly entrenched that he'll always be remembered. In fact the ancients honored him with his own temples, altars, ceremonies, and priests. But it was his wisdom and great soul that earned those honors; noble blood, physical strength, and political power just aren't good enough.
In 1600, the citizens of Avignon bestowed on Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV of France) the title of the Hercule Gaulois ("Gallic Hercules"), justifying the extravagant flattery with a genealogy that traced the origin of the House of Navarre to a nephew of Hercules' son Hispalus.
The Road of Hercules is a route across Southern Gaul that is associated with the path Hercules took during his 10th labor of retrieving the Cattle of Geryon from the Red Isles. Hannibal took the same path on his march towards Italy and encouraged the belief that he was the second Hercules. Primary sources often make comparisons between Hercules and Hannibal. Hannibal further tried to invoke parallels between himself and Hercules by starting his march on Italy by visiting the shrine of Hercules at Gades. While crossing the alps, he performed labors in a heroic manner. A famous example was noted by Livy, when Hannibal fractured the side of a cliff that was blocking his march.
In ancient Roman society women were usually limited to two types of cults: those that addressed feminine matters such as childbirth, and cults that required virginal chastity. However, there is evidence suggesting there were female worshippers of Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Hercules. Some scholars believe that women were completely prohibited from any of Hercules's cults. Others believe it was only the "Ara Maxima" at which they were not allowed to worship. Macrobius in his first book of Saturnalia paraphrases from Varro: "For when Hercules was bringing the cattle of Geryon through Italy, a woman replied to the thirsty hero that she could not give him water because it was the day of the Goddess Women and it was unlawful for a man to taste what had been prepared for her. Hercules, therefore, when he was about to offer a sacrifice forbid the presence of women and ordered Potitius and Pinarius who were in charge of his rites, not to allow any women from taking part". Macrobius states that women were restricted in their participation in Hercules cults, but to what extent remains ambiguous. He mentions that women were not allowed to participate in Sacrum which is general term used to describe anything that was believed to have belonged to the gods. This could include anything from a precious item to a temple. Due to the general nature of a Sacrum, we can not judge the extent of the prohibition from Macrobius alone. There are also ancient writings on this topic from Aulus Gellius when speaking on how Romans swore oaths. He mentioned that Roman women do not swear on Hercules, nor do Roman men swear on Castor. He went on to say that women refrain from sacrificing to Hercules. Propertius in his poem 4.9 also mentions similar information as Macrobius. This is evidence that he was also using Varro as a source.
There is evidence of Hercules worship in myth in the Latin epic poem, the Aeneid. In the 8th book of the poem Aeneas finally reaches the future site of Rome, where he meets Evander and the Arcadians making sacrifices to Hercules on the banks of the Tiber river. They share a feast, and Evander tells the story of how Hercules defeated the monster Cascus, and describes him as a triumphant hero. Translated from the Latin text of Vergil, Evander stated: "Time brought to us in our time of need the aid and arrival of a god. For there came that mightiest avenger, the victor Hercules, proud with the slaughter and the spoils of threefold Geryon, and he drove the mighty bulls here, and the cattle filled both valley and riverside.
Hercules was also mentioned in the Fables of Gaius Julius Hyginus. For example, in his fable about Philoctetes he tells the story of how Philoctetes built a funeral pyre for Hercules so his body could be consumed and raised to immortality.
According to Livy (9.44.16) Romans were commemorating military victories by building statues to Hercules as early as 305 BCE. Also, philosopher Pliny the Elder dates Hercules worship back to the time of Evander, by accrediting him with erecting a statue in the Forum Boarium of Hercules. Scholars agree that there would have been 5–7 temples in Augustan Rome. There are believed to be related Republican triumphatores, however, not necessarily triumphal dedications. There are two temples located in the Campus Martius. One, being the Temple of Hercules Musarum, dedicated between 187 and 179 BCE by M. Fulvius Nobilior. And the other being the Temple of Hercules Custos, likely renovated by Sulla in the 80s BCE.
In Roman works of art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance art, Hercules can be identified by his attributes, the lion skin and the gnarled club (his favorite weapon); in mosaic he is shown tanned bronze, a virile aspect.
In the twentieth century, the Farnese Hercules has inspired artists such as Jeff Koons, Matthew Darbyshire and Robert Mapplethorpe to reinterpret Hercules for new audiences. The choice of deliberately white materials by Koons and Darbyshire has been interpreted as perpetuation of colourism in how the classical world is viewed. Mapplethorpe's work with black model Derrick Cross can be seen as a reaction to Neo-classical colourism, resisting the portrayal of Hercules as white.
Hercules was among the earliest figures on ancient Roman coinage, and has been the main motif of many collector coins and medals since. One example is the Austrian 20 euro Baroque Silver coin issued on September 11, 2002. The obverse side of the coin shows the Grand Staircase in the town palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna, currently the Austrian Ministry of Finance. Gods and demi-gods hold its flights, while Hercules stands at the turn of the stairs.
Six successive ships of the British Royal Navy, from the 18th to the 20th century, bore the name HMS Hercules.
In the French Navy, there were no less than nineteen ships called Hercule, plus three more named Alcide which is another name of the same hero.
Hercules' name was also used for five ships of the US Navy, four ships of the Spanish Navy, four of the Argentine Navy and two of the Swedish Navy, as well as for numerous civilian sailing and steam ships.
In modern aviation a military transport aircraft produced by Lockheed Martin carries the title Lockheed C-130 Hercules.
Operation Herkules was the German code-name given to an abortive plan for the invasion of Malta during the Second World War.
A series of nineteen Italian Hercules movies were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The actors who played Hercules in these films were Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott, Kirk Morris, Mickey Hargitay, Mark Forest, Alan Steel, Dan Vadis, Brad Harris, Reg Park, Peter Lupus (billed as Rock Stevens) and Michael Lane. A number of English-dubbed Italian films that featured the name of Hercules in their title were not intended to be movies about Hercules. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hercules (/ˈhɜːrkjʊˌliːz/, US: /-kjə-/) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules is a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him. This article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the later tradition.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In Roman mythology, although Hercules was seen as the champion of the weak and a great protector, his personal problems started at birth. Juno sent two witches to prevent the birth, but they were tricked by one of Alcmene's servants and sent to another room. Juno then sent serpents to kill him in his cradle, but Hercules strangled them both. In one version of the myth, Alcmene abandoned her baby in the woods in order to protect him from Juno's wrath, but he was found by the goddess Minerva who brought him to Juno, claiming he was an orphan child left in the woods who needed nourishment. Juno suckled Hercules at her own breast until the infant bit her nipple, at which point she pushed him away, spilling her milk across the night sky and so forming the Milky Way. She then gave the infant back to Minerva and told her to take care of the baby herself. In feeding the child from her own breast, the goddess inadvertently imbued him with further strength and power.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Latin name Hercules was borrowed through Etruscan, where it is represented variously as Heracle, Hercle, and other forms. Hercules was a favorite subject for Etruscan art, and appears often on bronze mirrors. The Etruscan form Herceler derives from the Greek Heracles via syncope. A mild oath invoking Hercules (Hercule! or Mehercle!) was a common interjection in Classical Latin.",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hercules had a number of myths that were distinctly Roman. One of these is Hercules' defeat of Cacus, who was terrorizing the countryside of Rome. The hero was associated with the Aventine Hill through his son Aventinus. Mark Antony considered him a personal patron god, as did the emperor Commodus. Hercules received various forms of religious veneration, including as a deity concerned with children and childbirth, in part because of myths about his precocious infancy, and in part because he fathered countless children. Roman brides wore a special belt tied with the \"knot of Hercules\", which was supposed to be hard to untie. The comic playwright Plautus presents the myth of Hercules' conception as a sex comedy in his play Amphitryon; Seneca wrote the tragedy Hercules Furens about his bout with madness. During the Roman Imperial era, Hercules was worshipped locally from Hispania through Gaul.",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Tacitus records a special affinity of the Germanic peoples for Hercules. In chapter 3 of his Germania, Tacitus states:",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "... they say that Hercules, too, once visited them; and when going into battle, they sang of him first of all heroes. They have also those songs of theirs, by the recital of this barditus as they call it, they rouse their courage, while from the note they augur the result of the approaching conflict. For, as their line shouts, they inspire or feel alarm.",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Some have taken this as Tacitus equating the Germanic Þunraz with Hercules by way of interpretatio romana.",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the Roman era Hercules' Club amulets appear from the 2nd to 3rd century, distributed over the empire (including Roman Britain, c.f. Cool 1986), mostly made of gold, shaped like wooden clubs. A specimen found in Köln-Nippes bears the inscription \"DEO HER[culi]\", confirming the association with Hercules.",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the 5th to 7th centuries, during the Migration Period, the amulet is theorized to have rapidly spread from the Elbe Germanic area across Europe. These Germanic \"Donar's Clubs\" were made from deer antler, bone or wood, more rarely also from bronze or precious metals. The amulet type is replaced by the Viking Age Thor's hammer pendants in the course of the Christianization of Scandinavia from the 8th to 9th century.",
"title": "Roman era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "After the Roman Empire became Christianized, mythological narratives were often reinterpreted as allegory, influenced by the philosophy of late antiquity. In the 4th century, Servius had described Hercules' return from the underworld as representing his ability to overcome earthly desires and vices, or the earth itself as a consumer of bodies. In medieval mythography, Hercules was one of the heroes seen as a strong role model who demonstrated both valor and wisdom, while the monsters he battles were regarded as moral obstacles. One glossator noted that when Hercules became a constellation, he showed that strength was necessary to gain entrance to Heaven.",
"title": "Medieval mythography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Medieval mythography was written almost entirely in Latin, and original Greek texts were little used as sources for Hercules' myths.",
"title": "Medieval mythography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Renaissance and the invention of the printing press brought a renewed interest in and publication of Greek literature. Renaissance mythography drew more extensively on the Greek tradition of Heracles, typically under the Romanized name Hercules, or the alternate name Alcides. In a chapter of his book Mythologiae (1567), the influential mythographer Natale Conti collected and summarized an extensive range of myths concerning the birth, adventures, and death of the hero under his Roman name Hercules. Conti begins his lengthy chapter on Hercules with an overview description that continues the moralizing impulse of the Middle Ages:",
"title": "Renaissance mythography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Hercules, who subdued and destroyed monsters, bandits, and criminals, was justly famous and renowned for his great courage. His great and glorious reputation was worldwide, and so firmly entrenched that he'll always be remembered. In fact the ancients honored him with his own temples, altars, ceremonies, and priests. But it was his wisdom and great soul that earned those honors; noble blood, physical strength, and political power just aren't good enough.",
"title": "Renaissance mythography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1600, the citizens of Avignon bestowed on Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV of France) the title of the Hercule Gaulois (\"Gallic Hercules\"), justifying the extravagant flattery with a genealogy that traced the origin of the House of Navarre to a nephew of Hercules' son Hispalus.",
"title": "Renaissance mythography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Road of Hercules is a route across Southern Gaul that is associated with the path Hercules took during his 10th labor of retrieving the Cattle of Geryon from the Red Isles. Hannibal took the same path on his march towards Italy and encouraged the belief that he was the second Hercules. Primary sources often make comparisons between Hercules and Hannibal. Hannibal further tried to invoke parallels between himself and Hercules by starting his march on Italy by visiting the shrine of Hercules at Gades. While crossing the alps, he performed labors in a heroic manner. A famous example was noted by Livy, when Hannibal fractured the side of a cliff that was blocking his march.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In ancient Roman society women were usually limited to two types of cults: those that addressed feminine matters such as childbirth, and cults that required virginal chastity. However, there is evidence suggesting there were female worshippers of Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Hercules. Some scholars believe that women were completely prohibited from any of Hercules's cults. Others believe it was only the \"Ara Maxima\" at which they were not allowed to worship. Macrobius in his first book of Saturnalia paraphrases from Varro: \"For when Hercules was bringing the cattle of Geryon through Italy, a woman replied to the thirsty hero that she could not give him water because it was the day of the Goddess Women and it was unlawful for a man to taste what had been prepared for her. Hercules, therefore, when he was about to offer a sacrifice forbid the presence of women and ordered Potitius and Pinarius who were in charge of his rites, not to allow any women from taking part\". Macrobius states that women were restricted in their participation in Hercules cults, but to what extent remains ambiguous. He mentions that women were not allowed to participate in Sacrum which is general term used to describe anything that was believed to have belonged to the gods. This could include anything from a precious item to a temple. Due to the general nature of a Sacrum, we can not judge the extent of the prohibition from Macrobius alone. There are also ancient writings on this topic from Aulus Gellius when speaking on how Romans swore oaths. He mentioned that Roman women do not swear on Hercules, nor do Roman men swear on Castor. He went on to say that women refrain from sacrificing to Hercules. Propertius in his poem 4.9 also mentions similar information as Macrobius. This is evidence that he was also using Varro as a source.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There is evidence of Hercules worship in myth in the Latin epic poem, the Aeneid. In the 8th book of the poem Aeneas finally reaches the future site of Rome, where he meets Evander and the Arcadians making sacrifices to Hercules on the banks of the Tiber river. They share a feast, and Evander tells the story of how Hercules defeated the monster Cascus, and describes him as a triumphant hero. Translated from the Latin text of Vergil, Evander stated: \"Time brought to us in our time of need the aid and arrival of a god. For there came that mightiest avenger, the victor Hercules, proud with the slaughter and the spoils of threefold Geryon, and he drove the mighty bulls here, and the cattle filled both valley and riverside.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Hercules was also mentioned in the Fables of Gaius Julius Hyginus. For example, in his fable about Philoctetes he tells the story of how Philoctetes built a funeral pyre for Hercules so his body could be consumed and raised to immortality.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "According to Livy (9.44.16) Romans were commemorating military victories by building statues to Hercules as early as 305 BCE. Also, philosopher Pliny the Elder dates Hercules worship back to the time of Evander, by accrediting him with erecting a statue in the Forum Boarium of Hercules. Scholars agree that there would have been 5–7 temples in Augustan Rome. There are believed to be related Republican triumphatores, however, not necessarily triumphal dedications. There are two temples located in the Campus Martius. One, being the Temple of Hercules Musarum, dedicated between 187 and 179 BCE by M. Fulvius Nobilior. And the other being the Temple of Hercules Custos, likely renovated by Sulla in the 80s BCE.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In Roman works of art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance art, Hercules can be identified by his attributes, the lion skin and the gnarled club (his favorite weapon); in mosaic he is shown tanned bronze, a virile aspect.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the twentieth century, the Farnese Hercules has inspired artists such as Jeff Koons, Matthew Darbyshire and Robert Mapplethorpe to reinterpret Hercules for new audiences. The choice of deliberately white materials by Koons and Darbyshire has been interpreted as perpetuation of colourism in how the classical world is viewed. Mapplethorpe's work with black model Derrick Cross can be seen as a reaction to Neo-classical colourism, resisting the portrayal of Hercules as white.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hercules was among the earliest figures on ancient Roman coinage, and has been the main motif of many collector coins and medals since. One example is the Austrian 20 euro Baroque Silver coin issued on September 11, 2002. The obverse side of the coin shows the Grand Staircase in the town palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna, currently the Austrian Ministry of Finance. Gods and demi-gods hold its flights, while Hercules stands at the turn of the stairs.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Six successive ships of the British Royal Navy, from the 18th to the 20th century, bore the name HMS Hercules.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the French Navy, there were no less than nineteen ships called Hercule, plus three more named Alcide which is another name of the same hero.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Hercules' name was also used for five ships of the US Navy, four ships of the Spanish Navy, four of the Argentine Navy and two of the Swedish Navy, as well as for numerous civilian sailing and steam ships.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In modern aviation a military transport aircraft produced by Lockheed Martin carries the title Lockheed C-130 Hercules.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Operation Herkules was the German code-name given to an abortive plan for the invasion of Malta during the Second World War.",
"title": "Worship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A series of nineteen Italian Hercules movies were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The actors who played Hercules in these films were Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott, Kirk Morris, Mickey Hargitay, Mark Forest, Alan Steel, Dan Vadis, Brad Harris, Reg Park, Peter Lupus (billed as Rock Stevens) and Michael Lane. A number of English-dubbed Italian films that featured the name of Hercules in their title were not intended to be movies about Hercules.",
"title": "Worship"
}
]
| Hercules is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules is a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him. This article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the later tradition. | 2001-09-22T14:44:05Z | 2023-10-10T18:46:06Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules |
13,772 | History of Poland | The history of Poland spans over a thousand years, from medieval tribes, Christianization and monarchy; through Poland's Golden Age, expansionism and becoming one of the largest European powers; to its collapse and partitions, two world wars, communism, and the restoration of democracy.
The roots of Polish history can be traced to ancient times, when the territory of present-day Poland was settled by various tribes including Celts, Scythians, Germanic clans, Sarmatians, Slavs and Balts. However, it was the West Slavic Lechites, the closest ancestors of ethnic Poles, who established permanent settlements in the Polish lands during the Early Middle Ages. The Lechitic Western Polans, a tribe whose name means "people living in open fields", dominated the region and gave Poland - which lies in the North-Central European Plain - its name.
The first ruling dynasty, the Piasts, emerged in the 10th century AD. Duke Mieszko I is considered the de facto creator of the Polish state and is widely recognized for his adoption of Western Christianity in 966 CE. Mieszko's dominion was formally reconstituted as a medieval kingdom in 1025 by his son Bolesław I the Brave, known for military expansion under his rule. The most successful and the last Piast monarch, Casimir III the Great, presided over a period of economic prosperity and territorial aggrandizement before his death in 1370 without male heirs. The period of the Jagiellonian dynasty in the 14th–16th centuries brought close ties with the Lithuania, a cultural Renaissance in Poland and continued territorial expansion as well as Polonization that culminated in the establishment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, one of Europe's largest countries.
The Commonwealth was able to sustain the levels of prosperity achieved during the Jagiellonian period, while its political system matured as a unique noble democracy with an elective monarchy. From the mid-17th century, however, the huge state entered a period of decline caused by devastating wars and the deterioration of its political system. Significant internal reforms were introduced in the late 18th century, such as Europe's first Constitution of 3 May 1791, but neighboring powers did not allow the reforms to advance. The existence of the Commonwealth ended in 1795 after a series of invasions and partitions of Polish territory carried out by the Russian Empire in the east, the Kingdom of Prussia in the west and the Habsburg monarchy in the south. From 1795 until 1918, no truly independent Polish state existed, although strong Polish resistance movements operated. The opportunity to regain sovereignty only materialized after World War I, when the three partitioning imperial powers were fatally weakened in the wake of war and revolution.
The Second Polish Republic was established in 1918 and existed as an independent state until 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. Millions of Polish citizens of different faiths or identities perished in the course of the Nazi occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945 through planned genocide and extermination. A Polish government-in-exile nonetheless functioned throughout the war, and the Poles contributed to the Allied victory through participation in military campaigns on both the eastern and western fronts. The westward advances of the Soviet Red Army in 1944 and 1945 compelled Nazi Germany's forces to retreat from Poland, which led to the establishment of a satellite communist country, known from 1952 as the Polish People's Republic.
As a result of territorial adjustments mandated by the Allies at the end of World War II in 1945, Poland's geographic centre of gravity shifted towards the west, and the re-defined Polish lands largely lost their historic multi-ethnic character through the extermination, expulsion and migration of various ethnic groups during and after the war. By the late 1980s, the Polish reform movement Solidarity became crucial in bringing about a peaceful transition from a planned economy and a communist state to a capitalist economic system and a liberal parliamentary democracy. This process resulted in the creation of the modern Polish state, the Third Polish Republic, founded in 1989.
In prehistoric and protohistoric times, over a period of at least 600,000 years, the area of present-day Poland was intermittently inhabited by members of the genus Homo. It went through the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age stages of development, along with the nearby regions. The Neolithic period ushered in the Linear Pottery culture, whose founders migrated from the Danube River area beginning about 5500 BC. This culture was distinguished by the establishment of the first settled agricultural communities in modern Polish territory. Later, between about 4400 and 2000 BC, the native post-Mesolithic populations would also adopt and further develop the agricultural way of life.
Poland's Early Bronze Age began around 2400–2300 BC, whereas its Iron Age commenced c. 750–700 BC. One of the many cultures that have been uncovered, the Lusatian culture, spanned the Bronze and Iron Ages and left notable settlement sites. Around 400 BC, Poland was settled by Celts of the La Tène culture. They were soon followed by emerging cultures with a strong Germanic component, influenced first by the Celts and then by the Roman Empire. The Germanic peoples migrated out of the area by about 500 AD during the great Migration Period of the European Dark Ages. Wooded regions to the north and east were settled by Balts.
According to some archaeological research, Slavs have resided in modern Polish territories for only 1,500 years. However, recent genetic studies determined that people who live in the current territory of Poland include the descendants of the people who inhabited the area for thousands of years, beginning in the early Neolithic period. And according to other archaeological and linguistic research, early Slavic peoples were likely present in parts of Poland much earlier, and may have been associated with the ancient Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures of the 3rd century BC, though some Slavic groups may have arrived from the east in later periods. It has been suggested that the early Slavic peoples and languages may have originated in the region of Polesia, which includes the area around the Belarus–Ukraine border, parts of Western Russia, and parts of far Eastern Poland.
The West Slavic and Lechitic peoples as well as any remaining minority clans on ancient Polish lands were organized into tribal units, of which the larger ones were later known as the Polish tribes; the names of many tribes are found on the list compiled by the anonymous Bavarian Geographer in the 9th century. In the 9th and 10th centuries, these tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula, the coast of the Baltic Sea and in Greater Poland. The latest tribal undertaking, in Greater Poland, resulted in the formation of a lasting political structure in the 10th century that became the state of Poland.
Poland was established as a state under the Piast dynasty, which ruled the country between the 10th and 14th centuries. Historical records referring to the Polish state begin with the rule of Duke Mieszko I, whose reign commenced sometime before 963 and continued until his death in 992. Mieszko converted to Christianity in 966, following his marriage to Princess Doubravka of Bohemia, a fervent Christian. The event is known as the "baptism of Poland", and its date is often used to mark a symbolic beginning of Polish statehood. Mieszko completed a unification of the Lechitic tribal lands that was fundamental to the new country's existence. Following its emergence, Poland was led by a series of rulers who converted the population to Christianity, created a strong kingdom and fostered a distinctive Polish culture that was integrated into the broader European culture.
Mieszko's son, Duke Bolesław I the Brave (r. 992–1025), established a Polish Church structure, pursued territorial conquests and was officially crowned the first king of Poland in 1025, near the end of his life. Bolesław also sought to spread Christianity to parts of eastern Europe that remained pagan, but suffered a setback when his greatest missionary, Adalbert of Prague, was killed in Prussia in 997. During the Congress of Gniezno in the year 1000, Holy Roman Emperor Otto III recognized the Archbishopric of Gniezno, an institution crucial for the continuing existence of the sovereign Polish state. During the reign of Otto's successor, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, Bolesław fought prolonged wars with the Kingdom of Germany between 1002 and 1018.
Bolesław I's expansive rule overstretched the resources of the early Polish state, and it was followed by a collapse of the monarchy. Recovery took place under Casimir I the Restorer (r. 1039–58). Casimir's son Bolesław II the Generous (r. 1058–79) became involved in a conflict with Bishop Stanislaus of Szczepanów that ultimately caused his downfall. Bolesław had the bishop murdered in 1079 after being excommunicated by the Polish church on charges of adultery. This act sparked a revolt of Polish nobles that led to Bolesław's deposition and expulsion from the country. Around 1116, Gallus Anonymus wrote a seminal chronicle, the Gesta principum Polonorum, intended as a glorification of his patron Bolesław III Wrymouth (r. 1107–38), a ruler who revived the tradition of military prowess of Bolesław I's time. Gallus' work remains a paramount written source for the early history of Poland.
After Bolesław III divided Poland among his sons in his Testament of 1138, internal fragmentation eroded the Piast monarchical structures in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1180, Casimir II the Just, who sought papal confirmation of his status as a senior duke, granted immunities and additional privileges to the Polish Church at the Congress of Łęczyca. Around 1220, Wincenty Kadłubek wrote his Chronica seu originale regum et principum Poloniae, another major source for early Polish history. In 1226, one of the regional Piast dukes, Konrad I of Masovia, invited the Teutonic Knights to help him fight the Baltic Prussian pagans. The Teutonic Order destroyed the Prussians but kept their lands, which resulted in centuries of warfare between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, and later between Poland and the German Prussian state. The first Mongol invasion of Poland began in 1240; it culminated in the defeat of Polish and allied Christian forces and the death of the Silesian Piast Duke Henry II the Pious at the Battle of Legnica in 1241. In 1242, Wrocław became the first Polish municipality to be incorporated, as the period of fragmentation brought economic development and growth of towns. New cities were founded and existing settlements were granted town status per Magdeburg Law. In 1264, Bolesław the Pious granted Jewish liberties in the Statute of Kalisz.
Attempts to reunite the Polish lands gained momentum in the 13th century, and in 1295, Duke Przemysł II of Greater Poland managed to become the first ruler since Bolesław II to be crowned king of Poland. He ruled over a limited territory and was soon killed. In 1300–05 King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia also reigned as king of Poland. The Piast Kingdom was effectively restored under Władysław I the Elbow-high (r. 1306–33), who became king in 1320. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights seized Gdańsk and the surrounding region of Pomerelia.
King Casimir III the Great (r. 1333–70), Władysław's son and the last of the Piast rulers, strengthened and expanded the restored Kingdom of Poland, but the western provinces of Silesia (formally ceded by Casimir in 1339) and most of Polish Pomerania were lost to the Polish state for centuries to come. Progress was made in the recovery of the separately governed central province of Mazovia, however, and in 1340, the conquest of Red Ruthenia began, marking Poland's expansion to the east. The Congress of Kraków, a vast convocation of central, eastern, and northern European rulers probably assembled to plan an anti-Turkish crusade, took place in 1364, the same year that the future Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest European universities, was founded. On 9 October 1334, Casimir III confirmed the privileges granted to Jews in 1264 by Bolesław the Pious and allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers.
After the Polish royal line and Piast junior branch died out in 1370, Poland came under the rule of Louis I of Hungary of the Capetian House of Anjou, who presided over a union of Hungary and Poland that lasted until 1382. In 1374, Louis granted the Polish nobility the Privilege of Koszyce to assure the succession of one of his daughters in Poland. His youngest daughter Jadwiga (d. 1399) assumed the Polish throne in 1384.
In 1386, Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania converted to Catholicism and married Queen Jadwiga of Poland. This act enabled him to become a king of Poland himself, and he ruled as Władysław II Jagiełło until his death in 1434. The marriage established a personal Polish–Lithuanian union ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty. The first in a series of formal "unions" was the Union of Krewo of 1385, whereby arrangements were made for the marriage of Jogaila and Jadwiga. The Polish–Lithuanian partnership brought vast areas of Ruthenia controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into Poland's sphere of influence and proved beneficial for the nationals of both countries, who coexisted and cooperated in one of the largest political entities in Europe for the next four centuries. When Queen Jadwiga died in 1399, the Kingdom of Poland fell to her husband's sole possession.
In the Baltic Sea region, Poland's struggle with the Teutonic Knights continued and culminated in the Battle of Grunwald (1410), a great victory that the Poles and Lithuanians were unable to follow up with a decisive strike against the main seat of the Teutonic Order at Malbork Castle. The Union of Horodło of 1413 further defined the evolving relationship between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The privileges of the szlachta (nobility) kept expanding and in 1425 the rule of Neminem captivabimus, which protected the noblemen from arbitrary royal arrests, was formulated.
The reign of the young Władysław III (1434–44), who succeeded his father Władysław II Jagiełło and ruled as king of Poland and Hungary, was cut short by his death at the Battle of Varna against the forces of the Ottoman Empire. This disaster led to an interregnum of three years that ended with the accession of Władysław's brother Casimir IV Jagiellon in 1447.
Critical developments of the Jagiellonian period were concentrated during Casimir IV's long reign, which lasted until 1492. In 1454, Royal Prussia was incorporated by Poland and the Thirteen Years' War of 1454–66 with the Teutonic state ensued. In 1466, the milestone Peace of Thorn was concluded. This treaty divided Prussia to create East Prussia, the future Duchy of Prussia, a separate entity that functioned as a fief of Poland under the administration of the Teutonic Knights. Poland also confronted the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Tatars in the south, and in the east helped Lithuania fight the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The country was developing as a feudal state, with a predominantly agricultural economy and an increasingly dominant landed nobility. Kraków, the royal capital, was turning into a major academic and cultural center, and in 1473 the first printing press began operating there. With the growing importance of szlachta (middle and lower nobility), the king's council evolved to become by 1493 a bicameral General Sejm (parliament) that no longer represented exclusively top dignitaries of the realm.
The Nihil novi act, adopted in 1505 by the Sejm, transferred most of the legislative power from the monarch to the Sejm. This event marked the beginning of the period known as "Golden Liberty", when the state was ruled in principle by the "free and equal" Polish nobility. In the 16th century, the massive development of folwark agribusinesses operated by the nobility led to increasingly abusive conditions for the peasant serfs who worked them. The political monopoly of the nobles also stifled the development of cities, some of which were thriving during the late Jagiellonian era, and limited the rights of townspeople, effectively holding back the emergence of the middle class.
In the 16th century, Protestant Reformation movements made deep inroads into Polish Christianity and the resulting Reformation in Poland involved a number of different denominations. The policies of religious tolerance that developed in Poland were nearly unique in Europe at that time and many who fled regions torn by religious strife found refuge in Poland. The reigns of King Sigismund I the Old (1506–1548) and King Sigismund II Augustus (1548–1572) witnessed an intense cultivation of culture and science (a Golden Age of the Renaissance in Poland), of which the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is the best known representative. Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584) was a poet and the premier artistic personality of the period. In 1525, during the reign of Sigismund I, the Teutonic Order was secularized and Duke Albert performed an act of homage before the Polish king (the Prussian Homage) for his fief, the Duchy of Prussia. Mazovia was finally fully incorporated into the Polish Crown in 1529.
The reign of Sigismund II ended the Jagiellonian period, but gave rise to the Union of Lublin (1569), an ultimate fulfillment of the union with Lithuania. This agreement transferred Ukraine from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Poland and transformed the Polish–Lithuanian polity into a real union, preserving it beyond the death of the childless Sigismund II, whose active involvement made the completion of this process possible.
Livonia in the far northeast was incorporated by Poland in 1561 and Poland entered the Livonian War against Russia. The executionist movement, which attempted to check the progressing domination of the state by the magnate families of Poland and Lithuania, peaked at the Sejm in Piotrków in 1562–63. On the religious front, the Polish Brethren split from the Calvinists, and the Protestant Brest Bible was published in 1563. The Jesuits, who arrived in 1564, were destined to make a major impact on Poland's history.
The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federal state more closely unified than the earlier political arrangement between Poland and Lithuania. The union was run largely by the nobility through the system of central parliament and local assemblies, but was headed by elected kings. The formal rule of the nobility, who were proportionally more numerous than in other European countries, constituted an early democratic system ("a sophisticated noble democracy"), in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe.
The beginning of the Commonwealth coincided with a period in Polish history when great political power was attained and advancements in civilization and prosperity took place. The Polish–Lithuanian Union became an influential participant in European affairs and a vital cultural entity that spread Western culture (with Polish characteristics) eastward. In the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, the Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous states in contemporary Europe, with an area approaching one million square kilometres (0.39 million square miles) and a population of about ten million. Its economy was dominated by export-focused agriculture. Nationwide religious toleration was guaranteed at the Warsaw Confederation in 1573.
After the rule of the Jagiellonian dynasty ended in 1572, Henry of Valois (later King Henry III of France) was the winner of the first "free election" by the Polish nobility, held in 1573. He had to agree to the restrictive pacta conventa obligations and fled Poland in 1574 when news arrived of the vacancy of the French throne, to which he was the heir presumptive. From the start, the royal elections increased foreign influence in the Commonwealth as foreign powers sought to manipulate the Polish nobility to place candidates amicable to their interests. The reign of Stephen Báthory of Hungary followed (r. 1576–1586). He was militarily and domestically assertive and is revered in Polish historical tradition as a rare case of successful elective king. The establishment of the legal Crown Tribunal in 1578 meant a transfer of many appellate cases from the royal to noble jurisdiction.
A period of rule under the Swedish House of Vasa began in the Commonwealth in the year 1587. The first two kings from this dynasty, Sigismund III (r. 1587–1632) and Władysław IV (r. 1632–1648), repeatedly attempted to intrigue for accession to the throne of Sweden, which was a constant source of distraction for the affairs of the Commonwealth. At that time, the Catholic Church embarked on an ideological counter-offensive and the Counter-Reformation claimed many converts from Polish and Lithuanian Protestant circles. In 1596, the Union of Brest split the Eastern Christians of the Commonwealth to create the Uniate Church of the Eastern Rite, but subject to the authority of the pope. The Zebrzydowski rebellion against Sigismund III unfolded in 1606–1608.
Seeking supremacy in Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth fought wars with Russia between 1605 and 1618 in the wake of Russia's Time of Troubles; the series of conflicts is referred to as the Polish–Muscovite War or the Dymitriads. The efforts resulted in expansion of the eastern territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but the goal of taking over the Russian throne for the Polish ruling dynasty was not achieved. Sweden sought supremacy in the Baltic during the Polish–Swedish wars of 1617–1629, and the Ottoman Empire pressed from the south in the Battles at Cecora in 1620 and Khotyn in 1621. The agricultural expansion and serfdom policies in Polish Ukraine resulted in a series of Cossack uprisings. Allied with the Habsburg monarchy, the Commonwealth did not directly participate in the Thirty Years' War. Władysław's IV reign was mostly peaceful, with a Russian invasion in the form of the Smolensk War of 1632–1634 successfully repelled. The Orthodox Church hierarchy, banned in Poland after the Union of Brest, was re-established in 1635.
During the reign of John II Casimir Vasa (r. 1648–1668), the third and last king of his dynasty, the nobles' democracy fell into decline as a result of foreign invasions and domestic disorder. These calamities multiplied rather suddenly and marked the end of the Polish Golden Age. Their effect was to render the once powerful Commonwealth increasingly vulnerable to foreign intervention.
The Cossack Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657 engulfed the south-eastern regions of the Polish crown; its long-term effects were disastrous for the Commonwealth. The first liberum veto (a parliamentary device that allowed any member of the Sejm to dissolve a current session immediately) was exercised by a deputy in 1652. This practice would eventually weaken Poland's central government critically. In the Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654), the Ukrainian rebels declared themselves subjects of the Tsar of Russia. The Second Northern War raged through the core Polish lands in 1655–1660; it included a brutal and devastating invasion of Poland referred to as the Swedish Deluge. The war ended in 1660 with the Treaty of Oliva, which resulted in the loss of some of Poland's northern possessions. In 1657 the Treaty of Bromberg established the independence of the Duchy of Prussia. The Commonwealth forces did well in the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), but the result was the permanent division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia, as agreed to in the Truce of Andrusovo (1667). Towards the end of the war, the Lubomirski's rebellion, a major magnate revolt against the king, destabilized and weakened the country. The large-scale slave raids of the Crimean Tatars also had highly deleterious effects on the Polish economy. Merkuriusz Polski, the first Polish newspaper, was published in 1661.
In 1668, grief-stricken at the recent death of his wife and frustrated by the disastrous political setbacks of his reign, John II Casimir abdicated the throne and fled to France.
King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, a native Pole, was elected to replace John II Casimir in 1669. The Polish–Ottoman War (1672–76) broke out during his reign, which lasted until 1673, and continued under his successor, John III Sobieski (r. 1674–1696). Sobieski intended to pursue Baltic area expansion (and to this end he signed the secret Treaty of Jaworów with France in 1675), but was forced instead to fight protracted wars with the Ottoman Empire. By doing so, Sobieski briefly revived the Commonwealth's military might. He defeated the expanding Muslims at the Battle of Khotyn in 1673 and decisively helped deliver Vienna from a Turkish onslaught at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Sobieski's reign marked the last high point in the history of the Commonwealth: in the first half of the 18th century, Poland ceased to be an active player in international politics. The Treaty of Perpetual Peace (1686) with Russia was the final border settlement between the two countries before the First Partition of Poland in 1772.
The Commonwealth, subjected to almost constant warfare until 1720, suffered enormous population losses and massive damage to its economy and social structure. The government became ineffective in the wake of large-scale internal conflicts, corrupted legislative processes and manipulation by foreign interests. The nobility fell under the control of a handful of feuding magnate families with established territorial domains. The urban population and infrastructure fell into ruin, together with most peasant farms, whose inhabitants were subjected to increasingly extreme forms of serfdom. The development of science, culture and education came to a halt or regressed.
The royal election of 1697 brought a ruler of the Saxon House of Wettin to the Polish throne: Augustus II the Strong (r. 1697–1733), who was able to assume the throne only by agreeing to convert to Roman Catholicism. He was succeeded by his son Augustus III (r. 1734–1763). The reigns of the Saxon kings (who were both simultaneously prince-electors of Saxony) were disrupted by competing candidates for the throne and witnessed further disintegration of the Commonwealth.
The Great Northern War of 1700–1721, a period seen by the contemporaries as a temporary eclipse, may have been the fatal blow that brought down the Polish political system. Stanisław Leszczyński was installed as king in 1704 under Swedish protection, but lasted only a few years. The Silent Sejm of 1717 marked the beginning of the Commonwealth's existence as a Russian protectorate: the Tsardom would guarantee the reform-impeding Golden Liberty of the nobility from that time on in order to cement the Commonwealth's weak central authority and a state of perpetual political impotence. In a resounding break with traditions of religious tolerance, Protestants were executed during the Tumult of Thorn in 1724. In 1732, Russia, Austria and Prussia, Poland's three increasingly powerful and scheming neighbors, entered into the secret Treaty of the Three Black Eagles with the intention of controlling the future royal succession in the Commonwealth. The War of the Polish Succession was fought in 1733–1735 to assist Leszczyński in assuming the throne of Poland for a second time. Amidst considerable foreign involvement, his efforts were unsuccessful. The Kingdom of Prussia became a strong regional power and succeeded in wresting the historically Polish province of Silesia from the Habsburg monarchy in the Silesian Wars; it thus constituted an ever-greater threat to Poland's security.
The personal union between the Commonwealth and the Electorate of Saxony did give rise to the emergence of a reform movement in the Commonwealth and the beginnings of the Polish Enlightenment culture, the major positive developments of this era. The first Polish public library was the Załuski Library in Warsaw, opened to the public in 1747.
During the later part of the 18th century, fundamental internal reforms were attempted in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as it slid into extinction. The reform activity, initially promoted by the magnate Czartoryski family faction known as the Familia, provoked a hostile reaction and military response from neighboring powers, but it did create conditions that fostered economic improvement. The most populous urban center, the capital city of Warsaw, replaced Danzig (Gdańsk) as the leading trade center, and the importance of the more prosperous urban social classes increased. The last decades of the independent Commonwealth's existence were characterized by aggressive reform movements and far-reaching progress in the areas of education, intellectual life, art and the evolution of the social and political system.
The royal election of 1764 resulted in the elevation of Stanisław August Poniatowski, a refined and worldly aristocrat connected to the Czartoryski family, but hand-picked and imposed by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who expected him to be her obedient follower. Stanisław August ruled the Polish–Lithuanian state until its dissolution in 1795. The king spent his reign torn between his desire to implement reforms necessary to save the failing state and the perceived necessity of remaining in a subordinate relationship to his Russian sponsors.
The Bar Confederation (1768–1772) was a rebellion of nobles directed against Russia's influence in general and Stanisław August, who was seen as its representative, in particular. It was fought to preserve Poland's independence and the nobility's traditional interests. After several years, it was brought under control by forces loyal to the king and those of the Russian Empire.
Following the suppression of the Bar Confederation, parts of the Commonwealth were divided up among Prussia, Austria and Russia in 1772 at the instigation of Frederick the Great of Prussia, an action that became known as the First Partition of Poland: the outer provinces of the Commonwealth were seized by agreement among the country's three powerful neighbors and only a rump state remained. In 1773, the "Partition Sejm" ratified the partition under duress as a fait accompli. However, it also established the Commission of National Education, a pioneering in Europe education authority often called the world's first ministry of education.
The long-lasting session of parliament convened by King Stanisław August is known as the Great Sejm or Four-Year Sejm; it first met in 1788. Its landmark achievement was the passing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first singular pronouncement of a supreme law of the state in modern Europe. A moderately reformist document condemned by detractors as sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, it soon generated strong opposition from the conservative circles of the Commonwealth's upper nobility and from Empress Catherine of Russia, who was determined to prevent the rebirth of a strong Commonwealth. The nobility's Targowica Confederation, formed in Russian imperial capital of Saint Petersburg, appealed to Catherine for help, and in May 1792, the Russian army entered the territory of the Commonwealth. The Polish–Russian War of 1792, a defensive war fought by the forces of the Commonwealth against Russian invaders, ended when the Polish king, convinced of the futility of resistance, capitulated by joining the Targowica Confederation. The Russian-allied confederation took over the government, but Russia and Prussia in 1793 arranged for the Second Partition of Poland anyway. The partition left the country with a critically reduced territory that rendered it essentially incapable of an independent existence. The Commonwealth's Grodno Sejm of 1793, the last Sejm of the state's existence, was compelled to confirm the new partition.
Radicalized by recent events, Polish reformers (whether in exile or still resident in the reduced area remaining to the Commonwealth) were soon working on preparations for a national insurrection. Tadeusz Kościuszko, a popular general and a veteran of the American Revolution, was chosen as its leader. He returned from abroad and issued Kościuszko's proclamation in Kraków on March 24, 1794. It called for a national uprising under his supreme command. Kościuszko emancipated many peasants in order to enroll them as kosynierzy in his army, but the hard-fought insurrection, despite widespread national support, proved incapable of generating the foreign assistance necessary for its success. In the end, it was suppressed by the combined forces of Russia and Prussia, with Warsaw captured in November 1794 in the aftermath of the Battle of Praga.
In 1795, a Third Partition of Poland was undertaken by Russia, Prussia and Austria as a final division of territory that resulted in the effective dissolution of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. King Stanisław August Poniatowski was escorted to Grodno, forced to abdicate, and retired to Saint Petersburg. Tadeusz Kościuszko, initially imprisoned, was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1796.
The response of the Polish leadership to the last partition is a matter of historical debate. Literary scholars found that the dominant emotion of the first decade was despair that produced a moral desert ruled by violence and treason. On the other hand, historians have looked for signs of resistance to foreign rule. Apart from those who went into exile, the nobility took oaths of loyalty to their new rulers and served as officers in their armies.
Although no sovereign Polish state existed between 1795 and 1918, the idea of Polish independence was kept alive throughout the 19th century. There were a number of uprisings and other armed undertakings waged against the partitioning powers. Military efforts after the partitions were first based on the alliances of Polish émigrés with post-revolutionary France. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski's Polish Legions fought in French campaigns outside of Poland between 1797 and 1802 in hopes that their involvement and contribution would be rewarded with the liberation of their Polish homeland. The Polish national anthem, "Poland Is Not Yet Lost", or "Dąbrowski's Mazurka", was written in praise of his actions by Józef Wybicki in 1797.
The Duchy of Warsaw, a small, semi-independent Polish state, was created in 1807 by Napoleon in the wake of his defeat of Prussia and the signing of the Treaties of Tilsit with Emperor Alexander I of Russia. The Army of the Duchy of Warsaw, led by Józef Poniatowski, participated in numerous campaigns in alliance with France, including the successful Austro-Polish War of 1809, which, combined with the outcomes of other theaters of the War of the Fifth Coalition, resulted in an enlargement of the duchy's territory. The French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the German Campaign of 1813 saw the duchy's last military engagements. The Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw abolished serfdom as a reflection of the ideals of the French Revolution, but it did not promote land reform.
After Napoleon's defeat, a new European order was established at the Congress of Vienna, which met in the years 1814 and 1815. Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, a former close associate of Emperor Alexander I, became the leading advocate for the Polish national cause. The Congress implemented a new partition scheme, which took into account some of the gains realized by the Poles during the Napoleonic period.
The Duchy of Warsaw was replaced in 1815 with a new Kingdom of Poland, unofficially known as Congress Poland. The residual Polish kingdom was joined to the Russian Empire in a personal union under the Russian tsar and it was allowed its own constitution and military. East of the kingdom, large areas of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth remained directly incorporated into the Russian Empire as the Western Krai. These territories, along with Congress Poland, are generally considered to form the Russian Partition. The Russian, Prussian, and Austrian "partitions" are informal names for the lands of the former Commonwealth, not actual units of administrative division of Polish–Lithuanian territories after partitions. The Prussian Partition included a portion separated as the Grand Duchy of Posen. Peasants under the Prussian administration were gradually enfranchised under the reforms of 1811 and 1823. The limited legal reforms in the Austrian Partition were overshadowed by its rural poverty. The Free City of Cracow was a tiny republic created by the Congress of Vienna under the joint supervision of the three partitioning powers. Despite the bleak from the standpoint of Polish patriots political situation, economic progress was made in the lands taken over by foreign powers because the period after the Congress of Vienna witnessed a significant development in the building of early industry.
Economic historians have made new estimates on GDP per capita, 1790–1910. They confirm the hypothesis of semi-peripheral development of Polish territories in the 19th century and the slow process of catching-up with the core economies.
The increasingly repressive policies of the partitioning powers led to resistance movements in partitioned Poland, and in 1830 Polish patriots staged the November Uprising. This revolt developed into a full-scale war with Russia, but the leadership was taken over by Polish conservatives who were reluctant to challenge the empire and hostile to broadening the independence movement's social base through measures such as land reform. Despite the significant resources mobilized, a series of errors by several successive chief commanders appointed by the insurgent Polish National Government led to the defeat of its forces by the Russian army in 1831. Congress Poland lost its constitution and military, but formally remained a separate administrative unit within the Russian Empire.
After the defeat of the November Uprising, thousands of former Polish combatants and other activists emigrated to Western Europe. This phenomenon, known as the Great Emigration, soon dominated Polish political and intellectual life. Together with the leaders of the independence movement, the Polish community abroad included the greatest Polish literary and artistic minds, including the Romantic poets Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Cyprian Norwid, and the composer Frédéric Chopin. In occupied and repressed Poland, some sought progress through nonviolent activism focused on education and economy, known as organic work; others, in cooperation with the emigrant circles, organized conspiracies and prepared for the next armed insurrection.
The planned national uprising failed to materialize because the authorities in the partitions found out about secret preparations. The Greater Poland uprising ended in a fiasco in early 1846. In the Kraków uprising of February 1846, patriotic action was combined with revolutionary demands, but the result was the incorporation of the Free City of Cracow into the Austrian Partition. The Austrian officials took advantage of peasant discontent and incited villagers against the noble-dominated insurgent units. This resulted in the Galician slaughter of 1846, a large-scale rebellion of serfs seeking relief from their post-feudal condition of mandatory labor as practiced in folwarks. The uprising freed many from bondage and hastened decisions that led to the abolition of Polish serfdom in the Austrian Empire in 1848. A new wave of Polish involvement in revolutionary movements soon took place in the partitions and in other parts of Europe in the context of the Spring of Nations revolutions of 1848 (e.g. Józef Bem's participation in the revolutions in Austria and Hungary). The 1848 German revolutions precipitated the Greater Poland uprising of 1848, in which peasants in the Prussian Partition, who were by then largely enfranchised, played a prominent role.
As a matter of continuous policy, the Russian autocracy kept assailing Polish national core values of language, religion and culture. In consequence, despite the limited liberalization measures allowed in Congress Poland under the rule of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, a renewal of popular liberation activities took place in 1860–1861. During large-scale demonstrations in Warsaw, Russian forces inflicted numerous casualties on the civilian participants. The "Red", or left-wing faction of Polish activists, which promoted peasant enfranchisement and cooperated with Russian revolutionaries, became involved in immediate preparations for a national uprising. The "White", or right-wing faction, was inclined to cooperate with the Russian authorities and countered with partial reform proposals. In order to cripple the manpower potential of the Reds, Aleksander Wielopolski, the conservative leader of the government of Congress Poland, arranged for a partial selective conscription of young Poles for the Russian army in the years 1862 and 1863. This action hastened the outbreak of hostilities. The January Uprising, joined and led after the initial period by the Whites, was fought by partisan units against an overwhelmingly advantaged enemy. The uprising lasted from January 1863 to the spring of 1864, when Romuald Traugutt, the last supreme commander of the insurgency, was captured by the tsarist police.
On 2 March 1864, the Russian authority, compelled by the uprising to compete for the loyalty of Polish peasants, officially published an enfranchisement decree in Congress Poland along the lines of an earlier land reform proclamation of the insurgents. The act created the conditions necessary for the development of the capitalist system on central Polish lands. At the time when most Poles realized the futility of armed resistance without external support, the various sections of Polish society were undergoing deep and far-reaching evolution in the areas of social, economic and cultural development.
The failure of the January Uprising in Poland caused a major psychological trauma and became a historic watershed; indeed, it sparked the development of modern Polish nationalism. The Poles, subjected within the territories under the Russian and Prussian administrations to still stricter controls and increased persecution, sought to preserve their identity in non-violent ways. After the uprising, Congress Poland was downgraded in official usage from the "Kingdom of Poland" to the "Vistula Land" and was more fully integrated into Russia proper, but not entirely obliterated. The Russian and German languages were imposed in all public communication, and the Catholic Church was not spared from severe repression. Public education was increasingly subjected to Russification and Germanisation measures. Illiteracy was reduced, most effectively in the Prussian partition, but education in the Polish language was preserved mostly through unofficial efforts. The Prussian government pursued German colonization, including the purchase of Polish-owned land. On the other hand, the region of Galicia (western Ukraine and southern Poland) experienced a gradual relaxation of authoritarian policies and even a Polish cultural revival. Economically and socially backward, it was under the milder rule of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and from 1867 was increasingly allowed limited autonomy. Stańczycy, a conservative Polish pro-Austrian faction led by great land owners, dominated the Galician government. The Polish Academy of Learning (an academy of sciences) was founded in Kraków in 1872.
Social activities termed "organic work" consisted of self-help organizations that promoted economic advancement and work on improving the competitiveness of Polish-owned businesses, industrial, agricultural or other. New commercial methods of generating higher productivity were discussed and implemented through trade associations and special interest groups, while Polish banking and cooperative financial institutions made the necessary business loans available. The other major area of effort in organic work was educational and intellectual development of the common people. Many libraries and reading rooms were established in small towns and villages, and numerous printed periodicals manifested the growing interest in popular education. Scientific and educational societies were active in a number of cities. Such activities were most pronounced in the Prussian Partition.
Positivism in Poland replaced Romanticism as the leading intellectual, social and literary trend. It reflected the ideals and values of the emerging urban bourgeoisie. Around 1890, the urban classes gradually abandoned the positivist ideas and came under the influence of modern pan-European nationalism.
Under the partitioning powers, economic diversification and progress, including large-scale industrialisation, were introduced in the traditionally agrarian Polish lands, but this development turned out to be very uneven. Advanced agriculture was practiced in the Prussian Partition, except for Upper Silesia, where the coal-mining industry created a large labor force. The densest network of railroads was built in German-ruled western Poland. In Russian Congress Poland, a striking growth of industry, railways and towns took place, all against the background of an extensive, but less productive agriculture. The industrial initiative, capital and know-how were provided largely by entrepreneurs who were not ethnic Poles. Warsaw (a metallurgical center) and Łódź (a textiles center) grew rapidly, as did the total proportion of urban population, making the region the most economically advanced in the Russian Empire (industrial production exceeded agricultural production there by 1909). The coming of the railways spurred some industrial growth even in the vast Russian Partition territories outside of Congress Poland. The Austrian Partition was rural and poor, except for the industrialized Cieszyn Silesia area. Galician economic expansion after 1890 included oil extraction and resulted in the growth of Lemberg (Lwów, Lviv) and Kraków.
Economic and social changes involving land reform and industrialization, combined with the effects of foreign domination, altered the centuries-old social structure of Polish society. Among the newly emergent strata were wealthy industrialists and financiers, distinct from the traditional, but still critically important landed aristocracy. The intelligentsia, an educated, professional or business middle class, often originated from lower gentry, landless or alienated from their rural possessions, and from urban people. Many smaller agricultural enterprises based on serfdom did not survive the land reforms. The industrial proletariat, a new underprivileged class, was composed mainly of poor peasants or townspeople forced by deteriorating conditions to migrate and search for work in urban centers in their countries of origin or abroad. Millions of residents of the former Commonwealth of various ethnic groups worked or settled in Europe and in North and South America.
Social and economic changes were partial and gradual. The degree of industrialisation, relatively fast-paced in some areas, lagged behind the advanced regions of Western Europe. The three partitions developed different economies and were more economically integrated with their mother states than with each other. In the Prussian Partition, for example, agricultural production depended heavily on the German market, whereas the industrial sector of Congress Poland relied more on the Russian market.
In the 1870s–1890s, large-scale socialist, nationalist, agrarian and other political movements of great ideological fervor became established in partitioned Poland and Lithuania, along with corresponding political parties to promote them. Of the major parties, the socialist First Proletariat was founded in 1882, the Polish League (precursor of National Democracy) in 1887, the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia in 1890, the Polish Socialist Party in 1892, the Marxist Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1893, the agrarian People's Party of Galicia in 1895 and the Jewish socialist Bund in 1897. Christian democracy regional associations allied with the Catholic Church were also active; they united into the Polish Christian Democratic Party in 1919.
The main minority ethnic groups of the former Commonwealth, including Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Jews, were getting involved in their own national movements and plans, which met with disapproval on the part of those Polish independence activists who counted on an eventual rebirth of the Commonwealth or the rise of a Commonwealth-inspired federal structure (a political movement referred to as Prometheism).
Around the start of the 20th century, the Young Poland cultural movement, centered in Austrian Galicia, took advantage of a milieu conducive to liberal expression in that region and was the source of Poland's finest artistic and literary productions. In this same era, Marie Skłodowska Curie, a pioneer radiation scientist, performed her groundbreaking research in Paris.
The Revolution of 1905–1907 in Russian Poland, the result of many years of pent-up political frustrations and stifled national ambitions, was marked by political maneuvering, strikes and rebellion. The revolt was part of much broader disturbances throughout the Russian Empire associated with the general Revolution of 1905. In Poland, the principal revolutionary figures were Roman Dmowski and Józef Piłsudski. Dmowski was associated with the right-wing nationalist movement National Democracy, whereas Piłsudski was associated with the Polish Socialist Party. As the authorities re-established control within the Russian Empire, the revolt in Congress Poland, placed under martial law, withered as well, partially as a result of tsarist concessions in the areas of national and workers' rights, including Polish representation in the newly created Russian Duma. The collapse of the revolt in the Russian Partition, coupled with intensified Germanization in the Prussian Partition, left Austrian Galicia as the territory where Polish patriotic action was most likely to flourish.
In the Austrian Partition, Polish culture was openly cultivated, and in the Prussian Partition, there were high levels of education and living standards, but the Russian Partition remained of primary importance for the Polish nation and its aspirations. About 15.5 million Polish-speakers lived in the territories most densely populated by Poles: the western part of the Russian Partition, the Prussian Partition and the western Austrian Partition. Ethnically Polish settlement spread over a large area further to the east, including its greatest concentration in the Vilnius Region, amounted to only over 20% of that number.
Polish paramilitary organizations oriented toward independence, such as the Union of Active Struggle, were formed in 1908–1914, mainly in Galicia. The Poles were divided and their political parties fragmented on the eve of World War I, with Dmowski's National Democracy (pro-Entente) and Piłsudski's faction assuming opposing positions.
The outbreak of World War I in the Polish lands offered Poles unexpected hopes for achieving independence as a result of the turbulence that engulfed the empires of the partitioning powers. All three of the monarchies that had benefited from the partition of Polish territories (Germany, Austria and Russia) were dissolved by the end of the war, and many of their territories were dispersed into new political units. At the start of the war, the Poles found themselves conscripted into the armies of the partitioning powers in a war that was not theirs. Furthermore, they were frequently forced to fight each other, since the armies of Germany and Austria were allied against Russia. Piłsudski's paramilitary units stationed in Galicia were turned into the Polish Legions in 1914 and as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Army fought on the Russian front until 1917, when the formation was disbanded. Piłsudski, who refused demands that his men fight under German command, was arrested and imprisoned by the Germans and became a heroic symbol of Polish nationalism.
Due to a series of German victories on the Eastern Front, the area of Congress Poland became occupied by the Central Powers of Germany and Austria; Warsaw was captured by the Germans on 5 August 1915. In the Act of 5th November 1916, a fresh incarnation of the Kingdom of Poland (Królestwo Regencyjne) was proclaimed by Germany and Austria on formerly Russian-controlled territories, within the German Mitteleuropa scheme. The sponsor states were never able to agree on a candidate to assume the throne, however; rather, it was governed in turn by German and Austrian governor-generals, a Provisional Council of State, and a Regency Council. This increasingly autonomous puppet state existed until November 1918, when it was replaced by the newly established Republic of Poland. The existence of this "kingdom" and its planned Polish army had a positive effect on the Polish national efforts on the Allied side, but in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 the victorious in the east Germany imposed harsh conditions on defeated Russia and ignored Polish interests. Toward the end of the war, the German authorities engaged in massive, purposeful devastation of industrial and other economic potential of Polish lands in order to impoverish the country, a likely future competitor of Germany.
The independence of Poland had been campaigned for in Russia and in the West by Dmowski and in the West by Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and then the leaders of the February Revolution and the October Revolution of 1917, installed governments who declared in turn their support for Polish independence. In 1917, France formed the Blue Army (placed under Józef Haller) that comprised about 70,000 Poles by the end of the war, including men captured from German and Austrian units and 20,000 volunteers from the United States. There was also a 30,000-men strong Polish anti-German army in Russia. Dmowski, operating from Paris as head of the Polish National Committee (KNP), became the spokesman for Polish nationalism in the Allied camp. On the initiative of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, Polish independence was officially endorsed by the Allies in June 1918.
In all, about two million Poles served in the war, counting both sides, and about 400–450,000 died. Much of the fighting on the Eastern Front took place in Poland, and civilian casualties and devastation were high.
The final push for independence of Poland took place on the ground in October–November 1918. Near the end of the war, Austro-Hungarian and German units were being disarmed, and the Austrian army's collapse freed Cieszyn and Kraków at the end of October. Lviv was then contested in the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–1919. Ignacy Daszyński headed the first short-lived independent Polish government in Lublin from 7 November, the leftist Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland, proclaimed as a democracy. Germany, now defeated, was forced by the Allies to stand down its large military forces in Poland. Overtaken by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 at home, the Germans released Piłsudski from prison. He arrived in Warsaw on 10 November and was granted extensive authority by the Regency Council; Piłsudski's authority was also recognized by the Lublin government. On 22 November, he became the temporary head of state. Piłsudski was held by many in high regard, but was resented by the right-wing National Democrats. The emerging Polish state was internally divided, heavily war-damaged and economically dysfunctional.
After more than a century of foreign rule, Poland regained its independence at the end of World War I as one of the outcomes of the negotiations that took place at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The Treaty of Versailles that emerged from the conference set up an independent Polish nation with an outlet to the sea, but left some of its boundaries to be decided by plebiscites. The largely German-inhabited Free City of Danzig was granted a separate status that guaranteed its use as a port by Poland. In the end, the settlement of the German-Polish border turned out to be a prolonged and convoluted process. The dispute helped engender the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918–1919, the three Silesian uprisings of 1919–1921, the East Prussian plebiscite of 1920, the Upper Silesia plebiscite of 1921 and the 1922 Silesian Convention in Geneva.
Other boundaries were settled by war and subsequent treaties. A total of six border wars were fought in 1918–1921, including the Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts over Cieszyn Silesia in January 1919.
As distressing as these border conflicts were, the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921 was the most important series of military actions of the era. Piłsudski had entertained far-reaching anti-Russian cooperative designs in Eastern Europe, and in 1919 the Polish forces pushed eastward into Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine by taking advantage of the Russian preoccupation with a civil war, but they were soon confronted with the Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919. Western Ukraine was already a theater of the Polish–Ukrainian War, which eliminated the proclaimed West Ukrainian People's Republic in July 1919. In the autumn of 1919, Piłsudski rejected urgent pleas from the former Entente powers to support Anton Denikin's White movement in its advance on Moscow. The Polish–Soviet War proper began with the Polish Kiev offensive in April 1920. Allied with the Directorate of Ukraine of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Polish armies had advanced past Vilnius, Minsk and Kiev by June. At that time, a massive Soviet counter-offensive pushed the Poles out of most of Ukraine. On the northern front, the Soviet army reached the outskirts of Warsaw in early August. A Soviet triumph and the quick end of Poland seemed inevitable. However, the Poles scored a stunning victory at the Battle of Warsaw (1920). Afterwards, more Polish military successes followed, and the Soviets had to pull back. They left swathes of territory populated largely by Belarusians or Ukrainians to Polish rule. The new eastern boundary was finalized by the Peace of Riga in March 1921.
The defeat of the Russian armies forced Vladimir Lenin and the Soviet leadership to postpone their strategic objective of linking up with the German and other European revolutionary leftist collaborators to spread communist revolution. Lenin also hoped for generating support for the Red Army in Poland, which failed to materialize.
Piłsudski's seizure of Vilnius in October 1920 (known as Żeligowski's Mutiny) was a nail in the coffin of the already poor Lithuania–Poland relations that had been strained by the Polish–Lithuanian War of 1919–1920; both states would remain hostile to one another for the remainder of the interwar period. Piłsudski's concept of Intermarium (an East European federation of states inspired by the tradition of the multiethnic Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that would include a hypothetical multinational successor state to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) had the fatal flaw of being incompatible with his assumption of Polish domination, which would amount to an encroachment on the neighboring peoples' lands and aspirations. At the time of rising national movements, the plan thus ceased being a feature of Poland's politics. A larger federated structure was also opposed by Dmowski's National Democrats. Their representative at the Peace of Riga talks, Stanisław Grabski, opted for leaving Minsk, Berdychiv, Kamianets-Podilskyi and the surrounding areas on the Soviet side of the border. The National Democrats did not want to assume the lands they considered politically undesirable, as such territorial enlargement would result in a reduced proportion of citizens who were ethnically Polish.
The Peace of Riga settled the eastern border by preserving for Poland a substantial portion of the old Commonwealth's eastern territories at the cost of partitioning the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuania and Belarus) and Ukraine. The Ukrainians ended up with no state of their own and felt betrayed by the Riga arrangements; their resentment gave rise to extreme nationalism and anti-Polish hostility. The Kresy (or borderland) territories in the east won by 1921 would form the basis for a swap arranged and carried out by the Soviets in 1943–1945, who at that time compensated the re-emerging Polish state for the eastern lands lost to the Soviet Union with conquered areas of eastern Germany.
The successful outcome of the Polish–Soviet War gave Poland a false sense of its prowess as a self-sufficient military power and encouraged the government to try to resolve international problems through imposed unilateral solutions. The territorial and ethnic policies of the interwar period contributed to bad relations with most of Poland's neighbors and uneasy cooperation with more distant centers of power, especially France and Great Britain.
Among the chief difficulties faced by the government of the new Polish republic was the lack of an integrated infrastructure among the formerly separate partitions, a deficiency that disrupted industry, transportation, trade, and other areas.
The first Polish legislative election for the re-established Sejm (national parliament) took place in January 1919. A temporary Small Constitution was passed by the body the following month.
The rapidly growing population of Poland within its new boundaries was three-fourths agricultural and one-fourth urban; Polish was the primary language of only two thirds of the inhabitants of the new country. The minorities had very little voice in the government. The permanent March Constitution of Poland was adopted in March 1921. At the insistence of the National Democrats, who were concerned about how aggressively Józef Piłsudski might exercise presidential powers if he were elected to office, the constitution mandated limited prerogatives for the presidency.
The proclamation of the March Constitution was followed by a short and turbulent period of constitutional order and parliamentary democracy that lasted until 1926. The legislature remained fragmented, without stable majorities, and governments changed frequently. The open-minded Gabriel Narutowicz was elected president according to the Constitution by the National Assembly in 1922, without popular vote. However, members of the nationalist right-wing faction did not regard his elevation as legitimate. They viewed Narutowicz rather as a traitor whose election was pushed through by the votes of alien minorities. Narutowicz and his supporters were subjected to an intense harassment campaign, and the president was assassinated on 16 December 1922, after serving only five days in office.
Land reform measures were passed in 1919 and 1925 under pressure from an impoverished peasantry. They were partially implemented, but resulted in the parcellation of only 20% of the great agricultural estates. Poland endured numerous economic calamities and disruptions in the early 1920s, including waves of workers' strikes such as the 1923 Kraków riot. The German–Polish customs war, initiated by Germany in 1925, was one of the most damaging external factors that put a strain on Poland's economy. On the other hand, there were also signs of progress and stabilization, for example a critical reform of finances carried out by the competent government of Władysław Grabski, which lasted almost two years. Certain other achievements of the democratic period having to do with the management of governmental and civic institutions necessary to the functioning of the reunited state and nation were too easily overlooked. Lurking on the sidelines was a disgusted army officer corps unwilling to subject itself to civilian control, but ready to follow the retired Piłsudski, who was highly popular with Poles and just as dissatisfied with the Polish system of government as his former colleagues in the military.
On 12 May 1926, Piłsudski staged the May Coup, a military overthrow of the civilian government mounted against President Stanisław Wojciechowski and the troops loyal to the legitimate government. Hundreds died in fratricidal fighting. Piłsudski was supported by several leftist factions who ensured the success of his coup by blocking the railway transportation of government forces. He also had the support of the conservative great landowners, a move that left the right-wing National Democrats as the only major social force opposed to the takeover.
Following the coup, the new regime initially respected many parliamentary formalities, but gradually tightened its control and abandoned pretenses. The Centrolew, a coalition of center-left parties, was formed in 1929, and in 1930 called for the "abolition of dictatorship". In 1930, the Sejm was dissolved and a number of opposition deputies were imprisoned at the Brest Fortress. Five thousand political opponents were arrested ahead of the Polish legislative election of 1930, which was rigged to award a majority of seats to the pro-regime Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR).
The authoritarian Sanation regime ("sanation" meant to denote "healing") that Piłsudski led until his death in 1935 (and would remain in place until 1939) reflected the dictator's evolution from his center-left past to conservative alliances. Political institutions and parties were allowed to function, but the electoral process was manipulated and those not willing to cooperate submissively were subjected to repression. From 1930, persistent opponents of the regime, many of the leftist persuasion, were imprisoned and subjected to staged legal processes with harsh sentences, such as the Brest trials, or else detained in the Bereza Kartuska prison and similar camps for political prisoners. About three thousand were detained without trial at different times at the Bereza internment camp between 1934 and 1939. In 1936 for example, 369 activists were taken there, including 342 Polish communists. Rebellious peasants staged riots in 1932, 1933 and the 1937 peasant strike in Poland. Other civil disturbances were caused by striking industrial workers (e.g. events of the "Bloody Spring" of 1936), nationalist Ukrainians and the activists of the incipient Belarusian movement. All became targets of ruthless police-military pacification. Besides sponsoring political repression, the regime fostered Józef Piłsudski's cult of personality that had already existed long before he assumed dictatorial powers.
Piłsudski signed the Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact in 1932 and the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression in 1934, but in 1933 he insisted that there was no threat from the East or West and said that Poland's politics were focused on becoming fully independent without serving foreign interests. He initiated the policy of maintaining an equal distance and an adjustable middle course regarding the two great neighbors, later continued by Józef Beck. Piłsudski kept personal control of the army, but it was poorly equipped, poorly trained and had poor preparations in place for possible future conflicts. His only war plan was a defensive war against a Soviet invasion. The slow modernization after Piłsudski's death fell far behind the progress made by Poland's neighbors and measures to protect the western border, discontinued by Piłsudski from 1926, were not undertaken until March 1939.
Sanation deputies in the Sejm used a parliamentary maneuver to abolish the democratic March Constitution and push through a more authoritarian April Constitution in 1935; it reduced the powers of the Sejm, which Piłsudski despised. The process and the resulting document were seen as illegitimate by the anti-Sanation opposition, but during World War II, the Polish government-in-exile recognized the April Constitution in order to uphold the legal continuity of the Polish state.
Between 1932 and 1933 Piłsudski and Beck initiated several incidents along the borders with Germany and Danzig, both to test whether Western powers would protect the Versailles arrangements (on which Polish security depended), and as preparation for a preventative war against Germany. At the same time they sent emissaries to London and Paris, looking for their support in stopping Germany's rearmament effort. An invasion to Danzig by Poland was scheduled for April 21, 1933, but the amassing of troops was discovered and the invasion was postponed. At the time an invasion by Poland would have posed a serious military threat to Germany, but with the British rejecting the idea (in favor of the Four-Power Pact), and with wavering support from the French, the Poles had eventually reneged on the idea of invasion. Between 1933 and 1934 Germany would increase its armament expenditures by 68%, and by January 1934 the two powers would sign a ten-year non-aggression pact.
When Marshal Piłsudski died in 1935, he retained the support of dominant sections of Polish society even though he never risked testing his popularity in an honest election. His regime was dictatorial, but at that time only Czechoslovakia remained democratic in all of the regions neighboring Poland. Historians have taken widely divergent views of the meaning and consequences of the coup Piłsudski perpetrated and his personal rule that followed.
Independence stimulated the development of Polish culture in the Interbellum and intellectual achievement was high. Warsaw, whose population almost doubled between World War I and World War II, was a restless, burgeoning metropolis. It outpaced Kraków, Lwów and Wilno, the other major population centers of the country.
Mainstream Polish society was not affected by the repressions of the Sanation authorities overall; many Poles enjoyed relative stability, and the economy improved markedly between 1926 and 1929, only to become caught up in the global Great Depression. After 1929, the country's industrial production and gross national income slumped by about 50%.
The Great Depression brought low prices for farmers and unemployment for workers. Social tensions increased, including rising antisemitism. A major economic transformation and multi-year state plan to achieve national industrial development, as embodied in the Central Industrial Region initiative launched in 1936, was led by Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. Motivated primarily by the need for a native arms industry, the initiative was in progress at the time of the outbreak of World War II. Kwiatkowski was also the main architect of the earlier Gdynia seaport project.
The prevalent in political circles nationalism was fueled by the large size of Poland's minority populations and their separate agendas. According to the language criterion of the Polish census of 1931, the Poles constituted 69% of the population, Ukrainians 15%, Jews (defined as speakers of the Yiddish language) 8.5%, Belarusians 4.7%, Germans 2.2%, Lithuanians 0.25%, Russians 0.25% and Czechs 0.09%, with some geographical areas dominated by a particular minority. In time, the ethnic conflicts intensified, and the Polish state grew less tolerant of the interests of its national minorities. In interwar Poland, compulsory free general education substantially reduced illiteracy rates, but discrimination was practiced in a way that resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of Ukrainian language schools and official restrictions on Jewish attendance at selected schools in the late 1930s.
The population grew steadily, reaching 35 million in 1939. However, the overall economic situation in the interwar period was one of stagnation. There was little money for investment inside Poland, and few foreigners were interested in investing there. Total industrial production barely increased between 1913 and 1939 (within the area delimited by the 1939 borders), but because of population growth (from 26.3 million in 1919 to 34.8 million in 1939), the per capita output actually decreased by 18%.
Conditions in the predominant agricultural sector kept deteriorating between 1929 and 1939, which resulted in rural unrest and a progressive radicalization of the Polish peasant movement that became increasingly inclined toward militant anti-state activities. It was firmly repressed by the authorities. According to Norman Davies, the failures of the Sanation regime (combined with the objective economic realities) caused a radicalization of the Polish masses by the end of the 1930s, but he warns against drawing parallels with the incomparably more repressive regimes of Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union.
After Piłsudski's death in 1935, Poland was governed until (and initially during) the German invasion of 1939 by old allies and subordinates known as "Piłsudski's colonels". They had neither the vision nor the resources to cope with the perilous situation facing Poland in the late 1930s. The colonels had gradually assumed greater powers during Piłsudski's life by manipulating the ailing marshal behind the scenes. Eventually they achieved an overt politicization of the army that did nothing to help prepare the country for war.
Foreign policy was the responsibility of Józef Beck, under whom Polish diplomacy attempted balanced approaches toward Germany and the Soviet Union, without success, on the basis of a flawed understanding of the European geopolitics of his day. Beck had numerous foreign policy schemes and harbored illusions of Poland's status as a great power. He alienated most of Poland's neighbors, but is not blamed by historians for the ultimate failure of relations with Germany. The principal events of his tenure were concentrated in its last two years. In the case of the 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania, the Polish action nearly resulted in a German takeover of southwest Lithuania, the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory), which had a largely German population. Also in 1938, the Polish government opportunistically undertook a hostile action against the Czechoslovak state as weakened by the Munich Agreement and annexed a small piece of territory on its borders. In this case, Beck's understanding of the consequences of the Polish military move turned out to be completely mistaken, because in the end the German occupation of Czechoslovakia markedly weakened Poland's own position. Furthermore, Beck erroneously believed that Nazi-Soviet ideological contradictions would preclude their cooperation.
At home, increasingly alienated and suppressed minorities threatened unrest and violence. Extreme nationalist circles such as the National Radical Camp grew more outspoken. One of the groups, the Camp of National Unity, combined many nationalists with Sanation supporters and was connected to the new strongman, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, whose faction of the Sanation ruling movement was increasingly nationalistic.
In the late 1930s, the exile bloc Front Morges united several major Polish anti-Sanation figures, including Ignacy Paderewski, Władysław Sikorski, Wincenty Witos, Wojciech Korfanty and Józef Haller. It gained little influence inside Poland, but its spirit soon reappeared during World War II, within the Polish government-in-exile.
In October 1938, Joachim von Ribbentrop first proposed German-Polish territorial adjustments and Poland's participation in the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union. The status of the Free City of Danzig was one of the key bones of contention. Approached by Ribbentrop again in March 1939, the Polish government expressed willingness to address issues causing German concern, but effectively rejected Germany's stated demands and thus refused to allow Poland to be turned by Adolf Hitler into a German puppet state. Hitler, incensed by the British and French declarations of support for Poland, abrogated the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression in late April 1939.
To protect itself from an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany, already responsible for the annexations of Austria (in the Anschluss of 1938), Czechoslovakia (in 1939) and a part of Lithuania after the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania, Poland entered into a military alliance with Britain and France (the 1939 Anglo-Polish military alliance and the Franco-Polish alliance (1921), as updated in 1939). However, the two Western powers were defense-oriented and not in a strong position, either geographically or in terms of resources, to assist Poland. Attempts were therefore made by them to induce Soviet-Polish cooperation, which they viewed as the only militarily viable arrangement.
Diplomatic manoeuvers continued in the spring and summer of 1939, but in their final attempts, the Franco-British talks with the Soviets in Moscow on forming an anti-Nazi defensive military alliance failed. Warsaw's refusal to allow the Red Army to operate on Polish territory doomed the Western efforts. The final contentious Allied-Soviet exchanges took place on 21 and 23 August 1939. The regime of Joseph Stalin was the target of an intense German counter-initiative and was concurrently involved in increasingly effective negotiations with Hitler's agents. On 23 August, an outcome contrary to the exertions of the Allies became a reality: in Moscow, Germany and the Soviet Union hurriedly signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi- and Soviet-controlled zones.
On 1 September 1939, Hitler ordered an invasion of Poland, the opening event of World War II. Poland had signed an Anglo-Polish military alliance as recently as the 25th of August, and had long been in alliance with France. The two Western powers soon declared war on Germany, but they remained largely inactive (the period early in the conflict became known as the Phoney War) and extended no aid to the attacked country. The technically and numerically superior Wehrmacht formations rapidly advanced eastwards and engaged massively in the murder of Polish civilians over the entire occupied territory. On 17 September, a Soviet invasion of Poland began. The Soviet Union quickly occupied most of the areas of eastern Poland that were inhabited by a significant Ukrainian and Belarusian minority. The two invading powers divided up the country as they had agreed in the secret provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Poland's top government officials and military high command fled the war zone and arrived at the Romanian Bridgehead in mid-September. After the Soviet entry they sought refuge in Romania.
Among the military operations in which Poles held out the longest (until late September or early October) were the Siege of Warsaw, the Battle of Hel and the resistance of the Independent Operational Group Polesie. Warsaw fell on 27 September after a heavy German bombardment that killed tens of thousands civilians and soldiers. Poland was ultimately partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union according to the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty signed by the two powers in Moscow on 29 September.
Gerhard Weinberg has argued that the most significant Polish contribution to World War II was sharing its code-breaking results. This allowed the British to perform the cryptanalysis of the Enigma and decipher the main German military code, which gave the Allies a major advantage in the conflict. As regards actual military campaigns, some Polish historians have argued that simply resisting the initial invasion of Poland was the country's greatest contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, despite its defeat. The Polish Army of nearly one million men significantly delayed the start of the Battle of France, planned by the Germans for 1939. When the Nazi offensive in the West did happen, the delay caused it to be less effective, a possibly crucial factor in the victory of the Battle of Britain.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union as part of its Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the whole of pre-war Poland was overrun and occupied by German troops.
German-occupied Poland was divided from 1939 into two regions: Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany directly into the German Reich and areas ruled under a so-called General Government of occupation. The Poles formed an underground resistance movement and a Polish government-in-exile that operated first in Paris, then, from July 1940, in London. Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations, broken since September 1939, were resumed in July 1941 under the Sikorski–Mayski agreement, which facilitated the formation of a Polish army (the Anders' Army) in the Soviet Union. In November 1941, Prime Minister Sikorski flew to the Soviet Union to negotiate with Stalin on its role on the Soviet-German front, but the British wanted the Polish soldiers in the Middle East. Stalin agreed, and the army was evacuated there.
The organizations forming the Polish Underground State that functioned in Poland throughout the war were loyal to and formally under the Polish government-in-exile, acting through its Government Delegation for Poland. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Poles joined the underground Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), a part of the Polish Armed Forces of the government-in-exile. About 200,000 Poles fought on the Western Front in the Polish Armed Forces in the West loyal to the government-in-exile, and about 300,000 in the Polish Armed Forces in the East under the Soviet command on the Eastern Front. The pro-Soviet resistance movement in Poland, led by the Polish Workers' Party, was active from 1941. It was opposed by the gradually forming extreme nationalistic National Armed Forces.
Beginning in late 1939, hundreds of thousands of Poles from the Soviet-occupied areas were deported and taken east. Of the upper-ranking military personnel and others deemed uncooperative or potentially harmful by the Soviets, about 22,000 were secretly executed by them at the Katyn massacre. In April 1943, the Soviet Union broke off deteriorating relations with the Polish government-in-exile after the German military announced the discovery of mass graves containing murdered Polish army officers. The Soviets claimed that the Poles committed a hostile act by requesting that the Red Cross investigate these reports.
From 1941, the implementation of the Nazi Final Solution began, and the Holocaust in Poland proceeded with force. Warsaw was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April–May 1943, triggered by the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto by German SS units. The elimination of Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland took place in many cities. As the Jewish people were being removed to be exterminated, uprisings were waged against impossible odds by the Jewish Combat Organization and other desperate Jewish insurgents.
At a time of increasing cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union in the wake of the Nazi invasion of 1941, the influence of the Polish government-in-exile was seriously diminished by the death of Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski, its most capable leader, in a plane crash on 4 July 1943. Around that time, Polish-communist civilian and military organizations opposed to the government, led by Wanda Wasilewska and supported by Stalin, were formed in the Soviet Union.
In July 1944, the Soviet Red Army and Soviet-controlled Polish People's Army entered the territory of future postwar Poland. In protracted fighting in 1944 and 1945, the Soviets and their Polish allies defeated and expelled the German army from Poland at a cost of over 600,000 Soviet soldiers lost.
The greatest single undertaking of the Polish resistance movement in World War II and a major political event was the Warsaw Uprising that began on 1 August 1944. The uprising, in which most of the city's population participated, was instigated by the underground Home Army and approved by the Polish government-in-exile in an attempt to establish a non-communist Polish administration ahead of the arrival of the Red Army. The uprising was originally planned as a short-lived armed demonstration in expectation that the Soviet forces approaching Warsaw would assist in any battle to take the city. The Soviets had never agreed to an intervention, however, and they halted their advance at the Vistula River. The Germans used the opportunity to carry out a brutal suppression of the forces of the pro-Western Polish underground.
The bitterly fought uprising lasted for two months and resulted in the death or expulsion from the city of hundreds of thousands of civilians. After the defeated Poles surrendered on 2 October, the Germans carried out a planned destruction of Warsaw on Hitler's orders that obliterated the remaining infrastructure of the city. The Polish First Army, fighting alongside the Soviet Red Army, entered a devastated Warsaw on 17 January 1945.
From the time of the Tehran Conference in late 1943, there was broad agreement among the three Great Powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) that the locations of the borders between Germany and Poland and between Poland and the Soviet Union would be fundamentally changed after the conclusion of World War II. Stalin's view that Poland should be moved far to the west was accepted by Polish communists, whose organizations included the Polish Workers' Party and the Union of Polish Patriots. The communist-led State National Council, a quasi-parliamentary body, was in existence in Warsaw from the beginning of 1944. In July 1944, a communist-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation was established in Lublin, to nominally govern the areas liberated from German control. The move prompted protests from Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk and his Polish government-in-exile.
By the time of the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the communists had already established a Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland. The Soviet position at the conference was strong because of their decisive contribution to the war effort and as a result of their occupation of immense amounts of land in central and eastern Europe. The Great Powers gave assurances that the communist provisional government would be converted into an entity that would include democratic forces from within the country and active abroad, but the London-based government-in-exile was not mentioned. A Provisional Government of National Unity and subsequent democratic elections were the agreed stated goals. The disappointing results of these plans and the failure of the Western powers to ensure a strong participation of non-communists in the immediate post-war Polish government were seen by many Poles as a manifestation of Western betrayal.
A lack of accurate data makes it difficult to document numerically the extent of the human losses suffered by Polish citizens during World War II. Additionally, many assertions made in the past must be considered suspect due to flawed methodology and a desire to promote certain political agendas. The last available enumeration of ethnic Poles and the large ethnic minorities is the Polish census of 1931. Exact population figures for 1939 are therefore not known.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, at least 3 million Polish Jews and at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians were killed. According to the historians Brzoza and Sowa, about 2 million ethnic Poles were killed, but it is not known, even approximately, how many Polish citizens of other ethnicities perished, including Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Germans. Millions of Polish citizens were deported to Germany for forced labor or to German extermination camps such as Treblinka, Auschwitz and Sobibór. Nazi Germany intended to exterminate the Jews completely, in actions that have come to be described collectively as the Holocaust. The Poles were to be expelled from areas controlled by Nazi Germany through a process of resettlement that started in 1939. Such Nazi operations matured into a plan known as the Generalplan Ost that amounted to displacement, enslavement and partial extermination of the Slavic people and was expected to be completed within 15 years.
The majority of Poles remained indifferent to the Jewish plight, and neither assisted nor persecuted Jews. Of those who have helped rescue, shelter and protect Jews from the Nazi atrocity, Yad Vashem and the State of Israel have recognized 6,992 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations.
In an attempt to incapacitate Polish society, the Nazis and the Soviets executed tens of thousands of members of the intelligentsia and community leadership during events such as the German AB-Aktion in Poland, Operation Tannenberg and the Katyn massacre. Over 95% of the Jewish losses and 90% of the ethnic Polish losses were caused directly by Nazi Germany, whereas 5% of the ethnic Polish losses were caused by the Soviets and 5% by Ukrainian nationalists. The large-scale Jewish presence in Poland that had endured for centuries was rather quickly put to an end by the policies of extermination implemented by the Nazis during the war. Waves of displacement and emigration that took place both during and after the war removed from Poland a majority of the Jews who survived. Further significant Jewish emigration followed events such as the Polish October political thaw of 1956 and the 1968 Polish political crisis.
In 1940–1941, some 325,000 Polish citizens were deported by the Soviet regime. The number of Polish citizens who died at the hands of the Soviets is estimated at less than 100,000.
In 1943–1944, Ukrainian nationalists associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army perpetrated the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Estimates of the number of Polish civilian victims vary greatly, from tens to hundreds of thousands.
Approximately 90% of Poland's war casualties were the victims of prisons, death camps, raids, executions, the annihilation of ghettos, epidemics, starvation, excessive work and ill treatment. The war left one million children orphaned and 590,000 persons disabled. The country lost 38% of its national assets (whereas Britain lost only 0.8%, and France only 1.5%). Nearly half of pre-war Poland was expropriated by the Soviet Union, including the two great cultural centers of Lwów and Wilno.
The policies of Nazi Germany have been judged after the war by the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials and Polish genocide trials to be aimed at extermination of Jews, Poles and Roma, and to have "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term".
By the terms of the 1945 Potsdam Agreement signed by the three victorious Great Powers, the Soviet Union retained most of the territories captured as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, including western Ukraine and western Belarus, and gained others. Lithuania and the Königsberg area of East Prussia were officially incorporated into the Soviet Union, in the case of the former without the recognition of the Western powers.
Poland was compensated with the bulk of Silesia, including Breslau (Wrocław) and Grünberg (Zielona Góra), the bulk of Pomerania, including Stettin (Szczecin), and the greater southern portion of the former East Prussia, along with Danzig (Gdańsk), pending a final peace conference with Germany which eventually never took place. Collectively referred to by the Polish authorities as the "Recovered Territories", they were included in the reconstituted Polish state. With Germany's defeat Poland was thus shifted west in relation to its prewar location, to the area between the Oder–Neisse and Curzon lines, which resulted in a country more compact and with much broader access to the sea. The Poles lost 70% of their pre-war oil capacity to the Soviets, but gained from the Germans a highly developed industrial base and infrastructure that made a diversified industrial economy possible for the first time in Polish history.
The flight and expulsion of Germans from what was eastern Germany prior to the war began before and during the Soviet conquest of those regions from the Nazis, and the process continued in the years immediately after the war. 8,030,000 Germans were evacuated, expelled, or migrated by 1950.
Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the Polish communist authorities even before the Potsdam Conference (the "wild expulsions" from June to mid July 1945, when the Polish military and militia expelled nearly all people from the districts immediately east of the Oder–Neisse line), to ensure the establishment of ethnically homogeneous Poland. About 1% (100,000) of the German civilian population east of the Oder–Neisse line perished in the fighting prior to the surrender in May 1945, and afterwards some 200,000 Germans in Poland were employed as forced labor prior to being expelled. Many Germans died in labor camps such as the Zgoda labour camp and the Potulice camp. Of those Germans who remained within the new borders of Poland, many later chose to emigrate to post-war Germany.
On the other hand, 1.5–2 million ethnic Poles moved or were expelled from the previously Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. The vast majority were resettled in the former German territories. At least one million Poles remained in what had become the Soviet Union, and at least half a million ended up in the West or elsewhere outside of Poland. However, contrary to the official declaration that the former German inhabitants of the Recovered Territories had to be removed quickly to house Poles displaced by the Soviet annexation, the Recovered Territories initially faced a severe population shortage.
Many exiled Poles could not return to the country for which they had fought because they belonged to political groups incompatible with the new communist regimes, or because they originated from areas of pre-war eastern Poland that were incorporated into the Soviet Union (see Polish population transfers (1944–1946)). Some were deterred from returning simply on the strength of warnings that anyone who had served in military units in the West would be endangered. Many Poles were pursued, arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for belonging to the Home Army or other formations (see Anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944–1946)), or were persecuted because they had fought on the Western front.
Territories on both sides of the new Polish-Ukrainian border were also "ethnically cleansed". Of the Ukrainians and Lemkos living in Poland within the new borders (about 700,000), close to 95% were forcibly moved to the Soviet Ukraine, or (in 1947) to the new territories in northern and western Poland under Operation Vistula. In Volhynia, 98% of the Polish pre-war population was either killed or expelled; in Eastern Galicia, the Polish population was reduced by 92%. According to Timothy D. Snyder, about 70,000 Poles and about 20,000 Ukrainians were killed in the ethnic violence that occurred in the 1940s, both during and after the war.
According to an estimate by historian Jan Grabowski, about 50,000 of the 250,000 Polish Jews who escaped the Nazis during the liquidation of ghettos survived without leaving Poland (the remainder perished). More were repatriated from the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and the February 1946 population census showed about 300,000 Jews within Poland's new borders. Of the surviving Jews, many chose to emigrate or felt compelled to because of the anti-Jewish violence in Poland.
Because of changing borders and the mass movements of people of various nationalities, the emerging communist Poland ended up with a mainly homogeneous, ethnically Polish population (97.6% according to the December 1950 census). The remaining members of ethnic minorities were not encouraged, by the authorities or by their neighbors, to emphasize their ethnic identities.
In response to the February 1945 Yalta Conference directives, a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in June 1945 under Soviet auspices; it was soon recognized by the United States and many other countries. The Soviet domination was apparent from the beginning, as prominent leaders of the Polish Underground State were brought to trial in Moscow (the "Trial of the Sixteen" of June 1945). In the immediate post-war years, the emerging communist rule was challenged by opposition groups, including militarily by the so-called "cursed soldiers", of whom thousands perished in armed confrontations or were pursued by the Ministry of Public Security and executed. Such guerillas often pinned their hopes on expectations of an imminent outbreak of World War III and defeat of the Soviet Union. The Polish right-wing insurgency faded after the amnesty of February 1947.
The Polish people's referendum of June 1946 was arranged by the communist Polish Workers' Party to legitimize its dominance in Polish politics and claim widespread support for the party's policies. Although the Yalta agreement called for free elections, the Polish legislative election of January 1947 was controlled by the communists. Some democratic and pro-Western elements, led by Stanisław Mikołajczyk, former prime minister-in-exile, participated in the Provisional Government and the 1947 elections, but were ultimately eliminated through electoral fraud, intimidation and violence. In times of severe political confrontation and radical economic change, members of Mikołajczyk's agrarian movement (the Polish People's Party) attempted to preserve the existing aspects of mixed economy and protect property and other rights. However, after the 1947 elections, the Government of National Unity ceased to exist and the communists moved towards abolishing the post-war partially pluralistic "people's democracy" and replacing it with a state socialist system. The communist-dominated front Democratic Bloc of the 1947 elections, turned into the Front of National Unity in 1952, became officially the source of governmental authority. The Polish government-in-exile, lacking international recognition, remained in continuous existence until 1990.
The Polish People's Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) was established under the rule of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The name change from the Polish Republic was not officially adopted, however, until the proclamation of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic in 1952.
The ruling PZPR was formed by the forced amalgamation in December 1948 of the communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR) and the historically non-communist Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The PPR chief had been its wartime leader Władysław Gomułka, who in 1947 declared a "Polish road to socialism" as intended to curb, rather than eradicate, capitalist elements. In 1948 he was overruled, removed and imprisoned by Stalinist authorities. The PPS, re-established in 1944 by its left wing, had since been allied with the communists. The ruling communists, who in post-war Poland preferred to use the term "socialism" instead of "communism" to identify their ideological basis, needed to include the socialist junior partner to broaden their appeal, claim greater legitimacy and eliminate competition on the political Left. The socialists, who were losing their organization, were subjected to political pressure, ideological cleansing and purges in order to become suitable for unification on the terms of the PPR. The leading pro-communist leaders of the socialists were the prime ministers Edward Osóbka-Morawski and Józef Cyrankiewicz.
During the most oppressive phase of the Stalinist period (1948–1953), terror was justified in Poland as necessary to eliminate reactionary subversion. Many thousands of perceived opponents of the regime were arbitrarily tried and large numbers were executed. The People's Republic was led by discredited Soviet operatives such as Bolesław Bierut, Jakub Berman and Konstantin Rokossovsky. The independent Catholic Church in Poland was subjected to property confiscations and other curtailments from 1949, and in 1950 was pressured into signing an accord with the government. In 1953 and later, despite a partial thaw after the death of Stalin that year, the persecution of the Church intensified and its head, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, was detained. A key event in the persecution of the Polish Church was the Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia in January 1953.
In the Warsaw Pact, formed in 1955, the Polish Army was the second largest, after the Soviet Army.
In 1944, large agricultural holdings and former German property in Poland started to be redistributed through land reform, and industry started to be nationalized. Communist restructuring and the imposition of work-space rules encountered active worker opposition already in the years 1945–1947. The moderate Three-Year Plan of 1947–1949 continued with the rebuilding, socialization and socialist restructuring of the economy. It was followed by the Six-Year Plan of 1950–1955 for heavy industry. The rejection of the Marshall Plan in 1947 made aspirations for catching up with West European standards of living unrealistic.
The government's highest economic priority was the development of heavy industry useful to the military. State-run or controlled institutions common in all the socialist countries of eastern Europe were imposed on Poland, including collective farms and worker cooperatives. The latter were dismantled in the late 1940s as not socialist enough, although they were later re-established; even small-scale private enterprises were eradicated. Stalinism introduced heavy political and ideological propaganda and indoctrination in social life, culture and education.
Great strides were made, however, in the areas of employment (which became nearly full), universal public education (which nearly eradicated adult illiteracy), health care and recreational amenities. Many historic sites, including the central districts of Warsaw and Gdańsk, both devastated during the war, were rebuilt at great cost.
The communist industrialization program led to increased urbanization and educational and career opportunities for the intended beneficiaries of the social transformation, along the lines of the peasants-workers-working intelligentsia paradigm. The most significant improvement was accomplished in the lives of Polish peasants, many of whom were able to leave their impoverished and overcrowded village communities for better conditions in urban centers. Those who stayed behind took advantage of the implementation of the 1944 land reform decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, which terminated the antiquated but widespread parafeudal socioeconomic relations in Poland. The Stalinist attempts at establishing collective farms generally failed. Due to urbanization, the national percentage of the rural population decreased in communist Poland by about 50%. A majority of Poland's residents of cities and towns still live in apartment blocks built during the communist era, in part to accommodate migrants from rural areas.
In March 1956, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow ushered in de-Stalinization, Edward Ochab was chosen to replace the deceased Bolesław Bierut as first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party. As a result, Poland was rapidly overtaken by social restlessness and reformist undertakings; thousands of political prisoners were released and many people previously persecuted were officially rehabilitated. Worker riots in Poznań in June 1956 were violently suppressed, but they gave rise to the formation of a reformist current within the communist party.
Amidst the continuing social and national upheaval, a further shakeup took place in the party leadership as part of what is known as the Polish October of 1956. While retaining most traditional communist economic and social aims, the regime led by Władysław Gomułka, the new first secretary of the PZPR, liberalized internal life in Poland. The dependence on the Soviet Union was somewhat mollified, and the state's relationships with the Church and Catholic lay activists were put on a new footing. A repatriation agreement with the Soviet Union allowed the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Poles who were still in Soviet hands, including many former political prisoners. Collectivization efforts were abandoned—agricultural land, unlike in other Comecon countries, remained for the most part in the private ownership of farming families. State-mandated provisions of agricultural products at fixed, artificially low prices were reduced, and from 1972 eliminated.
The legislative election of 1957 was followed by several years of political stability that was accompanied by economic stagnation and curtailment of reforms and reformists. One of the last initiatives of the brief reform era was a nuclear weapons–free zone in Central Europe proposed in 1957 by Adam Rapacki, Poland's foreign minister.
Culture in the Polish People's Republic, to varying degrees linked to the intelligentsia's opposition to the authoritarian system, developed to a sophisticated level under Gomułka and his successors. The creative process was often compromised by state censorship, but significant works were created in fields such as literature, theater, cinema and music, among others. Journalism of veiled understanding and varieties of native and Western popular culture were well represented. Uncensored information and works generated by émigré circles were conveyed through a variety of channels. The Paris-based Kultura magazine developed a conceptual framework for dealing with the issues of borders and the neighbors of a future free Poland, but for ordinary Poles Radio Free Europe was of foremost importance.
One of the confirmations of the end of an era of greater tolerance was the expulsion from the communist party of several prominent "Marxist revisionists" in the 1960s.
In 1965, the Conference of Polish Bishops issued the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops, a gesture intended to heal bad mutual feelings left over from World War II. In 1966, the celebrations of the 1,000th anniversary of the Christianization of Poland led by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and other bishops turned into a huge demonstration of the power and popularity of the Catholic Church in Poland.
The post-1956 liberalizing trend, in decline for a number of years, was reversed in March 1968, when student demonstrations were suppressed during the 1968 Polish political crisis. Motivated in part by the Prague Spring movement, the Polish opposition leaders, intellectuals, academics and students used a historical-patriotic Dziady theater spectacle series in Warsaw (and its termination forced by the authorities) as a springboard for protests, which soon spread to other centers of higher education and turned nationwide. The authorities responded with a major crackdown on opposition activity, including the firing of faculty and the dismissal of students at universities and other institutions of learning. At the center of the controversy was also the small number of Catholic deputies in the Sejm (the Znak Association members) who attempted to defend the students.
In an official speech, Gomułka drew attention to the role of Jewish activists in the events taking place. This provided ammunition to a nationalistic and antisemitic communist party faction headed by Mieczysław Moczar that was opposed to Gomułka's leadership. Using the context of the military victory of Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, some in the Polish communist leadership waged an antisemitic campaign against the remnants of the Jewish community in Poland. The targets of this campaign were accused of disloyalty and active sympathy with Israeli aggression. Branded "Zionists", they were scapegoated and blamed for the unrest in March 1968, which eventually led to the emigration of much of Poland's remaining Jewish population (about 15,000 Polish citizens left the country).
With the active support of the Gomułka regime, the Polish People's Army took part in the infamous Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, after the Brezhnev Doctrine was informally announced.
In the final major achievement of Gomułka diplomacy, the governments of Poland and West Germany signed in December 1970 the Treaty of Warsaw, which normalized their relations and made possible meaningful cooperation in a number of areas of bilateral interest. In particular, West Germany recognized the post-World War II de facto border between Poland and East Germany.
Price increases for essential consumer goods triggered the Polish protests of 1970. In December, there were disturbances and strikes in the Baltic Sea port cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Szczecin that reflected deep dissatisfaction with living and working conditions in the country. The activity was centered in the industrial shipyard areas of the three coastal cities. Dozens of protesting workers and bystanders were killed in police and military actions, generally under the authority of Gomułka and Minister of Defense Wojciech Jaruzelski. In the aftermath, Edward Gierek replaced Gomułka as first secretary of the communist party. The new regime was seen as more modern, friendly and pragmatic, and at first it enjoyed a degree of popular and foreign support.
To revitalize the economy, from 1971 the Gierek regime introduced wide-ranging reforms that involved large-scale foreign borrowing. These actions initially caused improved conditions for consumers, but in a few years the strategy backfired and the economy deteriorated. Another attempt to raise food prices resulted in the June 1976 protests. The Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), established in response to the crackdown that followed, consisted of dissident intellectuals determined to support industrial workers, farmers and students persecuted by the authorities. The opposition circles active in the late 1970s were emboldened by the Helsinki Conference processes.
In October 1978, the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła, became Pope John Paul II, head of the Catholic Church. Catholics and others rejoiced at the elevation of a Pole to the papacy and greeted his June 1979 visit to Poland with an outpouring of emotion.
Fueled by large infusions of Western credit, Poland's economic growth rate was one of the world's highest during the first half of the 1970s, but much of the borrowed capital was misspent, and the centrally planned economy was unable to use the new resources effectively. The 1973 oil crisis caused recession and high interest rates in the West, to which the Polish government had to respond with sharp domestic consumer price increases. The growing debt burden became insupportable in the late 1970s, and negative economic growth set in by 1979.
Around 1 July 1980, with the Polish foreign debt standing at more than $20 billion, the government made yet another attempt to increase meat prices. Workers responded with escalating work stoppages that culminated in the 1980 general strikes in Lublin. In mid-August, labor protests at the Gdańsk Shipyard gave rise to a chain reaction of strikes that virtually paralyzed the Baltic coast by the end of the month and, for the first time, closed most coal mines in Silesia. The Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee coordinated the strike action across hundreds of workplaces and formulated the 21 demands as the basis for negotiations with the authorities. The Strike Committee was sovereign in its decision-making, but was aided by a team of "expert" advisers that included the well-known dissidents Jacek Kuroń, Karol Modzelewski, Bronisław Geremek and Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
On 31 August 1980, representatives of workers at the Gdańsk Shipyard, led by an electrician and activist Lech Wałęsa, signed the Gdańsk Agreement with the government that ended their strike. Similar agreements were concluded in Szczecin (the Szczecin Agreement) and in Silesia. The key provision of these agreements was the guarantee of the workers' right to form independent trade unions and the right to strike. Following the successful resolution of the largest labor confrontation in communist Poland's history, nationwide union organizing movements swept the country.
Edward Gierek was blamed by the Soviets for not following their "fraternal" advice, not shoring up the communist party and the official trade unions and allowing "anti-socialist" forces to emerge. On 5 September 1980, Gierek was replaced by Stanisław Kania as first secretary of the PZPR.
Delegates of the emergent worker committees from all over Poland gathered in Gdańsk on 17 September and decided to form a single national union organization named "Solidarity".
While party–controlled courts took up the contentious issues of Solidarity's legal registration as a trade union (finalized by November 10), planning had already begun for the imposition of martial law. A parallel farmers' union was organized and strongly opposed by the regime, but Rural Solidarity was eventually registered (12 May 1981). In the meantime, a rapid deterioration of the authority of the communist party, disintegration of state power and escalation of demands and threats by the various Solidarity–affiliated groups were occurring. According to Kuroń, a "tremendous social democratization movement in all spheres" was taking place and could not be contained. Wałęsa had meetings with Kania, which brought no resolution to the impasse.
Following the Warsaw Pact summit in Moscow, the Soviet Union proceeded with a massive military build-up along Poland's border in December 1980, but during the summit Kania forcefully argued with Leonid Brezhnev and other allied communists leaders against the feasibility of an external military intervention, and no action was taken. The United States, under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, repeatedly warned the Soviets about the consequences of a direct intervention, while discouraging an open insurrection in Poland and signaling to the Polish opposition that there would be no rescue by the NATO forces.
In February 1981, Defense Minister General Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed the position of prime minister. The Solidarity social revolt had thus far been free of any major use of force, but in March 1981 in Bydgoszcz three activists were beaten up by the secret police. In a nationwide "warning strike" the 9.5-million-strong Solidarity union was supported by the population at large, but a general strike was called off by Wałęsa after the 30 March settlement with the government. Both Solidarity and the communist party were badly split and the Soviets were losing patience. Kania was re-elected at the Party Congress in July, but the collapse of the economy continued and so did the general disorder.
At the first Solidarity National Congress in September–October 1981 in Gdańsk, Lech Wałęsa was elected national chairman of the union with 55% of the vote. An appeal was issued to the workers of the other East European countries, urging them to follow in the footsteps of Solidarity. To the Soviets, the gathering was an "anti-socialist and anti-Soviet orgy" and the Polish communist leaders, increasingly led by Jaruzelski and General Czesław Kiszczak, were ready to apply force.
In October 1981, Jaruzelski was named first secretary of the PZPR. The Plenum's vote was 180 to 4, and he kept his government posts. Jaruzelski asked parliament to ban strikes and allow him to exercise extraordinary powers, but when neither request was granted, he decided to proceed with his plans anyway.
On 12–13 December 1981, the regime declared martial law in Poland, under which the army and the ZOMO special police forces were used to crush Solidarity. The Soviet leaders insisted that Jaruzelski pacifies the opposition with the forces at his disposal, without Soviet involvement. Almost all Solidarity leaders and many affiliated intellectuals were arrested or detained. Nine workers were killed in the Pacification of Wujek. The United States and other Western countries responded by imposing economic sanctions against Poland and the Soviet Union. Unrest in the country was subdued, but continued.
During martial law, Poland was ruled by the so-called Military Council of National Salvation. The open or semi-open opposition communications, as recently practiced, were replaced by underground publishing (known in the eastern bloc as Samizdat), and Solidarity was reduced to a few thousand underground activists.
Having achieved some semblance of stability, the Polish regime relaxed and then rescinded martial law over several stages. By December 1982 martial law was suspended and a small number of political prisoners, including Wałęsa, were released. Although martial law formally ended in July 1983 and a partial amnesty was enacted, several hundred political prisoners remained in jail. Jerzy Popiełuszko, a popular pro-Solidarity priest, was abducted and murdered by security functionaries in October 1984.
Further developments in Poland occurred concurrently with and were influenced by the reformist leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union (processes known as Glasnost and Perestroika). In September 1986, a general amnesty was declared and the government released nearly all political prisoners. However, the country lacked basic stability, as the regime's efforts to organize society from the top down had failed, while the opposition's attempts at creating an "alternate society" were also unsuccessful. With the economic crisis unresolved and societal institutions dysfunctional, both the ruling establishment and the opposition began looking for ways out of the stalemate. Facilitated by the indispensable mediation of the Catholic Church, exploratory contacts were established.
Student protests resumed in February 1988. Continuing economic decline led to strikes across the country in April, May and August. The Soviet Union, increasingly destabilized, was unwilling to apply military or other pressure to prop up allied regimes in trouble. The Polish government felt compelled to negotiate with the opposition and in September 1988 preliminary talks with Solidarity leaders ensued in Magdalenka. Numerous meetings that took place involved Wałęsa and General Kiszczak, among others. In November, the regime made a major public relations mistake by allowing a televised debate between Wałęsa and Alfred Miodowicz, chief of the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions, the official trade union organization. The fitful bargaining and intra-party squabbling led to the official Round Table Negotiations in 1989, followed by the Polish legislative election in June of that year, a watershed event marking the fall of communism in Poland.
The Polish Round Table Agreement of April 1989 called for local self-government, policies of job guarantees, legalization of independent trade unions and many wide-ranging reforms. The current Sejm promptly implemented the deal and agreed to National Assembly elections that were set for 4 June and 18 June. Only 35% of the seats in the Sejm (national legislature's lower house) and all of the Senate seats were freely contested; the remaining Sejm seats (65%) were guaranteed for the communists and their allies.
The failure of the communists at the polls (almost all of the contested seats were won by the opposition) resulted in a political crisis. The new April Novelization to the constitution called for re-establishment of the Polish presidency and on 19 July the National Assembly elected the communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, to that office. His election, seen at the time as politically necessary, was barely accomplished with tacit support from some Solidarity deputies, and the new president's position was not strong. Moreover, the unexpected definitiveness of the parliamentary election results created new political dynamics and attempts by the communists to form a government failed.
On 19 August, President Jaruzelski asked journalist and Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to form a government; on 12 September, the Sejm voted approval of Prime Minister Mazowiecki and his cabinet. Mazowiecki decided to leave the economic reform entirely in the hands of economic liberals led by the new Deputy Prime Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, who proceeded with the design and implementation of his "shock therapy" policy. For the first time in post-war history, Poland had a government led by non-communists, setting a precedent soon to be followed by other Eastern Bloc nations in a phenomenon known as the Revolutions of 1989. Mazowiecki's acceptance of the "thick line" formula meant that there would be no "witch-hunt", i.e., an absence of revenge seeking or exclusion from politics in regard to former communist officials.
In part because of the attempted indexation of wages, inflation reached 900% by the end of 1989, but was soon dealt with by means of radical methods. In December 1989, the Sejm approved the Balcerowicz Plan to transform the Polish economy rapidly from a centrally planned one to a free market economy. The Constitution of the Polish People's Republic was amended to eliminate references to the "leading role" of the communist party and the country was renamed the "Republic of Poland". The communist Polish United Workers' Party dissolved itself in January 1990. In its place, a new party, Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, was created. "Territorial self-government", abolished in 1950, was legislated back in March 1990, to be led by locally elected officials; its fundamental unit was the administratively independent gmina.
In October 1990, the constitution was amended to curtail the term of President Jaruzelski. In November 1990, the German–Polish Border Treaty, with unified Germany, was signed.
In November 1990, Lech Wałęsa was elected president for a five-year term; in December, he became the first popularly elected president of Poland. Poland's first free parliamentary election was held in October 1991. 18 parties entered the new Sejm, but the largest representation received only 12% of the total vote.
There were several post-Solidarity governments between the 1989 election and the 1993 election, after which the "post-communist" left-wing parties took over. In 1993, the formerly Soviet Northern Group of Forces, a vestige of past domination, left Poland.
In 1995, Aleksander Kwaśniewski of the Social Democratic Party was elected president and remained in that capacity for the next ten years (two terms).
In 1997, the new Constitution of Poland was finalized and approved in a referendum; it replaced the Small Constitution of 1992, an amended version of the communist constitution.
Poland joined NATO in 1999. Elements of the Polish Armed Forces have since participated in the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Poland joined the European Union as part of its enlargement in 2004. However, Poland has not adopted the euro as its currency and legal tender, but instead uses the Polish złoty.
In April 2010, Polish president Lech Kaczynski and dozens of the country's top political and military leaders died in the Smolensk air disaster.
After the election of the conservative Law and Justice party in 2015, the Polish government repeatedly clashed with EU institutions on the issue of judicial reform and was accused by the European Commission and the European Parliament of undermining "European Values" and eroding democratic standards. However, the Polish government headed by the Law and Justice party maintained that the reforms were necessary due to the prevalence of corruption within the Polish judiciary and the continued presence of holdover Communist era judges.
In October 2019, Poland's governing Law and Justice party (PiS) won parliamentary election, keeping its majority in the lower house. The second was centrist Civic Coalition (KO). The government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki continued. However, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński was considered the most powerful political figure in Poland although not a member of government. In July 2020, President Andrzej Duda, supported by PiS, was re-elected.
Poland has been one of neigbouring Ukraine’s most ardent supporters after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of November 2022, Poland had received more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of the war. In September 2023, however, Poland said that it will stop supplying arms to Ukraine and instead focus on its own defense. Poland's decision to ban importing Ukrainian grain, in order to protect its own farmers, had caused tension between the two countries.
In October 2023, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party won the largest share of the vote in the election, but lost its majority in parliament. In December 2023, Donald Tusk became the new Prime Minister leading a coalition of three parliamentary groups made up of Civic Coalition, Third Way, and The Left.
a. Piłsudski's family roots in the Polonized gentry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the resulting perspective of seeing himself and people like him as legitimate Lithuanians put him in conflict with modern Lithuanian nationalists (who in Piłsudski's lifetime redefined the scope and meaning of the "Lithuanian" identity), and, by extension, with other nationalists including the Polish modern nationalist movement.
b. In 1938, Poland and Romania refused to agree to a Franco-British proposal that in the event of war with Nazi Germany, Soviet forces would be allowed to cross their territories to aid Czechoslovakia. The Polish ruling elites considered the Soviets in some ways more threatening than the Nazis.
The Soviet Union repeatedly declared intention to fulfill its obligations under the 1935 treaty with Czechoslovakia and defend Czechoslovakia militarily. A transfer of land and air forces through Poland and/or Romania was required and the Soviets approached about it the French, who also had a treaty with Czechoslovakia (and with Poland and with the Soviet Union). Edward Rydz-Śmigły rebuked the French suggestion on that matter in 1936, and in 1938 Józef Beck pressured Romania not to allow even Soviet warplanes to fly over its territory. Like Hungary, Poland was looking into using the German-Czechoslovak conflict to settle its own territorial grievances, namely disputes over parts of Trans-Olza, Spiš and Orava.
c. In October 1939, the British Foreign Office notified the Soviets that the United Kingdom would be satisfied with a postwar creation of small ethnic Poland, patterned after the Duchy of Warsaw. An establishment of Poland restricted to "minimal size", according to ethnographic boundaries (such as the lands common to both the prewar Poland and postwar Poland), was planned by the Soviet People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in 1943–1944. Such territorial reduction was recommended by Ivan Maisky to Vyacheslav Molotov in early 1944, because of what Maisky saw as Poland's historically unfriendly disposition toward Russia and the Soviet Union, likely in some way to continue. Joseph Stalin opted for a larger version, allowing a "swap" (territorial compensation for Poland), which involved the eastern lands gained by Poland at the Peace of Riga of 1921 and now lost, and eastern Germany conquered from the Nazis in 1944–1945. In regard to the several major disputed areas: Lower Silesia west of the Oder and the Eastern Neisse rivers (the British wanted it to remain a part of the future German state), Stettin (in 1945 the German communists already established their administration there), "Zakerzonia" (western Red Ruthenia demanded by the Ukrainians), and the Białystok region (Białystok was claimed by the communists of the Byelorussian SSR), the Soviet leader made decisions that favored Poland.
Other territorial and ethnic scenarios were also possible, generally with possible outcomes less advantageous to Poland than the form the country assumed.
d. Timothy D. Snyder spoke of about 100,000 Jews killed by Poles during the Nazi occupation, the majority probably by members of the collaborationist Blue Police. This number would have likely been many times higher had Poland entered into an alliance with Germany in 1939, as advocated by some Polish historians and others.
e. Some may have falsely claimed the Jewish identity hoping for permission to emigrate. The communist authorities, pursuing the concept of Poland of single ethnicity (in accordance with the recent border changes and expulsions), were allowing the Jews to leave the country. For a discussion of early communist Poland's ethnic politics, see Timothy D. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, chapters on modern "Ukrainian Borderland".
f. A Communist Party of Poland had existed in the past, but was eliminated in Stalin's purges in 1938.
g. The Soviet leadership, which had previously ordered the crushing of the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968, in late 1970 became worried about potential demoralizing effects that deployment against Polish workers would have on the Polish army, a crucial Warsaw Pact component. The Soviets withdrew their support for Gomułka, who insisted on the use of force; he and his close associates were subsequently ousted from the Polish Politburo by the Polish Central Committee.
h. East of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line, the population was 43% Polish, 33% Ukrainian, 8% Belarusian and 8% Jewish. The Soviet Union did not want to appear as an aggressor, and moved its troops to eastern Poland under the pretext of offering protection to "the kindred Ukrainian and Belorussian people".
i. Joseph Stalin at the 1943 Tehran Conference discussed with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt new post-war borders in central-eastern Europe, including the shape of a future Poland. He endorsed the Piast Concept, which justified a massive shift of Poland's frontiers to the west. Stalin resolved to secure and stabilize the western reaches of the Soviet Union and disable the future military potential of Germany by constructing a compact and ethnically defined Poland (along with the Soviet ethnic Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania) and by radically altering the region's system of national borders. After 1945, the Polish communist regime wholeheartedly adopted and promoted the Piast Concept, making it the centerpiece of their claim to be the true inheritors of Polish nationalism. After all the killings and population transfers during and after the war, the country was 99% "Polish".
j. "All the currently available documents of Nazi administration show that, together with the Jews, the stratum of the Polish intelligentsia was marked for total extermination. In fact, Nazi Germany achieved this goal almost by half, since Poland lost 50 percent of her citizens with university diplomas and 35 percent of those with a gimnazium diploma." According to Brzoza and Sowa, 450,000 of Polish citizens had completed higher, secondary, or trade school education by the outbreak of the war. 37.5% of people with higher education perished, 30% of those with general secondary education, and 53.3% of trade school graduates.
k. Decisive political events took place in Poland shortly before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Władysław Gomułka, a reformist party leader, was reinstated to the Politburo of the PZPR and the Eighth Plenum of its Central Committee was announced to convene on 19 October 1956, all without seeking a Soviet approval. The Soviet Union responded with military moves and intimidation and its "military-political delegation", led by Nikita Khrushchev, quickly arrived in Warsaw. Gomułka tried to convince them of his loyalty but insisted on the reforms that he considered essential, including a replacement of Poland's Soviet-trusted minister of defense, Konstantin Rokossovsky. The disconcerted Soviets returned to Moscow, the PZPR Plenum elected Gomułka first secretary and removed Rokossovsky from the Politburo. On 21 October, the Soviet Presidium followed Khrushchev's lead and decided unanimously to "refrain from military intervention" in Poland, a decision likely influenced also by the ongoing preparations for the invasion of Hungary. The Soviet gamble paid off, because Gomułka in the coming years turned out to be a very dependable Soviet ally and an orthodox communist.
However, unlike the other Warsaw Pact countries, Poland did not endorse the Soviet armed intervention in Hungary. The Hungarian Revolution was intensely supported by the Polish public.
l. The delayed reinforcements were coming and the government military commanders General Tadeusz Rozwadowski and Władysław Anders wanted to keep on fighting the coup perpetrators, but President Stanisław Wojciechowski and the government decided to surrender to prevent the imminent spread of civil war. The coup brought to power the "Sanation" regime under Józef Piłsudski (Edward Rydz-Śmigły after Piłsudski's death). The Sanation regime persecuted the opposition within the military and in general. Rozwadowski died after abusive imprisonment, according to some accounts murdered. Another major opponent of Piłsudski, General Włodzimierz Zagórski, disappeared in 1927. According to Aleksandra Piłsudska, the marshal's wife, following the coup and for the rest of his life Piłsudski lost his composure and appeared over-burdened.
At the time of Rydz-Śmigły's command, the Sanation camp embraced the ideology of Roman Dmowski, Piłsudski's nemesis. Rydz-Śmigły did not allow General Władysław Sikorski, an enemy of the Sanation movement, to participate as a soldier in the country's defense against the Invasion of Poland in September 1939. During World War II in France and then in Britain, the Polish government-in-exile became dominated by anti-Sanation politicians. The perceived Sanation followers were in turn persecuted (in exile) under prime ministers Sikorski and Stanisław Mikołajczyk.
m. General Zygmunt Berling of the Soviet-allied First Polish Army attempted in mid-September a crossing of the Vistula and landing at Czerniaków to aid the insurgents, but the operation was defeated by the Germans and the Poles suffered heavy losses.
n. The decision to launch the Warsaw Uprising resulted in the destruction of the city, its population and its elites and has been a source of lasting controversy. According to the historians Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Leon Sowa, orders of further military offensives, issued at the end of August 1944 as a continuation of Operation Tempest, show a loss of the sense of responsibility for the country's fate on the part of the underground Polish leadership.
o. One of the party leaders Mieczysław Rakowski, who abandoned his mentor Gomułka following the 1970 crisis, saw the demands of the demonstrating workers as "exclusively socialist" in character, because of the way they were phrased. Most people in communist Poland, including opposition activists, did not question the supremacy of socialism or the socialist idea; misconduct by party officials, such as not following the provisions of the constitution, was blamed. From the time of Gierek, this assumed standard of political correctness was increasingly challenged: pluralism, and then free market, became frequently used concepts.
p. The Polish Sanation authorities were provoked by the independence-seeking Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). OUN engaged in political assassinations, terror and sabotage, to which the Polish state responded with a repressive campaign in the 1930s, as Józef Piłsudski and his successors imposed collective responsibility on the villagers in the affected areas. After the disturbances of 1933 and 1934, the Bereza Kartuska prison camp was established; it became notorious for its brutal regime. The government brought Polish settlers and administrators to parts of Volhynia with a centuries-old tradition of Ukrainian peasant rising against Polish land owners (and to Eastern Galicia). In the late 1930s, after Piłsudski's death, military persecution intensified and a policy of "national assimilation" was aggressively pursued. Military raids, public beatings, property confiscations and the closing and destruction of Orthodox churches aroused lasting enmity in Galicia and antagonized Ukrainian society in Volhynia at the worst possible moment, according to Timothy D. Snyder. However, he also notes that "Ukrainian terrorism and Polish reprisals touched only part of the population, leaving vast regions unaffected" and "the OUN's nationalist prescription, a Ukrainian state for ethnic Ukrainians alone was far from popular". Halik Kochanski wrote of the legacy of bitterness between the Ukrainians and Poles that soon exploded in the context of World War II. See also: History of the Ukrainian minority in Poland.
q. In Poland, officials of central government (the provincial office of wojewoda) can overrule elected territorial and municipal local governments. However, in such cases wojewoda decisions have sometimes been invalidated by courts.
r. Foreign policy was one of the few governmental areas in which Piłsudski took an active interest. He saw Poland's role and opportunity as lying in Eastern Europe and advocated passive relations with the West. He felt that a German attack should not be feared, because even if this unlikely event were to take place, the Western powers would be bound to restrain Germany and come to Poland's rescue.
s. According to the researcher Jan Sowa, the Commonwealth failed as a state because it was not able to conform to the emerging new European order established at the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Poland's elective kings, restricted by the self-serving and short-sighted nobility, could not impose a strong and efficient central government with its characteristic post-Westphalian internal and external sovereignty. The inability of Polish kings to levy and collect taxes (and therefore sustain a standing army) and conduct independent foreign policy were among the chief obstacles to Poland competing effectively on the changed European scene, where absolutist power was a prerequisite for survival and became the foundation for the abolition of serfdom and gradual formation of parliamentarism.
t. Besides the Home Army there were other major underground fighting formations: Bataliony Chłopskie, National Armed Forces (NSZ) and Gwardia Ludowa (later Armia Ludowa). From 1943, the leaders of the nationalistic NSZ collaborated with Nazi Germany in a case unique in occupied Poland. The NSZ conducted an anti-communist civil war. Before the arrival of the Soviets, the NSZ's Holy Cross Mountains Brigade left Poland under the protection of the German army. According to the historians Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Leon Sowa, participation figures given for the underground resistance are often inflated. In the spring of 1944, the time of the most extensive involvement of the underground organizations, there were most likely considerably fewer than 500,000 military and civilian personnel participating, over the entire spectrum, from the right wing to the communists.
u. According to Jerzy Eisler, about 1.1 million people may have been imprisoned or detained in 1944–1956 and about 50,000 may have died because of the struggle and persecution, including about 7,000 soldiers of the right-wing underground killed in the 1940s. According to Adam Leszczyński, up to 30,000 people were killed by the communist regime during the first several years after the war.
v. According to Andrzej Stelmachowski, one of the key participants of the Polish systemic transformation, Minister Leszek Balcerowicz pursued extremely liberal economic policies, often extraordinarily painful for society. The December 1989 Sejm statute of credit relations reform introduced an "incredible" system of privileges for banks, which were allowed to unilaterally alter interest rates on already existing contracts. The exceedingly high rates they instantly introduced ruined many previously profitable enterprises and caused a complete breakdown of the apartment block construction industry, which had long-term deleterious effects on the state budget as well. Balcerowicz's policies also caused permanent damage to Polish agriculture, an area in which he lacked expertise, and to the often successful and useful Polish cooperative movement.
According to Karol Modzelewski, a dissident and critic of the economic transformation, in 1989 Solidarity no longer existed, having been in reality eliminated during the martial law period. What the "post-Solidarity elites" did in 1989 amounted to a betrayal of the old Solidarity base, and the retribution was only a matter of time.
w. Led by Władysław Anders, the Polish II Corps fought in 1944–1945 in the Allied Italian Campaign, where the corps' main engagement was the Battle of Monte Cassino.
x. The Piast Concept, of which the chief proponent was Jan Ludwik Popławski (late 19th century), was based on the claim that the Piast homeland was inhabited by so-called "native" aboriginal Slavs and Slavonic Poles since time immemorial and only later was "infiltrated" by "alien" Celts, Germanic peoples, and others. After 1945, the so-called "autochthonous" or "aboriginal" school of Polish prehistory received official backing and a considerable degree of popular support in Poland. According to this view, the Lusatian Culture, which flourished between the Oder and the Vistula in the early Iron Age, was said to be Slavonic; all non-Slavonic tribes and peoples recorded in the area at various points in ancient times were dismissed as "migrants" and "visitors". In contrast, the critics of this theory, such as Marija Gimbutas, regarded it as an unproved hypotheses and for them the date and origin of the westward migration of the Slavs were largely uncharted; the Slavonic connections of the Lusatian Culture were entirely imaginary; and the presence of an ethnically mixed and constantly changing collection of peoples on the North European Plain was taken for granted.
y. According to the count presented by Prime Minister and Internal Affairs Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski before the Sejm committee in January 1938, 818 people were killed in police suppression of labor protests (industrial and agricultural) during the 1932–1937 period.
z. John II Casimir Vasa is known for his remarkable and accurate prediction of the Partitions of Poland, made over a century before the event's occurrence.
a1. According to war historian Ben Macintyre, "The Polish contribution to allied victory in the Second World War was extraordinary, perhaps even decisive, but for many years it was disgracefully played down, obscured by the politics of the Cold War."
b1. Piłsudski left the Polish Socialist Party in 1914 and severed his connections with the socialist movement, but many activists from the Left and of other political orientations presumed his continuing involvement there.
c1. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points program was subsequently weakened by internal developments in the US, Britain, France, and Germany. In the last case, Poland was denied the city of Danzig on the Baltic coast.
d1. The government of Soviet Russia issued in August 1918 a decree strongly supportive of the independence of Poland, but at that time no Polish lands were under Russian control.
Academic journals
More recent general history of Poland books in English
Published in Poland | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The history of Poland spans over a thousand years, from medieval tribes, Christianization and monarchy; through Poland's Golden Age, expansionism and becoming one of the largest European powers; to its collapse and partitions, two world wars, communism, and the restoration of democracy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The roots of Polish history can be traced to ancient times, when the territory of present-day Poland was settled by various tribes including Celts, Scythians, Germanic clans, Sarmatians, Slavs and Balts. However, it was the West Slavic Lechites, the closest ancestors of ethnic Poles, who established permanent settlements in the Polish lands during the Early Middle Ages. The Lechitic Western Polans, a tribe whose name means \"people living in open fields\", dominated the region and gave Poland - which lies in the North-Central European Plain - its name.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The first ruling dynasty, the Piasts, emerged in the 10th century AD. Duke Mieszko I is considered the de facto creator of the Polish state and is widely recognized for his adoption of Western Christianity in 966 CE. Mieszko's dominion was formally reconstituted as a medieval kingdom in 1025 by his son Bolesław I the Brave, known for military expansion under his rule. The most successful and the last Piast monarch, Casimir III the Great, presided over a period of economic prosperity and territorial aggrandizement before his death in 1370 without male heirs. The period of the Jagiellonian dynasty in the 14th–16th centuries brought close ties with the Lithuania, a cultural Renaissance in Poland and continued territorial expansion as well as Polonization that culminated in the establishment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, one of Europe's largest countries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Commonwealth was able to sustain the levels of prosperity achieved during the Jagiellonian period, while its political system matured as a unique noble democracy with an elective monarchy. From the mid-17th century, however, the huge state entered a period of decline caused by devastating wars and the deterioration of its political system. Significant internal reforms were introduced in the late 18th century, such as Europe's first Constitution of 3 May 1791, but neighboring powers did not allow the reforms to advance. The existence of the Commonwealth ended in 1795 after a series of invasions and partitions of Polish territory carried out by the Russian Empire in the east, the Kingdom of Prussia in the west and the Habsburg monarchy in the south. From 1795 until 1918, no truly independent Polish state existed, although strong Polish resistance movements operated. The opportunity to regain sovereignty only materialized after World War I, when the three partitioning imperial powers were fatally weakened in the wake of war and revolution.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Second Polish Republic was established in 1918 and existed as an independent state until 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. Millions of Polish citizens of different faiths or identities perished in the course of the Nazi occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945 through planned genocide and extermination. A Polish government-in-exile nonetheless functioned throughout the war, and the Poles contributed to the Allied victory through participation in military campaigns on both the eastern and western fronts. The westward advances of the Soviet Red Army in 1944 and 1945 compelled Nazi Germany's forces to retreat from Poland, which led to the establishment of a satellite communist country, known from 1952 as the Polish People's Republic.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "As a result of territorial adjustments mandated by the Allies at the end of World War II in 1945, Poland's geographic centre of gravity shifted towards the west, and the re-defined Polish lands largely lost their historic multi-ethnic character through the extermination, expulsion and migration of various ethnic groups during and after the war. By the late 1980s, the Polish reform movement Solidarity became crucial in bringing about a peaceful transition from a planned economy and a communist state to a capitalist economic system and a liberal parliamentary democracy. This process resulted in the creation of the modern Polish state, the Third Polish Republic, founded in 1989.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In prehistoric and protohistoric times, over a period of at least 600,000 years, the area of present-day Poland was intermittently inhabited by members of the genus Homo. It went through the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age stages of development, along with the nearby regions. The Neolithic period ushered in the Linear Pottery culture, whose founders migrated from the Danube River area beginning about 5500 BC. This culture was distinguished by the establishment of the first settled agricultural communities in modern Polish territory. Later, between about 4400 and 2000 BC, the native post-Mesolithic populations would also adopt and further develop the agricultural way of life.",
"title": "Prehistory and protohistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Poland's Early Bronze Age began around 2400–2300 BC, whereas its Iron Age commenced c. 750–700 BC. One of the many cultures that have been uncovered, the Lusatian culture, spanned the Bronze and Iron Ages and left notable settlement sites. Around 400 BC, Poland was settled by Celts of the La Tène culture. They were soon followed by emerging cultures with a strong Germanic component, influenced first by the Celts and then by the Roman Empire. The Germanic peoples migrated out of the area by about 500 AD during the great Migration Period of the European Dark Ages. Wooded regions to the north and east were settled by Balts.",
"title": "Prehistory and protohistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "According to some archaeological research, Slavs have resided in modern Polish territories for only 1,500 years. However, recent genetic studies determined that people who live in the current territory of Poland include the descendants of the people who inhabited the area for thousands of years, beginning in the early Neolithic period. And according to other archaeological and linguistic research, early Slavic peoples were likely present in parts of Poland much earlier, and may have been associated with the ancient Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures of the 3rd century BC, though some Slavic groups may have arrived from the east in later periods. It has been suggested that the early Slavic peoples and languages may have originated in the region of Polesia, which includes the area around the Belarus–Ukraine border, parts of Western Russia, and parts of far Eastern Poland.",
"title": "Prehistory and protohistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The West Slavic and Lechitic peoples as well as any remaining minority clans on ancient Polish lands were organized into tribal units, of which the larger ones were later known as the Polish tribes; the names of many tribes are found on the list compiled by the anonymous Bavarian Geographer in the 9th century. In the 9th and 10th centuries, these tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula, the coast of the Baltic Sea and in Greater Poland. The latest tribal undertaking, in Greater Poland, resulted in the formation of a lasting political structure in the 10th century that became the state of Poland.",
"title": "Prehistory and protohistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Poland was established as a state under the Piast dynasty, which ruled the country between the 10th and 14th centuries. Historical records referring to the Polish state begin with the rule of Duke Mieszko I, whose reign commenced sometime before 963 and continued until his death in 992. Mieszko converted to Christianity in 966, following his marriage to Princess Doubravka of Bohemia, a fervent Christian. The event is known as the \"baptism of Poland\", and its date is often used to mark a symbolic beginning of Polish statehood. Mieszko completed a unification of the Lechitic tribal lands that was fundamental to the new country's existence. Following its emergence, Poland was led by a series of rulers who converted the population to Christianity, created a strong kingdom and fostered a distinctive Polish culture that was integrated into the broader European culture.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Mieszko's son, Duke Bolesław I the Brave (r. 992–1025), established a Polish Church structure, pursued territorial conquests and was officially crowned the first king of Poland in 1025, near the end of his life. Bolesław also sought to spread Christianity to parts of eastern Europe that remained pagan, but suffered a setback when his greatest missionary, Adalbert of Prague, was killed in Prussia in 997. During the Congress of Gniezno in the year 1000, Holy Roman Emperor Otto III recognized the Archbishopric of Gniezno, an institution crucial for the continuing existence of the sovereign Polish state. During the reign of Otto's successor, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, Bolesław fought prolonged wars with the Kingdom of Germany between 1002 and 1018.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Bolesław I's expansive rule overstretched the resources of the early Polish state, and it was followed by a collapse of the monarchy. Recovery took place under Casimir I the Restorer (r. 1039–58). Casimir's son Bolesław II the Generous (r. 1058–79) became involved in a conflict with Bishop Stanislaus of Szczepanów that ultimately caused his downfall. Bolesław had the bishop murdered in 1079 after being excommunicated by the Polish church on charges of adultery. This act sparked a revolt of Polish nobles that led to Bolesław's deposition and expulsion from the country. Around 1116, Gallus Anonymus wrote a seminal chronicle, the Gesta principum Polonorum, intended as a glorification of his patron Bolesław III Wrymouth (r. 1107–38), a ruler who revived the tradition of military prowess of Bolesław I's time. Gallus' work remains a paramount written source for the early history of Poland.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "After Bolesław III divided Poland among his sons in his Testament of 1138, internal fragmentation eroded the Piast monarchical structures in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1180, Casimir II the Just, who sought papal confirmation of his status as a senior duke, granted immunities and additional privileges to the Polish Church at the Congress of Łęczyca. Around 1220, Wincenty Kadłubek wrote his Chronica seu originale regum et principum Poloniae, another major source for early Polish history. In 1226, one of the regional Piast dukes, Konrad I of Masovia, invited the Teutonic Knights to help him fight the Baltic Prussian pagans. The Teutonic Order destroyed the Prussians but kept their lands, which resulted in centuries of warfare between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, and later between Poland and the German Prussian state. The first Mongol invasion of Poland began in 1240; it culminated in the defeat of Polish and allied Christian forces and the death of the Silesian Piast Duke Henry II the Pious at the Battle of Legnica in 1241. In 1242, Wrocław became the first Polish municipality to be incorporated, as the period of fragmentation brought economic development and growth of towns. New cities were founded and existing settlements were granted town status per Magdeburg Law. In 1264, Bolesław the Pious granted Jewish liberties in the Statute of Kalisz.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Attempts to reunite the Polish lands gained momentum in the 13th century, and in 1295, Duke Przemysł II of Greater Poland managed to become the first ruler since Bolesław II to be crowned king of Poland. He ruled over a limited territory and was soon killed. In 1300–05 King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia also reigned as king of Poland. The Piast Kingdom was effectively restored under Władysław I the Elbow-high (r. 1306–33), who became king in 1320. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights seized Gdańsk and the surrounding region of Pomerelia.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "King Casimir III the Great (r. 1333–70), Władysław's son and the last of the Piast rulers, strengthened and expanded the restored Kingdom of Poland, but the western provinces of Silesia (formally ceded by Casimir in 1339) and most of Polish Pomerania were lost to the Polish state for centuries to come. Progress was made in the recovery of the separately governed central province of Mazovia, however, and in 1340, the conquest of Red Ruthenia began, marking Poland's expansion to the east. The Congress of Kraków, a vast convocation of central, eastern, and northern European rulers probably assembled to plan an anti-Turkish crusade, took place in 1364, the same year that the future Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest European universities, was founded. On 9 October 1334, Casimir III confirmed the privileges granted to Jews in 1264 by Bolesław the Pious and allowed them to settle in Poland in great numbers.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "After the Polish royal line and Piast junior branch died out in 1370, Poland came under the rule of Louis I of Hungary of the Capetian House of Anjou, who presided over a union of Hungary and Poland that lasted until 1382. In 1374, Louis granted the Polish nobility the Privilege of Koszyce to assure the succession of one of his daughters in Poland. His youngest daughter Jadwiga (d. 1399) assumed the Polish throne in 1384.",
"title": "Piast period (10th century–1385)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1386, Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania converted to Catholicism and married Queen Jadwiga of Poland. This act enabled him to become a king of Poland himself, and he ruled as Władysław II Jagiełło until his death in 1434. The marriage established a personal Polish–Lithuanian union ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty. The first in a series of formal \"unions\" was the Union of Krewo of 1385, whereby arrangements were made for the marriage of Jogaila and Jadwiga. The Polish–Lithuanian partnership brought vast areas of Ruthenia controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into Poland's sphere of influence and proved beneficial for the nationals of both countries, who coexisted and cooperated in one of the largest political entities in Europe for the next four centuries. When Queen Jadwiga died in 1399, the Kingdom of Poland fell to her husband's sole possession.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In the Baltic Sea region, Poland's struggle with the Teutonic Knights continued and culminated in the Battle of Grunwald (1410), a great victory that the Poles and Lithuanians were unable to follow up with a decisive strike against the main seat of the Teutonic Order at Malbork Castle. The Union of Horodło of 1413 further defined the evolving relationship between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The privileges of the szlachta (nobility) kept expanding and in 1425 the rule of Neminem captivabimus, which protected the noblemen from arbitrary royal arrests, was formulated.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The reign of the young Władysław III (1434–44), who succeeded his father Władysław II Jagiełło and ruled as king of Poland and Hungary, was cut short by his death at the Battle of Varna against the forces of the Ottoman Empire. This disaster led to an interregnum of three years that ended with the accession of Władysław's brother Casimir IV Jagiellon in 1447.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Critical developments of the Jagiellonian period were concentrated during Casimir IV's long reign, which lasted until 1492. In 1454, Royal Prussia was incorporated by Poland and the Thirteen Years' War of 1454–66 with the Teutonic state ensued. In 1466, the milestone Peace of Thorn was concluded. This treaty divided Prussia to create East Prussia, the future Duchy of Prussia, a separate entity that functioned as a fief of Poland under the administration of the Teutonic Knights. Poland also confronted the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Tatars in the south, and in the east helped Lithuania fight the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The country was developing as a feudal state, with a predominantly agricultural economy and an increasingly dominant landed nobility. Kraków, the royal capital, was turning into a major academic and cultural center, and in 1473 the first printing press began operating there. With the growing importance of szlachta (middle and lower nobility), the king's council evolved to become by 1493 a bicameral General Sejm (parliament) that no longer represented exclusively top dignitaries of the realm.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Nihil novi act, adopted in 1505 by the Sejm, transferred most of the legislative power from the monarch to the Sejm. This event marked the beginning of the period known as \"Golden Liberty\", when the state was ruled in principle by the \"free and equal\" Polish nobility. In the 16th century, the massive development of folwark agribusinesses operated by the nobility led to increasingly abusive conditions for the peasant serfs who worked them. The political monopoly of the nobles also stifled the development of cities, some of which were thriving during the late Jagiellonian era, and limited the rights of townspeople, effectively holding back the emergence of the middle class.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In the 16th century, Protestant Reformation movements made deep inroads into Polish Christianity and the resulting Reformation in Poland involved a number of different denominations. The policies of religious tolerance that developed in Poland were nearly unique in Europe at that time and many who fled regions torn by religious strife found refuge in Poland. The reigns of King Sigismund I the Old (1506–1548) and King Sigismund II Augustus (1548–1572) witnessed an intense cultivation of culture and science (a Golden Age of the Renaissance in Poland), of which the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is the best known representative. Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584) was a poet and the premier artistic personality of the period. In 1525, during the reign of Sigismund I, the Teutonic Order was secularized and Duke Albert performed an act of homage before the Polish king (the Prussian Homage) for his fief, the Duchy of Prussia. Mazovia was finally fully incorporated into the Polish Crown in 1529.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The reign of Sigismund II ended the Jagiellonian period, but gave rise to the Union of Lublin (1569), an ultimate fulfillment of the union with Lithuania. This agreement transferred Ukraine from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Poland and transformed the Polish–Lithuanian polity into a real union, preserving it beyond the death of the childless Sigismund II, whose active involvement made the completion of this process possible.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Livonia in the far northeast was incorporated by Poland in 1561 and Poland entered the Livonian War against Russia. The executionist movement, which attempted to check the progressing domination of the state by the magnate families of Poland and Lithuania, peaked at the Sejm in Piotrków in 1562–63. On the religious front, the Polish Brethren split from the Calvinists, and the Protestant Brest Bible was published in 1563. The Jesuits, who arrived in 1564, were destined to make a major impact on Poland's history.",
"title": "Jagiellonian dynasty (1385–1572)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federal state more closely unified than the earlier political arrangement between Poland and Lithuania. The union was run largely by the nobility through the system of central parliament and local assemblies, but was headed by elected kings. The formal rule of the nobility, who were proportionally more numerous than in other European countries, constituted an early democratic system (\"a sophisticated noble democracy\"), in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The beginning of the Commonwealth coincided with a period in Polish history when great political power was attained and advancements in civilization and prosperity took place. The Polish–Lithuanian Union became an influential participant in European affairs and a vital cultural entity that spread Western culture (with Polish characteristics) eastward. In the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, the Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous states in contemporary Europe, with an area approaching one million square kilometres (0.39 million square miles) and a population of about ten million. Its economy was dominated by export-focused agriculture. Nationwide religious toleration was guaranteed at the Warsaw Confederation in 1573.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "After the rule of the Jagiellonian dynasty ended in 1572, Henry of Valois (later King Henry III of France) was the winner of the first \"free election\" by the Polish nobility, held in 1573. He had to agree to the restrictive pacta conventa obligations and fled Poland in 1574 when news arrived of the vacancy of the French throne, to which he was the heir presumptive. From the start, the royal elections increased foreign influence in the Commonwealth as foreign powers sought to manipulate the Polish nobility to place candidates amicable to their interests. The reign of Stephen Báthory of Hungary followed (r. 1576–1586). He was militarily and domestically assertive and is revered in Polish historical tradition as a rare case of successful elective king. The establishment of the legal Crown Tribunal in 1578 meant a transfer of many appellate cases from the royal to noble jurisdiction.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A period of rule under the Swedish House of Vasa began in the Commonwealth in the year 1587. The first two kings from this dynasty, Sigismund III (r. 1587–1632) and Władysław IV (r. 1632–1648), repeatedly attempted to intrigue for accession to the throne of Sweden, which was a constant source of distraction for the affairs of the Commonwealth. At that time, the Catholic Church embarked on an ideological counter-offensive and the Counter-Reformation claimed many converts from Polish and Lithuanian Protestant circles. In 1596, the Union of Brest split the Eastern Christians of the Commonwealth to create the Uniate Church of the Eastern Rite, but subject to the authority of the pope. The Zebrzydowski rebellion against Sigismund III unfolded in 1606–1608.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Seeking supremacy in Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth fought wars with Russia between 1605 and 1618 in the wake of Russia's Time of Troubles; the series of conflicts is referred to as the Polish–Muscovite War or the Dymitriads. The efforts resulted in expansion of the eastern territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but the goal of taking over the Russian throne for the Polish ruling dynasty was not achieved. Sweden sought supremacy in the Baltic during the Polish–Swedish wars of 1617–1629, and the Ottoman Empire pressed from the south in the Battles at Cecora in 1620 and Khotyn in 1621. The agricultural expansion and serfdom policies in Polish Ukraine resulted in a series of Cossack uprisings. Allied with the Habsburg monarchy, the Commonwealth did not directly participate in the Thirty Years' War. Władysław's IV reign was mostly peaceful, with a Russian invasion in the form of the Smolensk War of 1632–1634 successfully repelled. The Orthodox Church hierarchy, banned in Poland after the Union of Brest, was re-established in 1635.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "During the reign of John II Casimir Vasa (r. 1648–1668), the third and last king of his dynasty, the nobles' democracy fell into decline as a result of foreign invasions and domestic disorder. These calamities multiplied rather suddenly and marked the end of the Polish Golden Age. Their effect was to render the once powerful Commonwealth increasingly vulnerable to foreign intervention.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Cossack Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657 engulfed the south-eastern regions of the Polish crown; its long-term effects were disastrous for the Commonwealth. The first liberum veto (a parliamentary device that allowed any member of the Sejm to dissolve a current session immediately) was exercised by a deputy in 1652. This practice would eventually weaken Poland's central government critically. In the Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654), the Ukrainian rebels declared themselves subjects of the Tsar of Russia. The Second Northern War raged through the core Polish lands in 1655–1660; it included a brutal and devastating invasion of Poland referred to as the Swedish Deluge. The war ended in 1660 with the Treaty of Oliva, which resulted in the loss of some of Poland's northern possessions. In 1657 the Treaty of Bromberg established the independence of the Duchy of Prussia. The Commonwealth forces did well in the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), but the result was the permanent division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia, as agreed to in the Truce of Andrusovo (1667). Towards the end of the war, the Lubomirski's rebellion, a major magnate revolt against the king, destabilized and weakened the country. The large-scale slave raids of the Crimean Tatars also had highly deleterious effects on the Polish economy. Merkuriusz Polski, the first Polish newspaper, was published in 1661.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 1668, grief-stricken at the recent death of his wife and frustrated by the disastrous political setbacks of his reign, John II Casimir abdicated the throne and fled to France.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, a native Pole, was elected to replace John II Casimir in 1669. The Polish–Ottoman War (1672–76) broke out during his reign, which lasted until 1673, and continued under his successor, John III Sobieski (r. 1674–1696). Sobieski intended to pursue Baltic area expansion (and to this end he signed the secret Treaty of Jaworów with France in 1675), but was forced instead to fight protracted wars with the Ottoman Empire. By doing so, Sobieski briefly revived the Commonwealth's military might. He defeated the expanding Muslims at the Battle of Khotyn in 1673 and decisively helped deliver Vienna from a Turkish onslaught at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Sobieski's reign marked the last high point in the history of the Commonwealth: in the first half of the 18th century, Poland ceased to be an active player in international politics. The Treaty of Perpetual Peace (1686) with Russia was the final border settlement between the two countries before the First Partition of Poland in 1772.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Commonwealth, subjected to almost constant warfare until 1720, suffered enormous population losses and massive damage to its economy and social structure. The government became ineffective in the wake of large-scale internal conflicts, corrupted legislative processes and manipulation by foreign interests. The nobility fell under the control of a handful of feuding magnate families with established territorial domains. The urban population and infrastructure fell into ruin, together with most peasant farms, whose inhabitants were subjected to increasingly extreme forms of serfdom. The development of science, culture and education came to a halt or regressed.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The royal election of 1697 brought a ruler of the Saxon House of Wettin to the Polish throne: Augustus II the Strong (r. 1697–1733), who was able to assume the throne only by agreeing to convert to Roman Catholicism. He was succeeded by his son Augustus III (r. 1734–1763). The reigns of the Saxon kings (who were both simultaneously prince-electors of Saxony) were disrupted by competing candidates for the throne and witnessed further disintegration of the Commonwealth.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Great Northern War of 1700–1721, a period seen by the contemporaries as a temporary eclipse, may have been the fatal blow that brought down the Polish political system. Stanisław Leszczyński was installed as king in 1704 under Swedish protection, but lasted only a few years. The Silent Sejm of 1717 marked the beginning of the Commonwealth's existence as a Russian protectorate: the Tsardom would guarantee the reform-impeding Golden Liberty of the nobility from that time on in order to cement the Commonwealth's weak central authority and a state of perpetual political impotence. In a resounding break with traditions of religious tolerance, Protestants were executed during the Tumult of Thorn in 1724. In 1732, Russia, Austria and Prussia, Poland's three increasingly powerful and scheming neighbors, entered into the secret Treaty of the Three Black Eagles with the intention of controlling the future royal succession in the Commonwealth. The War of the Polish Succession was fought in 1733–1735 to assist Leszczyński in assuming the throne of Poland for a second time. Amidst considerable foreign involvement, his efforts were unsuccessful. The Kingdom of Prussia became a strong regional power and succeeded in wresting the historically Polish province of Silesia from the Habsburg monarchy in the Silesian Wars; it thus constituted an ever-greater threat to Poland's security.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The personal union between the Commonwealth and the Electorate of Saxony did give rise to the emergence of a reform movement in the Commonwealth and the beginnings of the Polish Enlightenment culture, the major positive developments of this era. The first Polish public library was the Załuski Library in Warsaw, opened to the public in 1747.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the later part of the 18th century, fundamental internal reforms were attempted in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as it slid into extinction. The reform activity, initially promoted by the magnate Czartoryski family faction known as the Familia, provoked a hostile reaction and military response from neighboring powers, but it did create conditions that fostered economic improvement. The most populous urban center, the capital city of Warsaw, replaced Danzig (Gdańsk) as the leading trade center, and the importance of the more prosperous urban social classes increased. The last decades of the independent Commonwealth's existence were characterized by aggressive reform movements and far-reaching progress in the areas of education, intellectual life, art and the evolution of the social and political system.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The royal election of 1764 resulted in the elevation of Stanisław August Poniatowski, a refined and worldly aristocrat connected to the Czartoryski family, but hand-picked and imposed by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who expected him to be her obedient follower. Stanisław August ruled the Polish–Lithuanian state until its dissolution in 1795. The king spent his reign torn between his desire to implement reforms necessary to save the failing state and the perceived necessity of remaining in a subordinate relationship to his Russian sponsors.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Bar Confederation (1768–1772) was a rebellion of nobles directed against Russia's influence in general and Stanisław August, who was seen as its representative, in particular. It was fought to preserve Poland's independence and the nobility's traditional interests. After several years, it was brought under control by forces loyal to the king and those of the Russian Empire.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Following the suppression of the Bar Confederation, parts of the Commonwealth were divided up among Prussia, Austria and Russia in 1772 at the instigation of Frederick the Great of Prussia, an action that became known as the First Partition of Poland: the outer provinces of the Commonwealth were seized by agreement among the country's three powerful neighbors and only a rump state remained. In 1773, the \"Partition Sejm\" ratified the partition under duress as a fait accompli. However, it also established the Commission of National Education, a pioneering in Europe education authority often called the world's first ministry of education.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The long-lasting session of parliament convened by King Stanisław August is known as the Great Sejm or Four-Year Sejm; it first met in 1788. Its landmark achievement was the passing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first singular pronouncement of a supreme law of the state in modern Europe. A moderately reformist document condemned by detractors as sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, it soon generated strong opposition from the conservative circles of the Commonwealth's upper nobility and from Empress Catherine of Russia, who was determined to prevent the rebirth of a strong Commonwealth. The nobility's Targowica Confederation, formed in Russian imperial capital of Saint Petersburg, appealed to Catherine for help, and in May 1792, the Russian army entered the territory of the Commonwealth. The Polish–Russian War of 1792, a defensive war fought by the forces of the Commonwealth against Russian invaders, ended when the Polish king, convinced of the futility of resistance, capitulated by joining the Targowica Confederation. The Russian-allied confederation took over the government, but Russia and Prussia in 1793 arranged for the Second Partition of Poland anyway. The partition left the country with a critically reduced territory that rendered it essentially incapable of an independent existence. The Commonwealth's Grodno Sejm of 1793, the last Sejm of the state's existence, was compelled to confirm the new partition.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Radicalized by recent events, Polish reformers (whether in exile or still resident in the reduced area remaining to the Commonwealth) were soon working on preparations for a national insurrection. Tadeusz Kościuszko, a popular general and a veteran of the American Revolution, was chosen as its leader. He returned from abroad and issued Kościuszko's proclamation in Kraków on March 24, 1794. It called for a national uprising under his supreme command. Kościuszko emancipated many peasants in order to enroll them as kosynierzy in his army, but the hard-fought insurrection, despite widespread national support, proved incapable of generating the foreign assistance necessary for its success. In the end, it was suppressed by the combined forces of Russia and Prussia, with Warsaw captured in November 1794 in the aftermath of the Battle of Praga.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1795, a Third Partition of Poland was undertaken by Russia, Prussia and Austria as a final division of territory that resulted in the effective dissolution of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. King Stanisław August Poniatowski was escorted to Grodno, forced to abdicate, and retired to Saint Petersburg. Tadeusz Kościuszko, initially imprisoned, was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1796.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The response of the Polish leadership to the last partition is a matter of historical debate. Literary scholars found that the dominant emotion of the first decade was despair that produced a moral desert ruled by violence and treason. On the other hand, historians have looked for signs of resistance to foreign rule. Apart from those who went into exile, the nobility took oaths of loyalty to their new rulers and served as officers in their armies.",
"title": "Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Although no sovereign Polish state existed between 1795 and 1918, the idea of Polish independence was kept alive throughout the 19th century. There were a number of uprisings and other armed undertakings waged against the partitioning powers. Military efforts after the partitions were first based on the alliances of Polish émigrés with post-revolutionary France. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski's Polish Legions fought in French campaigns outside of Poland between 1797 and 1802 in hopes that their involvement and contribution would be rewarded with the liberation of their Polish homeland. The Polish national anthem, \"Poland Is Not Yet Lost\", or \"Dąbrowski's Mazurka\", was written in praise of his actions by Józef Wybicki in 1797.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The Duchy of Warsaw, a small, semi-independent Polish state, was created in 1807 by Napoleon in the wake of his defeat of Prussia and the signing of the Treaties of Tilsit with Emperor Alexander I of Russia. The Army of the Duchy of Warsaw, led by Józef Poniatowski, participated in numerous campaigns in alliance with France, including the successful Austro-Polish War of 1809, which, combined with the outcomes of other theaters of the War of the Fifth Coalition, resulted in an enlargement of the duchy's territory. The French invasion of Russia in 1812 and the German Campaign of 1813 saw the duchy's last military engagements. The Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw abolished serfdom as a reflection of the ideals of the French Revolution, but it did not promote land reform.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "After Napoleon's defeat, a new European order was established at the Congress of Vienna, which met in the years 1814 and 1815. Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, a former close associate of Emperor Alexander I, became the leading advocate for the Polish national cause. The Congress implemented a new partition scheme, which took into account some of the gains realized by the Poles during the Napoleonic period.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Duchy of Warsaw was replaced in 1815 with a new Kingdom of Poland, unofficially known as Congress Poland. The residual Polish kingdom was joined to the Russian Empire in a personal union under the Russian tsar and it was allowed its own constitution and military. East of the kingdom, large areas of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth remained directly incorporated into the Russian Empire as the Western Krai. These territories, along with Congress Poland, are generally considered to form the Russian Partition. The Russian, Prussian, and Austrian \"partitions\" are informal names for the lands of the former Commonwealth, not actual units of administrative division of Polish–Lithuanian territories after partitions. The Prussian Partition included a portion separated as the Grand Duchy of Posen. Peasants under the Prussian administration were gradually enfranchised under the reforms of 1811 and 1823. The limited legal reforms in the Austrian Partition were overshadowed by its rural poverty. The Free City of Cracow was a tiny republic created by the Congress of Vienna under the joint supervision of the three partitioning powers. Despite the bleak from the standpoint of Polish patriots political situation, economic progress was made in the lands taken over by foreign powers because the period after the Congress of Vienna witnessed a significant development in the building of early industry.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Economic historians have made new estimates on GDP per capita, 1790–1910. They confirm the hypothesis of semi-peripheral development of Polish territories in the 19th century and the slow process of catching-up with the core economies.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The increasingly repressive policies of the partitioning powers led to resistance movements in partitioned Poland, and in 1830 Polish patriots staged the November Uprising. This revolt developed into a full-scale war with Russia, but the leadership was taken over by Polish conservatives who were reluctant to challenge the empire and hostile to broadening the independence movement's social base through measures such as land reform. Despite the significant resources mobilized, a series of errors by several successive chief commanders appointed by the insurgent Polish National Government led to the defeat of its forces by the Russian army in 1831. Congress Poland lost its constitution and military, but formally remained a separate administrative unit within the Russian Empire.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "After the defeat of the November Uprising, thousands of former Polish combatants and other activists emigrated to Western Europe. This phenomenon, known as the Great Emigration, soon dominated Polish political and intellectual life. Together with the leaders of the independence movement, the Polish community abroad included the greatest Polish literary and artistic minds, including the Romantic poets Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Cyprian Norwid, and the composer Frédéric Chopin. In occupied and repressed Poland, some sought progress through nonviolent activism focused on education and economy, known as organic work; others, in cooperation with the emigrant circles, organized conspiracies and prepared for the next armed insurrection.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The planned national uprising failed to materialize because the authorities in the partitions found out about secret preparations. The Greater Poland uprising ended in a fiasco in early 1846. In the Kraków uprising of February 1846, patriotic action was combined with revolutionary demands, but the result was the incorporation of the Free City of Cracow into the Austrian Partition. The Austrian officials took advantage of peasant discontent and incited villagers against the noble-dominated insurgent units. This resulted in the Galician slaughter of 1846, a large-scale rebellion of serfs seeking relief from their post-feudal condition of mandatory labor as practiced in folwarks. The uprising freed many from bondage and hastened decisions that led to the abolition of Polish serfdom in the Austrian Empire in 1848. A new wave of Polish involvement in revolutionary movements soon took place in the partitions and in other parts of Europe in the context of the Spring of Nations revolutions of 1848 (e.g. Józef Bem's participation in the revolutions in Austria and Hungary). The 1848 German revolutions precipitated the Greater Poland uprising of 1848, in which peasants in the Prussian Partition, who were by then largely enfranchised, played a prominent role.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "As a matter of continuous policy, the Russian autocracy kept assailing Polish national core values of language, religion and culture. In consequence, despite the limited liberalization measures allowed in Congress Poland under the rule of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, a renewal of popular liberation activities took place in 1860–1861. During large-scale demonstrations in Warsaw, Russian forces inflicted numerous casualties on the civilian participants. The \"Red\", or left-wing faction of Polish activists, which promoted peasant enfranchisement and cooperated with Russian revolutionaries, became involved in immediate preparations for a national uprising. The \"White\", or right-wing faction, was inclined to cooperate with the Russian authorities and countered with partial reform proposals. In order to cripple the manpower potential of the Reds, Aleksander Wielopolski, the conservative leader of the government of Congress Poland, arranged for a partial selective conscription of young Poles for the Russian army in the years 1862 and 1863. This action hastened the outbreak of hostilities. The January Uprising, joined and led after the initial period by the Whites, was fought by partisan units against an overwhelmingly advantaged enemy. The uprising lasted from January 1863 to the spring of 1864, when Romuald Traugutt, the last supreme commander of the insurgency, was captured by the tsarist police.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On 2 March 1864, the Russian authority, compelled by the uprising to compete for the loyalty of Polish peasants, officially published an enfranchisement decree in Congress Poland along the lines of an earlier land reform proclamation of the insurgents. The act created the conditions necessary for the development of the capitalist system on central Polish lands. At the time when most Poles realized the futility of armed resistance without external support, the various sections of Polish society were undergoing deep and far-reaching evolution in the areas of social, economic and cultural development.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The failure of the January Uprising in Poland caused a major psychological trauma and became a historic watershed; indeed, it sparked the development of modern Polish nationalism. The Poles, subjected within the territories under the Russian and Prussian administrations to still stricter controls and increased persecution, sought to preserve their identity in non-violent ways. After the uprising, Congress Poland was downgraded in official usage from the \"Kingdom of Poland\" to the \"Vistula Land\" and was more fully integrated into Russia proper, but not entirely obliterated. The Russian and German languages were imposed in all public communication, and the Catholic Church was not spared from severe repression. Public education was increasingly subjected to Russification and Germanisation measures. Illiteracy was reduced, most effectively in the Prussian partition, but education in the Polish language was preserved mostly through unofficial efforts. The Prussian government pursued German colonization, including the purchase of Polish-owned land. On the other hand, the region of Galicia (western Ukraine and southern Poland) experienced a gradual relaxation of authoritarian policies and even a Polish cultural revival. Economically and socially backward, it was under the milder rule of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and from 1867 was increasingly allowed limited autonomy. Stańczycy, a conservative Polish pro-Austrian faction led by great land owners, dominated the Galician government. The Polish Academy of Learning (an academy of sciences) was founded in Kraków in 1872.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Social activities termed \"organic work\" consisted of self-help organizations that promoted economic advancement and work on improving the competitiveness of Polish-owned businesses, industrial, agricultural or other. New commercial methods of generating higher productivity were discussed and implemented through trade associations and special interest groups, while Polish banking and cooperative financial institutions made the necessary business loans available. The other major area of effort in organic work was educational and intellectual development of the common people. Many libraries and reading rooms were established in small towns and villages, and numerous printed periodicals manifested the growing interest in popular education. Scientific and educational societies were active in a number of cities. Such activities were most pronounced in the Prussian Partition.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Positivism in Poland replaced Romanticism as the leading intellectual, social and literary trend. It reflected the ideals and values of the emerging urban bourgeoisie. Around 1890, the urban classes gradually abandoned the positivist ideas and came under the influence of modern pan-European nationalism.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Under the partitioning powers, economic diversification and progress, including large-scale industrialisation, were introduced in the traditionally agrarian Polish lands, but this development turned out to be very uneven. Advanced agriculture was practiced in the Prussian Partition, except for Upper Silesia, where the coal-mining industry created a large labor force. The densest network of railroads was built in German-ruled western Poland. In Russian Congress Poland, a striking growth of industry, railways and towns took place, all against the background of an extensive, but less productive agriculture. The industrial initiative, capital and know-how were provided largely by entrepreneurs who were not ethnic Poles. Warsaw (a metallurgical center) and Łódź (a textiles center) grew rapidly, as did the total proportion of urban population, making the region the most economically advanced in the Russian Empire (industrial production exceeded agricultural production there by 1909). The coming of the railways spurred some industrial growth even in the vast Russian Partition territories outside of Congress Poland. The Austrian Partition was rural and poor, except for the industrialized Cieszyn Silesia area. Galician economic expansion after 1890 included oil extraction and resulted in the growth of Lemberg (Lwów, Lviv) and Kraków.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Economic and social changes involving land reform and industrialization, combined with the effects of foreign domination, altered the centuries-old social structure of Polish society. Among the newly emergent strata were wealthy industrialists and financiers, distinct from the traditional, but still critically important landed aristocracy. The intelligentsia, an educated, professional or business middle class, often originated from lower gentry, landless or alienated from their rural possessions, and from urban people. Many smaller agricultural enterprises based on serfdom did not survive the land reforms. The industrial proletariat, a new underprivileged class, was composed mainly of poor peasants or townspeople forced by deteriorating conditions to migrate and search for work in urban centers in their countries of origin or abroad. Millions of residents of the former Commonwealth of various ethnic groups worked or settled in Europe and in North and South America.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Social and economic changes were partial and gradual. The degree of industrialisation, relatively fast-paced in some areas, lagged behind the advanced regions of Western Europe. The three partitions developed different economies and were more economically integrated with their mother states than with each other. In the Prussian Partition, for example, agricultural production depended heavily on the German market, whereas the industrial sector of Congress Poland relied more on the Russian market.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In the 1870s–1890s, large-scale socialist, nationalist, agrarian and other political movements of great ideological fervor became established in partitioned Poland and Lithuania, along with corresponding political parties to promote them. Of the major parties, the socialist First Proletariat was founded in 1882, the Polish League (precursor of National Democracy) in 1887, the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia in 1890, the Polish Socialist Party in 1892, the Marxist Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1893, the agrarian People's Party of Galicia in 1895 and the Jewish socialist Bund in 1897. Christian democracy regional associations allied with the Catholic Church were also active; they united into the Polish Christian Democratic Party in 1919.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The main minority ethnic groups of the former Commonwealth, including Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians and Jews, were getting involved in their own national movements and plans, which met with disapproval on the part of those Polish independence activists who counted on an eventual rebirth of the Commonwealth or the rise of a Commonwealth-inspired federal structure (a political movement referred to as Prometheism).",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Around the start of the 20th century, the Young Poland cultural movement, centered in Austrian Galicia, took advantage of a milieu conducive to liberal expression in that region and was the source of Poland's finest artistic and literary productions. In this same era, Marie Skłodowska Curie, a pioneer radiation scientist, performed her groundbreaking research in Paris.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Revolution of 1905–1907 in Russian Poland, the result of many years of pent-up political frustrations and stifled national ambitions, was marked by political maneuvering, strikes and rebellion. The revolt was part of much broader disturbances throughout the Russian Empire associated with the general Revolution of 1905. In Poland, the principal revolutionary figures were Roman Dmowski and Józef Piłsudski. Dmowski was associated with the right-wing nationalist movement National Democracy, whereas Piłsudski was associated with the Polish Socialist Party. As the authorities re-established control within the Russian Empire, the revolt in Congress Poland, placed under martial law, withered as well, partially as a result of tsarist concessions in the areas of national and workers' rights, including Polish representation in the newly created Russian Duma. The collapse of the revolt in the Russian Partition, coupled with intensified Germanization in the Prussian Partition, left Austrian Galicia as the territory where Polish patriotic action was most likely to flourish.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In the Austrian Partition, Polish culture was openly cultivated, and in the Prussian Partition, there were high levels of education and living standards, but the Russian Partition remained of primary importance for the Polish nation and its aspirations. About 15.5 million Polish-speakers lived in the territories most densely populated by Poles: the western part of the Russian Partition, the Prussian Partition and the western Austrian Partition. Ethnically Polish settlement spread over a large area further to the east, including its greatest concentration in the Vilnius Region, amounted to only over 20% of that number.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Polish paramilitary organizations oriented toward independence, such as the Union of Active Struggle, were formed in 1908–1914, mainly in Galicia. The Poles were divided and their political parties fragmented on the eve of World War I, with Dmowski's National Democracy (pro-Entente) and Piłsudski's faction assuming opposing positions.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The outbreak of World War I in the Polish lands offered Poles unexpected hopes for achieving independence as a result of the turbulence that engulfed the empires of the partitioning powers. All three of the monarchies that had benefited from the partition of Polish territories (Germany, Austria and Russia) were dissolved by the end of the war, and many of their territories were dispersed into new political units. At the start of the war, the Poles found themselves conscripted into the armies of the partitioning powers in a war that was not theirs. Furthermore, they were frequently forced to fight each other, since the armies of Germany and Austria were allied against Russia. Piłsudski's paramilitary units stationed in Galicia were turned into the Polish Legions in 1914 and as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Army fought on the Russian front until 1917, when the formation was disbanded. Piłsudski, who refused demands that his men fight under German command, was arrested and imprisoned by the Germans and became a heroic symbol of Polish nationalism.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Due to a series of German victories on the Eastern Front, the area of Congress Poland became occupied by the Central Powers of Germany and Austria; Warsaw was captured by the Germans on 5 August 1915. In the Act of 5th November 1916, a fresh incarnation of the Kingdom of Poland (Królestwo Regencyjne) was proclaimed by Germany and Austria on formerly Russian-controlled territories, within the German Mitteleuropa scheme. The sponsor states were never able to agree on a candidate to assume the throne, however; rather, it was governed in turn by German and Austrian governor-generals, a Provisional Council of State, and a Regency Council. This increasingly autonomous puppet state existed until November 1918, when it was replaced by the newly established Republic of Poland. The existence of this \"kingdom\" and its planned Polish army had a positive effect on the Polish national efforts on the Allied side, but in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 the victorious in the east Germany imposed harsh conditions on defeated Russia and ignored Polish interests. Toward the end of the war, the German authorities engaged in massive, purposeful devastation of industrial and other economic potential of Polish lands in order to impoverish the country, a likely future competitor of Germany.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The independence of Poland had been campaigned for in Russia and in the West by Dmowski and in the West by Ignacy Jan Paderewski. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and then the leaders of the February Revolution and the October Revolution of 1917, installed governments who declared in turn their support for Polish independence. In 1917, France formed the Blue Army (placed under Józef Haller) that comprised about 70,000 Poles by the end of the war, including men captured from German and Austrian units and 20,000 volunteers from the United States. There was also a 30,000-men strong Polish anti-German army in Russia. Dmowski, operating from Paris as head of the Polish National Committee (KNP), became the spokesman for Polish nationalism in the Allied camp. On the initiative of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, Polish independence was officially endorsed by the Allies in June 1918.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In all, about two million Poles served in the war, counting both sides, and about 400–450,000 died. Much of the fighting on the Eastern Front took place in Poland, and civilian casualties and devastation were high.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The final push for independence of Poland took place on the ground in October–November 1918. Near the end of the war, Austro-Hungarian and German units were being disarmed, and the Austrian army's collapse freed Cieszyn and Kraków at the end of October. Lviv was then contested in the Polish–Ukrainian War of 1918–1919. Ignacy Daszyński headed the first short-lived independent Polish government in Lublin from 7 November, the leftist Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland, proclaimed as a democracy. Germany, now defeated, was forced by the Allies to stand down its large military forces in Poland. Overtaken by the German Revolution of 1918–1919 at home, the Germans released Piłsudski from prison. He arrived in Warsaw on 10 November and was granted extensive authority by the Regency Council; Piłsudski's authority was also recognized by the Lublin government. On 22 November, he became the temporary head of state. Piłsudski was held by many in high regard, but was resented by the right-wing National Democrats. The emerging Polish state was internally divided, heavily war-damaged and economically dysfunctional.",
"title": "Partitioned Poland (1795–1918)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "After more than a century of foreign rule, Poland regained its independence at the end of World War I as one of the outcomes of the negotiations that took place at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The Treaty of Versailles that emerged from the conference set up an independent Polish nation with an outlet to the sea, but left some of its boundaries to be decided by plebiscites. The largely German-inhabited Free City of Danzig was granted a separate status that guaranteed its use as a port by Poland. In the end, the settlement of the German-Polish border turned out to be a prolonged and convoluted process. The dispute helped engender the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918–1919, the three Silesian uprisings of 1919–1921, the East Prussian plebiscite of 1920, the Upper Silesia plebiscite of 1921 and the 1922 Silesian Convention in Geneva.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Other boundaries were settled by war and subsequent treaties. A total of six border wars were fought in 1918–1921, including the Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts over Cieszyn Silesia in January 1919.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "As distressing as these border conflicts were, the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921 was the most important series of military actions of the era. Piłsudski had entertained far-reaching anti-Russian cooperative designs in Eastern Europe, and in 1919 the Polish forces pushed eastward into Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine by taking advantage of the Russian preoccupation with a civil war, but they were soon confronted with the Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919. Western Ukraine was already a theater of the Polish–Ukrainian War, which eliminated the proclaimed West Ukrainian People's Republic in July 1919. In the autumn of 1919, Piłsudski rejected urgent pleas from the former Entente powers to support Anton Denikin's White movement in its advance on Moscow. The Polish–Soviet War proper began with the Polish Kiev offensive in April 1920. Allied with the Directorate of Ukraine of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Polish armies had advanced past Vilnius, Minsk and Kiev by June. At that time, a massive Soviet counter-offensive pushed the Poles out of most of Ukraine. On the northern front, the Soviet army reached the outskirts of Warsaw in early August. A Soviet triumph and the quick end of Poland seemed inevitable. However, the Poles scored a stunning victory at the Battle of Warsaw (1920). Afterwards, more Polish military successes followed, and the Soviets had to pull back. They left swathes of territory populated largely by Belarusians or Ukrainians to Polish rule. The new eastern boundary was finalized by the Peace of Riga in March 1921.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The defeat of the Russian armies forced Vladimir Lenin and the Soviet leadership to postpone their strategic objective of linking up with the German and other European revolutionary leftist collaborators to spread communist revolution. Lenin also hoped for generating support for the Red Army in Poland, which failed to materialize.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Piłsudski's seizure of Vilnius in October 1920 (known as Żeligowski's Mutiny) was a nail in the coffin of the already poor Lithuania–Poland relations that had been strained by the Polish–Lithuanian War of 1919–1920; both states would remain hostile to one another for the remainder of the interwar period. Piłsudski's concept of Intermarium (an East European federation of states inspired by the tradition of the multiethnic Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that would include a hypothetical multinational successor state to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) had the fatal flaw of being incompatible with his assumption of Polish domination, which would amount to an encroachment on the neighboring peoples' lands and aspirations. At the time of rising national movements, the plan thus ceased being a feature of Poland's politics. A larger federated structure was also opposed by Dmowski's National Democrats. Their representative at the Peace of Riga talks, Stanisław Grabski, opted for leaving Minsk, Berdychiv, Kamianets-Podilskyi and the surrounding areas on the Soviet side of the border. The National Democrats did not want to assume the lands they considered politically undesirable, as such territorial enlargement would result in a reduced proportion of citizens who were ethnically Polish.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The Peace of Riga settled the eastern border by preserving for Poland a substantial portion of the old Commonwealth's eastern territories at the cost of partitioning the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuania and Belarus) and Ukraine. The Ukrainians ended up with no state of their own and felt betrayed by the Riga arrangements; their resentment gave rise to extreme nationalism and anti-Polish hostility. The Kresy (or borderland) territories in the east won by 1921 would form the basis for a swap arranged and carried out by the Soviets in 1943–1945, who at that time compensated the re-emerging Polish state for the eastern lands lost to the Soviet Union with conquered areas of eastern Germany.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The successful outcome of the Polish–Soviet War gave Poland a false sense of its prowess as a self-sufficient military power and encouraged the government to try to resolve international problems through imposed unilateral solutions. The territorial and ethnic policies of the interwar period contributed to bad relations with most of Poland's neighbors and uneasy cooperation with more distant centers of power, especially France and Great Britain.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Among the chief difficulties faced by the government of the new Polish republic was the lack of an integrated infrastructure among the formerly separate partitions, a deficiency that disrupted industry, transportation, trade, and other areas.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The first Polish legislative election for the re-established Sejm (national parliament) took place in January 1919. A temporary Small Constitution was passed by the body the following month.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The rapidly growing population of Poland within its new boundaries was three-fourths agricultural and one-fourth urban; Polish was the primary language of only two thirds of the inhabitants of the new country. The minorities had very little voice in the government. The permanent March Constitution of Poland was adopted in March 1921. At the insistence of the National Democrats, who were concerned about how aggressively Józef Piłsudski might exercise presidential powers if he were elected to office, the constitution mandated limited prerogatives for the presidency.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The proclamation of the March Constitution was followed by a short and turbulent period of constitutional order and parliamentary democracy that lasted until 1926. The legislature remained fragmented, without stable majorities, and governments changed frequently. The open-minded Gabriel Narutowicz was elected president according to the Constitution by the National Assembly in 1922, without popular vote. However, members of the nationalist right-wing faction did not regard his elevation as legitimate. They viewed Narutowicz rather as a traitor whose election was pushed through by the votes of alien minorities. Narutowicz and his supporters were subjected to an intense harassment campaign, and the president was assassinated on 16 December 1922, after serving only five days in office.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Land reform measures were passed in 1919 and 1925 under pressure from an impoverished peasantry. They were partially implemented, but resulted in the parcellation of only 20% of the great agricultural estates. Poland endured numerous economic calamities and disruptions in the early 1920s, including waves of workers' strikes such as the 1923 Kraków riot. The German–Polish customs war, initiated by Germany in 1925, was one of the most damaging external factors that put a strain on Poland's economy. On the other hand, there were also signs of progress and stabilization, for example a critical reform of finances carried out by the competent government of Władysław Grabski, which lasted almost two years. Certain other achievements of the democratic period having to do with the management of governmental and civic institutions necessary to the functioning of the reunited state and nation were too easily overlooked. Lurking on the sidelines was a disgusted army officer corps unwilling to subject itself to civilian control, but ready to follow the retired Piłsudski, who was highly popular with Poles and just as dissatisfied with the Polish system of government as his former colleagues in the military.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "On 12 May 1926, Piłsudski staged the May Coup, a military overthrow of the civilian government mounted against President Stanisław Wojciechowski and the troops loyal to the legitimate government. Hundreds died in fratricidal fighting. Piłsudski was supported by several leftist factions who ensured the success of his coup by blocking the railway transportation of government forces. He also had the support of the conservative great landowners, a move that left the right-wing National Democrats as the only major social force opposed to the takeover.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Following the coup, the new regime initially respected many parliamentary formalities, but gradually tightened its control and abandoned pretenses. The Centrolew, a coalition of center-left parties, was formed in 1929, and in 1930 called for the \"abolition of dictatorship\". In 1930, the Sejm was dissolved and a number of opposition deputies were imprisoned at the Brest Fortress. Five thousand political opponents were arrested ahead of the Polish legislative election of 1930, which was rigged to award a majority of seats to the pro-regime Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR).",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The authoritarian Sanation regime (\"sanation\" meant to denote \"healing\") that Piłsudski led until his death in 1935 (and would remain in place until 1939) reflected the dictator's evolution from his center-left past to conservative alliances. Political institutions and parties were allowed to function, but the electoral process was manipulated and those not willing to cooperate submissively were subjected to repression. From 1930, persistent opponents of the regime, many of the leftist persuasion, were imprisoned and subjected to staged legal processes with harsh sentences, such as the Brest trials, or else detained in the Bereza Kartuska prison and similar camps for political prisoners. About three thousand were detained without trial at different times at the Bereza internment camp between 1934 and 1939. In 1936 for example, 369 activists were taken there, including 342 Polish communists. Rebellious peasants staged riots in 1932, 1933 and the 1937 peasant strike in Poland. Other civil disturbances were caused by striking industrial workers (e.g. events of the \"Bloody Spring\" of 1936), nationalist Ukrainians and the activists of the incipient Belarusian movement. All became targets of ruthless police-military pacification. Besides sponsoring political repression, the regime fostered Józef Piłsudski's cult of personality that had already existed long before he assumed dictatorial powers.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Piłsudski signed the Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact in 1932 and the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression in 1934, but in 1933 he insisted that there was no threat from the East or West and said that Poland's politics were focused on becoming fully independent without serving foreign interests. He initiated the policy of maintaining an equal distance and an adjustable middle course regarding the two great neighbors, later continued by Józef Beck. Piłsudski kept personal control of the army, but it was poorly equipped, poorly trained and had poor preparations in place for possible future conflicts. His only war plan was a defensive war against a Soviet invasion. The slow modernization after Piłsudski's death fell far behind the progress made by Poland's neighbors and measures to protect the western border, discontinued by Piłsudski from 1926, were not undertaken until March 1939.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Sanation deputies in the Sejm used a parliamentary maneuver to abolish the democratic March Constitution and push through a more authoritarian April Constitution in 1935; it reduced the powers of the Sejm, which Piłsudski despised. The process and the resulting document were seen as illegitimate by the anti-Sanation opposition, but during World War II, the Polish government-in-exile recognized the April Constitution in order to uphold the legal continuity of the Polish state.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Between 1932 and 1933 Piłsudski and Beck initiated several incidents along the borders with Germany and Danzig, both to test whether Western powers would protect the Versailles arrangements (on which Polish security depended), and as preparation for a preventative war against Germany. At the same time they sent emissaries to London and Paris, looking for their support in stopping Germany's rearmament effort. An invasion to Danzig by Poland was scheduled for April 21, 1933, but the amassing of troops was discovered and the invasion was postponed. At the time an invasion by Poland would have posed a serious military threat to Germany, but with the British rejecting the idea (in favor of the Four-Power Pact), and with wavering support from the French, the Poles had eventually reneged on the idea of invasion. Between 1933 and 1934 Germany would increase its armament expenditures by 68%, and by January 1934 the two powers would sign a ten-year non-aggression pact.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "When Marshal Piłsudski died in 1935, he retained the support of dominant sections of Polish society even though he never risked testing his popularity in an honest election. His regime was dictatorial, but at that time only Czechoslovakia remained democratic in all of the regions neighboring Poland. Historians have taken widely divergent views of the meaning and consequences of the coup Piłsudski perpetrated and his personal rule that followed.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Independence stimulated the development of Polish culture in the Interbellum and intellectual achievement was high. Warsaw, whose population almost doubled between World War I and World War II, was a restless, burgeoning metropolis. It outpaced Kraków, Lwów and Wilno, the other major population centers of the country.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Mainstream Polish society was not affected by the repressions of the Sanation authorities overall; many Poles enjoyed relative stability, and the economy improved markedly between 1926 and 1929, only to become caught up in the global Great Depression. After 1929, the country's industrial production and gross national income slumped by about 50%.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The Great Depression brought low prices for farmers and unemployment for workers. Social tensions increased, including rising antisemitism. A major economic transformation and multi-year state plan to achieve national industrial development, as embodied in the Central Industrial Region initiative launched in 1936, was led by Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. Motivated primarily by the need for a native arms industry, the initiative was in progress at the time of the outbreak of World War II. Kwiatkowski was also the main architect of the earlier Gdynia seaport project.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The prevalent in political circles nationalism was fueled by the large size of Poland's minority populations and their separate agendas. According to the language criterion of the Polish census of 1931, the Poles constituted 69% of the population, Ukrainians 15%, Jews (defined as speakers of the Yiddish language) 8.5%, Belarusians 4.7%, Germans 2.2%, Lithuanians 0.25%, Russians 0.25% and Czechs 0.09%, with some geographical areas dominated by a particular minority. In time, the ethnic conflicts intensified, and the Polish state grew less tolerant of the interests of its national minorities. In interwar Poland, compulsory free general education substantially reduced illiteracy rates, but discrimination was practiced in a way that resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of Ukrainian language schools and official restrictions on Jewish attendance at selected schools in the late 1930s.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The population grew steadily, reaching 35 million in 1939. However, the overall economic situation in the interwar period was one of stagnation. There was little money for investment inside Poland, and few foreigners were interested in investing there. Total industrial production barely increased between 1913 and 1939 (within the area delimited by the 1939 borders), but because of population growth (from 26.3 million in 1919 to 34.8 million in 1939), the per capita output actually decreased by 18%.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Conditions in the predominant agricultural sector kept deteriorating between 1929 and 1939, which resulted in rural unrest and a progressive radicalization of the Polish peasant movement that became increasingly inclined toward militant anti-state activities. It was firmly repressed by the authorities. According to Norman Davies, the failures of the Sanation regime (combined with the objective economic realities) caused a radicalization of the Polish masses by the end of the 1930s, but he warns against drawing parallels with the incomparably more repressive regimes of Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "After Piłsudski's death in 1935, Poland was governed until (and initially during) the German invasion of 1939 by old allies and subordinates known as \"Piłsudski's colonels\". They had neither the vision nor the resources to cope with the perilous situation facing Poland in the late 1930s. The colonels had gradually assumed greater powers during Piłsudski's life by manipulating the ailing marshal behind the scenes. Eventually they achieved an overt politicization of the army that did nothing to help prepare the country for war.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Foreign policy was the responsibility of Józef Beck, under whom Polish diplomacy attempted balanced approaches toward Germany and the Soviet Union, without success, on the basis of a flawed understanding of the European geopolitics of his day. Beck had numerous foreign policy schemes and harbored illusions of Poland's status as a great power. He alienated most of Poland's neighbors, but is not blamed by historians for the ultimate failure of relations with Germany. The principal events of his tenure were concentrated in its last two years. In the case of the 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania, the Polish action nearly resulted in a German takeover of southwest Lithuania, the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory), which had a largely German population. Also in 1938, the Polish government opportunistically undertook a hostile action against the Czechoslovak state as weakened by the Munich Agreement and annexed a small piece of territory on its borders. In this case, Beck's understanding of the consequences of the Polish military move turned out to be completely mistaken, because in the end the German occupation of Czechoslovakia markedly weakened Poland's own position. Furthermore, Beck erroneously believed that Nazi-Soviet ideological contradictions would preclude their cooperation.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "At home, increasingly alienated and suppressed minorities threatened unrest and violence. Extreme nationalist circles such as the National Radical Camp grew more outspoken. One of the groups, the Camp of National Unity, combined many nationalists with Sanation supporters and was connected to the new strongman, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, whose faction of the Sanation ruling movement was increasingly nationalistic.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "In the late 1930s, the exile bloc Front Morges united several major Polish anti-Sanation figures, including Ignacy Paderewski, Władysław Sikorski, Wincenty Witos, Wojciech Korfanty and Józef Haller. It gained little influence inside Poland, but its spirit soon reappeared during World War II, within the Polish government-in-exile.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "In October 1938, Joachim von Ribbentrop first proposed German-Polish territorial adjustments and Poland's participation in the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union. The status of the Free City of Danzig was one of the key bones of contention. Approached by Ribbentrop again in March 1939, the Polish government expressed willingness to address issues causing German concern, but effectively rejected Germany's stated demands and thus refused to allow Poland to be turned by Adolf Hitler into a German puppet state. Hitler, incensed by the British and French declarations of support for Poland, abrogated the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression in late April 1939.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "To protect itself from an increasingly aggressive Nazi Germany, already responsible for the annexations of Austria (in the Anschluss of 1938), Czechoslovakia (in 1939) and a part of Lithuania after the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania, Poland entered into a military alliance with Britain and France (the 1939 Anglo-Polish military alliance and the Franco-Polish alliance (1921), as updated in 1939). However, the two Western powers were defense-oriented and not in a strong position, either geographically or in terms of resources, to assist Poland. Attempts were therefore made by them to induce Soviet-Polish cooperation, which they viewed as the only militarily viable arrangement.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Diplomatic manoeuvers continued in the spring and summer of 1939, but in their final attempts, the Franco-British talks with the Soviets in Moscow on forming an anti-Nazi defensive military alliance failed. Warsaw's refusal to allow the Red Army to operate on Polish territory doomed the Western efforts. The final contentious Allied-Soviet exchanges took place on 21 and 23 August 1939. The regime of Joseph Stalin was the target of an intense German counter-initiative and was concurrently involved in increasingly effective negotiations with Hitler's agents. On 23 August, an outcome contrary to the exertions of the Allies became a reality: in Moscow, Germany and the Soviet Union hurriedly signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi- and Soviet-controlled zones.",
"title": "Second Polish Republic (1918–1939)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "On 1 September 1939, Hitler ordered an invasion of Poland, the opening event of World War II. Poland had signed an Anglo-Polish military alliance as recently as the 25th of August, and had long been in alliance with France. The two Western powers soon declared war on Germany, but they remained largely inactive (the period early in the conflict became known as the Phoney War) and extended no aid to the attacked country. The technically and numerically superior Wehrmacht formations rapidly advanced eastwards and engaged massively in the murder of Polish civilians over the entire occupied territory. On 17 September, a Soviet invasion of Poland began. The Soviet Union quickly occupied most of the areas of eastern Poland that were inhabited by a significant Ukrainian and Belarusian minority. The two invading powers divided up the country as they had agreed in the secret provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Poland's top government officials and military high command fled the war zone and arrived at the Romanian Bridgehead in mid-September. After the Soviet entry they sought refuge in Romania.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Among the military operations in which Poles held out the longest (until late September or early October) were the Siege of Warsaw, the Battle of Hel and the resistance of the Independent Operational Group Polesie. Warsaw fell on 27 September after a heavy German bombardment that killed tens of thousands civilians and soldiers. Poland was ultimately partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union according to the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty signed by the two powers in Moscow on 29 September.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Gerhard Weinberg has argued that the most significant Polish contribution to World War II was sharing its code-breaking results. This allowed the British to perform the cryptanalysis of the Enigma and decipher the main German military code, which gave the Allies a major advantage in the conflict. As regards actual military campaigns, some Polish historians have argued that simply resisting the initial invasion of Poland was the country's greatest contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, despite its defeat. The Polish Army of nearly one million men significantly delayed the start of the Battle of France, planned by the Germans for 1939. When the Nazi offensive in the West did happen, the delay caused it to be less effective, a possibly crucial factor in the victory of the Battle of Britain.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "After Germany invaded the Soviet Union as part of its Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the whole of pre-war Poland was overrun and occupied by German troops.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "German-occupied Poland was divided from 1939 into two regions: Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany directly into the German Reich and areas ruled under a so-called General Government of occupation. The Poles formed an underground resistance movement and a Polish government-in-exile that operated first in Paris, then, from July 1940, in London. Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations, broken since September 1939, were resumed in July 1941 under the Sikorski–Mayski agreement, which facilitated the formation of a Polish army (the Anders' Army) in the Soviet Union. In November 1941, Prime Minister Sikorski flew to the Soviet Union to negotiate with Stalin on its role on the Soviet-German front, but the British wanted the Polish soldiers in the Middle East. Stalin agreed, and the army was evacuated there.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The organizations forming the Polish Underground State that functioned in Poland throughout the war were loyal to and formally under the Polish government-in-exile, acting through its Government Delegation for Poland. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Poles joined the underground Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), a part of the Polish Armed Forces of the government-in-exile. About 200,000 Poles fought on the Western Front in the Polish Armed Forces in the West loyal to the government-in-exile, and about 300,000 in the Polish Armed Forces in the East under the Soviet command on the Eastern Front. The pro-Soviet resistance movement in Poland, led by the Polish Workers' Party, was active from 1941. It was opposed by the gradually forming extreme nationalistic National Armed Forces.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Beginning in late 1939, hundreds of thousands of Poles from the Soviet-occupied areas were deported and taken east. Of the upper-ranking military personnel and others deemed uncooperative or potentially harmful by the Soviets, about 22,000 were secretly executed by them at the Katyn massacre. In April 1943, the Soviet Union broke off deteriorating relations with the Polish government-in-exile after the German military announced the discovery of mass graves containing murdered Polish army officers. The Soviets claimed that the Poles committed a hostile act by requesting that the Red Cross investigate these reports.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "From 1941, the implementation of the Nazi Final Solution began, and the Holocaust in Poland proceeded with force. Warsaw was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April–May 1943, triggered by the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto by German SS units. The elimination of Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland took place in many cities. As the Jewish people were being removed to be exterminated, uprisings were waged against impossible odds by the Jewish Combat Organization and other desperate Jewish insurgents.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "At a time of increasing cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union in the wake of the Nazi invasion of 1941, the influence of the Polish government-in-exile was seriously diminished by the death of Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski, its most capable leader, in a plane crash on 4 July 1943. Around that time, Polish-communist civilian and military organizations opposed to the government, led by Wanda Wasilewska and supported by Stalin, were formed in the Soviet Union.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "In July 1944, the Soviet Red Army and Soviet-controlled Polish People's Army entered the territory of future postwar Poland. In protracted fighting in 1944 and 1945, the Soviets and their Polish allies defeated and expelled the German army from Poland at a cost of over 600,000 Soviet soldiers lost.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The greatest single undertaking of the Polish resistance movement in World War II and a major political event was the Warsaw Uprising that began on 1 August 1944. The uprising, in which most of the city's population participated, was instigated by the underground Home Army and approved by the Polish government-in-exile in an attempt to establish a non-communist Polish administration ahead of the arrival of the Red Army. The uprising was originally planned as a short-lived armed demonstration in expectation that the Soviet forces approaching Warsaw would assist in any battle to take the city. The Soviets had never agreed to an intervention, however, and they halted their advance at the Vistula River. The Germans used the opportunity to carry out a brutal suppression of the forces of the pro-Western Polish underground.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The bitterly fought uprising lasted for two months and resulted in the death or expulsion from the city of hundreds of thousands of civilians. After the defeated Poles surrendered on 2 October, the Germans carried out a planned destruction of Warsaw on Hitler's orders that obliterated the remaining infrastructure of the city. The Polish First Army, fighting alongside the Soviet Red Army, entered a devastated Warsaw on 17 January 1945.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "From the time of the Tehran Conference in late 1943, there was broad agreement among the three Great Powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) that the locations of the borders between Germany and Poland and between Poland and the Soviet Union would be fundamentally changed after the conclusion of World War II. Stalin's view that Poland should be moved far to the west was accepted by Polish communists, whose organizations included the Polish Workers' Party and the Union of Polish Patriots. The communist-led State National Council, a quasi-parliamentary body, was in existence in Warsaw from the beginning of 1944. In July 1944, a communist-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation was established in Lublin, to nominally govern the areas liberated from German control. The move prompted protests from Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk and his Polish government-in-exile.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "By the time of the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the communists had already established a Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland. The Soviet position at the conference was strong because of their decisive contribution to the war effort and as a result of their occupation of immense amounts of land in central and eastern Europe. The Great Powers gave assurances that the communist provisional government would be converted into an entity that would include democratic forces from within the country and active abroad, but the London-based government-in-exile was not mentioned. A Provisional Government of National Unity and subsequent democratic elections were the agreed stated goals. The disappointing results of these plans and the failure of the Western powers to ensure a strong participation of non-communists in the immediate post-war Polish government were seen by many Poles as a manifestation of Western betrayal.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "A lack of accurate data makes it difficult to document numerically the extent of the human losses suffered by Polish citizens during World War II. Additionally, many assertions made in the past must be considered suspect due to flawed methodology and a desire to promote certain political agendas. The last available enumeration of ethnic Poles and the large ethnic minorities is the Polish census of 1931. Exact population figures for 1939 are therefore not known.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, at least 3 million Polish Jews and at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians were killed. According to the historians Brzoza and Sowa, about 2 million ethnic Poles were killed, but it is not known, even approximately, how many Polish citizens of other ethnicities perished, including Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Germans. Millions of Polish citizens were deported to Germany for forced labor or to German extermination camps such as Treblinka, Auschwitz and Sobibór. Nazi Germany intended to exterminate the Jews completely, in actions that have come to be described collectively as the Holocaust. The Poles were to be expelled from areas controlled by Nazi Germany through a process of resettlement that started in 1939. Such Nazi operations matured into a plan known as the Generalplan Ost that amounted to displacement, enslavement and partial extermination of the Slavic people and was expected to be completed within 15 years.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "The majority of Poles remained indifferent to the Jewish plight, and neither assisted nor persecuted Jews. Of those who have helped rescue, shelter and protect Jews from the Nazi atrocity, Yad Vashem and the State of Israel have recognized 6,992 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In an attempt to incapacitate Polish society, the Nazis and the Soviets executed tens of thousands of members of the intelligentsia and community leadership during events such as the German AB-Aktion in Poland, Operation Tannenberg and the Katyn massacre. Over 95% of the Jewish losses and 90% of the ethnic Polish losses were caused directly by Nazi Germany, whereas 5% of the ethnic Polish losses were caused by the Soviets and 5% by Ukrainian nationalists. The large-scale Jewish presence in Poland that had endured for centuries was rather quickly put to an end by the policies of extermination implemented by the Nazis during the war. Waves of displacement and emigration that took place both during and after the war removed from Poland a majority of the Jews who survived. Further significant Jewish emigration followed events such as the Polish October political thaw of 1956 and the 1968 Polish political crisis.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In 1940–1941, some 325,000 Polish citizens were deported by the Soviet regime. The number of Polish citizens who died at the hands of the Soviets is estimated at less than 100,000.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "In 1943–1944, Ukrainian nationalists associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army perpetrated the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Estimates of the number of Polish civilian victims vary greatly, from tens to hundreds of thousands.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Approximately 90% of Poland's war casualties were the victims of prisons, death camps, raids, executions, the annihilation of ghettos, epidemics, starvation, excessive work and ill treatment. The war left one million children orphaned and 590,000 persons disabled. The country lost 38% of its national assets (whereas Britain lost only 0.8%, and France only 1.5%). Nearly half of pre-war Poland was expropriated by the Soviet Union, including the two great cultural centers of Lwów and Wilno.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "The policies of Nazi Germany have been judged after the war by the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials and Polish genocide trials to be aimed at extermination of Jews, Poles and Roma, and to have \"all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term\".",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "By the terms of the 1945 Potsdam Agreement signed by the three victorious Great Powers, the Soviet Union retained most of the territories captured as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, including western Ukraine and western Belarus, and gained others. Lithuania and the Königsberg area of East Prussia were officially incorporated into the Soviet Union, in the case of the former without the recognition of the Western powers.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Poland was compensated with the bulk of Silesia, including Breslau (Wrocław) and Grünberg (Zielona Góra), the bulk of Pomerania, including Stettin (Szczecin), and the greater southern portion of the former East Prussia, along with Danzig (Gdańsk), pending a final peace conference with Germany which eventually never took place. Collectively referred to by the Polish authorities as the \"Recovered Territories\", they were included in the reconstituted Polish state. With Germany's defeat Poland was thus shifted west in relation to its prewar location, to the area between the Oder–Neisse and Curzon lines, which resulted in a country more compact and with much broader access to the sea. The Poles lost 70% of their pre-war oil capacity to the Soviets, but gained from the Germans a highly developed industrial base and infrastructure that made a diversified industrial economy possible for the first time in Polish history.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The flight and expulsion of Germans from what was eastern Germany prior to the war began before and during the Soviet conquest of those regions from the Nazis, and the process continued in the years immediately after the war. 8,030,000 Germans were evacuated, expelled, or migrated by 1950.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Early expulsions in Poland were undertaken by the Polish communist authorities even before the Potsdam Conference (the \"wild expulsions\" from June to mid July 1945, when the Polish military and militia expelled nearly all people from the districts immediately east of the Oder–Neisse line), to ensure the establishment of ethnically homogeneous Poland. About 1% (100,000) of the German civilian population east of the Oder–Neisse line perished in the fighting prior to the surrender in May 1945, and afterwards some 200,000 Germans in Poland were employed as forced labor prior to being expelled. Many Germans died in labor camps such as the Zgoda labour camp and the Potulice camp. Of those Germans who remained within the new borders of Poland, many later chose to emigrate to post-war Germany.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "On the other hand, 1.5–2 million ethnic Poles moved or were expelled from the previously Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. The vast majority were resettled in the former German territories. At least one million Poles remained in what had become the Soviet Union, and at least half a million ended up in the West or elsewhere outside of Poland. However, contrary to the official declaration that the former German inhabitants of the Recovered Territories had to be removed quickly to house Poles displaced by the Soviet annexation, the Recovered Territories initially faced a severe population shortage.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Many exiled Poles could not return to the country for which they had fought because they belonged to political groups incompatible with the new communist regimes, or because they originated from areas of pre-war eastern Poland that were incorporated into the Soviet Union (see Polish population transfers (1944–1946)). Some were deterred from returning simply on the strength of warnings that anyone who had served in military units in the West would be endangered. Many Poles were pursued, arrested, tortured and imprisoned by the Soviet authorities for belonging to the Home Army or other formations (see Anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944–1946)), or were persecuted because they had fought on the Western front.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Territories on both sides of the new Polish-Ukrainian border were also \"ethnically cleansed\". Of the Ukrainians and Lemkos living in Poland within the new borders (about 700,000), close to 95% were forcibly moved to the Soviet Ukraine, or (in 1947) to the new territories in northern and western Poland under Operation Vistula. In Volhynia, 98% of the Polish pre-war population was either killed or expelled; in Eastern Galicia, the Polish population was reduced by 92%. According to Timothy D. Snyder, about 70,000 Poles and about 20,000 Ukrainians were killed in the ethnic violence that occurred in the 1940s, both during and after the war.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "According to an estimate by historian Jan Grabowski, about 50,000 of the 250,000 Polish Jews who escaped the Nazis during the liquidation of ghettos survived without leaving Poland (the remainder perished). More were repatriated from the Soviet Union and elsewhere, and the February 1946 population census showed about 300,000 Jews within Poland's new borders. Of the surviving Jews, many chose to emigrate or felt compelled to because of the anti-Jewish violence in Poland.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Because of changing borders and the mass movements of people of various nationalities, the emerging communist Poland ended up with a mainly homogeneous, ethnically Polish population (97.6% according to the December 1950 census). The remaining members of ethnic minorities were not encouraged, by the authorities or by their neighbors, to emphasize their ethnic identities.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "In response to the February 1945 Yalta Conference directives, a Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in June 1945 under Soviet auspices; it was soon recognized by the United States and many other countries. The Soviet domination was apparent from the beginning, as prominent leaders of the Polish Underground State were brought to trial in Moscow (the \"Trial of the Sixteen\" of June 1945). In the immediate post-war years, the emerging communist rule was challenged by opposition groups, including militarily by the so-called \"cursed soldiers\", of whom thousands perished in armed confrontations or were pursued by the Ministry of Public Security and executed. Such guerillas often pinned their hopes on expectations of an imminent outbreak of World War III and defeat of the Soviet Union. The Polish right-wing insurgency faded after the amnesty of February 1947.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "The Polish people's referendum of June 1946 was arranged by the communist Polish Workers' Party to legitimize its dominance in Polish politics and claim widespread support for the party's policies. Although the Yalta agreement called for free elections, the Polish legislative election of January 1947 was controlled by the communists. Some democratic and pro-Western elements, led by Stanisław Mikołajczyk, former prime minister-in-exile, participated in the Provisional Government and the 1947 elections, but were ultimately eliminated through electoral fraud, intimidation and violence. In times of severe political confrontation and radical economic change, members of Mikołajczyk's agrarian movement (the Polish People's Party) attempted to preserve the existing aspects of mixed economy and protect property and other rights. However, after the 1947 elections, the Government of National Unity ceased to exist and the communists moved towards abolishing the post-war partially pluralistic \"people's democracy\" and replacing it with a state socialist system. The communist-dominated front Democratic Bloc of the 1947 elections, turned into the Front of National Unity in 1952, became officially the source of governmental authority. The Polish government-in-exile, lacking international recognition, remained in continuous existence until 1990.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "The Polish People's Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) was established under the rule of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The name change from the Polish Republic was not officially adopted, however, until the proclamation of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic in 1952.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "The ruling PZPR was formed by the forced amalgamation in December 1948 of the communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR) and the historically non-communist Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The PPR chief had been its wartime leader Władysław Gomułka, who in 1947 declared a \"Polish road to socialism\" as intended to curb, rather than eradicate, capitalist elements. In 1948 he was overruled, removed and imprisoned by Stalinist authorities. The PPS, re-established in 1944 by its left wing, had since been allied with the communists. The ruling communists, who in post-war Poland preferred to use the term \"socialism\" instead of \"communism\" to identify their ideological basis, needed to include the socialist junior partner to broaden their appeal, claim greater legitimacy and eliminate competition on the political Left. The socialists, who were losing their organization, were subjected to political pressure, ideological cleansing and purges in order to become suitable for unification on the terms of the PPR. The leading pro-communist leaders of the socialists were the prime ministers Edward Osóbka-Morawski and Józef Cyrankiewicz.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "During the most oppressive phase of the Stalinist period (1948–1953), terror was justified in Poland as necessary to eliminate reactionary subversion. Many thousands of perceived opponents of the regime were arbitrarily tried and large numbers were executed. The People's Republic was led by discredited Soviet operatives such as Bolesław Bierut, Jakub Berman and Konstantin Rokossovsky. The independent Catholic Church in Poland was subjected to property confiscations and other curtailments from 1949, and in 1950 was pressured into signing an accord with the government. In 1953 and later, despite a partial thaw after the death of Stalin that year, the persecution of the Church intensified and its head, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, was detained. A key event in the persecution of the Polish Church was the Stalinist show trial of the Kraków Curia in January 1953.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "In the Warsaw Pact, formed in 1955, the Polish Army was the second largest, after the Soviet Army.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "In 1944, large agricultural holdings and former German property in Poland started to be redistributed through land reform, and industry started to be nationalized. Communist restructuring and the imposition of work-space rules encountered active worker opposition already in the years 1945–1947. The moderate Three-Year Plan of 1947–1949 continued with the rebuilding, socialization and socialist restructuring of the economy. It was followed by the Six-Year Plan of 1950–1955 for heavy industry. The rejection of the Marshall Plan in 1947 made aspirations for catching up with West European standards of living unrealistic.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "The government's highest economic priority was the development of heavy industry useful to the military. State-run or controlled institutions common in all the socialist countries of eastern Europe were imposed on Poland, including collective farms and worker cooperatives. The latter were dismantled in the late 1940s as not socialist enough, although they were later re-established; even small-scale private enterprises were eradicated. Stalinism introduced heavy political and ideological propaganda and indoctrination in social life, culture and education.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "Great strides were made, however, in the areas of employment (which became nearly full), universal public education (which nearly eradicated adult illiteracy), health care and recreational amenities. Many historic sites, including the central districts of Warsaw and Gdańsk, both devastated during the war, were rebuilt at great cost.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "The communist industrialization program led to increased urbanization and educational and career opportunities for the intended beneficiaries of the social transformation, along the lines of the peasants-workers-working intelligentsia paradigm. The most significant improvement was accomplished in the lives of Polish peasants, many of whom were able to leave their impoverished and overcrowded village communities for better conditions in urban centers. Those who stayed behind took advantage of the implementation of the 1944 land reform decree of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, which terminated the antiquated but widespread parafeudal socioeconomic relations in Poland. The Stalinist attempts at establishing collective farms generally failed. Due to urbanization, the national percentage of the rural population decreased in communist Poland by about 50%. A majority of Poland's residents of cities and towns still live in apartment blocks built during the communist era, in part to accommodate migrants from rural areas.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "In March 1956, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow ushered in de-Stalinization, Edward Ochab was chosen to replace the deceased Bolesław Bierut as first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party. As a result, Poland was rapidly overtaken by social restlessness and reformist undertakings; thousands of political prisoners were released and many people previously persecuted were officially rehabilitated. Worker riots in Poznań in June 1956 were violently suppressed, but they gave rise to the formation of a reformist current within the communist party.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "Amidst the continuing social and national upheaval, a further shakeup took place in the party leadership as part of what is known as the Polish October of 1956. While retaining most traditional communist economic and social aims, the regime led by Władysław Gomułka, the new first secretary of the PZPR, liberalized internal life in Poland. The dependence on the Soviet Union was somewhat mollified, and the state's relationships with the Church and Catholic lay activists were put on a new footing. A repatriation agreement with the Soviet Union allowed the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Poles who were still in Soviet hands, including many former political prisoners. Collectivization efforts were abandoned—agricultural land, unlike in other Comecon countries, remained for the most part in the private ownership of farming families. State-mandated provisions of agricultural products at fixed, artificially low prices were reduced, and from 1972 eliminated.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "The legislative election of 1957 was followed by several years of political stability that was accompanied by economic stagnation and curtailment of reforms and reformists. One of the last initiatives of the brief reform era was a nuclear weapons–free zone in Central Europe proposed in 1957 by Adam Rapacki, Poland's foreign minister.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "Culture in the Polish People's Republic, to varying degrees linked to the intelligentsia's opposition to the authoritarian system, developed to a sophisticated level under Gomułka and his successors. The creative process was often compromised by state censorship, but significant works were created in fields such as literature, theater, cinema and music, among others. Journalism of veiled understanding and varieties of native and Western popular culture were well represented. Uncensored information and works generated by émigré circles were conveyed through a variety of channels. The Paris-based Kultura magazine developed a conceptual framework for dealing with the issues of borders and the neighbors of a future free Poland, but for ordinary Poles Radio Free Europe was of foremost importance.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "One of the confirmations of the end of an era of greater tolerance was the expulsion from the communist party of several prominent \"Marxist revisionists\" in the 1960s.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "In 1965, the Conference of Polish Bishops issued the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops, a gesture intended to heal bad mutual feelings left over from World War II. In 1966, the celebrations of the 1,000th anniversary of the Christianization of Poland led by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and other bishops turned into a huge demonstration of the power and popularity of the Catholic Church in Poland.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "The post-1956 liberalizing trend, in decline for a number of years, was reversed in March 1968, when student demonstrations were suppressed during the 1968 Polish political crisis. Motivated in part by the Prague Spring movement, the Polish opposition leaders, intellectuals, academics and students used a historical-patriotic Dziady theater spectacle series in Warsaw (and its termination forced by the authorities) as a springboard for protests, which soon spread to other centers of higher education and turned nationwide. The authorities responded with a major crackdown on opposition activity, including the firing of faculty and the dismissal of students at universities and other institutions of learning. At the center of the controversy was also the small number of Catholic deputies in the Sejm (the Znak Association members) who attempted to defend the students.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "In an official speech, Gomułka drew attention to the role of Jewish activists in the events taking place. This provided ammunition to a nationalistic and antisemitic communist party faction headed by Mieczysław Moczar that was opposed to Gomułka's leadership. Using the context of the military victory of Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, some in the Polish communist leadership waged an antisemitic campaign against the remnants of the Jewish community in Poland. The targets of this campaign were accused of disloyalty and active sympathy with Israeli aggression. Branded \"Zionists\", they were scapegoated and blamed for the unrest in March 1968, which eventually led to the emigration of much of Poland's remaining Jewish population (about 15,000 Polish citizens left the country).",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "With the active support of the Gomułka regime, the Polish People's Army took part in the infamous Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, after the Brezhnev Doctrine was informally announced.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "In the final major achievement of Gomułka diplomacy, the governments of Poland and West Germany signed in December 1970 the Treaty of Warsaw, which normalized their relations and made possible meaningful cooperation in a number of areas of bilateral interest. In particular, West Germany recognized the post-World War II de facto border between Poland and East Germany.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "Price increases for essential consumer goods triggered the Polish protests of 1970. In December, there were disturbances and strikes in the Baltic Sea port cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Szczecin that reflected deep dissatisfaction with living and working conditions in the country. The activity was centered in the industrial shipyard areas of the three coastal cities. Dozens of protesting workers and bystanders were killed in police and military actions, generally under the authority of Gomułka and Minister of Defense Wojciech Jaruzelski. In the aftermath, Edward Gierek replaced Gomułka as first secretary of the communist party. The new regime was seen as more modern, friendly and pragmatic, and at first it enjoyed a degree of popular and foreign support.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "To revitalize the economy, from 1971 the Gierek regime introduced wide-ranging reforms that involved large-scale foreign borrowing. These actions initially caused improved conditions for consumers, but in a few years the strategy backfired and the economy deteriorated. Another attempt to raise food prices resulted in the June 1976 protests. The Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), established in response to the crackdown that followed, consisted of dissident intellectuals determined to support industrial workers, farmers and students persecuted by the authorities. The opposition circles active in the late 1970s were emboldened by the Helsinki Conference processes.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "In October 1978, the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła, became Pope John Paul II, head of the Catholic Church. Catholics and others rejoiced at the elevation of a Pole to the papacy and greeted his June 1979 visit to Poland with an outpouring of emotion.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "Fueled by large infusions of Western credit, Poland's economic growth rate was one of the world's highest during the first half of the 1970s, but much of the borrowed capital was misspent, and the centrally planned economy was unable to use the new resources effectively. The 1973 oil crisis caused recession and high interest rates in the West, to which the Polish government had to respond with sharp domestic consumer price increases. The growing debt burden became insupportable in the late 1970s, and negative economic growth set in by 1979.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "Around 1 July 1980, with the Polish foreign debt standing at more than $20 billion, the government made yet another attempt to increase meat prices. Workers responded with escalating work stoppages that culminated in the 1980 general strikes in Lublin. In mid-August, labor protests at the Gdańsk Shipyard gave rise to a chain reaction of strikes that virtually paralyzed the Baltic coast by the end of the month and, for the first time, closed most coal mines in Silesia. The Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee coordinated the strike action across hundreds of workplaces and formulated the 21 demands as the basis for negotiations with the authorities. The Strike Committee was sovereign in its decision-making, but was aided by a team of \"expert\" advisers that included the well-known dissidents Jacek Kuroń, Karol Modzelewski, Bronisław Geremek and Tadeusz Mazowiecki.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "On 31 August 1980, representatives of workers at the Gdańsk Shipyard, led by an electrician and activist Lech Wałęsa, signed the Gdańsk Agreement with the government that ended their strike. Similar agreements were concluded in Szczecin (the Szczecin Agreement) and in Silesia. The key provision of these agreements was the guarantee of the workers' right to form independent trade unions and the right to strike. Following the successful resolution of the largest labor confrontation in communist Poland's history, nationwide union organizing movements swept the country.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "Edward Gierek was blamed by the Soviets for not following their \"fraternal\" advice, not shoring up the communist party and the official trade unions and allowing \"anti-socialist\" forces to emerge. On 5 September 1980, Gierek was replaced by Stanisław Kania as first secretary of the PZPR.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "Delegates of the emergent worker committees from all over Poland gathered in Gdańsk on 17 September and decided to form a single national union organization named \"Solidarity\".",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "While party–controlled courts took up the contentious issues of Solidarity's legal registration as a trade union (finalized by November 10), planning had already begun for the imposition of martial law. A parallel farmers' union was organized and strongly opposed by the regime, but Rural Solidarity was eventually registered (12 May 1981). In the meantime, a rapid deterioration of the authority of the communist party, disintegration of state power and escalation of demands and threats by the various Solidarity–affiliated groups were occurring. According to Kuroń, a \"tremendous social democratization movement in all spheres\" was taking place and could not be contained. Wałęsa had meetings with Kania, which brought no resolution to the impasse.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "Following the Warsaw Pact summit in Moscow, the Soviet Union proceeded with a massive military build-up along Poland's border in December 1980, but during the summit Kania forcefully argued with Leonid Brezhnev and other allied communists leaders against the feasibility of an external military intervention, and no action was taken. The United States, under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, repeatedly warned the Soviets about the consequences of a direct intervention, while discouraging an open insurrection in Poland and signaling to the Polish opposition that there would be no rescue by the NATO forces.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "In February 1981, Defense Minister General Wojciech Jaruzelski assumed the position of prime minister. The Solidarity social revolt had thus far been free of any major use of force, but in March 1981 in Bydgoszcz three activists were beaten up by the secret police. In a nationwide \"warning strike\" the 9.5-million-strong Solidarity union was supported by the population at large, but a general strike was called off by Wałęsa after the 30 March settlement with the government. Both Solidarity and the communist party were badly split and the Soviets were losing patience. Kania was re-elected at the Party Congress in July, but the collapse of the economy continued and so did the general disorder.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 168,
"text": "At the first Solidarity National Congress in September–October 1981 in Gdańsk, Lech Wałęsa was elected national chairman of the union with 55% of the vote. An appeal was issued to the workers of the other East European countries, urging them to follow in the footsteps of Solidarity. To the Soviets, the gathering was an \"anti-socialist and anti-Soviet orgy\" and the Polish communist leaders, increasingly led by Jaruzelski and General Czesław Kiszczak, were ready to apply force.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 169,
"text": "In October 1981, Jaruzelski was named first secretary of the PZPR. The Plenum's vote was 180 to 4, and he kept his government posts. Jaruzelski asked parliament to ban strikes and allow him to exercise extraordinary powers, but when neither request was granted, he decided to proceed with his plans anyway.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 170,
"text": "On 12–13 December 1981, the regime declared martial law in Poland, under which the army and the ZOMO special police forces were used to crush Solidarity. The Soviet leaders insisted that Jaruzelski pacifies the opposition with the forces at his disposal, without Soviet involvement. Almost all Solidarity leaders and many affiliated intellectuals were arrested or detained. Nine workers were killed in the Pacification of Wujek. The United States and other Western countries responded by imposing economic sanctions against Poland and the Soviet Union. Unrest in the country was subdued, but continued.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 171,
"text": "During martial law, Poland was ruled by the so-called Military Council of National Salvation. The open or semi-open opposition communications, as recently practiced, were replaced by underground publishing (known in the eastern bloc as Samizdat), and Solidarity was reduced to a few thousand underground activists.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 172,
"text": "Having achieved some semblance of stability, the Polish regime relaxed and then rescinded martial law over several stages. By December 1982 martial law was suspended and a small number of political prisoners, including Wałęsa, were released. Although martial law formally ended in July 1983 and a partial amnesty was enacted, several hundred political prisoners remained in jail. Jerzy Popiełuszko, a popular pro-Solidarity priest, was abducted and murdered by security functionaries in October 1984.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 173,
"text": "Further developments in Poland occurred concurrently with and were influenced by the reformist leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union (processes known as Glasnost and Perestroika). In September 1986, a general amnesty was declared and the government released nearly all political prisoners. However, the country lacked basic stability, as the regime's efforts to organize society from the top down had failed, while the opposition's attempts at creating an \"alternate society\" were also unsuccessful. With the economic crisis unresolved and societal institutions dysfunctional, both the ruling establishment and the opposition began looking for ways out of the stalemate. Facilitated by the indispensable mediation of the Catholic Church, exploratory contacts were established.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 174,
"text": "Student protests resumed in February 1988. Continuing economic decline led to strikes across the country in April, May and August. The Soviet Union, increasingly destabilized, was unwilling to apply military or other pressure to prop up allied regimes in trouble. The Polish government felt compelled to negotiate with the opposition and in September 1988 preliminary talks with Solidarity leaders ensued in Magdalenka. Numerous meetings that took place involved Wałęsa and General Kiszczak, among others. In November, the regime made a major public relations mistake by allowing a televised debate between Wałęsa and Alfred Miodowicz, chief of the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions, the official trade union organization. The fitful bargaining and intra-party squabbling led to the official Round Table Negotiations in 1989, followed by the Polish legislative election in June of that year, a watershed event marking the fall of communism in Poland.",
"title": "Polish People's Republic (1945–1989)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 175,
"text": "The Polish Round Table Agreement of April 1989 called for local self-government, policies of job guarantees, legalization of independent trade unions and many wide-ranging reforms. The current Sejm promptly implemented the deal and agreed to National Assembly elections that were set for 4 June and 18 June. Only 35% of the seats in the Sejm (national legislature's lower house) and all of the Senate seats were freely contested; the remaining Sejm seats (65%) were guaranteed for the communists and their allies.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 176,
"text": "The failure of the communists at the polls (almost all of the contested seats were won by the opposition) resulted in a political crisis. The new April Novelization to the constitution called for re-establishment of the Polish presidency and on 19 July the National Assembly elected the communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, to that office. His election, seen at the time as politically necessary, was barely accomplished with tacit support from some Solidarity deputies, and the new president's position was not strong. Moreover, the unexpected definitiveness of the parliamentary election results created new political dynamics and attempts by the communists to form a government failed.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 177,
"text": "On 19 August, President Jaruzelski asked journalist and Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to form a government; on 12 September, the Sejm voted approval of Prime Minister Mazowiecki and his cabinet. Mazowiecki decided to leave the economic reform entirely in the hands of economic liberals led by the new Deputy Prime Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, who proceeded with the design and implementation of his \"shock therapy\" policy. For the first time in post-war history, Poland had a government led by non-communists, setting a precedent soon to be followed by other Eastern Bloc nations in a phenomenon known as the Revolutions of 1989. Mazowiecki's acceptance of the \"thick line\" formula meant that there would be no \"witch-hunt\", i.e., an absence of revenge seeking or exclusion from politics in regard to former communist officials.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 178,
"text": "In part because of the attempted indexation of wages, inflation reached 900% by the end of 1989, but was soon dealt with by means of radical methods. In December 1989, the Sejm approved the Balcerowicz Plan to transform the Polish economy rapidly from a centrally planned one to a free market economy. The Constitution of the Polish People's Republic was amended to eliminate references to the \"leading role\" of the communist party and the country was renamed the \"Republic of Poland\". The communist Polish United Workers' Party dissolved itself in January 1990. In its place, a new party, Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, was created. \"Territorial self-government\", abolished in 1950, was legislated back in March 1990, to be led by locally elected officials; its fundamental unit was the administratively independent gmina.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 179,
"text": "In October 1990, the constitution was amended to curtail the term of President Jaruzelski. In November 1990, the German–Polish Border Treaty, with unified Germany, was signed.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 180,
"text": "In November 1990, Lech Wałęsa was elected president for a five-year term; in December, he became the first popularly elected president of Poland. Poland's first free parliamentary election was held in October 1991. 18 parties entered the new Sejm, but the largest representation received only 12% of the total vote.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 181,
"text": "There were several post-Solidarity governments between the 1989 election and the 1993 election, after which the \"post-communist\" left-wing parties took over. In 1993, the formerly Soviet Northern Group of Forces, a vestige of past domination, left Poland.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 182,
"text": "In 1995, Aleksander Kwaśniewski of the Social Democratic Party was elected president and remained in that capacity for the next ten years (two terms).",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 183,
"text": "In 1997, the new Constitution of Poland was finalized and approved in a referendum; it replaced the Small Constitution of 1992, an amended version of the communist constitution.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 184,
"text": "Poland joined NATO in 1999. Elements of the Polish Armed Forces have since participated in the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Poland joined the European Union as part of its enlargement in 2004. However, Poland has not adopted the euro as its currency and legal tender, but instead uses the Polish złoty.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 185,
"text": "In April 2010, Polish president Lech Kaczynski and dozens of the country's top political and military leaders died in the Smolensk air disaster.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 186,
"text": "After the election of the conservative Law and Justice party in 2015, the Polish government repeatedly clashed with EU institutions on the issue of judicial reform and was accused by the European Commission and the European Parliament of undermining \"European Values\" and eroding democratic standards. However, the Polish government headed by the Law and Justice party maintained that the reforms were necessary due to the prevalence of corruption within the Polish judiciary and the continued presence of holdover Communist era judges.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 187,
"text": "In October 2019, Poland's governing Law and Justice party (PiS) won parliamentary election, keeping its majority in the lower house. The second was centrist Civic Coalition (KO). The government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki continued. However, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński was considered the most powerful political figure in Poland although not a member of government. In July 2020, President Andrzej Duda, supported by PiS, was re-elected.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 188,
"text": "Poland has been one of neigbouring Ukraine’s most ardent supporters after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of November 2022, Poland had received more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of the war. In September 2023, however, Poland said that it will stop supplying arms to Ukraine and instead focus on its own defense. Poland's decision to ban importing Ukrainian grain, in order to protect its own farmers, had caused tension between the two countries.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 189,
"text": "In October 2023, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party won the largest share of the vote in the election, but lost its majority in parliament. In December 2023, Donald Tusk became the new Prime Minister leading a coalition of three parliamentary groups made up of Civic Coalition, Third Way, and The Left.",
"title": "Third Polish Republic (1989–today)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 190,
"text": "a. Piłsudski's family roots in the Polonized gentry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the resulting perspective of seeing himself and people like him as legitimate Lithuanians put him in conflict with modern Lithuanian nationalists (who in Piłsudski's lifetime redefined the scope and meaning of the \"Lithuanian\" identity), and, by extension, with other nationalists including the Polish modern nationalist movement.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 191,
"text": "b. In 1938, Poland and Romania refused to agree to a Franco-British proposal that in the event of war with Nazi Germany, Soviet forces would be allowed to cross their territories to aid Czechoslovakia. The Polish ruling elites considered the Soviets in some ways more threatening than the Nazis.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 192,
"text": "The Soviet Union repeatedly declared intention to fulfill its obligations under the 1935 treaty with Czechoslovakia and defend Czechoslovakia militarily. A transfer of land and air forces through Poland and/or Romania was required and the Soviets approached about it the French, who also had a treaty with Czechoslovakia (and with Poland and with the Soviet Union). Edward Rydz-Śmigły rebuked the French suggestion on that matter in 1936, and in 1938 Józef Beck pressured Romania not to allow even Soviet warplanes to fly over its territory. Like Hungary, Poland was looking into using the German-Czechoslovak conflict to settle its own territorial grievances, namely disputes over parts of Trans-Olza, Spiš and Orava.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 193,
"text": "c. In October 1939, the British Foreign Office notified the Soviets that the United Kingdom would be satisfied with a postwar creation of small ethnic Poland, patterned after the Duchy of Warsaw. An establishment of Poland restricted to \"minimal size\", according to ethnographic boundaries (such as the lands common to both the prewar Poland and postwar Poland), was planned by the Soviet People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in 1943–1944. Such territorial reduction was recommended by Ivan Maisky to Vyacheslav Molotov in early 1944, because of what Maisky saw as Poland's historically unfriendly disposition toward Russia and the Soviet Union, likely in some way to continue. Joseph Stalin opted for a larger version, allowing a \"swap\" (territorial compensation for Poland), which involved the eastern lands gained by Poland at the Peace of Riga of 1921 and now lost, and eastern Germany conquered from the Nazis in 1944–1945. In regard to the several major disputed areas: Lower Silesia west of the Oder and the Eastern Neisse rivers (the British wanted it to remain a part of the future German state), Stettin (in 1945 the German communists already established their administration there), \"Zakerzonia\" (western Red Ruthenia demanded by the Ukrainians), and the Białystok region (Białystok was claimed by the communists of the Byelorussian SSR), the Soviet leader made decisions that favored Poland.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 194,
"text": "Other territorial and ethnic scenarios were also possible, generally with possible outcomes less advantageous to Poland than the form the country assumed.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 195,
"text": "d. Timothy D. Snyder spoke of about 100,000 Jews killed by Poles during the Nazi occupation, the majority probably by members of the collaborationist Blue Police. This number would have likely been many times higher had Poland entered into an alliance with Germany in 1939, as advocated by some Polish historians and others.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 196,
"text": "e. Some may have falsely claimed the Jewish identity hoping for permission to emigrate. The communist authorities, pursuing the concept of Poland of single ethnicity (in accordance with the recent border changes and expulsions), were allowing the Jews to leave the country. For a discussion of early communist Poland's ethnic politics, see Timothy D. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations, chapters on modern \"Ukrainian Borderland\".",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 197,
"text": "f. A Communist Party of Poland had existed in the past, but was eliminated in Stalin's purges in 1938.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 198,
"text": "g. The Soviet leadership, which had previously ordered the crushing of the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968, in late 1970 became worried about potential demoralizing effects that deployment against Polish workers would have on the Polish army, a crucial Warsaw Pact component. The Soviets withdrew their support for Gomułka, who insisted on the use of force; he and his close associates were subsequently ousted from the Polish Politburo by the Polish Central Committee.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 199,
"text": "h. East of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line, the population was 43% Polish, 33% Ukrainian, 8% Belarusian and 8% Jewish. The Soviet Union did not want to appear as an aggressor, and moved its troops to eastern Poland under the pretext of offering protection to \"the kindred Ukrainian and Belorussian people\".",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 200,
"text": "i. Joseph Stalin at the 1943 Tehran Conference discussed with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt new post-war borders in central-eastern Europe, including the shape of a future Poland. He endorsed the Piast Concept, which justified a massive shift of Poland's frontiers to the west. Stalin resolved to secure and stabilize the western reaches of the Soviet Union and disable the future military potential of Germany by constructing a compact and ethnically defined Poland (along with the Soviet ethnic Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania) and by radically altering the region's system of national borders. After 1945, the Polish communist regime wholeheartedly adopted and promoted the Piast Concept, making it the centerpiece of their claim to be the true inheritors of Polish nationalism. After all the killings and population transfers during and after the war, the country was 99% \"Polish\".",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 201,
"text": "j. \"All the currently available documents of Nazi administration show that, together with the Jews, the stratum of the Polish intelligentsia was marked for total extermination. In fact, Nazi Germany achieved this goal almost by half, since Poland lost 50 percent of her citizens with university diplomas and 35 percent of those with a gimnazium diploma.\" According to Brzoza and Sowa, 450,000 of Polish citizens had completed higher, secondary, or trade school education by the outbreak of the war. 37.5% of people with higher education perished, 30% of those with general secondary education, and 53.3% of trade school graduates.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 202,
"text": "k. Decisive political events took place in Poland shortly before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Władysław Gomułka, a reformist party leader, was reinstated to the Politburo of the PZPR and the Eighth Plenum of its Central Committee was announced to convene on 19 October 1956, all without seeking a Soviet approval. The Soviet Union responded with military moves and intimidation and its \"military-political delegation\", led by Nikita Khrushchev, quickly arrived in Warsaw. Gomułka tried to convince them of his loyalty but insisted on the reforms that he considered essential, including a replacement of Poland's Soviet-trusted minister of defense, Konstantin Rokossovsky. The disconcerted Soviets returned to Moscow, the PZPR Plenum elected Gomułka first secretary and removed Rokossovsky from the Politburo. On 21 October, the Soviet Presidium followed Khrushchev's lead and decided unanimously to \"refrain from military intervention\" in Poland, a decision likely influenced also by the ongoing preparations for the invasion of Hungary. The Soviet gamble paid off, because Gomułka in the coming years turned out to be a very dependable Soviet ally and an orthodox communist.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 203,
"text": "However, unlike the other Warsaw Pact countries, Poland did not endorse the Soviet armed intervention in Hungary. The Hungarian Revolution was intensely supported by the Polish public.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 204,
"text": "l. The delayed reinforcements were coming and the government military commanders General Tadeusz Rozwadowski and Władysław Anders wanted to keep on fighting the coup perpetrators, but President Stanisław Wojciechowski and the government decided to surrender to prevent the imminent spread of civil war. The coup brought to power the \"Sanation\" regime under Józef Piłsudski (Edward Rydz-Śmigły after Piłsudski's death). The Sanation regime persecuted the opposition within the military and in general. Rozwadowski died after abusive imprisonment, according to some accounts murdered. Another major opponent of Piłsudski, General Włodzimierz Zagórski, disappeared in 1927. According to Aleksandra Piłsudska, the marshal's wife, following the coup and for the rest of his life Piłsudski lost his composure and appeared over-burdened.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 205,
"text": "At the time of Rydz-Śmigły's command, the Sanation camp embraced the ideology of Roman Dmowski, Piłsudski's nemesis. Rydz-Śmigły did not allow General Władysław Sikorski, an enemy of the Sanation movement, to participate as a soldier in the country's defense against the Invasion of Poland in September 1939. During World War II in France and then in Britain, the Polish government-in-exile became dominated by anti-Sanation politicians. The perceived Sanation followers were in turn persecuted (in exile) under prime ministers Sikorski and Stanisław Mikołajczyk.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 206,
"text": "m. General Zygmunt Berling of the Soviet-allied First Polish Army attempted in mid-September a crossing of the Vistula and landing at Czerniaków to aid the insurgents, but the operation was defeated by the Germans and the Poles suffered heavy losses.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 207,
"text": "n. The decision to launch the Warsaw Uprising resulted in the destruction of the city, its population and its elites and has been a source of lasting controversy. According to the historians Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Leon Sowa, orders of further military offensives, issued at the end of August 1944 as a continuation of Operation Tempest, show a loss of the sense of responsibility for the country's fate on the part of the underground Polish leadership.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 208,
"text": "o. One of the party leaders Mieczysław Rakowski, who abandoned his mentor Gomułka following the 1970 crisis, saw the demands of the demonstrating workers as \"exclusively socialist\" in character, because of the way they were phrased. Most people in communist Poland, including opposition activists, did not question the supremacy of socialism or the socialist idea; misconduct by party officials, such as not following the provisions of the constitution, was blamed. From the time of Gierek, this assumed standard of political correctness was increasingly challenged: pluralism, and then free market, became frequently used concepts.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 209,
"text": "p. The Polish Sanation authorities were provoked by the independence-seeking Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). OUN engaged in political assassinations, terror and sabotage, to which the Polish state responded with a repressive campaign in the 1930s, as Józef Piłsudski and his successors imposed collective responsibility on the villagers in the affected areas. After the disturbances of 1933 and 1934, the Bereza Kartuska prison camp was established; it became notorious for its brutal regime. The government brought Polish settlers and administrators to parts of Volhynia with a centuries-old tradition of Ukrainian peasant rising against Polish land owners (and to Eastern Galicia). In the late 1930s, after Piłsudski's death, military persecution intensified and a policy of \"national assimilation\" was aggressively pursued. Military raids, public beatings, property confiscations and the closing and destruction of Orthodox churches aroused lasting enmity in Galicia and antagonized Ukrainian society in Volhynia at the worst possible moment, according to Timothy D. Snyder. However, he also notes that \"Ukrainian terrorism and Polish reprisals touched only part of the population, leaving vast regions unaffected\" and \"the OUN's nationalist prescription, a Ukrainian state for ethnic Ukrainians alone was far from popular\". Halik Kochanski wrote of the legacy of bitterness between the Ukrainians and Poles that soon exploded in the context of World War II. See also: History of the Ukrainian minority in Poland.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 210,
"text": "q. In Poland, officials of central government (the provincial office of wojewoda) can overrule elected territorial and municipal local governments. However, in such cases wojewoda decisions have sometimes been invalidated by courts.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 211,
"text": "r. Foreign policy was one of the few governmental areas in which Piłsudski took an active interest. He saw Poland's role and opportunity as lying in Eastern Europe and advocated passive relations with the West. He felt that a German attack should not be feared, because even if this unlikely event were to take place, the Western powers would be bound to restrain Germany and come to Poland's rescue.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 212,
"text": "s. According to the researcher Jan Sowa, the Commonwealth failed as a state because it was not able to conform to the emerging new European order established at the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Poland's elective kings, restricted by the self-serving and short-sighted nobility, could not impose a strong and efficient central government with its characteristic post-Westphalian internal and external sovereignty. The inability of Polish kings to levy and collect taxes (and therefore sustain a standing army) and conduct independent foreign policy were among the chief obstacles to Poland competing effectively on the changed European scene, where absolutist power was a prerequisite for survival and became the foundation for the abolition of serfdom and gradual formation of parliamentarism.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 213,
"text": "t. Besides the Home Army there were other major underground fighting formations: Bataliony Chłopskie, National Armed Forces (NSZ) and Gwardia Ludowa (later Armia Ludowa). From 1943, the leaders of the nationalistic NSZ collaborated with Nazi Germany in a case unique in occupied Poland. The NSZ conducted an anti-communist civil war. Before the arrival of the Soviets, the NSZ's Holy Cross Mountains Brigade left Poland under the protection of the German army. According to the historians Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Leon Sowa, participation figures given for the underground resistance are often inflated. In the spring of 1944, the time of the most extensive involvement of the underground organizations, there were most likely considerably fewer than 500,000 military and civilian personnel participating, over the entire spectrum, from the right wing to the communists.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 214,
"text": "u. According to Jerzy Eisler, about 1.1 million people may have been imprisoned or detained in 1944–1956 and about 50,000 may have died because of the struggle and persecution, including about 7,000 soldiers of the right-wing underground killed in the 1940s. According to Adam Leszczyński, up to 30,000 people were killed by the communist regime during the first several years after the war.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 215,
"text": "v. According to Andrzej Stelmachowski, one of the key participants of the Polish systemic transformation, Minister Leszek Balcerowicz pursued extremely liberal economic policies, often extraordinarily painful for society. The December 1989 Sejm statute of credit relations reform introduced an \"incredible\" system of privileges for banks, which were allowed to unilaterally alter interest rates on already existing contracts. The exceedingly high rates they instantly introduced ruined many previously profitable enterprises and caused a complete breakdown of the apartment block construction industry, which had long-term deleterious effects on the state budget as well. Balcerowicz's policies also caused permanent damage to Polish agriculture, an area in which he lacked expertise, and to the often successful and useful Polish cooperative movement.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 216,
"text": "According to Karol Modzelewski, a dissident and critic of the economic transformation, in 1989 Solidarity no longer existed, having been in reality eliminated during the martial law period. What the \"post-Solidarity elites\" did in 1989 amounted to a betrayal of the old Solidarity base, and the retribution was only a matter of time.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 217,
"text": "w. Led by Władysław Anders, the Polish II Corps fought in 1944–1945 in the Allied Italian Campaign, where the corps' main engagement was the Battle of Monte Cassino.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 218,
"text": "x. The Piast Concept, of which the chief proponent was Jan Ludwik Popławski (late 19th century), was based on the claim that the Piast homeland was inhabited by so-called \"native\" aboriginal Slavs and Slavonic Poles since time immemorial and only later was \"infiltrated\" by \"alien\" Celts, Germanic peoples, and others. After 1945, the so-called \"autochthonous\" or \"aboriginal\" school of Polish prehistory received official backing and a considerable degree of popular support in Poland. According to this view, the Lusatian Culture, which flourished between the Oder and the Vistula in the early Iron Age, was said to be Slavonic; all non-Slavonic tribes and peoples recorded in the area at various points in ancient times were dismissed as \"migrants\" and \"visitors\". In contrast, the critics of this theory, such as Marija Gimbutas, regarded it as an unproved hypotheses and for them the date and origin of the westward migration of the Slavs were largely uncharted; the Slavonic connections of the Lusatian Culture were entirely imaginary; and the presence of an ethnically mixed and constantly changing collection of peoples on the North European Plain was taken for granted.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 219,
"text": "y. According to the count presented by Prime Minister and Internal Affairs Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski before the Sejm committee in January 1938, 818 people were killed in police suppression of labor protests (industrial and agricultural) during the 1932–1937 period.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 220,
"text": "z. John II Casimir Vasa is known for his remarkable and accurate prediction of the Partitions of Poland, made over a century before the event's occurrence.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 221,
"text": "a1. According to war historian Ben Macintyre, \"The Polish contribution to allied victory in the Second World War was extraordinary, perhaps even decisive, but for many years it was disgracefully played down, obscured by the politics of the Cold War.\"",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 222,
"text": "b1. Piłsudski left the Polish Socialist Party in 1914 and severed his connections with the socialist movement, but many activists from the Left and of other political orientations presumed his continuing involvement there.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 223,
"text": "c1. Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points program was subsequently weakened by internal developments in the US, Britain, France, and Germany. In the last case, Poland was denied the city of Danzig on the Baltic coast.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 224,
"text": "d1. The government of Soviet Russia issued in August 1918 a decree strongly supportive of the independence of Poland, but at that time no Polish lands were under Russian control.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 225,
"text": "Academic journals",
"title": "Bibliography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 226,
"text": "More recent general history of Poland books in English",
"title": "Bibliography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 227,
"text": "Published in Poland",
"title": "Bibliography"
}
]
| The history of Poland spans over a thousand years, from medieval tribes, Christianization and monarchy; through Poland's Golden Age, expansionism and becoming one of the largest European powers; to its collapse and partitions, two world wars, communism, and the restoration of democracy. The roots of Polish history can be traced to ancient times, when the territory of present-day Poland was settled by various tribes including Celts, Scythians, Germanic clans, Sarmatians, Slavs and Balts. However, it was the West Slavic Lechites, the closest ancestors of ethnic Poles, who established permanent settlements in the Polish lands during the Early Middle Ages. The Lechitic Western Polans, a tribe whose name means "people living in open fields", dominated the region and gave Poland - which lies in the North-Central European Plain - its name. The first ruling dynasty, the Piasts, emerged in the 10th century AD. Duke Mieszko I is considered the de facto creator of the Polish state and is widely recognized for his adoption of Western Christianity in 966 CE. Mieszko's dominion was formally reconstituted as a medieval kingdom in 1025 by his son Bolesław I the Brave, known for military expansion under his rule. The most successful and the last Piast monarch, Casimir III the Great, presided over a period of economic prosperity and territorial aggrandizement before his death in 1370 without male heirs. The period of the Jagiellonian dynasty in the 14th–16th centuries brought close ties with the Lithuania, a cultural Renaissance in Poland and continued territorial expansion as well as Polonization that culminated in the establishment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, one of Europe's largest countries. The Commonwealth was able to sustain the levels of prosperity achieved during the Jagiellonian period, while its political system matured as a unique noble democracy with an elective monarchy. From the mid-17th century, however, the huge state entered a period of decline caused by devastating wars and the deterioration of its political system. Significant internal reforms were introduced in the late 18th century, such as Europe's first Constitution of 3 May 1791, but neighboring powers did not allow the reforms to advance. The existence of the Commonwealth ended in 1795 after a series of invasions and partitions of Polish territory carried out by the Russian Empire in the east, the Kingdom of Prussia in the west and the Habsburg monarchy in the south. From 1795 until 1918, no truly independent Polish state existed, although strong Polish resistance movements operated. The opportunity to regain sovereignty only materialized after World War I, when the three partitioning imperial powers were fatally weakened in the wake of war and revolution. The Second Polish Republic was established in 1918 and existed as an independent state until 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. Millions of Polish citizens of different faiths or identities perished in the course of the Nazi occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945 through planned genocide and extermination. A Polish government-in-exile nonetheless functioned throughout the war, and the Poles contributed to the Allied victory through participation in military campaigns on both the eastern and western fronts. The westward advances of the Soviet Red Army in 1944 and 1945 compelled Nazi Germany's forces to retreat from Poland, which led to the establishment of a satellite communist country, known from 1952 as the Polish People's Republic. As a result of territorial adjustments mandated by the Allies at the end of World War II in 1945, Poland's geographic centre of gravity shifted towards the west, and the re-defined Polish lands largely lost their historic multi-ethnic character through the extermination, expulsion and migration of various ethnic groups during and after the war. By the late 1980s, the Polish reform movement Solidarity became crucial in bringing about a peaceful transition from a planned economy and a communist state to a capitalist economic system and a liberal parliamentary democracy. This process resulted in the creation of the modern Polish state, the Third Polish Republic, founded in 1989. | 2001-09-17T18:43:50Z | 2023-12-16T01:49:45Z | [
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13,773 | Hradčany | Hradčany (Czech pronunciation: [ˈɦratʃanɪ] (listen); German: Hradschin), the Castle District, is the district of the city of Prague, Czech Republic surrounding Prague Castle.
The castle is one of the biggest in the world at about 570 metres (1,870 feet) in length and an average of about 130 metres (430 feet) wide. Its history stretches back to the 9th century. St Vitus Cathedral is located in the castle area.
Most of the district consists of noble historical palaces. There are many other attractions for visitors: romantic nooks, peaceful places and beautiful lookouts.
Hradčany was an independent borough until 1784, when the four independent boroughs that had formerly constituted Prague were proclaimed a single city. The other three were Malá Strana (German: Kleinseite, Lesser Quarter), Staré Město (German: Altstadt, Old Town) and Nové Město (German: Neustadt, New Town).
50°05′22″N 14°23′50″E / 50.08944°N 14.39722°E / 50.08944; 14.39722 | [
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"text": "The castle is one of the biggest in the world at about 570 metres (1,870 feet) in length and an average of about 130 metres (430 feet) wide. Its history stretches back to the 9th century. St Vitus Cathedral is located in the castle area.",
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"text": "Hradčany was an independent borough until 1784, when the four independent boroughs that had formerly constituted Prague were proclaimed a single city. The other three were Malá Strana (German: Kleinseite, Lesser Quarter), Staré Město (German: Altstadt, Old Town) and Nové Město (German: Neustadt, New Town).",
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"text": "50°05′22″N 14°23′50″E / 50.08944°N 14.39722°E / 50.08944; 14.39722",
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| Hradčany, the Castle District, is the district of the city of Prague, Czech Republic surrounding Prague Castle. The castle is one of the biggest in the world at about 570 metres in length and an average of about 130 metres wide. Its history stretches back to the 9th century. St Vitus Cathedral is located in the castle area. Most of the district consists of noble historical palaces. There are many other attractions for visitors: romantic nooks, peaceful places and beautiful lookouts. Hradčany was an independent borough until 1784, when the four independent boroughs that had formerly constituted Prague were proclaimed a single city. The other three were Malá Strana, Staré Město and Nové Město. | 2023-05-29T17:46:27Z | [
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|
13,774 | Houston | Houston (/ˈhjuːstən/ ; HEW-stən) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. It is the fourth-most populous city in the United States after New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and the seventh-most populous city in North America. With a population of 2,302,878 in 2022, Houston is located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; it is the seat and largest city of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle.
Comprising a land area of 640.4 square miles (1,659 km), Houston is the ninth-most expansive city in the United States (including consolidated city-counties). It is the largest city in the United States by total area whose government is not consolidated with a county, parish, or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, bordering other principal communities of Greater Houston such as Sugar Land and The Woodlands.
Houston was founded by land investors on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou (a point now known as Allen's Landing) and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837. The city is named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had won Texas's independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles (40 km) east of Allen's Landing. After briefly serving as the capital of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew steadily into a regional trading center for the remainder of the 19th century.
The arrival of the 20th century brought a convergence of economic factors that fueled rapid growth in Houston, including a burgeoning port and railroad industry, the decline of Galveston as Texas's primary port following a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, and the Texas oil boom. In the mid-20th century, Houston's economy diversified, as it became home to the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, home to the Mission Control Center.
Since the late 19th century Houston's economy has had a broad industrial base, in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, and transportation. Leading in healthcare sectors and building oilfield equipment, Houston has the second-most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U.S. municipality within its city limits (after New York City). The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled.
Nicknamed the "Bayou City", "Space City", "H-Town", and "the 713", Houston has become a global city, with strengths in culture, medicine, and research. The city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse metropolitan area in Texas and has been described as the most racially and ethnically diverse major city in the U.S. It is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than seven million visitors a year to the Museum District. The Museum District is home to nineteen museums, galleries, and community spaces. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District, and offers year-round resident companies in all major performing arts.
Present-day Houston sits on land that was once occupied by the Karankawa (kə rang′kə wä′,-wô′,-wə) and the Atakapa (əˈtɑːkəpə) indigenous peoples for at least 2,000 years before the first known settlers arrived. These tribes are almost nonexistent today; this was most likely caused by foreign disease, and competition with various settler groups in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the land then remained largely uninhabited from the late 1700s until settlement in the 1830s.
The Allen brothers—Augustus Chapman and John Kirby—explored town sites on Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay. According to historian David McComb, "[T]he brothers, on August 26, 1836, bought from Elizabeth E. Parrott, wife of T.F.L. Parrott and widow of John Austin, the south half of the lower league [2,214-acre (896 ha) tract] granted to her by her late husband. They paid $5,000 total, but only $1,000 of this in cash; notes made up the remainder."
The Allen brothers ran their first advertisement for Houston just four days later in the Telegraph and Texas Register, naming the notional town in honor of Sam Houston, who would become President later that year. They successfully lobbied the Republic of Texas Congress to designate Houston as the temporary capital, agreeing to provide the new government with a state capitol building. About a dozen persons resided in the town at the beginning of 1837, but that number grew to about 1,500 by the time the Texas Congress convened in Houston for the first time that May. The Republic of Texas granted Houston incorporation on June 5, 1837, as James S. Holman became its first mayor. In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County (now Harris County).
In 1839, the Republic of Texas relocated its capital to Austin. The town suffered another setback that year when a yellow fever epidemic claimed about one life for every eight residents, yet it persisted as a commercial center, forming a symbiosis with its Gulf Coast port, Galveston. Landlocked farmers brought their produce to Houston, using Buffalo Bayou to gain access to Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. Houston merchants profited from selling staples to farmers and shipping the farmers' produce to Galveston.
The great majority of enslaved people in Texas came with their owners from the older slave states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the domestic slave trade. New Orleans was the center of this trade in the Deep South, but slave dealers were in Houston. Thousands of enslaved black people lived near the city before the American Civil War. Many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs.
In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce, in part to promote shipping and navigation at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou.
By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton. Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont. During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for Confederate Major General John B. Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston. After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more commerce between Downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890, Houston was the railroad center of Texas.
In 1900, after Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane, efforts to make Houston into a viable deep-water port were accelerated. The following year, the discovery of oil at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel. By 1910, the city's population had reached 78,800, almost doubling from a decade before. African Americans formed a large part of the city's population, numbering 23,929 people, which was nearly one-third of Houston's residents.
President Woodrow Wilson opened the deep-water Port of Houston in 1914, seven years after digging began. By 1930, Houston had become Texas's most populous city and Harris County the most populous county. In 1940, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Houston's population as 77.5% White and 22.4% Black.
When World War II started, tonnage levels at the port decreased and shipping activities were suspended; however, the war did provide economic benefits for the city. Petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants were constructed along the ship channel because of the demand for petroleum and synthetic rubber products by the defense industry during the war. Ellington Field, initially built during World War I, was revitalized as an advanced training center for bombardiers and navigators. The Brown Shipbuilding Company was founded in 1942 to build ships for the U.S. Navy during World War II. Due to the boom in defense jobs, thousands of new workers migrated to the city, both blacks, and whites competing for the higher-paying jobs. President Roosevelt had established a policy of nondiscrimination for defense contractors, and blacks gained some opportunities, especially in shipbuilding, although not without resistance from whites and increasing social tensions that erupted into occasional violence. Economic gains of blacks who entered defense industries continued in the postwar years.
In 1945, the M.D. Anderson Foundation formed the Texas Medical Center. After the war, Houston's economy reverted to being primarily port-driven. In 1948, the city annexed several unincorporated areas, more than doubling its size. Houston proper began to spread across the region. In 1950, the availability of air conditioning provided impetus for many companies to relocate to Houston, where wages were lower than those in the North; this resulted in an economic boom and produced a key shift in the city's economy toward the energy sector.
The increased production of the expanded shipbuilding industry during World War II spurred Houston's growth, as did the establishment in 1961 of NASA's "Manned Spacecraft Center" (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973). This was the stimulus for the development of the city's aerospace industry. The Astrodome, nicknamed the "Eighth Wonder of the World", opened in 1965 as the world's first indoor domed sports stadium.
During the late 1970s, Houston had a population boom as people from the Rust Belt states moved to Texas in large numbers. The new residents came for numerous employment opportunities in the petroleum industry, created as a result of the Arab oil embargo. With the increase in professional jobs, Houston has become a destination for many college-educated persons, most recently including African Americans in a reverse Great Migration from northern areas.
In 1997, Houstonians elected Lee P. Brown as the city's first African American mayor.
Houston has continued to grow into the 21st century, with the population increasing 15.7% from 2000 to 2022.
Oil & gas have continued to fuel Houston's economic growth, with major oil companies including Phillips 66, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum, Halliburton, and ExxonMobil having their headquarters in the Houston area. In 2001, Enron Corporation, a Houston company with $100 billion in revenue, became engulfed in an accounting scandal which bankrupted the company in 2001. Health care has emerged as a major industry in Houston. The Texas Medical Center is now the largest medical complex in the world and employs over 120,000 people.
Three new sports stadiums opened downtown in the first decade of the 21st century. In 2000, the Houston Astros opened their new baseball stadium, Minute Maid Park, in downtown adjacent to the old Union Station. The Houston Texans were formed in 2002 as an NFL expansion team, replacing the Houston Oilers, which had left the city in 1996. NRG Stadium opened the same year. In 2003, the Toyota Center opened as the home for the Houston Rockets. In 2005, the Houston Dynamo soccer team was formed. In 2017, the Houston Astros won their first World Series.
Flooding has been a recurring problem in the Houston area, exacerbated by a lack of zoning laws, which allowed unregulated building of residential homes and other structures in flood-prone areas. In June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain on parts of Houston, causing what was then the worst flooding in the city's history and billions of dollars in damage, and killed 20 people in Texas. In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans, who evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. One month later, about 2.5 million Houston-area residents evacuated when Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This was the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States. In May 2015, seven people died after 12 inches of rain fell in 10 hours during what is known as the Memorial Day Flood. Eight people died in April 2016 during a storm that dropped 17 inches of rain. The worst came in late August 2017, when Hurricane Harvey stalled over southeastern Texas, much like Tropical Storm Allison did sixteen years earlier, causing severe flooding in the Houston area, with some areas receiving over 50 inches (1,300 mm) of rain. The rainfall exceeded 50 inches in several areas locally, breaking the national record for rainfall. The damage for the Houston area was estimated at up to $125 billion U.S. dollars, and was considered to be one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States, with the death toll exceeding 70 people.
Houston is 165 miles (266 km) east of Austin, 88 miles (142 km) west of the Louisiana border, and 250 miles (400 km) south of Dallas. The city has a total area of 637.4 square miles (1,651 km); this comprises over 599.59 square miles (1,552.9 km) of land and 22.3 square miles (58 km) covered by water. Most of Houston is on the gulf coastal plain, and its vegetation is classified as Western Gulf coastal grasslands while further north, it transitions into a subtropical jungle, the Big Thicket.
Much of the city was built on forested land, marshes, or swamps, and all are still visible in surrounding areas. Flat terrain and extensive greenfield development have combined to worsen flooding. Downtown stands about 50 feet (15 m) above sea level, and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about 150 feet (46 m) in elevation. The city once relied on groundwater for its needs, but land subsidence forced the city to turn to ground-level water sources such as Lake Houston, Lake Conroe, and Lake Livingston. The city owns surface water rights for 1.20 billion US gallons (4.5 Gl) of water a day in addition to 150 million US gallons (570 Ml) a day of groundwater.
Houston has four major bayous passing through the city that accept water from the extensive drainage system. Buffalo Bayou runs through Downtown and the Houston Ship Channel, and has three tributaries: White Oak Bayou, which runs through the Houston Heights community northwest of Downtown and then towards Downtown; Brays Bayou, which runs along the Texas Medical Center; and Sims Bayou, which runs through the south of Houston and Downtown Houston. The ship channel continues past Galveston and then into the Gulf of Mexico.
Houston is a flat, marshy area where an extensive drainage system has been built. The adjoining prairie land drains into the city, which is prone to flooding. Underpinning Houston's land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, and poorly cemented sands up to several miles deep. The region's geology developed from river deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic marine matter, that over time, transformed into oil and natural gas. Beneath the layers of sediment is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward. As it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into salt dome formations, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. The thick, rich, sometimes black, surface soil is suitable for rice farming in suburban outskirts where the city continues to grow.
The Houston area has over 150 active faults (estimated to be 300 active faults) with an aggregate length of up to 310 miles (500 km), including the Long Point–Eureka Heights fault system which runs through the center of the city. Land in some areas southeast of Houston is sinking because water has been pumped out of the ground for many years. It may be associated with slip along the faults; however, the slippage is slow and not considered an earthquake, where stationary faults must slip suddenly enough to create seismic waves. These faults also tend to move at a smooth rate in what is termed "fault creep", which further reduces the risk of an earthquake.
The city of Houston was incorporated in 1837 and adopted a ward system of representation shortly afterward, in 1840. The six original wards of Houston are the progenitors of the 11 modern-day geographically oriented Houston City Council districts, though the city abandoned the ward system in 1905 in favor of a commission government, and, later, the existing mayor–council government.
Locations in Houston are generally classified as either being inside or outside the Interstate 610 loop. The "Inner Loop" encompasses a 97-square-mile (250 km) area which includes Downtown, pre–World War II residential neighborhoods and streetcar suburbs, and newer high-density apartment and townhouse developments. Outside the loop, the city's typology is more suburban, though many major business districts—such as Uptown, Westchase, and the Energy Corridor—lie well outside the urban core. In addition to Interstate 610, two additional loop highways encircle the city: Beltway 8, with a radius of approximately 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown, and State Highway 99 (the Grand Parkway), with a radius of 25 miles (40 km). Approximately 470,000 people lived within the Interstate 610 loop, while 1.65 million lived between Interstate 610 and Beltway 8 and 2.25 million lived within Harris County outside Beltway 8 in 2015.
Though Houston is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations, it has developed similarly to other Sun Belt cities because the city's land use regulations and legal covenants have played a similar role. Regulations include mandatory lot size for single-family houses and requirements that parking be available to tenants and customers. Such restrictions have had mixed results. Though some have blamed the city's low density, urban sprawl, and lack of pedestrian-friendliness on these policies, others have credited the city's land use patterns with providing significant affordable housing, sparing Houston the worst effects of the 2008 real estate crisis. The city issued 42,697 building permits in 2008 and was ranked first in the list of healthiest housing markets for 2009. In 2019, home sales reached a new record of $30 billion.
In referendums in 1948, 1962, and 1993, voters rejected efforts to establish separate residential and commercial land-use districts. Consequently, rather than a single central business district as the center of the city's employment, multiple districts and skylines have grown throughout the city in addition to Downtown, which include Uptown, the Texas Medical Center, Midtown, Greenway Plaza, Memorial City, the Energy Corridor, Westchase, and Greenspoint.
Houston had the fifth-tallest skyline in North America (after New York City, Chicago, Toronto and Miami) and 36th-tallest in the world in 2015. A seven-mile (11 km) system of tunnels and skywalks links Downtown buildings containing shops and restaurants, enabling pedestrians to avoid summer heat and rain while walking between buildings. In the 1960s, Downtown Houston consisted of a collection of mid-rise office structures. Downtown was on the threshold of an energy industry–led boom in 1970. A succession of skyscrapers was built throughout the 1970s—many by real estate developer Gerald D. Hines—culminating with Houston's tallest skyscraper, the 75-floor, 1,002-foot (305 m)-tall JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly the Texas Commerce Tower), completed in 1982. It is the tallest structure in Texas, 19th tallest building in the United States, and was previously 85th-tallest skyscraper in the world, based on highest architectural feature. In 1983, the 71-floor, 992-foot (302 m)-tall Wells Fargo Plaza (formerly Allied Bank Plaza) was completed, becoming the second-tallest building in Houston and Texas. Based on highest architectural feature, it is the 21st-tallest in the United States. In 2007, Downtown had over 43 million square feet (4,000,000 m) of office space.
Centered on Post Oak Boulevard and Westheimer Road, the Uptown District boomed during the 1970s and early 1980s when a collection of midrise office buildings, hotels, and retail developments appeared along Interstate 610 West. Uptown became one of the most prominent instances of an edge city. The tallest building in Uptown is the 64-floor, 901-foot (275 m)-tall, Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed landmark Williams Tower (known as the Transco Tower until 1999). At the time of construction, it was believed to be the world's tallest skyscraper outside a central business district. The new 20-story Skanska building and BBVA Compass Plaza are the newest office buildings built in Uptown after 30 years. The Uptown District is also home to buildings designed by noted architects I. M. Pei, César Pelli, and Philip Johnson. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a mini-boom of midrise and highrise residential tower construction occurred, with several over 30 stories tall. Since 2000 over 30 skyscrapers have been developed in Houston; all told, 72 high-rises tower over the city, which adds up to about 8,300 units. In 2002, Uptown had more than 23 million square feet (2,100,000 m) of office space with 16 million square feet (1,500,000 m) of class A office space.
Houston's climate is classified as humid subtropical (Cfa in the Köppen climate classification system), typical of the Southern United States. While not in Tornado Alley, like much of Northern Texas, spring supercell thunderstorms sometimes bring tornadoes to the area. Prevailing winds are from the south and southeast during most of the year, which bring heat and tropical moisture from the nearby Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay.
During the summer, temperatures reach or exceed 90 °F (32 °C) an average of 106.5 days per year, including a majority of days from June to September. Additionally, an average of 4.6 days per year reach or exceed 100 °F (37.8 °C). Houston's characteristic subtropical humidity often results in a higher apparent temperature, and summer mornings average over 90% relative humidity. Air conditioning is ubiquitous in Houston; in 1981, annual spending on electricity for interior cooling exceeded $600 million (equivalent to $1.93 billion in 2022), and by the late 1990s, approximately 90% of Houston homes featured air conditioning systems. The record highest temperature recorded in Houston is 109 °F (43 °C) at Bush Intercontinental Airport, during September 4, 2000, and again on August 27, 2011.
Houston has mild winters, with occasional cold spells. In January, the normal mean temperature at George Bush Intercontinental Airport is 53 °F (12 °C), with an average of 13 days per year with a low at or below 32 °F (0 °C), occurring on average between December 3 and February 20, allowing for a growing season of 286 days. Twenty-first century snow events in Houston include a storm on December 24, 2004, which saw 1 inch (3 cm) of snow accumulate in parts of the metro area, and an event on December 7, 2017, which precipitated 0.7 inches (2 cm) of snowfall. Snowfalls of at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) on both December 10, 2008, and December 4, 2009, marked the first time measurable snowfall had occurred in two consecutive years in the city's recorded history. Overall, Houston has seen measurable snowfall 38 times between 1895 and 2018. On February 14 and 15, 1895, Houston received 20 inches (51 cm) of snow, its largest snowfall from one storm on record. The coldest temperature officially recorded in Houston was 5 °F (−15 °C) on January 18, 1930. The last time Houston saw single digit temperatures was on December 23, 1989. The temperature dropped to 7 °F (−14 °C) at Bush Airport, marking the coldest temperature ever recorded there. 1.7 inches of snow fell at George Bush Intercontinental Airport the previous day.
Houston generally receives ample rainfall, averaging about 49.8 in (1,260 mm) annually based on records between 1981 and 2010. Many parts of the city have a high risk of localized flooding due to flat topography, ubiquitous low-permeability clay-silt prairie soils, and inadequate infrastructure. During the mid-2010s, Greater Houston experienced consecutive major flood events in 2015 ("Memorial Day"), 2016 ("Tax Day"), and 2017 (Hurricane Harvey). Overall, there have been more casualties and property loss from floods in Houston than in any other locality in the United States. The majority of rainfall occurs between April and October (the wet season of Southeast Texas), when the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico evaporates extensively over the city.
Houston has excessive ozone levels and is routinely ranked among the most ozone-polluted cities in the United States. Ground-level ozone, or smog, is Houston's predominant air pollution problem, with the American Lung Association rating the metropolitan area's ozone level twelfth on the "Most Polluted Cities by Ozone" in 2017, after major cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City, and Denver. The industries along the ship channel are a major cause of the city's air pollution. The rankings are in terms of peak-based standards, focusing strictly on the worst days of the year; the average ozone levels in Houston are lower than what is seen in most other areas of the country, as dominant winds ensure clean, marine air from the Gulf. Excessive man-made emissions in the Houston area led to a persistent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the city. Such an increase, often regarded as "CO2 urban dome", is driven by a combination of strong emissions and stagnant atmospheric conditions. Moreover, Houston is the only metropolitan area with less than ten million citizens where such a CO2 dome can be detected by satellites.
Because of Houston's wet season and proximity to the Gulf Coast, the city is prone to flooding from heavy rains; the most notable flooding events include Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, along with most recent Tropical Storm Imelda in 2019 and Tropical Storm Beta in 2020. In response to Hurricane Harvey, Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston initiated plans to require developers to build homes that will be less susceptible to flooding by raising them two feet above the 500-year floodplain. Hurricane Harvey damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and dumped trillions of gallons of water into the city. In places this led to feet of standing water that blocked streets and flooded homes. The Houston City Council passed this regulation in 2018 with a vote of 9–7. Had these floodplain development rules had been in place all along, it is estimated that 84% of homes in the 100-year and 500-year floodplains would have been spared damage.
In a recent case testing these regulations, near the Brickhouse Gulley, an old golf course that long served as a floodplain and reservoir for floodwaters, announced a change of heart toward intensifying development. A nationwide developer, Meritage Homes, bought the land and planned to develop the 500-year floodplain into 900 new residential homes. Their plan would bring in $360 million in revenue and boost city population and tax revenue. In order to meet the new floodplain regulations, the developers needed to elevate the lowest floors two feet above the 500-year floodplain, equivalent to five or six feet above the 100-year base flood elevation, and build a channel to direct stormwater runoff toward detention basins. Before Hurricane Harvey, the city had bought $10.7 million in houses in this area specifically to take them out of danger. In addition to developing new streets and single-family housing within a floodplain, a flowing flood-water stream termed a floodway runs through the development area, a most dangerous place to encounter during any future flooding event. Under Texas law Harris County, like other more rural Texas counties, cannot direct developers where to build or not build via land use controls such as a zoning ordinance, and instead can only impose general floodplain regulations for enforcement during subdivision approvals and building permit approvals.
The 2020 U.S. census determined Houston had a population of 2,304,580. In 2017, the census-estimated population was 2,312,717, and in 2018 it was 2,325,502. An estimated 600,000 undocumented immigrants resided in the Houston area in 2017, comprising nearly 9% of the city's metropolitan population. At the 2010 United States census, Houston had a population of 2,100,263 residents, up from the city's 2,396 at the 1850 census.
Per the 2019 American Community Survey, Houston's age distribution was 482,402 under 15; 144,196 aged 15 to 19; 594,477 aged 20 to 34; 591,561 aged 35 to 54; 402,804 aged 55 to 74; and 101,357 aged 75 and older. The median age of the city was 33.4. At the 2014-2018 census estimates, Houston's age distribution was 486,083 under 15; 147,710 aged 15 to 19; 603,586 aged 20 to 34; 726,877 aged 35 to 59; and 357,834 aged 60 and older. The median age was 33.1, up from 32.9 in 2017 and down from 33.5 in 2014; the city's youthfulness has been attributed to an influx of an African American New Great Migration, Hispanic and Latino American, and Asian immigrants into Texas. For every 100 females, there were 98.5 males.
There were 987,158 housing units in 2019 and 876,504 households. An estimated 42.3% of Houstonians owned housing units, with an average of 2.65 people per household. The median monthly owner costs with a mortgage were $1,646, and $536 without a mortgage. Houston's median gross rent from 2015 to 2019 was $1,041. The median household income in 2019 was $52,338 and 20.1% of Houstonians lived at or below the poverty line.
Houston is a majority-minority city. The Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, a think tank, has described Greater Houston as "one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse metropolitan areas in the country". Houston's diversity, historically fueled by large waves of Hispanic and Latino American, and Asian immigrants, has been attributed to its relatively lower cost of living compared to most major cities, strong job market, and role as a hub for refugee resettlement.
Houston has long been known as a popular destination for African Americans due to the city's well-established and influential African American community. Houston has become known as a Black mecca akin to Atlanta because it is a popular living destination for Black professionals and entrepreneurs. The Houston area is home to the largest African American community west of the Mississippi River. A 2012 Kinder Institute report found that, based on the evenness of population distribution between the four major racial groups in the United States (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Hispanic or Latino, and Asian), Greater Houston was the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the United States, ahead of New York City.
In 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, non-Hispanic whites made up 23.3% of the population of Houston proper, Hispanics and Latino Americans 45.8%, Blacks or African Americans 22.4%, and Asian Americans 6.5%. In 2018, non-Hispanic whites made up 20.7% of the population, Hispanics or Latino Americans 44.9%, Blacks or African Americans 30.3%, and Asian Americans 8.2%. The largest Hispanic or Latino American ethnic groups in the city were Mexican Americans (31.6%), Puerto Ricans (0.8%), and Cuban Americans (0.8%) in 2018.
As documented, Houston has a higher proportion of minorities than non-Hispanic whites; in 2010, whites (including Hispanic whites) made up 57.6% of the city of Houston's population; 24.6% of the total population was non-Hispanic white. Blacks or African Americans made up 22.5% of Houston's population, American Indians made up 0.3% of the population, Asians made up 6.9% (1.7% Vietnamese, 1.3% Chinese, 1.3% Indian, 0.9% Pakistani, 0.4% Filipino, 0.3% Korean, 0.1% Japanese) and Pacific Islanders made up 0.1%. Individuals from some other race made up 15.69% of the city's population. Individuals from two or more races made up 2.1% of the city.
At the 2000 U.S. census, the racial makeup of the city was 49.3% White, 25.3% Black or African American, 5.3% Asian, 0.7% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.5% from some other race, and 3.1% from two or more races. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 37.4% of Houston's population in 2000, while non-Hispanic whites made up 30.8%. The proportion of non-Hispanic whites in Houston has decreased significantly since 1970, when it was 62.4%.
Houston is home to one of the largest LGBT communities and pride parades in the United States. In 2018, the city scored a 70 out of 100 for LGBT friendliness. Jordan Blum of the Houston Chronicle stated levels of LGBT acceptance and discrimination varied in 2016 due to some of the region's traditionally conservative culture.
Before the 1970s, the city's gay bars were spread around Downtown Houston and what is now midtown Houston. LGBT Houstonians needed to have a place to socialize after the closing of the gay bars. They began going to Art Wren, a 24-hour restaurant in Montrose. LGBT community members were attracted to Montrose as a neighborhood after encountering it while patronizing Art Wren, and they began to gentrify the neighborhood and assist its native inhabitants with property maintenance. Within Montrose, new gay bars began to open. By 1985, the flavor and politics of the neighborhood were heavily influenced by the LGBT community, and in 1990, according to Hill, 19% of Montrose residents identified as LGBT. Paul Broussard was murdered in Montrose in 1991.
Before the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States the marriage of Billie Ert and Antonio Molina, considered the first same-sex marriage in Texas history, took place on October 5, 1972. Houston elected the first openly lesbian mayor of a major city in 2009, and she served until 2016. During her tenure she authorized the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance which was intended to improve anti-discrimination coverage based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the city, specifically in areas such as housing and occupation where no anti-discrimination policy existed.
Houston and its metropolitan area are the third-most religious and Christian area by percentage of population in the United States, and second in Texas behind the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Historically, Houston has been a center of Protestant Christianity, being part of the Bible Belt. Other Christian groups including Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christianity, and non-Christian religions did not grow for much of the city's history because immigration was predominantly from Western Europe (which at the time was dominated by Western Christianity and favored by the quotas in federal immigration law). The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed the quotas, allowing for the growth of other religions.
According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 73% of the population of the Houston area identified themselves as Christians, about 50% of whom claimed Protestant affiliations and about 19% claimed Roman Catholic affiliations. Nationwide, about 71% of respondents identified as Christians. About 20% of Houston-area residents claimed no religious affiliation, compared to about 23% nationwide. The same study says area residents who identify with other religions (including Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism) collectively made up about 7% of the area population.
In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute estimated 40% were Protestant and 29% Catholic; overall, Christianity represented 72% of the population. In 2020, the Association of Religion Data Archives determined the Catholic Church numbered 1,299,901 for the metropolitan area; the second-largest single Christian denomination (Southern Baptists) numbered 800,688; following, non-denominational Protestant churches represented the third-largest Christian cohort at 666,548. Altogether, however, Baptists of the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Association, American Baptist Churches USA, Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, National Baptist Convention USA and National Baptist Convention of America, and the National Missionary Baptist Convention numbered 926,554. Non-denominational Protestants, the Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, and the Churches of Christ numbered 723,603 altogether according to this study.
Lakewood Church in Houston, led by Pastor Joel Osteen, is the largest church in the United States. A megachurch, it had 44,800 weekly attendees in 2010, up from 11,000 weekly in 2000. Since 2005, it has occupied the former Compaq Center sports stadium. In September 2010, Outreach magazine published a list of the 100 largest Christian churches in the United States, and on the list were the following Houston-area churches: Lakewood, Second Baptist Church Houston, Woodlands Church, Church Without Walls, and First Baptist Church. According to the list, Houston and Dallas were tied as the second-most popular city for megachurches.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, the largest Catholic jurisdiction in Texas and fifth-largest in the United States, was established in 1847. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston claimed approximately 1.7 million Catholics within its boundaries as of 2019. Its co-cathedral is located within the Houston city limits, while the diocesan see is in Galveston. Other prominent Catholic jurisdictions include the Eastern Catholic Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as well as the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, whose cathedral is also in Houston.
A variety of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches can be found in Houston. Immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Ethiopia, India, and other areas have added to Houston's Eastern and Oriental Orthodox population. As of 2011 in the entire state, 32,000 people actively attended Orthodox churches. In 2013 Father John Whiteford, the pastor of St. Jonah Orthodox Church near Spring, stated there were about 6,000-9,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians in Houston. The Association of Religion Data Archives numbered 16,526 Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Houstonians in 2020. The most prominent Eastern and Oriental Orthodox jurisdictions are the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Houston's Jewish community, estimated at 47,000 in 2001, has been present in the city since the 1800s. Houstonian Jews have origins from throughout the United States, Israel, Mexico, Russia, and other places. As of 2016, over 40 synagogues were in Greater Houston. The largest synagogues are Congregation Beth Yeshurun, a Conservative Jewish temple, and the Reform Jewish congregations Beth Israel and Emanu-El. According to a study in 2016 by Berman Jewish DataBank, 51,000 Jews lived in the area, an increase of 4,000 since 2001.
Houston has a large and diverse Muslim community; it is the largest in Texas and the Southern United States, as of 2012. It is estimated that Muslims made up 1.2% of Houston's population. As of 2016, Muslims in the Houston area included South Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, Turks, and Indonesians, as well as a growing population of Latino Muslim converts. In 2000 there were over 41 mosques and storefront religious centers, with the largest being the Al-Noor Mosque (Mosque of Light) of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.
The Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist communities form a growing sector of the religious demographic after Judaism and Islam. Large Hindu temples in the metropolitan area include the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Houston, affiliated with the Swaminarayan Sampradaya denomination in Fort Bend County, near the suburb of Stafford as well as the South Indian-style Sri Meenakshi Temple in suburban Pearland, in Brazoria County, which is the oldest Hindu temple in Texas and third-oldest Hindu temple in the United States.
Of the irreligious community 16% practiced nothing in particular, 3% were agnostic, and 2% were atheist in 2014.
Houston is recognized worldwide for its energy industry—particularly for oil and natural gas—as well as for biomedical research and aeronautics. Renewable energy sources—wind and solar—are also growing economic bases in the city, and the City Government purchases 90% of its annual 1 TWh power mostly from wind, and some from solar. The city has also been a growing hub for technology startup firms and is the fastest growing sector of the city's economy. Major technology and software companies within Greater Houston include Crown Castle, KBR, FlightAware, Cybersoft, Houston Wire & Cable, and HostGator. Aylo, Go Daddy, and ByteDance have offices in the Houston area. On April 4, 2022, Hewlett Packard Enterprise relocated its global headquarters from California to the Greater Houston area. The Houston Ship Channel is also a large part of Houston's economic base.
Because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network and global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. The Houston area is the top U.S. market for exports, surpassing New York City in 2013, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration. In 2012, the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land area recorded $110.3 billion in merchandise exports. Petroleum products, chemicals, and oil and gas extraction equipment accounted for roughly two-thirds of the metropolitan area's exports last year. The top three destinations for exports were Mexico, Canada, and Brazil.
The Houston area is a leading center for building oilfield equipment. Much of its success as a petrochemical complex is due to its busy ship channel, the Port of Houston. In the United States, the port ranks first in international commerce and 16th among the largest ports in the world. Unlike most places, high oil and gasoline prices are beneficial for Houston's economy, as many of its residents are employed in the energy industry. Houston is the beginning or end point of numerous oil, gas, and products pipelines.
The Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metro area's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 was $633 billion, making it the seventh-largest of any metropolitan area in the United States and larger than Iran's, Colombia's, or the United Arab Emirates' GDP. Only 27 countries other than the United States have a gross domestic product exceeding Houston's regional gross area product (GAP). In 2010, mining (which consists almost entirely of exploration and production of oil and gas in Houston) accounted for 26.3% of Houston's GAP up sharply in response to high energy prices and a decreased worldwide surplus of oil production capacity, followed by engineering services, health services, and manufacturing.
The University of Houston System's annual impact on the Houston area's economy equates to that of a major corporation: $1.1 billion in new funds attracted annually to the Houston area, $3.13 billion in total economic benefit, and 24,000 local jobs generated. This is in addition to the 12,500 new graduates the U.H. System produces every year who enter the workforce in Houston and throughout Texas. These degree-holders tend to stay in Houston. After five years, 80.5% of graduates are still living and working in the region.
In 2019, the Houston metropolitan area ranked third in Texas within the category of "Best Places for Business and Careers" by Forbes magazine. Ninety-one foreign governments have established consular offices in Houston's metropolitan area, the third-highest in the nation. Forty foreign governments maintain trade and commercial offices here with 23 active foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations. Twenty-five foreign banks representing 13 nations operate in Houston, providing financial assistance to the international community.
In 2008, Houston received top ranking on Kiplinger's Personal Finance "Best Cities of 2008" list, which ranks cities on their local economy, employment opportunities, reasonable living costs, and quality of life. The city ranked fourth for highest increase in the local technological innovation over the preceding 15 years, according to Forbes magazine. In the same year, the city ranked second on the annual Fortune 500 list of company headquarters, first for Forbes magazine's "Best Cities for College Graduates", and first on their list of "Best Cities to Buy a Home". In 2010, the city was rated the best city for shopping, according to Forbes.
In 2012, the city was ranked number one for paycheck worth by Forbes and in late May 2013, Houston was identified as America's top city for employment creation.
In 2013, Houston was identified as the number one U.S. city for job creation by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics after it was not only the first major city to regain all the jobs lost in the preceding economic downturn, but also after the crash, more than two jobs were added for every one lost. Economist and vice president of research at the Greater Houston Partnership Patrick Jankowski attributed Houston's success to the ability of the region's real estate and energy industries to learn from historical mistakes. Furthermore, Jankowski stated that "more than 100 foreign-owned companies relocated, expanded or started new businesses in Houston" between 2008 and 2010, and this openness to external business boosted job creation during a period when domestic demand was problematically low. Also in 2013, Houston again appeared on Forbes' list of "Best Places for Business and Careers".
Located in the American South, Houston is a diverse city with a large and growing international community. The Greater Houston metropolitan area is home to an estimated 1.1 million (21.4 percent) residents who were born outside the United States, with nearly two-thirds of the area's foreign-born population from south of the United States–Mexico border since 2009. Additionally, more than one in five foreign-born residents are from Asia. The city is home to the nation's third-largest concentration of consular offices, representing 92 countries.
Many annual events celebrate the diverse cultures of Houston. The largest and longest-running is the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, held over 20 days from early to late March, and is the largest annual livestock show and rodeo in the world. Another large celebration is the annual night-time Houston Gay Pride Parade, held at the end of June. Other notable annual events include the Houston Greek Festival, Art Car Parade, the Houston Auto Show, the Houston International Festival, and the Bayou City Art Festival, which is considered to be one of the top five art festivals in the United States.
Houston is highly regarded for its diverse food and restaurant culture. Several major publications have consistently named Houston one of "America's Best Food Cities". Houston received the official nickname of "Space City" in 1967 because it is the location of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Other nicknames often used by locals include "Bayou City", "Clutch City", "Crush City", "Magnolia City", "H-Town", and "Culinary Capital of the South".
The Houston Theater District, in Downtown, is home to nine major performing arts organizations and six performance halls. It is the second-largest concentration of theater seats in a Downtown area in the United States.
Houston is one of the few United States cities with permanent, professional, resident companies in all major performing arts disciplines: opera (Houston Grand Opera), ballet (Houston Ballet), music (Houston Symphony Orchestra), and theater (The Alley Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars). Houston is also home to folk artists, art groups and various small progressive arts organizations.
Houston attracts many touring Broadway acts, concerts, shows, and exhibitions for a variety of interests. Facilities in the Theater District include the Jones Hall—home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Society for the Performing Arts—and the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.
The Museum District's cultural institutions and exhibits attract more than 7 million visitors a year. Notable facilities include The Museum of Fine Arts, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, the Holocaust Museum Houston, the Children's Museum of Houston, and the Houston Zoo.
Located near the Museum District are The Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, the Moody Center for the Arts and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.
Bayou Bend is a 14-acre (5.7 ha) facility of the Museum of Fine Arts that houses one of America's most prominent collections of decorative art, paintings, and furniture. Bayou Bend is the former home of Houston philanthropist Ima Hogg.
The National Museum of Funeral History is in Houston near the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The museum houses the original Popemobile used by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s along with numerous hearses, embalming displays, and information on famous funerals.
Venues across Houston regularly host local and touring rock, blues, country, dubstep, and Tejano musical acts. While Houston has never been widely known for its music scene, Houston hip hop has become a significant, independent music scene that is influential nationwide. Houston is the birthplace of the chopped and screwed remixing-technique in hip-hop which was pioneered by DJ Screw from the city. Some other notable hip-hop artists from the area include Destiny's Child, Don Toliver, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Bun B, Geto Boys, Trae tha Truth, Kirko Bangz, Z-Ro, South Park Mexican, Travis Scott and Megan Thee Stallion.
The Theater District is a 17-block area in the center of Downtown Houston that is home to the Bayou Place entertainment complex, restaurants, movies, plazas, and parks. Bayou Place is a large multilevel building containing full-service restaurants, bars, live music, billiards, and Sundance Cinema. The Bayou Music Center stages live concerts, stage plays, and stand-up comedy.
Space Center Houston is the official visitors' center of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The Space Center has many interactive exhibits including Moon rocks, a Space Shuttle simulator, and presentations about the history of NASA's manned space flight program. Other tourist attractions include the Galleria (Texas's largest shopping mall, in the Uptown District), Old Market Square, the Downtown Aquarium, and Sam Houston Race Park.
Houston's current Chinatown and the Mahatma Gandhi District are two major ethnic enclaves, reflecting Houston's multicultural makeup. Restaurants, bakeries, traditional-clothing boutiques, and specialty shops can be found in both areas.
Houston is home to 337 parks, including Hermann Park, Terry Hershey Park, Lake Houston Park, Memorial Park, Tranquility Park, Sesquicentennial Park, Discovery Green, Buffalo Bayou Park and Sam Houston Park. Within Hermann Park are the Houston Zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Sam Houston Park contains restored and reconstructed homes which were originally built between 1823 and 1905.
Of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, Houston has the largest total area of parks and green space, 56,405 acres (228 km). The city also has over 200 additional green spaces—totaling over 19,600 acres (79 km) that are managed by the city—including the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. The Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark is a public skatepark owned and operated by the city of Houston, and is one of the largest skateparks in Texas consisting of a 30,000-ft (2,800 m)in-ground facility.
The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park in the Uptown District of the city serves as a popular tourist attraction and for weddings and various celebrations. A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Houston the 23rd most walkable of the 50 largest cities in the United States.
Houston has sports teams for every major professional league except the National Hockey League. The Houston Astros are a Major League Baseball expansion team formed in 1962 (known as the "Colt .45s" until 1965) that have won the World Series in 2017 and 2022 and appeared in it in 2005, 2019, and 2021. It is the only MLB team to have won pennants in both modern leagues. The Houston Rockets are a National Basketball Association franchise based in the city since 1971. They have won two NBA Championships, one in 1994 and another in 1995, under star players Hakeem Olajuwon, Otis Thorpe, Clyde Drexler, Vernon Maxwell, and Kenny Smith. The Houston Texans are a National Football League expansion team formed in 2002. The Houston Dynamo is a Major League Soccer franchise that has been based in Houston since 2006, winning two MLS Cup titles in 2006 and 2007. The Houston Dash team plays in the National Women's Soccer League, who won their first title in 2020. The Houston SaberCats are a rugby team that plays in Major League Rugby. Houston is also one of eight cities to have an XFL team, the Houston Roughnecks.
Minute Maid Park (home of the Astros) and Toyota Center (home of the Rockets), are in Downtown Houston. Houston has the NFL's first retractable-roof stadium with natural grass, NRG Stadium (home of the Texans). Minute Maid Park is also a retractable-roof stadium. Toyota Center also has the largest screen for an indoor arena in the United States built to coincide with the arena's hosting of the 2013 NBA All-Star Game. Shell Energy Stadium is a soccer-specific stadium for the Houston Dynamo, the Texas Southern Tigers football team, and Houston Dash, in East Downtown. Aveva Stadium (home of the SaberCats) is in south Houston. In addition, NRG Astrodome was the first indoor stadium in the world, built in 1965. Other sports facilities include Hofheinz Pavilion (Houston Cougars basketball), Rice Stadium (Rice Owls football), and NRG Arena. TDECU Stadium is where the University of Houston's Cougars football team plays.
Houston has hosted several major sports events: the 1968, 1986 and 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Games; the 1989, 2006 and 2013 NBA All-Star Games; Super Bowl VIII, Super Bowl XXXVIII, and Super Bowl LI, as well as hosting the 1981, 1986, 1994 and 1995 NBA Finals, winning the latter two, and hosting the 2005 World Series, 2017 World Series, 2019 World Series, 2021 World Series and 2022 World Series. The city won its first baseball championship during the 2017 event and won again 5 years later. NRG Stadium hosted Super Bowl LI on February 5, 2017. Houston will host multiple matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The city has hosted several major professional and college sporting events, including the annual Houston Open golf tournament. Houston hosts the annual Houston College Classic baseball tournament every February, and the Texas Kickoff and Bowl in September and December, respectively.
The Grand Prix of Houston, an annual auto race on the IndyCar Series circuit was held on a 1.7-mile temporary street circuit in NRG Park. The October 2013 event was held using a tweaked version of the 2006–2007 course. The event had a 5-year race contract through 2017 with IndyCar. In motorcycling, the Astrodome hosted an AMA Supercross Championship round from 1974 to 2003 and the NRG Stadium since 2003.
Houston is also one of the first cities in the world to have a major esports team represent it, in the form of the Houston Outlaws. The Outlaws play in the Overwatch League and are one of two Texan teams, the other being the Dallas Fuel.
The city of Houston has a strong mayoral form of municipal government. Houston is a home rule city and all municipal elections in Texas are nonpartisan. The city's elected officials are the mayor, city controller and 16 members of the Houston City Council. The current mayor of Houston is Sylvester Turner, a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot. Houston's mayor serves as the city's chief administrator, executive officer, and official representative, and is responsible for the general management of the city and for seeing all laws and ordinances are enforced.
The original city council line-up of 14 members (nine district-based and five at-large positions) was based on a U.S. Justice Department mandate which took effect in 1979. At-large council members represent the entire city. Under the city charter, once the population in the city limits exceeded 2.1 million residents, two additional districts were to be added. The city of Houston's official 2010 census count was 600 shy of the required number; however, as the city was expected to grow beyond 2.1 million shortly thereafter, the two additional districts were added for, and the positions filled during, the August 2011 elections.
The city controller is elected independently of the mayor and council. The controller's duties are to certify available funds prior to committing such funds and processing disbursements. The city's fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30. Chris Brown is the city controller, serving his first term as of January 2016.
As the result of a 2015 referendum in Houston, a mayor is elected for a four-year term and can be elected to as many as two consecutive terms. The term limits were spearheaded in 1991 by conservative political activist Clymer Wright. During 1991–2015, the city controller and city council members were subjected to a two-year, three-term limitation–the 2015 referendum amended term limits to two four-year terms. As of 2017 some councilmembers who served two terms and won a final term will have served eight years in office, whereas a freshman councilmember who won a position in 2013 can serve up to two additional terms under the previous term limit law–a select few will have at least 10 years of incumbency once their term expires.
Houston is considered to be a politically divided city whose balance of power often sways between Republicans and Democrats. According to the 2005 Houston Area Survey, 68 percent of non-Hispanic whites in Harris County are declared or favor Republicans while 89 percent of non-Hispanic blacks in the area are declared or favor Democrats. About 62 percent of Hispanics (of any nationality) in the area are declared or favor Democrats. The city has often been known to be the most politically diverse city in Texas, a state known for being generally conservative. As a result, the city is often a contested area in statewide elections. In 2009, Houston became the first U.S. city with a population over 1 million citizens to elect a gay mayor, by electing Annise Parker.
Texas has banned sanctuary cities, but Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Houston will not assist ICE agents with immigration raids.
Houston had 303 homicides in 2015 and 302 homicides in 2016. Officials predicted there would be 323 homicides in 2016. Instead, there was no increase in Houston's homicide rate between 2015 and 2016.
Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population). In 2010, the city's murder rate (per capita rate of 11.8 murders per 100,000 population) was ranked sixth among U.S. cities with a population of over 750,000 (behind New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, and Philadelphia) according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Murders fell by 37 percent from January to June 2011, compared with the same period in 2010. Houston's total crime rate including violent and nonviolent crimes decreased by 11 percent. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) indicates a downward trend of violent crime in Houston over the ten- and twenty-year periods ending in 2016, which is consistent with national trends. This trend toward lower rates of violent crime in Houston includes the murder rate, though it had seen a four-year uptick that lasted through 2015. Houston's violent crime rate was 8.6% percent higher in 2016 than the previous year. However, from 2006 to 2016, violent crime was still down 12 percent in Houston.
Houston is a significant hub for trafficking of cocaine, cannabis, heroin, MDMA, and methamphetamine due to its size and proximity to major illegal drug exporting nations.
In the early 1970s, Houston, Pasadena and several coastal towns were the site of the Houston mass murders, which at the time were the deadliest case of serial killing in American history.
In 1853, the first execution in Houston took place in public at Founder's Cemetery in the Fourth Ward; initially, the cemetery was the execution site, but post-1868 executions took place in the jail facilities. In the year 2023, the city of Houston made enforcement of an anti-food sharing ordinance a priority. This has resulted in volunteers receiving over 80 tickets, and a federal lawsuit to be filed against the city of Houston.
Nineteen school districts exist within the city of Houston. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the seventh-largest school district in the United States and the largest in Texas. HISD has over 100 campuses that serve as magnet or vanguard schools—specializing in such disciplines as health professions, visual and performing arts, and the sciences. There are also many charter schools that are run separately from school districts. In addition, some public school districts also have their own charter schools.
The Houston area encompasses more than 300 private schools, many of which are accredited by Texas Private School Accreditation Commission recognized agencies. The Greater Houston metropolitan area's independent schools offer education from a variety of different religious as well as secular viewpoints. The Greater Houston area's Catholic schools are operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
Houston has four state universities. The University of Houston (UH) is a research university and the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. The third-largest university in Texas, the University of Houston has nearly 44,000 students on its 667-acre (270-hectare) campus in the Third Ward. The University of Houston–Clear Lake and the University of Houston–Downtown are stand-alone universities within the University of Houston System; they are not branch campuses of the University of Houston. Slightly west of the University of Houston is Texas Southern University (TSU), one of the largest historically black universities in the United States with approximately 10,000 students. Texas Southern University is the first state university in Houston, founded in 1927.
Several private institutions of higher learning are within the city. Rice University, the most selective university in Texas and one of the most selective in the United States, is a private, secular institution with a high level of research activity. Founded in 1912, Rice's historic, heavily wooded 300-acre (120-hectare) campus, adjacent to Hermann Park and the Texas Medical Center, hosts approximately 4,000 undergraduate and 3,000 post-graduate students. To the north in Neartown, the University of St. Thomas, founded in 1947, is Houston's only Catholic university. St. Thomas provides a liberal arts curriculum for roughly 3,000 students at its historic 19-block campus along Montrose Boulevard. In southwest Houston, Houston Christian University (formerly Houston Baptist University), founded in 1960, offers bachelor's and graduate degrees at its Sharpstown campus. The school is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and has a student population of approximately 3,000.
Three community college districts have campuses in and around Houston. The Houston Community College System (HCC) serves most of Houston proper; its main campus and headquarters are in Midtown. Suburban northern and western parts of the metropolitan area are served by various campuses of the Lone Star College System, while the southeastern portion of Houston is served by San Jacinto College, and a northeastern portion is served by Lee College. The Houston Community College and Lone Star College systems are among the 10 largest institutions of higher learning in the United States.
Houston also hosts a number of graduate schools in law and healthcare. The University of Houston Law Center and Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University are public, ABA-accredited law schools, while the South Texas College of Law, in Downtown, serves as a private, independent alternative. The Texas Medical Center is home to a high density of health professions schools, including two medical schools: McGovern Medical School, part of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Baylor College of Medicine, a highly selective private institution. Prairie View A&M University's nursing school is in the Texas Medical Center. Additionally, both Texas Southern University and the University of Houston have pharmacy schools, and the University of Houston hosts a medical school and a college of optometry.
The primary network-affiliated television stations are KPRC-TV channel 2 (NBC), KHOU channel 11 (CBS), KTRK-TV channel 13 (ABC), KTXH channel 20 (MyNetworkTV), KRIV channel 26 (Fox), KIAH channel 39 (The CW), KXLN-DT channel 45 (Univision), KTMD-TV channel 47 (Telemundo), KPXB-TV channel 49 (Ion Television), KYAZ channel 51 (MeTV) and KFTH-DT channel 67 (UniMás). KTRK-TV, KTXH, KRIV, KTXH, KIAH, KXLN-DT, KTMD-TV, KPXB-TV, KYAZ and KFTH-DT operate as owned-and-operated stations of their networks.
The Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area is served by one public television station and two public radio stations. KUHT channel 8 (Houston Public Media) is a PBS member station and is the first public television station in the United States. Houston Public Radio is listener-funded and comprises one NPR member station, KUHF (News 88.7). The University of Houston System owns and holds broadcasting licenses to KUHT and KUHF. The stations broadcast from the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting on the campus of the University of Houston. Houston additionally is served by the Pacifica Foundation public radio station KPFT.
Houston and its metropolitan area are served by the Houston Chronicle, its only major daily newspaper with wide distribution. Hearst Communications, which owns and operates the Houston Chronicle, bought the assets of the Houston Post—its long-time rival and main competition—when Houston Post ceased operations in 1995. The Houston Post was owned by the family of former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby of Houston. The only other major publication to serve the city is the Houston Press—which was a free alternative weekly newspaper before the destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey resulted in the publication switching to an online-only format on November 2, 2017. Other notable publications include Houston Forward Times, OutSmart, and La Voz de Houston. Houston Forward Times is one of the largest black-owned newspapers in the metropolitan area and owned by Forward Times Publishing Company. OutSmart is an LGBT magazine in Houston and was ranked "Best Local Magazine" by the Houston Press in 2008. La Voz de Houston is the Houston Chronicle's Spanish-language newspaper and the largest in the area.
Houston is the seat of the Texas Medical Center, which is the largest medical center in the world, and which describes itself as containing the world's largest concentration of research and healthcare institutions. All 49 member institutions of the Texas Medical Center are non-profit organizations. They provide patient and preventive care, research, education, and local, national, and international community well-being. Employing more than 73,600 people, institutions at the medical center include 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and virtually all health-related careers. It is where one of the first—and still the largest—air emergency service, Life Flight, was created, and an inter-institutional transplant program was developed. Around 2007, more heart surgeries were performed at the Texas Medical Center than anywhere else in the world.
Some of the academic and research health institutions at the center include MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, UT Health Science Center, Memorial Hermann Hospital, Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, and University of Houston College of Pharmacy.
In the 2000s, the Baylor College of Medicine was annually considered within the top ten medical schools in the nation; likewise, the MD Anderson Cancer Center had been consistently ranked as one of the top two U.S. hospitals specializing in cancer care by U.S. News & World Report since 1990. The Menninger Clinic, a psychiatric treatment center, is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the Houston Methodist Hospital System. With hospital locations nationwide and headquarters in Houston, the Triumph Healthcare hospital system was the third largest long term acute care provider nationally in 2005.
Harris Health System (formerly Harris County Hospital District), the hospital district for Harris County, operates public hospitals (Ben Taub General Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital) and public clinics. The City of Houston Health Department also operates four clinics. As of 2011 the dental centers of Harris Health System take patients of ages 16 and up with patients under that age referred to the City of Houston's dental clinics. Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) serves as the hospital district for Houstonians living in Montgomery County. Fort Bend County, in which a portion of Houston resides, does not have a hospital district. OakBend Medical Center serves as the county's charity hospital which the county contracts with.
Houston is considered an automobile-dependent city, with an estimated 77.2% of commuters driving alone to work in 2016, up from 71.7% in 1990 and 75.6% in 2009. In 2016, another 11.4% of Houstonians carpooled to work, while 3.6% used public transit, 2.1% walked, and 0.5% bicycled. A commuting study estimated the median length of commute in the region was 12.2 miles (19.6 km) in 2012. According to the 2013 American Community Survey, the average work commute in Houston (city) takes 26.3 minutes. A 1999 Murdoch University study found Houston had both the lengthiest commute and lowest urban density of 13 large American cities surveyed, and a 2017 Arcadis study ranked Houston 22nd out of 23 American cities in transportation sustainability. Harris County is one of the largest consumers of gasoline in the United States, ranking second (behind Los Angeles County) in 2013.
Despite the region's high rate of automobile usage, attitudes towards transportation among Houstonians indicate a growing preference for walkability. A 2017 study by the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research found 56% of Harris County residents have a preference for dense housing in a mixed-use, walkable setting as opposed to single-family housing in a low-density area. A plurality of survey respondents also indicated traffic congestion was the most significant problem facing the metropolitan area. In addition, many households in the city of Houston have no car. In 2015, 8.3 percent of Houston households lacked a car, which was virtually unchanged in 2016 (8.1 percent). The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Houston averaged 1.59 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.
The eight-county Greater Houston metropolitan area contains over 25,000 miles (40,000 km) of roadway, of which 10%, or approximately 2,500 miles (4,000 km), is limited-access highway. The Houston region's extensive freeway system handles over 40% of the regional daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Arterial roads handle an additional 40% of daily VMT, while toll roads, of which Greater Houston has 180 miles (290 km), handle nearly 10%.
Greater Houston possesses a hub-and-spoke limited-access highway system, in which a number of freeways radiate outward from Downtown, with ring roads providing connections between these radial highways at intermediate distances from the city center. The city is crossed by three Interstate highways, Interstate 10, Interstate 45, and Interstate 69 (commonly known as U.S. Route 59), as well as a number of other United States routes and state highways. Major freeways in Greater Houston are often referred to by either the cardinal direction or geographic location they travel towards. Highways that follow the cardinal convention include U.S. Route 290 (Northwest Freeway), Interstate 45 north of Downtown (North Freeway), Interstate 10 east of Downtown (East Freeway), Texas State Highway 288 (South Freeway), and Interstate 69 south of Downtown (Southwest Freeway). Highways that follow the location convention include Interstate 10 west of Downtown (Katy Freeway), Interstate 69 north of Downtown (Eastex Freeway), Interstate 45 south of Downtown (Gulf Freeway), and Texas State Highway 225 (Pasadena Freeway).
Three loop freeways provide north–south and east–west connectivity between Greater Houston's radial highways. The innermost loop is Interstate 610, commonly known as the Inner Loop, which encircles Downtown, the Texas Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, the cities of West University Place and Southside Place, and many core neighborhoods. The 88-mile (142 km) State Highway Beltway 8, often referred to as the Beltway, forms the middle loop at a radius of roughly 10 miles (16 km). A third, 180-mile (290 km) loop with a radius of approximately 25 miles (40 km), State Highway 99 (the Grand Parkway), is currently under construction, with eight of eleven segments completed as of 2018. Completed segments D through I-2 provide a continuous 123-mile (198 km) limited-access tollway connection between Sugar Land, Richmond, Katy, Cypress, Spring, Porter, New Caney, Cleveland, Dayton, Mont Belvieu, and Baytown .
A system of toll roads, operated by the Harris County Toll Road Authority (HCTRA) and Fort Bend County Toll Road Authority (FBCTRA), provides additional options for regional commuters. The Sam Houston Tollway, which encompasses the mainlanes of Beltway 8 (as opposed to the frontage roads, which are untolled), is the longest tollway in the system, covering the entirety of the Beltway with the exception of a free section between Interstate 45 and Interstate 69 near George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The region is serviced by four spoke tollways: a set of managed lanes on the Katy Freeway; the Hardy Toll Road, which parallels Interstate 45 north of Downtown up to Spring; the Westpark Tollway, which services Houston's western suburbs out to Fulshear; and Fort Bend Parkway, which connects to Sienna Plantation. Westpark Tollway and Fort Bend Parkway are operated conjunctly with the Fort Bend County Toll Road Authority.
Greater Houston's freeway system is monitored by Houston TranStar, a partnership of four government agencies which is responsible for providing transportation and emergency management services to the region.
Greater Houston's arterial road network is established at the municipal level, with the City of Houston exercising planning control over both its incorporated area and extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ). Therefore, Houston exercises transportation planning authority over a 2,000-square-mile (5,200 km) area over five counties, many times larger than its corporate area. The Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan, updated annually, establishes the city's street hierarchy, identifies roadways in need of widening, and proposes new roadways in unserved areas. Arterial roads are organized into four categories, in decreasing order of intensity: major thoroughfares, transit corridor streets, collector streets, and local streets. Roadway classification affects anticipated traffic volumes, roadway design, and right of way breadth. Ultimately, the system is designed to ferry traffic from neighborhood streets to major thoroughfares, which connect into the limited-access highway system. Notable arterial roads in the region include Westheimer Road, Memorial Drive, Texas State Highway 6, Farm to Market Road 1960, Bellaire Boulevard, and Telephone Road.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) provides public transportation in the form of buses, light rail, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, and paratransit to fifteen municipalities throughout the Greater Houston area and parts of unincorporated Harris County. METRO's service area covers 1,303 square miles (3,370 km) containing a population of 3.6 million.
METRO's local bus network services approximately 275,000 riders daily with a fleet of over 1,200 buses. The agency's 75 local routes contain nearly 8,900 stops and saw nearly 67 million boardings during the 2016 fiscal year. A park and ride system provides commuter bus service from 34 transit centers scattered throughout the region's suburban areas; these express buses operate independently of the local bus network and utilize the region's extensive system of HOV lanes. Downtown and the Texas Medical Center have the highest rates of transit use in the region, largely due to the park and ride system, with nearly 60% of commuters in each district utilizing public transit to get to work.
METRO began light rail service in 2004 with the opening of the 8-mile (13 km) north-south Red Line connecting Downtown, Midtown, the Museum District, the Texas Medical Center, and NRG Park. In the early 2010s, two additional lines—the Green Line, servicing the East End, and the Purple Line, servicing the Third Ward—opened, and the Red Line was extended northward to Northline, bringing the total length of the system to 22.7 miles (36.5 km). Two light rail lines outlined in a five-line system approved by voters in a 2003 referendum have yet to be constructed. The Uptown Line, which runs along Post Oak Boulevard in Uptown, was under construction as a bus rapid transit line—the city's first—while the University Line has been postponed indefinitely. The light rail system saw approximately 16.8 million boardings in fiscal year 2016.
Amtrak's thrice-weekly Los Angeles–New Orleans Sunset Limited serves Houston at a station northwest of Downtown. There were 14,891 boardings and alightings in FY2008, 20,327 in FY2012, and 20,205 in FY2018. A daily Amtrak Thruway connects Houston with Amtrak's Chicago–San Antonio Texas Eagle at Longview.
Houston has the largest number of bike commuters in Texas with over 160 miles of dedicated bikeways. The city is currently in the process of expanding its on and off street bikeway network. In 2015, Downtown Houston added a cycle track on Lamar Street, running from Sam Houston Park to Discovery Green. Houston City Council approved the Houston Bike Plan in March 2017, at that time entering the plan into the Houston Code of Ordinances. In August 2017, Houston City Council approved spending for construction of 13 additional miles of bike trails.
Houston's bicycle sharing system started service with nineteen stations in May 2012. Houston Bcycle (also known as B-Cycle), a local non-profit, runs the subscription program, supplying bicycles and docking stations, while partnering with other companies to maintain the system. The network expanded to 29 stations and 225 bicycles in 2014, registering over 43,000 checkouts of equipment during the first half of the same year. In 2017, Bcycle logged over 142,000 check outs while expanding to 56 docking stations.
The Houston Airport System, a branch of the municipal government, oversees the operation of three major public airports in the city. Two of these airports, George Bush Intercontinental Airport and William P. Hobby Airport, offer commercial aviation service to a variety of domestic and international destinations and served 55 million passengers in 2016. The third, Ellington Airport, is home to the Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base. The Federal Aviation Administration and the state of Texas selected the Houston Airport System as "Airport of the Year" in 2005, largely due to the implementation of a $3.1 billion airport improvement program for both major airports in Houston.
George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), 23 miles (37 km) north of Downtown Houston between Interstates 45 and 69, is the eighth busiest commercial airport in the United States (by total passengers and aircraft movements) and forty-third busiest globally. The five-terminal, five-runway, 11,000-acre (4,500-hectare) airport served 40 million passengers in 2016, including 10 million international travelers. In 2006, the United States Department of Transportation named IAH the fastest-growing of the top ten airports in the United States. The Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center is at Bush Intercontinental.
Houston was the headquarters of Continental Airlines until its 2010 merger with United Airlines with headquarters in Chicago; regulatory approval for the merger was granted in October of that year. Bush Intercontinental is currently United Airlines' second largest hub, behind O'Hare International Airport. United Airlines' share of the Houston Airport System's commercial aviation market was nearly 60% in 2017 with 16 million enplaned passengers. In early 2007, Bush Intercontinental Airport was named a model "port of entry" for international travelers by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), known as Houston International Airport until 1967, operates primarily short- to medium-haul domestic and international flights to 60 destinations. The four-runway, 1,304-acre (528-hectare) facility is approximately 7 miles (11 km) southeast of Downtown Houston. In 2015, Southwest Airlines launched service from a new international terminal at Hobby to several destinations in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. These were the first international flights flown from Hobby since the opening of Bush Intercontinental in 1969. Houston's aviation history is showcased in the 1940 Air Terminal Museum in the old terminal building on the west side of the airport. In 2009, Hobby Airport was recognized with two awards for being one of the top five performing airports globally and for customer service by Airports Council International. In 2022 Hobby Airport was certified as the first 5-Star Airport in North America by Skytrax. It became the first Airport in North America to do so and just the 16th airport worldwide to receive the accomplishment.
Houston's third municipal airport is Ellington Airport, used by the military, government (including NASA) and general aviation sectors.
The Mayor's Office of Trade and International Affairs (MOTIA) is the city's liaison to Houston's sister cities and to the national governing organization, Sister Cities International. Through their official city-to-city relationships, these volunteer associations promote people-to-people diplomacy and encourage citizens to develop mutual trust and understanding through commercial, cultural, educational, and humanitarian exchanges. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Houston (/ˈhjuːstən/ ; HEW-stən) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. It is the fourth-most populous city in the United States after New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and the seventh-most populous city in North America. With a population of 2,302,878 in 2022, Houston is located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; it is the seat and largest city of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Comprising a land area of 640.4 square miles (1,659 km), Houston is the ninth-most expansive city in the United States (including consolidated city-counties). It is the largest city in the United States by total area whose government is not consolidated with a county, parish, or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, bordering other principal communities of Greater Houston such as Sugar Land and The Woodlands.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Houston was founded by land investors on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou (a point now known as Allen's Landing) and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837. The city is named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had won Texas's independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles (40 km) east of Allen's Landing. After briefly serving as the capital of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew steadily into a regional trading center for the remainder of the 19th century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The arrival of the 20th century brought a convergence of economic factors that fueled rapid growth in Houston, including a burgeoning port and railroad industry, the decline of Galveston as Texas's primary port following a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, and the Texas oil boom. In the mid-20th century, Houston's economy diversified, as it became home to the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, home to the Mission Control Center.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Since the late 19th century Houston's economy has had a broad industrial base, in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, and transportation. Leading in healthcare sectors and building oilfield equipment, Houston has the second-most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U.S. municipality within its city limits (after New York City). The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Nicknamed the \"Bayou City\", \"Space City\", \"H-Town\", and \"the 713\", Houston has become a global city, with strengths in culture, medicine, and research. The city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse metropolitan area in Texas and has been described as the most racially and ethnically diverse major city in the U.S. It is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than seven million visitors a year to the Museum District. The Museum District is home to nineteen museums, galleries, and community spaces. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District, and offers year-round resident companies in all major performing arts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Present-day Houston sits on land that was once occupied by the Karankawa (kə rang′kə wä′,-wô′,-wə) and the Atakapa (əˈtɑːkəpə) indigenous peoples for at least 2,000 years before the first known settlers arrived. These tribes are almost nonexistent today; this was most likely caused by foreign disease, and competition with various settler groups in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the land then remained largely uninhabited from the late 1700s until settlement in the 1830s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Allen brothers—Augustus Chapman and John Kirby—explored town sites on Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay. According to historian David McComb, \"[T]he brothers, on August 26, 1836, bought from Elizabeth E. Parrott, wife of T.F.L. Parrott and widow of John Austin, the south half of the lower league [2,214-acre (896 ha) tract] granted to her by her late husband. They paid $5,000 total, but only $1,000 of this in cash; notes made up the remainder.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Allen brothers ran their first advertisement for Houston just four days later in the Telegraph and Texas Register, naming the notional town in honor of Sam Houston, who would become President later that year. They successfully lobbied the Republic of Texas Congress to designate Houston as the temporary capital, agreeing to provide the new government with a state capitol building. About a dozen persons resided in the town at the beginning of 1837, but that number grew to about 1,500 by the time the Texas Congress convened in Houston for the first time that May. The Republic of Texas granted Houston incorporation on June 5, 1837, as James S. Holman became its first mayor. In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County (now Harris County).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1839, the Republic of Texas relocated its capital to Austin. The town suffered another setback that year when a yellow fever epidemic claimed about one life for every eight residents, yet it persisted as a commercial center, forming a symbiosis with its Gulf Coast port, Galveston. Landlocked farmers brought their produce to Houston, using Buffalo Bayou to gain access to Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. Houston merchants profited from selling staples to farmers and shipping the farmers' produce to Galveston.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The great majority of enslaved people in Texas came with their owners from the older slave states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the domestic slave trade. New Orleans was the center of this trade in the Deep South, but slave dealers were in Houston. Thousands of enslaved black people lived near the city before the American Civil War. Many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce, in part to promote shipping and navigation at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton. Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont. During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for Confederate Major General John B. Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston. After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more commerce between Downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890, Houston was the railroad center of Texas.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1900, after Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane, efforts to make Houston into a viable deep-water port were accelerated. The following year, the discovery of oil at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel. By 1910, the city's population had reached 78,800, almost doubling from a decade before. African Americans formed a large part of the city's population, numbering 23,929 people, which was nearly one-third of Houston's residents.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "President Woodrow Wilson opened the deep-water Port of Houston in 1914, seven years after digging began. By 1930, Houston had become Texas's most populous city and Harris County the most populous county. In 1940, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Houston's population as 77.5% White and 22.4% Black.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "When World War II started, tonnage levels at the port decreased and shipping activities were suspended; however, the war did provide economic benefits for the city. Petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants were constructed along the ship channel because of the demand for petroleum and synthetic rubber products by the defense industry during the war. Ellington Field, initially built during World War I, was revitalized as an advanced training center for bombardiers and navigators. The Brown Shipbuilding Company was founded in 1942 to build ships for the U.S. Navy during World War II. Due to the boom in defense jobs, thousands of new workers migrated to the city, both blacks, and whites competing for the higher-paying jobs. President Roosevelt had established a policy of nondiscrimination for defense contractors, and blacks gained some opportunities, especially in shipbuilding, although not without resistance from whites and increasing social tensions that erupted into occasional violence. Economic gains of blacks who entered defense industries continued in the postwar years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1945, the M.D. Anderson Foundation formed the Texas Medical Center. After the war, Houston's economy reverted to being primarily port-driven. In 1948, the city annexed several unincorporated areas, more than doubling its size. Houston proper began to spread across the region. In 1950, the availability of air conditioning provided impetus for many companies to relocate to Houston, where wages were lower than those in the North; this resulted in an economic boom and produced a key shift in the city's economy toward the energy sector.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The increased production of the expanded shipbuilding industry during World War II spurred Houston's growth, as did the establishment in 1961 of NASA's \"Manned Spacecraft Center\" (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973). This was the stimulus for the development of the city's aerospace industry. The Astrodome, nicknamed the \"Eighth Wonder of the World\", opened in 1965 as the world's first indoor domed sports stadium.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "During the late 1970s, Houston had a population boom as people from the Rust Belt states moved to Texas in large numbers. The new residents came for numerous employment opportunities in the petroleum industry, created as a result of the Arab oil embargo. With the increase in professional jobs, Houston has become a destination for many college-educated persons, most recently including African Americans in a reverse Great Migration from northern areas.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1997, Houstonians elected Lee P. Brown as the city's first African American mayor.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Houston has continued to grow into the 21st century, with the population increasing 15.7% from 2000 to 2022.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Oil & gas have continued to fuel Houston's economic growth, with major oil companies including Phillips 66, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum, Halliburton, and ExxonMobil having their headquarters in the Houston area. In 2001, Enron Corporation, a Houston company with $100 billion in revenue, became engulfed in an accounting scandal which bankrupted the company in 2001. Health care has emerged as a major industry in Houston. The Texas Medical Center is now the largest medical complex in the world and employs over 120,000 people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Three new sports stadiums opened downtown in the first decade of the 21st century. In 2000, the Houston Astros opened their new baseball stadium, Minute Maid Park, in downtown adjacent to the old Union Station. The Houston Texans were formed in 2002 as an NFL expansion team, replacing the Houston Oilers, which had left the city in 1996. NRG Stadium opened the same year. In 2003, the Toyota Center opened as the home for the Houston Rockets. In 2005, the Houston Dynamo soccer team was formed. In 2017, the Houston Astros won their first World Series.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Flooding has been a recurring problem in the Houston area, exacerbated by a lack of zoning laws, which allowed unregulated building of residential homes and other structures in flood-prone areas. In June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain on parts of Houston, causing what was then the worst flooding in the city's history and billions of dollars in damage, and killed 20 people in Texas. In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans, who evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. One month later, about 2.5 million Houston-area residents evacuated when Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This was the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States. In May 2015, seven people died after 12 inches of rain fell in 10 hours during what is known as the Memorial Day Flood. Eight people died in April 2016 during a storm that dropped 17 inches of rain. The worst came in late August 2017, when Hurricane Harvey stalled over southeastern Texas, much like Tropical Storm Allison did sixteen years earlier, causing severe flooding in the Houston area, with some areas receiving over 50 inches (1,300 mm) of rain. The rainfall exceeded 50 inches in several areas locally, breaking the national record for rainfall. The damage for the Houston area was estimated at up to $125 billion U.S. dollars, and was considered to be one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States, with the death toll exceeding 70 people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Houston is 165 miles (266 km) east of Austin, 88 miles (142 km) west of the Louisiana border, and 250 miles (400 km) south of Dallas. The city has a total area of 637.4 square miles (1,651 km); this comprises over 599.59 square miles (1,552.9 km) of land and 22.3 square miles (58 km) covered by water. Most of Houston is on the gulf coastal plain, and its vegetation is classified as Western Gulf coastal grasslands while further north, it transitions into a subtropical jungle, the Big Thicket.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Much of the city was built on forested land, marshes, or swamps, and all are still visible in surrounding areas. Flat terrain and extensive greenfield development have combined to worsen flooding. Downtown stands about 50 feet (15 m) above sea level, and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about 150 feet (46 m) in elevation. The city once relied on groundwater for its needs, but land subsidence forced the city to turn to ground-level water sources such as Lake Houston, Lake Conroe, and Lake Livingston. The city owns surface water rights for 1.20 billion US gallons (4.5 Gl) of water a day in addition to 150 million US gallons (570 Ml) a day of groundwater.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Houston has four major bayous passing through the city that accept water from the extensive drainage system. Buffalo Bayou runs through Downtown and the Houston Ship Channel, and has three tributaries: White Oak Bayou, which runs through the Houston Heights community northwest of Downtown and then towards Downtown; Brays Bayou, which runs along the Texas Medical Center; and Sims Bayou, which runs through the south of Houston and Downtown Houston. The ship channel continues past Galveston and then into the Gulf of Mexico.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Houston is a flat, marshy area where an extensive drainage system has been built. The adjoining prairie land drains into the city, which is prone to flooding. Underpinning Houston's land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, and poorly cemented sands up to several miles deep. The region's geology developed from river deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic marine matter, that over time, transformed into oil and natural gas. Beneath the layers of sediment is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward. As it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into salt dome formations, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. The thick, rich, sometimes black, surface soil is suitable for rice farming in suburban outskirts where the city continues to grow.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Houston area has over 150 active faults (estimated to be 300 active faults) with an aggregate length of up to 310 miles (500 km), including the Long Point–Eureka Heights fault system which runs through the center of the city. Land in some areas southeast of Houston is sinking because water has been pumped out of the ground for many years. It may be associated with slip along the faults; however, the slippage is slow and not considered an earthquake, where stationary faults must slip suddenly enough to create seismic waves. These faults also tend to move at a smooth rate in what is termed \"fault creep\", which further reduces the risk of an earthquake.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The city of Houston was incorporated in 1837 and adopted a ward system of representation shortly afterward, in 1840. The six original wards of Houston are the progenitors of the 11 modern-day geographically oriented Houston City Council districts, though the city abandoned the ward system in 1905 in favor of a commission government, and, later, the existing mayor–council government.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Locations in Houston are generally classified as either being inside or outside the Interstate 610 loop. The \"Inner Loop\" encompasses a 97-square-mile (250 km) area which includes Downtown, pre–World War II residential neighborhoods and streetcar suburbs, and newer high-density apartment and townhouse developments. Outside the loop, the city's typology is more suburban, though many major business districts—such as Uptown, Westchase, and the Energy Corridor—lie well outside the urban core. In addition to Interstate 610, two additional loop highways encircle the city: Beltway 8, with a radius of approximately 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown, and State Highway 99 (the Grand Parkway), with a radius of 25 miles (40 km). Approximately 470,000 people lived within the Interstate 610 loop, while 1.65 million lived between Interstate 610 and Beltway 8 and 2.25 million lived within Harris County outside Beltway 8 in 2015.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Though Houston is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations, it has developed similarly to other Sun Belt cities because the city's land use regulations and legal covenants have played a similar role. Regulations include mandatory lot size for single-family houses and requirements that parking be available to tenants and customers. Such restrictions have had mixed results. Though some have blamed the city's low density, urban sprawl, and lack of pedestrian-friendliness on these policies, others have credited the city's land use patterns with providing significant affordable housing, sparing Houston the worst effects of the 2008 real estate crisis. The city issued 42,697 building permits in 2008 and was ranked first in the list of healthiest housing markets for 2009. In 2019, home sales reached a new record of $30 billion.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In referendums in 1948, 1962, and 1993, voters rejected efforts to establish separate residential and commercial land-use districts. Consequently, rather than a single central business district as the center of the city's employment, multiple districts and skylines have grown throughout the city in addition to Downtown, which include Uptown, the Texas Medical Center, Midtown, Greenway Plaza, Memorial City, the Energy Corridor, Westchase, and Greenspoint.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Houston had the fifth-tallest skyline in North America (after New York City, Chicago, Toronto and Miami) and 36th-tallest in the world in 2015. A seven-mile (11 km) system of tunnels and skywalks links Downtown buildings containing shops and restaurants, enabling pedestrians to avoid summer heat and rain while walking between buildings. In the 1960s, Downtown Houston consisted of a collection of mid-rise office structures. Downtown was on the threshold of an energy industry–led boom in 1970. A succession of skyscrapers was built throughout the 1970s—many by real estate developer Gerald D. Hines—culminating with Houston's tallest skyscraper, the 75-floor, 1,002-foot (305 m)-tall JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly the Texas Commerce Tower), completed in 1982. It is the tallest structure in Texas, 19th tallest building in the United States, and was previously 85th-tallest skyscraper in the world, based on highest architectural feature. In 1983, the 71-floor, 992-foot (302 m)-tall Wells Fargo Plaza (formerly Allied Bank Plaza) was completed, becoming the second-tallest building in Houston and Texas. Based on highest architectural feature, it is the 21st-tallest in the United States. In 2007, Downtown had over 43 million square feet (4,000,000 m) of office space.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Centered on Post Oak Boulevard and Westheimer Road, the Uptown District boomed during the 1970s and early 1980s when a collection of midrise office buildings, hotels, and retail developments appeared along Interstate 610 West. Uptown became one of the most prominent instances of an edge city. The tallest building in Uptown is the 64-floor, 901-foot (275 m)-tall, Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed landmark Williams Tower (known as the Transco Tower until 1999). At the time of construction, it was believed to be the world's tallest skyscraper outside a central business district. The new 20-story Skanska building and BBVA Compass Plaza are the newest office buildings built in Uptown after 30 years. The Uptown District is also home to buildings designed by noted architects I. M. Pei, César Pelli, and Philip Johnson. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a mini-boom of midrise and highrise residential tower construction occurred, with several over 30 stories tall. Since 2000 over 30 skyscrapers have been developed in Houston; all told, 72 high-rises tower over the city, which adds up to about 8,300 units. In 2002, Uptown had more than 23 million square feet (2,100,000 m) of office space with 16 million square feet (1,500,000 m) of class A office space.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Houston's climate is classified as humid subtropical (Cfa in the Köppen climate classification system), typical of the Southern United States. While not in Tornado Alley, like much of Northern Texas, spring supercell thunderstorms sometimes bring tornadoes to the area. Prevailing winds are from the south and southeast during most of the year, which bring heat and tropical moisture from the nearby Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "During the summer, temperatures reach or exceed 90 °F (32 °C) an average of 106.5 days per year, including a majority of days from June to September. Additionally, an average of 4.6 days per year reach or exceed 100 °F (37.8 °C). Houston's characteristic subtropical humidity often results in a higher apparent temperature, and summer mornings average over 90% relative humidity. Air conditioning is ubiquitous in Houston; in 1981, annual spending on electricity for interior cooling exceeded $600 million (equivalent to $1.93 billion in 2022), and by the late 1990s, approximately 90% of Houston homes featured air conditioning systems. The record highest temperature recorded in Houston is 109 °F (43 °C) at Bush Intercontinental Airport, during September 4, 2000, and again on August 27, 2011.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Houston has mild winters, with occasional cold spells. In January, the normal mean temperature at George Bush Intercontinental Airport is 53 °F (12 °C), with an average of 13 days per year with a low at or below 32 °F (0 °C), occurring on average between December 3 and February 20, allowing for a growing season of 286 days. Twenty-first century snow events in Houston include a storm on December 24, 2004, which saw 1 inch (3 cm) of snow accumulate in parts of the metro area, and an event on December 7, 2017, which precipitated 0.7 inches (2 cm) of snowfall. Snowfalls of at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) on both December 10, 2008, and December 4, 2009, marked the first time measurable snowfall had occurred in two consecutive years in the city's recorded history. Overall, Houston has seen measurable snowfall 38 times between 1895 and 2018. On February 14 and 15, 1895, Houston received 20 inches (51 cm) of snow, its largest snowfall from one storm on record. The coldest temperature officially recorded in Houston was 5 °F (−15 °C) on January 18, 1930. The last time Houston saw single digit temperatures was on December 23, 1989. The temperature dropped to 7 °F (−14 °C) at Bush Airport, marking the coldest temperature ever recorded there. 1.7 inches of snow fell at George Bush Intercontinental Airport the previous day.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Houston generally receives ample rainfall, averaging about 49.8 in (1,260 mm) annually based on records between 1981 and 2010. Many parts of the city have a high risk of localized flooding due to flat topography, ubiquitous low-permeability clay-silt prairie soils, and inadequate infrastructure. During the mid-2010s, Greater Houston experienced consecutive major flood events in 2015 (\"Memorial Day\"), 2016 (\"Tax Day\"), and 2017 (Hurricane Harvey). Overall, there have been more casualties and property loss from floods in Houston than in any other locality in the United States. The majority of rainfall occurs between April and October (the wet season of Southeast Texas), when the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico evaporates extensively over the city.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Houston has excessive ozone levels and is routinely ranked among the most ozone-polluted cities in the United States. Ground-level ozone, or smog, is Houston's predominant air pollution problem, with the American Lung Association rating the metropolitan area's ozone level twelfth on the \"Most Polluted Cities by Ozone\" in 2017, after major cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City, and Denver. The industries along the ship channel are a major cause of the city's air pollution. The rankings are in terms of peak-based standards, focusing strictly on the worst days of the year; the average ozone levels in Houston are lower than what is seen in most other areas of the country, as dominant winds ensure clean, marine air from the Gulf. Excessive man-made emissions in the Houston area led to a persistent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the city. Such an increase, often regarded as \"CO2 urban dome\", is driven by a combination of strong emissions and stagnant atmospheric conditions. Moreover, Houston is the only metropolitan area with less than ten million citizens where such a CO2 dome can be detected by satellites.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Because of Houston's wet season and proximity to the Gulf Coast, the city is prone to flooding from heavy rains; the most notable flooding events include Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, along with most recent Tropical Storm Imelda in 2019 and Tropical Storm Beta in 2020. In response to Hurricane Harvey, Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston initiated plans to require developers to build homes that will be less susceptible to flooding by raising them two feet above the 500-year floodplain. Hurricane Harvey damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and dumped trillions of gallons of water into the city. In places this led to feet of standing water that blocked streets and flooded homes. The Houston City Council passed this regulation in 2018 with a vote of 9–7. Had these floodplain development rules had been in place all along, it is estimated that 84% of homes in the 100-year and 500-year floodplains would have been spared damage.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In a recent case testing these regulations, near the Brickhouse Gulley, an old golf course that long served as a floodplain and reservoir for floodwaters, announced a change of heart toward intensifying development. A nationwide developer, Meritage Homes, bought the land and planned to develop the 500-year floodplain into 900 new residential homes. Their plan would bring in $360 million in revenue and boost city population and tax revenue. In order to meet the new floodplain regulations, the developers needed to elevate the lowest floors two feet above the 500-year floodplain, equivalent to five or six feet above the 100-year base flood elevation, and build a channel to direct stormwater runoff toward detention basins. Before Hurricane Harvey, the city had bought $10.7 million in houses in this area specifically to take them out of danger. In addition to developing new streets and single-family housing within a floodplain, a flowing flood-water stream termed a floodway runs through the development area, a most dangerous place to encounter during any future flooding event. Under Texas law Harris County, like other more rural Texas counties, cannot direct developers where to build or not build via land use controls such as a zoning ordinance, and instead can only impose general floodplain regulations for enforcement during subdivision approvals and building permit approvals.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The 2020 U.S. census determined Houston had a population of 2,304,580. In 2017, the census-estimated population was 2,312,717, and in 2018 it was 2,325,502. An estimated 600,000 undocumented immigrants resided in the Houston area in 2017, comprising nearly 9% of the city's metropolitan population. At the 2010 United States census, Houston had a population of 2,100,263 residents, up from the city's 2,396 at the 1850 census.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Per the 2019 American Community Survey, Houston's age distribution was 482,402 under 15; 144,196 aged 15 to 19; 594,477 aged 20 to 34; 591,561 aged 35 to 54; 402,804 aged 55 to 74; and 101,357 aged 75 and older. The median age of the city was 33.4. At the 2014-2018 census estimates, Houston's age distribution was 486,083 under 15; 147,710 aged 15 to 19; 603,586 aged 20 to 34; 726,877 aged 35 to 59; and 357,834 aged 60 and older. The median age was 33.1, up from 32.9 in 2017 and down from 33.5 in 2014; the city's youthfulness has been attributed to an influx of an African American New Great Migration, Hispanic and Latino American, and Asian immigrants into Texas. For every 100 females, there were 98.5 males.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "There were 987,158 housing units in 2019 and 876,504 households. An estimated 42.3% of Houstonians owned housing units, with an average of 2.65 people per household. The median monthly owner costs with a mortgage were $1,646, and $536 without a mortgage. Houston's median gross rent from 2015 to 2019 was $1,041. The median household income in 2019 was $52,338 and 20.1% of Houstonians lived at or below the poverty line.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Houston is a majority-minority city. The Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, a think tank, has described Greater Houston as \"one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse metropolitan areas in the country\". Houston's diversity, historically fueled by large waves of Hispanic and Latino American, and Asian immigrants, has been attributed to its relatively lower cost of living compared to most major cities, strong job market, and role as a hub for refugee resettlement.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Houston has long been known as a popular destination for African Americans due to the city's well-established and influential African American community. Houston has become known as a Black mecca akin to Atlanta because it is a popular living destination for Black professionals and entrepreneurs. The Houston area is home to the largest African American community west of the Mississippi River. A 2012 Kinder Institute report found that, based on the evenness of population distribution between the four major racial groups in the United States (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Hispanic or Latino, and Asian), Greater Houston was the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the United States, ahead of New York City.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, non-Hispanic whites made up 23.3% of the population of Houston proper, Hispanics and Latino Americans 45.8%, Blacks or African Americans 22.4%, and Asian Americans 6.5%. In 2018, non-Hispanic whites made up 20.7% of the population, Hispanics or Latino Americans 44.9%, Blacks or African Americans 30.3%, and Asian Americans 8.2%. The largest Hispanic or Latino American ethnic groups in the city were Mexican Americans (31.6%), Puerto Ricans (0.8%), and Cuban Americans (0.8%) in 2018.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "As documented, Houston has a higher proportion of minorities than non-Hispanic whites; in 2010, whites (including Hispanic whites) made up 57.6% of the city of Houston's population; 24.6% of the total population was non-Hispanic white. Blacks or African Americans made up 22.5% of Houston's population, American Indians made up 0.3% of the population, Asians made up 6.9% (1.7% Vietnamese, 1.3% Chinese, 1.3% Indian, 0.9% Pakistani, 0.4% Filipino, 0.3% Korean, 0.1% Japanese) and Pacific Islanders made up 0.1%. Individuals from some other race made up 15.69% of the city's population. Individuals from two or more races made up 2.1% of the city.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "At the 2000 U.S. census, the racial makeup of the city was 49.3% White, 25.3% Black or African American, 5.3% Asian, 0.7% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.5% from some other race, and 3.1% from two or more races. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos of any race made up 37.4% of Houston's population in 2000, while non-Hispanic whites made up 30.8%. The proportion of non-Hispanic whites in Houston has decreased significantly since 1970, when it was 62.4%.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Houston is home to one of the largest LGBT communities and pride parades in the United States. In 2018, the city scored a 70 out of 100 for LGBT friendliness. Jordan Blum of the Houston Chronicle stated levels of LGBT acceptance and discrimination varied in 2016 due to some of the region's traditionally conservative culture.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Before the 1970s, the city's gay bars were spread around Downtown Houston and what is now midtown Houston. LGBT Houstonians needed to have a place to socialize after the closing of the gay bars. They began going to Art Wren, a 24-hour restaurant in Montrose. LGBT community members were attracted to Montrose as a neighborhood after encountering it while patronizing Art Wren, and they began to gentrify the neighborhood and assist its native inhabitants with property maintenance. Within Montrose, new gay bars began to open. By 1985, the flavor and politics of the neighborhood were heavily influenced by the LGBT community, and in 1990, according to Hill, 19% of Montrose residents identified as LGBT. Paul Broussard was murdered in Montrose in 1991.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Before the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States the marriage of Billie Ert and Antonio Molina, considered the first same-sex marriage in Texas history, took place on October 5, 1972. Houston elected the first openly lesbian mayor of a major city in 2009, and she served until 2016. During her tenure she authorized the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance which was intended to improve anti-discrimination coverage based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the city, specifically in areas such as housing and occupation where no anti-discrimination policy existed.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Houston and its metropolitan area are the third-most religious and Christian area by percentage of population in the United States, and second in Texas behind the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Historically, Houston has been a center of Protestant Christianity, being part of the Bible Belt. Other Christian groups including Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christianity, and non-Christian religions did not grow for much of the city's history because immigration was predominantly from Western Europe (which at the time was dominated by Western Christianity and favored by the quotas in federal immigration law). The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed the quotas, allowing for the growth of other religions.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 73% of the population of the Houston area identified themselves as Christians, about 50% of whom claimed Protestant affiliations and about 19% claimed Roman Catholic affiliations. Nationwide, about 71% of respondents identified as Christians. About 20% of Houston-area residents claimed no religious affiliation, compared to about 23% nationwide. The same study says area residents who identify with other religions (including Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism) collectively made up about 7% of the area population.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute estimated 40% were Protestant and 29% Catholic; overall, Christianity represented 72% of the population. In 2020, the Association of Religion Data Archives determined the Catholic Church numbered 1,299,901 for the metropolitan area; the second-largest single Christian denomination (Southern Baptists) numbered 800,688; following, non-denominational Protestant churches represented the third-largest Christian cohort at 666,548. Altogether, however, Baptists of the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Association, American Baptist Churches USA, Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, National Baptist Convention USA and National Baptist Convention of America, and the National Missionary Baptist Convention numbered 926,554. Non-denominational Protestants, the Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, and the Churches of Christ numbered 723,603 altogether according to this study.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Lakewood Church in Houston, led by Pastor Joel Osteen, is the largest church in the United States. A megachurch, it had 44,800 weekly attendees in 2010, up from 11,000 weekly in 2000. Since 2005, it has occupied the former Compaq Center sports stadium. In September 2010, Outreach magazine published a list of the 100 largest Christian churches in the United States, and on the list were the following Houston-area churches: Lakewood, Second Baptist Church Houston, Woodlands Church, Church Without Walls, and First Baptist Church. According to the list, Houston and Dallas were tied as the second-most popular city for megachurches.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, the largest Catholic jurisdiction in Texas and fifth-largest in the United States, was established in 1847. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston claimed approximately 1.7 million Catholics within its boundaries as of 2019. Its co-cathedral is located within the Houston city limits, while the diocesan see is in Galveston. Other prominent Catholic jurisdictions include the Eastern Catholic Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as well as the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, whose cathedral is also in Houston.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "A variety of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches can be found in Houston. Immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Ethiopia, India, and other areas have added to Houston's Eastern and Oriental Orthodox population. As of 2011 in the entire state, 32,000 people actively attended Orthodox churches. In 2013 Father John Whiteford, the pastor of St. Jonah Orthodox Church near Spring, stated there were about 6,000-9,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians in Houston. The Association of Religion Data Archives numbered 16,526 Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Houstonians in 2020. The most prominent Eastern and Oriental Orthodox jurisdictions are the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Houston's Jewish community, estimated at 47,000 in 2001, has been present in the city since the 1800s. Houstonian Jews have origins from throughout the United States, Israel, Mexico, Russia, and other places. As of 2016, over 40 synagogues were in Greater Houston. The largest synagogues are Congregation Beth Yeshurun, a Conservative Jewish temple, and the Reform Jewish congregations Beth Israel and Emanu-El. According to a study in 2016 by Berman Jewish DataBank, 51,000 Jews lived in the area, an increase of 4,000 since 2001.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Houston has a large and diverse Muslim community; it is the largest in Texas and the Southern United States, as of 2012. It is estimated that Muslims made up 1.2% of Houston's population. As of 2016, Muslims in the Houston area included South Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, Turks, and Indonesians, as well as a growing population of Latino Muslim converts. In 2000 there were over 41 mosques and storefront religious centers, with the largest being the Al-Noor Mosque (Mosque of Light) of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist communities form a growing sector of the religious demographic after Judaism and Islam. Large Hindu temples in the metropolitan area include the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Houston, affiliated with the Swaminarayan Sampradaya denomination in Fort Bend County, near the suburb of Stafford as well as the South Indian-style Sri Meenakshi Temple in suburban Pearland, in Brazoria County, which is the oldest Hindu temple in Texas and third-oldest Hindu temple in the United States.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Of the irreligious community 16% practiced nothing in particular, 3% were agnostic, and 2% were atheist in 2014.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Houston is recognized worldwide for its energy industry—particularly for oil and natural gas—as well as for biomedical research and aeronautics. Renewable energy sources—wind and solar—are also growing economic bases in the city, and the City Government purchases 90% of its annual 1 TWh power mostly from wind, and some from solar. The city has also been a growing hub for technology startup firms and is the fastest growing sector of the city's economy. Major technology and software companies within Greater Houston include Crown Castle, KBR, FlightAware, Cybersoft, Houston Wire & Cable, and HostGator. Aylo, Go Daddy, and ByteDance have offices in the Houston area. On April 4, 2022, Hewlett Packard Enterprise relocated its global headquarters from California to the Greater Houston area. The Houston Ship Channel is also a large part of Houston's economic base.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network and global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. The Houston area is the top U.S. market for exports, surpassing New York City in 2013, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration. In 2012, the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land area recorded $110.3 billion in merchandise exports. Petroleum products, chemicals, and oil and gas extraction equipment accounted for roughly two-thirds of the metropolitan area's exports last year. The top three destinations for exports were Mexico, Canada, and Brazil.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The Houston area is a leading center for building oilfield equipment. Much of its success as a petrochemical complex is due to its busy ship channel, the Port of Houston. In the United States, the port ranks first in international commerce and 16th among the largest ports in the world. Unlike most places, high oil and gasoline prices are beneficial for Houston's economy, as many of its residents are employed in the energy industry. Houston is the beginning or end point of numerous oil, gas, and products pipelines.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metro area's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 was $633 billion, making it the seventh-largest of any metropolitan area in the United States and larger than Iran's, Colombia's, or the United Arab Emirates' GDP. Only 27 countries other than the United States have a gross domestic product exceeding Houston's regional gross area product (GAP). In 2010, mining (which consists almost entirely of exploration and production of oil and gas in Houston) accounted for 26.3% of Houston's GAP up sharply in response to high energy prices and a decreased worldwide surplus of oil production capacity, followed by engineering services, health services, and manufacturing.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The University of Houston System's annual impact on the Houston area's economy equates to that of a major corporation: $1.1 billion in new funds attracted annually to the Houston area, $3.13 billion in total economic benefit, and 24,000 local jobs generated. This is in addition to the 12,500 new graduates the U.H. System produces every year who enter the workforce in Houston and throughout Texas. These degree-holders tend to stay in Houston. After five years, 80.5% of graduates are still living and working in the region.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 2019, the Houston metropolitan area ranked third in Texas within the category of \"Best Places for Business and Careers\" by Forbes magazine. Ninety-one foreign governments have established consular offices in Houston's metropolitan area, the third-highest in the nation. Forty foreign governments maintain trade and commercial offices here with 23 active foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations. Twenty-five foreign banks representing 13 nations operate in Houston, providing financial assistance to the international community.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 2008, Houston received top ranking on Kiplinger's Personal Finance \"Best Cities of 2008\" list, which ranks cities on their local economy, employment opportunities, reasonable living costs, and quality of life. The city ranked fourth for highest increase in the local technological innovation over the preceding 15 years, according to Forbes magazine. In the same year, the city ranked second on the annual Fortune 500 list of company headquarters, first for Forbes magazine's \"Best Cities for College Graduates\", and first on their list of \"Best Cities to Buy a Home\". In 2010, the city was rated the best city for shopping, according to Forbes.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In 2012, the city was ranked number one for paycheck worth by Forbes and in late May 2013, Houston was identified as America's top city for employment creation.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In 2013, Houston was identified as the number one U.S. city for job creation by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics after it was not only the first major city to regain all the jobs lost in the preceding economic downturn, but also after the crash, more than two jobs were added for every one lost. Economist and vice president of research at the Greater Houston Partnership Patrick Jankowski attributed Houston's success to the ability of the region's real estate and energy industries to learn from historical mistakes. Furthermore, Jankowski stated that \"more than 100 foreign-owned companies relocated, expanded or started new businesses in Houston\" between 2008 and 2010, and this openness to external business boosted job creation during a period when domestic demand was problematically low. Also in 2013, Houston again appeared on Forbes' list of \"Best Places for Business and Careers\".",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Located in the American South, Houston is a diverse city with a large and growing international community. The Greater Houston metropolitan area is home to an estimated 1.1 million (21.4 percent) residents who were born outside the United States, with nearly two-thirds of the area's foreign-born population from south of the United States–Mexico border since 2009. Additionally, more than one in five foreign-born residents are from Asia. The city is home to the nation's third-largest concentration of consular offices, representing 92 countries.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Many annual events celebrate the diverse cultures of Houston. The largest and longest-running is the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, held over 20 days from early to late March, and is the largest annual livestock show and rodeo in the world. Another large celebration is the annual night-time Houston Gay Pride Parade, held at the end of June. Other notable annual events include the Houston Greek Festival, Art Car Parade, the Houston Auto Show, the Houston International Festival, and the Bayou City Art Festival, which is considered to be one of the top five art festivals in the United States.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Houston is highly regarded for its diverse food and restaurant culture. Several major publications have consistently named Houston one of \"America's Best Food Cities\". Houston received the official nickname of \"Space City\" in 1967 because it is the location of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Other nicknames often used by locals include \"Bayou City\", \"Clutch City\", \"Crush City\", \"Magnolia City\", \"H-Town\", and \"Culinary Capital of the South\".",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The Houston Theater District, in Downtown, is home to nine major performing arts organizations and six performance halls. It is the second-largest concentration of theater seats in a Downtown area in the United States.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Houston is one of the few United States cities with permanent, professional, resident companies in all major performing arts disciplines: opera (Houston Grand Opera), ballet (Houston Ballet), music (Houston Symphony Orchestra), and theater (The Alley Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars). Houston is also home to folk artists, art groups and various small progressive arts organizations.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Houston attracts many touring Broadway acts, concerts, shows, and exhibitions for a variety of interests. Facilities in the Theater District include the Jones Hall—home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Society for the Performing Arts—and the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Museum District's cultural institutions and exhibits attract more than 7 million visitors a year. Notable facilities include The Museum of Fine Arts, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, the Holocaust Museum Houston, the Children's Museum of Houston, and the Houston Zoo.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Located near the Museum District are The Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, the Moody Center for the Arts and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Bayou Bend is a 14-acre (5.7 ha) facility of the Museum of Fine Arts that houses one of America's most prominent collections of decorative art, paintings, and furniture. Bayou Bend is the former home of Houston philanthropist Ima Hogg.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The National Museum of Funeral History is in Houston near the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The museum houses the original Popemobile used by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s along with numerous hearses, embalming displays, and information on famous funerals.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Venues across Houston regularly host local and touring rock, blues, country, dubstep, and Tejano musical acts. While Houston has never been widely known for its music scene, Houston hip hop has become a significant, independent music scene that is influential nationwide. Houston is the birthplace of the chopped and screwed remixing-technique in hip-hop which was pioneered by DJ Screw from the city. Some other notable hip-hop artists from the area include Destiny's Child, Don Toliver, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Bun B, Geto Boys, Trae tha Truth, Kirko Bangz, Z-Ro, South Park Mexican, Travis Scott and Megan Thee Stallion.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The Theater District is a 17-block area in the center of Downtown Houston that is home to the Bayou Place entertainment complex, restaurants, movies, plazas, and parks. Bayou Place is a large multilevel building containing full-service restaurants, bars, live music, billiards, and Sundance Cinema. The Bayou Music Center stages live concerts, stage plays, and stand-up comedy.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Space Center Houston is the official visitors' center of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The Space Center has many interactive exhibits including Moon rocks, a Space Shuttle simulator, and presentations about the history of NASA's manned space flight program. Other tourist attractions include the Galleria (Texas's largest shopping mall, in the Uptown District), Old Market Square, the Downtown Aquarium, and Sam Houston Race Park.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Houston's current Chinatown and the Mahatma Gandhi District are two major ethnic enclaves, reflecting Houston's multicultural makeup. Restaurants, bakeries, traditional-clothing boutiques, and specialty shops can be found in both areas.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Houston is home to 337 parks, including Hermann Park, Terry Hershey Park, Lake Houston Park, Memorial Park, Tranquility Park, Sesquicentennial Park, Discovery Green, Buffalo Bayou Park and Sam Houston Park. Within Hermann Park are the Houston Zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Sam Houston Park contains restored and reconstructed homes which were originally built between 1823 and 1905.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, Houston has the largest total area of parks and green space, 56,405 acres (228 km). The city also has over 200 additional green spaces—totaling over 19,600 acres (79 km) that are managed by the city—including the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. The Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark is a public skatepark owned and operated by the city of Houston, and is one of the largest skateparks in Texas consisting of a 30,000-ft (2,800 m)in-ground facility.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park in the Uptown District of the city serves as a popular tourist attraction and for weddings and various celebrations. A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Houston the 23rd most walkable of the 50 largest cities in the United States.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Houston has sports teams for every major professional league except the National Hockey League. The Houston Astros are a Major League Baseball expansion team formed in 1962 (known as the \"Colt .45s\" until 1965) that have won the World Series in 2017 and 2022 and appeared in it in 2005, 2019, and 2021. It is the only MLB team to have won pennants in both modern leagues. The Houston Rockets are a National Basketball Association franchise based in the city since 1971. They have won two NBA Championships, one in 1994 and another in 1995, under star players Hakeem Olajuwon, Otis Thorpe, Clyde Drexler, Vernon Maxwell, and Kenny Smith. The Houston Texans are a National Football League expansion team formed in 2002. The Houston Dynamo is a Major League Soccer franchise that has been based in Houston since 2006, winning two MLS Cup titles in 2006 and 2007. The Houston Dash team plays in the National Women's Soccer League, who won their first title in 2020. The Houston SaberCats are a rugby team that plays in Major League Rugby. Houston is also one of eight cities to have an XFL team, the Houston Roughnecks.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Minute Maid Park (home of the Astros) and Toyota Center (home of the Rockets), are in Downtown Houston. Houston has the NFL's first retractable-roof stadium with natural grass, NRG Stadium (home of the Texans). Minute Maid Park is also a retractable-roof stadium. Toyota Center also has the largest screen for an indoor arena in the United States built to coincide with the arena's hosting of the 2013 NBA All-Star Game. Shell Energy Stadium is a soccer-specific stadium for the Houston Dynamo, the Texas Southern Tigers football team, and Houston Dash, in East Downtown. Aveva Stadium (home of the SaberCats) is in south Houston. In addition, NRG Astrodome was the first indoor stadium in the world, built in 1965. Other sports facilities include Hofheinz Pavilion (Houston Cougars basketball), Rice Stadium (Rice Owls football), and NRG Arena. TDECU Stadium is where the University of Houston's Cougars football team plays.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Houston has hosted several major sports events: the 1968, 1986 and 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Games; the 1989, 2006 and 2013 NBA All-Star Games; Super Bowl VIII, Super Bowl XXXVIII, and Super Bowl LI, as well as hosting the 1981, 1986, 1994 and 1995 NBA Finals, winning the latter two, and hosting the 2005 World Series, 2017 World Series, 2019 World Series, 2021 World Series and 2022 World Series. The city won its first baseball championship during the 2017 event and won again 5 years later. NRG Stadium hosted Super Bowl LI on February 5, 2017. Houston will host multiple matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The city has hosted several major professional and college sporting events, including the annual Houston Open golf tournament. Houston hosts the annual Houston College Classic baseball tournament every February, and the Texas Kickoff and Bowl in September and December, respectively.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The Grand Prix of Houston, an annual auto race on the IndyCar Series circuit was held on a 1.7-mile temporary street circuit in NRG Park. The October 2013 event was held using a tweaked version of the 2006–2007 course. The event had a 5-year race contract through 2017 with IndyCar. In motorcycling, the Astrodome hosted an AMA Supercross Championship round from 1974 to 2003 and the NRG Stadium since 2003.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Houston is also one of the first cities in the world to have a major esports team represent it, in the form of the Houston Outlaws. The Outlaws play in the Overwatch League and are one of two Texan teams, the other being the Dallas Fuel.",
"title": "Sports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The city of Houston has a strong mayoral form of municipal government. Houston is a home rule city and all municipal elections in Texas are nonpartisan. The city's elected officials are the mayor, city controller and 16 members of the Houston City Council. The current mayor of Houston is Sylvester Turner, a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot. Houston's mayor serves as the city's chief administrator, executive officer, and official representative, and is responsible for the general management of the city and for seeing all laws and ordinances are enforced.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The original city council line-up of 14 members (nine district-based and five at-large positions) was based on a U.S. Justice Department mandate which took effect in 1979. At-large council members represent the entire city. Under the city charter, once the population in the city limits exceeded 2.1 million residents, two additional districts were to be added. The city of Houston's official 2010 census count was 600 shy of the required number; however, as the city was expected to grow beyond 2.1 million shortly thereafter, the two additional districts were added for, and the positions filled during, the August 2011 elections.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The city controller is elected independently of the mayor and council. The controller's duties are to certify available funds prior to committing such funds and processing disbursements. The city's fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30. Chris Brown is the city controller, serving his first term as of January 2016.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "As the result of a 2015 referendum in Houston, a mayor is elected for a four-year term and can be elected to as many as two consecutive terms. The term limits were spearheaded in 1991 by conservative political activist Clymer Wright. During 1991–2015, the city controller and city council members were subjected to a two-year, three-term limitation–the 2015 referendum amended term limits to two four-year terms. As of 2017 some councilmembers who served two terms and won a final term will have served eight years in office, whereas a freshman councilmember who won a position in 2013 can serve up to two additional terms under the previous term limit law–a select few will have at least 10 years of incumbency once their term expires.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Houston is considered to be a politically divided city whose balance of power often sways between Republicans and Democrats. According to the 2005 Houston Area Survey, 68 percent of non-Hispanic whites in Harris County are declared or favor Republicans while 89 percent of non-Hispanic blacks in the area are declared or favor Democrats. About 62 percent of Hispanics (of any nationality) in the area are declared or favor Democrats. The city has often been known to be the most politically diverse city in Texas, a state known for being generally conservative. As a result, the city is often a contested area in statewide elections. In 2009, Houston became the first U.S. city with a population over 1 million citizens to elect a gay mayor, by electing Annise Parker.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Texas has banned sanctuary cities, but Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Houston will not assist ICE agents with immigration raids.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Houston had 303 homicides in 2015 and 302 homicides in 2016. Officials predicted there would be 323 homicides in 2016. Instead, there was no increase in Houston's homicide rate between 2015 and 2016.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population). In 2010, the city's murder rate (per capita rate of 11.8 murders per 100,000 population) was ranked sixth among U.S. cities with a population of over 750,000 (behind New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, and Philadelphia) according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Murders fell by 37 percent from January to June 2011, compared with the same period in 2010. Houston's total crime rate including violent and nonviolent crimes decreased by 11 percent. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) indicates a downward trend of violent crime in Houston over the ten- and twenty-year periods ending in 2016, which is consistent with national trends. This trend toward lower rates of violent crime in Houston includes the murder rate, though it had seen a four-year uptick that lasted through 2015. Houston's violent crime rate was 8.6% percent higher in 2016 than the previous year. However, from 2006 to 2016, violent crime was still down 12 percent in Houston.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Houston is a significant hub for trafficking of cocaine, cannabis, heroin, MDMA, and methamphetamine due to its size and proximity to major illegal drug exporting nations.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In the early 1970s, Houston, Pasadena and several coastal towns were the site of the Houston mass murders, which at the time were the deadliest case of serial killing in American history.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "In 1853, the first execution in Houston took place in public at Founder's Cemetery in the Fourth Ward; initially, the cemetery was the execution site, but post-1868 executions took place in the jail facilities. In the year 2023, the city of Houston made enforcement of an anti-food sharing ordinance a priority. This has resulted in volunteers receiving over 80 tickets, and a federal lawsuit to be filed against the city of Houston.",
"title": "Government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Nineteen school districts exist within the city of Houston. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the seventh-largest school district in the United States and the largest in Texas. HISD has over 100 campuses that serve as magnet or vanguard schools—specializing in such disciplines as health professions, visual and performing arts, and the sciences. There are also many charter schools that are run separately from school districts. In addition, some public school districts also have their own charter schools.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The Houston area encompasses more than 300 private schools, many of which are accredited by Texas Private School Accreditation Commission recognized agencies. The Greater Houston metropolitan area's independent schools offer education from a variety of different religious as well as secular viewpoints. The Greater Houston area's Catholic schools are operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Houston has four state universities. The University of Houston (UH) is a research university and the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. The third-largest university in Texas, the University of Houston has nearly 44,000 students on its 667-acre (270-hectare) campus in the Third Ward. The University of Houston–Clear Lake and the University of Houston–Downtown are stand-alone universities within the University of Houston System; they are not branch campuses of the University of Houston. Slightly west of the University of Houston is Texas Southern University (TSU), one of the largest historically black universities in the United States with approximately 10,000 students. Texas Southern University is the first state university in Houston, founded in 1927.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Several private institutions of higher learning are within the city. Rice University, the most selective university in Texas and one of the most selective in the United States, is a private, secular institution with a high level of research activity. Founded in 1912, Rice's historic, heavily wooded 300-acre (120-hectare) campus, adjacent to Hermann Park and the Texas Medical Center, hosts approximately 4,000 undergraduate and 3,000 post-graduate students. To the north in Neartown, the University of St. Thomas, founded in 1947, is Houston's only Catholic university. St. Thomas provides a liberal arts curriculum for roughly 3,000 students at its historic 19-block campus along Montrose Boulevard. In southwest Houston, Houston Christian University (formerly Houston Baptist University), founded in 1960, offers bachelor's and graduate degrees at its Sharpstown campus. The school is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and has a student population of approximately 3,000.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Three community college districts have campuses in and around Houston. The Houston Community College System (HCC) serves most of Houston proper; its main campus and headquarters are in Midtown. Suburban northern and western parts of the metropolitan area are served by various campuses of the Lone Star College System, while the southeastern portion of Houston is served by San Jacinto College, and a northeastern portion is served by Lee College. The Houston Community College and Lone Star College systems are among the 10 largest institutions of higher learning in the United States.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Houston also hosts a number of graduate schools in law and healthcare. The University of Houston Law Center and Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University are public, ABA-accredited law schools, while the South Texas College of Law, in Downtown, serves as a private, independent alternative. The Texas Medical Center is home to a high density of health professions schools, including two medical schools: McGovern Medical School, part of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Baylor College of Medicine, a highly selective private institution. Prairie View A&M University's nursing school is in the Texas Medical Center. Additionally, both Texas Southern University and the University of Houston have pharmacy schools, and the University of Houston hosts a medical school and a college of optometry.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "The primary network-affiliated television stations are KPRC-TV channel 2 (NBC), KHOU channel 11 (CBS), KTRK-TV channel 13 (ABC), KTXH channel 20 (MyNetworkTV), KRIV channel 26 (Fox), KIAH channel 39 (The CW), KXLN-DT channel 45 (Univision), KTMD-TV channel 47 (Telemundo), KPXB-TV channel 49 (Ion Television), KYAZ channel 51 (MeTV) and KFTH-DT channel 67 (UniMás). KTRK-TV, KTXH, KRIV, KTXH, KIAH, KXLN-DT, KTMD-TV, KPXB-TV, KYAZ and KFTH-DT operate as owned-and-operated stations of their networks.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area is served by one public television station and two public radio stations. KUHT channel 8 (Houston Public Media) is a PBS member station and is the first public television station in the United States. Houston Public Radio is listener-funded and comprises one NPR member station, KUHF (News 88.7). The University of Houston System owns and holds broadcasting licenses to KUHT and KUHF. The stations broadcast from the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting on the campus of the University of Houston. Houston additionally is served by the Pacifica Foundation public radio station KPFT.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Houston and its metropolitan area are served by the Houston Chronicle, its only major daily newspaper with wide distribution. Hearst Communications, which owns and operates the Houston Chronicle, bought the assets of the Houston Post—its long-time rival and main competition—when Houston Post ceased operations in 1995. The Houston Post was owned by the family of former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby of Houston. The only other major publication to serve the city is the Houston Press—which was a free alternative weekly newspaper before the destruction caused by Hurricane Harvey resulted in the publication switching to an online-only format on November 2, 2017. Other notable publications include Houston Forward Times, OutSmart, and La Voz de Houston. Houston Forward Times is one of the largest black-owned newspapers in the metropolitan area and owned by Forward Times Publishing Company. OutSmart is an LGBT magazine in Houston and was ranked \"Best Local Magazine\" by the Houston Press in 2008. La Voz de Houston is the Houston Chronicle's Spanish-language newspaper and the largest in the area.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Houston is the seat of the Texas Medical Center, which is the largest medical center in the world, and which describes itself as containing the world's largest concentration of research and healthcare institutions. All 49 member institutions of the Texas Medical Center are non-profit organizations. They provide patient and preventive care, research, education, and local, national, and international community well-being. Employing more than 73,600 people, institutions at the medical center include 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and virtually all health-related careers. It is where one of the first—and still the largest—air emergency service, Life Flight, was created, and an inter-institutional transplant program was developed. Around 2007, more heart surgeries were performed at the Texas Medical Center than anywhere else in the world.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Some of the academic and research health institutions at the center include MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, UT Health Science Center, Memorial Hermann Hospital, Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, and University of Houston College of Pharmacy.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "In the 2000s, the Baylor College of Medicine was annually considered within the top ten medical schools in the nation; likewise, the MD Anderson Cancer Center had been consistently ranked as one of the top two U.S. hospitals specializing in cancer care by U.S. News & World Report since 1990. The Menninger Clinic, a psychiatric treatment center, is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the Houston Methodist Hospital System. With hospital locations nationwide and headquarters in Houston, the Triumph Healthcare hospital system was the third largest long term acute care provider nationally in 2005.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Harris Health System (formerly Harris County Hospital District), the hospital district for Harris County, operates public hospitals (Ben Taub General Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital) and public clinics. The City of Houston Health Department also operates four clinics. As of 2011 the dental centers of Harris Health System take patients of ages 16 and up with patients under that age referred to the City of Houston's dental clinics. Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) serves as the hospital district for Houstonians living in Montgomery County. Fort Bend County, in which a portion of Houston resides, does not have a hospital district. OakBend Medical Center serves as the county's charity hospital which the county contracts with.",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Houston is considered an automobile-dependent city, with an estimated 77.2% of commuters driving alone to work in 2016, up from 71.7% in 1990 and 75.6% in 2009. In 2016, another 11.4% of Houstonians carpooled to work, while 3.6% used public transit, 2.1% walked, and 0.5% bicycled. A commuting study estimated the median length of commute in the region was 12.2 miles (19.6 km) in 2012. According to the 2013 American Community Survey, the average work commute in Houston (city) takes 26.3 minutes. A 1999 Murdoch University study found Houston had both the lengthiest commute and lowest urban density of 13 large American cities surveyed, and a 2017 Arcadis study ranked Houston 22nd out of 23 American cities in transportation sustainability. Harris County is one of the largest consumers of gasoline in the United States, ranking second (behind Los Angeles County) in 2013.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Despite the region's high rate of automobile usage, attitudes towards transportation among Houstonians indicate a growing preference for walkability. A 2017 study by the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research found 56% of Harris County residents have a preference for dense housing in a mixed-use, walkable setting as opposed to single-family housing in a low-density area. A plurality of survey respondents also indicated traffic congestion was the most significant problem facing the metropolitan area. In addition, many households in the city of Houston have no car. In 2015, 8.3 percent of Houston households lacked a car, which was virtually unchanged in 2016 (8.1 percent). The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Houston averaged 1.59 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "The eight-county Greater Houston metropolitan area contains over 25,000 miles (40,000 km) of roadway, of which 10%, or approximately 2,500 miles (4,000 km), is limited-access highway. The Houston region's extensive freeway system handles over 40% of the regional daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Arterial roads handle an additional 40% of daily VMT, while toll roads, of which Greater Houston has 180 miles (290 km), handle nearly 10%.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Greater Houston possesses a hub-and-spoke limited-access highway system, in which a number of freeways radiate outward from Downtown, with ring roads providing connections between these radial highways at intermediate distances from the city center. The city is crossed by three Interstate highways, Interstate 10, Interstate 45, and Interstate 69 (commonly known as U.S. Route 59), as well as a number of other United States routes and state highways. Major freeways in Greater Houston are often referred to by either the cardinal direction or geographic location they travel towards. Highways that follow the cardinal convention include U.S. Route 290 (Northwest Freeway), Interstate 45 north of Downtown (North Freeway), Interstate 10 east of Downtown (East Freeway), Texas State Highway 288 (South Freeway), and Interstate 69 south of Downtown (Southwest Freeway). Highways that follow the location convention include Interstate 10 west of Downtown (Katy Freeway), Interstate 69 north of Downtown (Eastex Freeway), Interstate 45 south of Downtown (Gulf Freeway), and Texas State Highway 225 (Pasadena Freeway).",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Three loop freeways provide north–south and east–west connectivity between Greater Houston's radial highways. The innermost loop is Interstate 610, commonly known as the Inner Loop, which encircles Downtown, the Texas Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, the cities of West University Place and Southside Place, and many core neighborhoods. The 88-mile (142 km) State Highway Beltway 8, often referred to as the Beltway, forms the middle loop at a radius of roughly 10 miles (16 km). A third, 180-mile (290 km) loop with a radius of approximately 25 miles (40 km), State Highway 99 (the Grand Parkway), is currently under construction, with eight of eleven segments completed as of 2018. Completed segments D through I-2 provide a continuous 123-mile (198 km) limited-access tollway connection between Sugar Land, Richmond, Katy, Cypress, Spring, Porter, New Caney, Cleveland, Dayton, Mont Belvieu, and Baytown .",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "A system of toll roads, operated by the Harris County Toll Road Authority (HCTRA) and Fort Bend County Toll Road Authority (FBCTRA), provides additional options for regional commuters. The Sam Houston Tollway, which encompasses the mainlanes of Beltway 8 (as opposed to the frontage roads, which are untolled), is the longest tollway in the system, covering the entirety of the Beltway with the exception of a free section between Interstate 45 and Interstate 69 near George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The region is serviced by four spoke tollways: a set of managed lanes on the Katy Freeway; the Hardy Toll Road, which parallels Interstate 45 north of Downtown up to Spring; the Westpark Tollway, which services Houston's western suburbs out to Fulshear; and Fort Bend Parkway, which connects to Sienna Plantation. Westpark Tollway and Fort Bend Parkway are operated conjunctly with the Fort Bend County Toll Road Authority.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Greater Houston's freeway system is monitored by Houston TranStar, a partnership of four government agencies which is responsible for providing transportation and emergency management services to the region.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Greater Houston's arterial road network is established at the municipal level, with the City of Houston exercising planning control over both its incorporated area and extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ). Therefore, Houston exercises transportation planning authority over a 2,000-square-mile (5,200 km) area over five counties, many times larger than its corporate area. The Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan, updated annually, establishes the city's street hierarchy, identifies roadways in need of widening, and proposes new roadways in unserved areas. Arterial roads are organized into four categories, in decreasing order of intensity: major thoroughfares, transit corridor streets, collector streets, and local streets. Roadway classification affects anticipated traffic volumes, roadway design, and right of way breadth. Ultimately, the system is designed to ferry traffic from neighborhood streets to major thoroughfares, which connect into the limited-access highway system. Notable arterial roads in the region include Westheimer Road, Memorial Drive, Texas State Highway 6, Farm to Market Road 1960, Bellaire Boulevard, and Telephone Road.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) provides public transportation in the form of buses, light rail, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, and paratransit to fifteen municipalities throughout the Greater Houston area and parts of unincorporated Harris County. METRO's service area covers 1,303 square miles (3,370 km) containing a population of 3.6 million.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "METRO's local bus network services approximately 275,000 riders daily with a fleet of over 1,200 buses. The agency's 75 local routes contain nearly 8,900 stops and saw nearly 67 million boardings during the 2016 fiscal year. A park and ride system provides commuter bus service from 34 transit centers scattered throughout the region's suburban areas; these express buses operate independently of the local bus network and utilize the region's extensive system of HOV lanes. Downtown and the Texas Medical Center have the highest rates of transit use in the region, largely due to the park and ride system, with nearly 60% of commuters in each district utilizing public transit to get to work.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "METRO began light rail service in 2004 with the opening of the 8-mile (13 km) north-south Red Line connecting Downtown, Midtown, the Museum District, the Texas Medical Center, and NRG Park. In the early 2010s, two additional lines—the Green Line, servicing the East End, and the Purple Line, servicing the Third Ward—opened, and the Red Line was extended northward to Northline, bringing the total length of the system to 22.7 miles (36.5 km). Two light rail lines outlined in a five-line system approved by voters in a 2003 referendum have yet to be constructed. The Uptown Line, which runs along Post Oak Boulevard in Uptown, was under construction as a bus rapid transit line—the city's first—while the University Line has been postponed indefinitely. The light rail system saw approximately 16.8 million boardings in fiscal year 2016.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Amtrak's thrice-weekly Los Angeles–New Orleans Sunset Limited serves Houston at a station northwest of Downtown. There were 14,891 boardings and alightings in FY2008, 20,327 in FY2012, and 20,205 in FY2018. A daily Amtrak Thruway connects Houston with Amtrak's Chicago–San Antonio Texas Eagle at Longview.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Houston has the largest number of bike commuters in Texas with over 160 miles of dedicated bikeways. The city is currently in the process of expanding its on and off street bikeway network. In 2015, Downtown Houston added a cycle track on Lamar Street, running from Sam Houston Park to Discovery Green. Houston City Council approved the Houston Bike Plan in March 2017, at that time entering the plan into the Houston Code of Ordinances. In August 2017, Houston City Council approved spending for construction of 13 additional miles of bike trails.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Houston's bicycle sharing system started service with nineteen stations in May 2012. Houston Bcycle (also known as B-Cycle), a local non-profit, runs the subscription program, supplying bicycles and docking stations, while partnering with other companies to maintain the system. The network expanded to 29 stations and 225 bicycles in 2014, registering over 43,000 checkouts of equipment during the first half of the same year. In 2017, Bcycle logged over 142,000 check outs while expanding to 56 docking stations.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The Houston Airport System, a branch of the municipal government, oversees the operation of three major public airports in the city. Two of these airports, George Bush Intercontinental Airport and William P. Hobby Airport, offer commercial aviation service to a variety of domestic and international destinations and served 55 million passengers in 2016. The third, Ellington Airport, is home to the Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base. The Federal Aviation Administration and the state of Texas selected the Houston Airport System as \"Airport of the Year\" in 2005, largely due to the implementation of a $3.1 billion airport improvement program for both major airports in Houston.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), 23 miles (37 km) north of Downtown Houston between Interstates 45 and 69, is the eighth busiest commercial airport in the United States (by total passengers and aircraft movements) and forty-third busiest globally. The five-terminal, five-runway, 11,000-acre (4,500-hectare) airport served 40 million passengers in 2016, including 10 million international travelers. In 2006, the United States Department of Transportation named IAH the fastest-growing of the top ten airports in the United States. The Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center is at Bush Intercontinental.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Houston was the headquarters of Continental Airlines until its 2010 merger with United Airlines with headquarters in Chicago; regulatory approval for the merger was granted in October of that year. Bush Intercontinental is currently United Airlines' second largest hub, behind O'Hare International Airport. United Airlines' share of the Houston Airport System's commercial aviation market was nearly 60% in 2017 with 16 million enplaned passengers. In early 2007, Bush Intercontinental Airport was named a model \"port of entry\" for international travelers by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), known as Houston International Airport until 1967, operates primarily short- to medium-haul domestic and international flights to 60 destinations. The four-runway, 1,304-acre (528-hectare) facility is approximately 7 miles (11 km) southeast of Downtown Houston. In 2015, Southwest Airlines launched service from a new international terminal at Hobby to several destinations in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. These were the first international flights flown from Hobby since the opening of Bush Intercontinental in 1969. Houston's aviation history is showcased in the 1940 Air Terminal Museum in the old terminal building on the west side of the airport. In 2009, Hobby Airport was recognized with two awards for being one of the top five performing airports globally and for customer service by Airports Council International. In 2022 Hobby Airport was certified as the first 5-Star Airport in North America by Skytrax. It became the first Airport in North America to do so and just the 16th airport worldwide to receive the accomplishment.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Houston's third municipal airport is Ellington Airport, used by the military, government (including NASA) and general aviation sectors.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "The Mayor's Office of Trade and International Affairs (MOTIA) is the city's liaison to Houston's sister cities and to the national governing organization, Sister Cities International. Through their official city-to-city relationships, these volunteer associations promote people-to-people diplomacy and encourage citizens to develop mutual trust and understanding through commercial, cultural, educational, and humanitarian exchanges.",
"title": "International relations"
}
]
| Houston is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. It is the fourth-most populous city in the United States after New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and the seventh-most populous city in North America. With a population of 2,302,878 in 2022, Houston is located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; it is the seat and largest city of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle. Comprising a land area of 640.4 square miles (1,659 km2), Houston is the ninth-most expansive city in the United States. It is the largest city in the United States by total area whose government is not consolidated with a county, parish, or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, bordering other principal communities of Greater Houston such as Sugar Land and The Woodlands. Houston was founded by land investors on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837. The city is named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had won Texas's independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles (40 km) east of Allen's Landing. After briefly serving as the capital of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew steadily into a regional trading center for the remainder of the 19th century. The arrival of the 20th century brought a convergence of economic factors that fueled rapid growth in Houston, including a burgeoning port and railroad industry, the decline of Galveston as Texas's primary port following a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, and the Texas oil boom. In the mid-20th century, Houston's economy diversified, as it became home to the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, home to the Mission Control Center. Since the late 19th century Houston's economy has had a broad industrial base, in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, and transportation. Leading in healthcare sectors and building oilfield equipment, Houston has the second-most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U.S. municipality within its city limits. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled. Nicknamed the "Bayou City", "Space City", "H-Town", and "the 713", Houston has become a global city, with strengths in culture, medicine, and research. The city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse metropolitan area in Texas and has been described as the most racially and ethnically diverse major city in the U.S. It is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than seven million visitors a year to the Museum District. The Museum District is home to nineteen museums, galleries, and community spaces. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District, and offers year-round resident companies in all major performing arts. | 2001-10-25T18:04:35Z | 2023-12-31T21:58:32Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston |
13,776 | Head (disambiguation) | The head is the part of an animal or human that usually includes the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
Head or Heads may also refer to: | [
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"text": "The head is the part of an animal or human that usually includes the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.",
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| The head is the part of an animal or human that usually includes the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Head or Heads may also refer to: Human head | 2001-09-18T06:46:18Z | 2023-10-14T20:07:02Z | [
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13,777 | Hard disk drive | A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk, is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data when powered off. Modern HDDs are typically in the form of a small rectangular box.
Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs were the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers beginning in the early 1960s. HDDs maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers, though personal computing devices produced in large volume, like mobile phones and tablets, rely on flash memory storage devices. More than 224 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation, most units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. HDDs dominate the volume of storage produced (exabytes per year) for servers. Though production is growing slowly (by exabytes shipped), sales revenues and unit shipments are declining, because solid-state drives (SSDs) have higher data-transfer rates, higher areal storage density, somewhat better reliability, and much lower latency and access times.
The revenues for SSDs, most of which use NAND flash memory, slightly exceeded those for HDDs in 2018. Flash storage products had more than twice the revenue of hard disk drives as of 2017. Though SSDs have four to nine times higher cost per bit, they are replacing HDDs in applications where speed, power consumption, small size, high capacity and durability are important. As of 2019, the cost per bit of SSDs is falling, and the price premium over HDDs has narrowed.
The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000: a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of 1,000 gigabytes (GB; where 1 gigabyte = 1 000 megabytes = 1 000 000 kilobytes (1 million) = 1 000 000 000 bytes (1 billion)). Typically, some of an HDD's capacity is unavailable to the user because it is used by the file system and the computer operating system, and possibly inbuilt redundancy for error correction and recovery. There can be confusion regarding storage capacity, since capacities are stated in decimal gigabytes (powers of 1000) by HDD manufacturers, whereas the most commonly used operating systems report capacities in powers of 1024, which results in a smaller number than advertised. Performance is specified as the time required to move the heads to a track or cylinder (average access time), the time it takes for the desired sector to move under the head (average latency, which is a function of the physical rotational speed in revolutions per minute), and finally, the speed at which the data is transmitted (data rate).
The two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3.5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2.5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA (Parallel ATA), SATA (Serial ATA), USB or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) cables.
The first production IBM hard disk drive, the 350 disk storage, shipped in 1957 as a component of the IBM 305 RAMAC system. It was approximately the size of two large refrigerators and stored five million six-bit characters (3.75 megabytes) on a stack of 52 disks (100 surfaces used). The 350 had a single arm with two read/write heads, one facing up and the other down, that moved both horizontally between a pair of adjacent platters and vertically from one pair of platters to a second set. Variants of the IBM 350 were the IBM 355, IBM 7300 and IBM 1405.
In 1961, IBM announced, and in 1962 shipped, the IBM 1301 disk storage unit, which superseded the IBM 350 and similar drives. The 1301 consisted of one (for Model 1) or two (for model 2) modules, each containing 25 platters, each platter about 1⁄8-inch (3.2 mm) thick and 24 inches (610 mm) in diameter. While the earlier IBM disk drives used only two read/write heads per arm, the 1301 used an array of 48 heads (comb), each array moving horizontally as a single unit, one head per surface used. Cylinder-mode read/write operations were supported, and the heads flew about 250 micro-inches (about 6 µm) above the platter surface. Motion of the head array depended upon a binary adder system of hydraulic actuators which assured repeatable positioning. The 1301 cabinet was about the size of three large refrigerators placed side by side, storing the equivalent of about 21 million eight-bit bytes per module. Access time was about a quarter of a second.
Also in 1962, IBM introduced the model 1311 disk drive, which was about the size of a washing machine and stored two million characters on a removable disk pack. Users could buy additional packs and interchange them as needed, much like reels of magnetic tape. Later models of removable pack drives, from IBM and others, became the norm in most computer installations and reached capacities of 300 megabytes by the early 1980s. Non-removable HDDs were called "fixed disk" drives.
In 1963, IBM introduced the 1302, with twice the track capacity and twice as many tracks per cylinder as the 1301. The 1302 had one (for Model 1) or two (for Model 2) modules, each containing a separate comb for the first 250 tracks and the last 250 tracks.
Some high-performance HDDs were manufactured with one head per track, e.g., Burroughs B-475 in 1964, IBM 2305 in 1970, so that no time was lost physically moving the heads to a track and the only latency was the time for the desired block of data to rotate into position under the head. Known as fixed-head or head-per-track disk drives, they were very expensive and are no longer in production.
In 1973, IBM introduced a new type of HDD code-named "Winchester". Its primary distinguishing feature was that the disk heads were not withdrawn completely from the stack of disk platters when the drive was powered down. Instead, the heads were allowed to "land" on a special area of the disk surface upon spin-down, "taking off" again when the disk was later powered on. This greatly reduced the cost of the head actuator mechanism, but precluded removing just the disks from the drive as was done with the disk packs of the day. Instead, the first models of "Winchester technology" drives featured a removable disk module, which included both the disk pack and the head assembly, leaving the actuator motor in the drive upon removal. Later "Winchester" drives abandoned the removable media concept and returned to non-removable platters.
In 1974, IBM introduced the swinging arm actuator, made feasible because the Winchester recording heads function well when skewed to the recorded tracks. The simple design of the IBM GV (Gulliver) drive, invented at IBM's UK Hursley Labs, became IBM's most licensed electro-mechanical invention of all time, the actuator and filtration system being adopted in the 1980s eventually for all HDDs, and still universal nearly 40 years and 10 billion arms later.
Like the first removable pack drive, the first "Winchester" drives used platters 14 inches (360 mm) in diameter. In 1978, IBM introduced a swing arm drive, the IBM 0680 (Piccolo), with eight inch platters, exploring the possibility that smaller platters might offer advantages. Other eight inch drives followed, then 5+1⁄4 in (130 mm) drives, sized to replace the contemporary floppy disk drives. The latter were primarily intended for the then fledgling personal computer (PC) market.
Over time, as recording densities were greatly increased, further reductions in disk diameter to 3.5" and 2.5" were found to be optimum. Powerful rare earth magnet materials became affordable during this period, and were complementary to the swing arm actuator design to make possible the compact form factors of modern HDDs.
As the 1980s began, HDDs were a rare and very expensive additional feature in PCs, but by the late 1980s, their cost had been reduced to the point where they were standard on all but the cheapest computers.
Most HDDs in the early 1980s were sold to PC end users as an external, add-on subsystem. The subsystem was not sold under the drive manufacturer's name but under the subsystem manufacturer's name such as Corvus Systems and Tallgrass Technologies, or under the PC system manufacturer's name such as the Apple ProFile. The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal 10 MB HDD, and soon thereafter, internal HDDs proliferated on personal computers.
External HDDs remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh. Many Macintosh computers made between 1986 and 1998 featured a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion simple. Older compact Macintosh computers did not have user-accessible hard drive bays (indeed, the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512K, and Macintosh Plus did not feature a hard drive bay at all), so on those models, external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option for expanding upon any internal storage.
HDD improvements have been driven by increasing areal density, listed in the table above. Applications expanded through the 2000s, from the mainframe computers of the late 1950s to most mass storage applications including computers and consumer applications such as storage of entertainment content.
In the 2000s and 2010s, NAND began supplanting HDDs in applications requiring portability or high performance. NAND performance is improving faster than HDDs, and applications for HDDs are eroding. In 2018, the largest hard drive had a capacity of 15 TB, while the largest capacity SSD had a capacity of 100 TB. As of 2018, HDDs were forecast to reach 100 TB capacities around 2025, but as of 2019, the expected pace of improvement was pared back to 50 TB by 2026. Smaller form factors, 1.8-inches and below, were discontinued around 2010. The cost of solid-state storage (NAND), represented by Moore's law, is improving faster than HDDs. NAND has a higher price elasticity of demand than HDDs, and this drives market growth. During the late 2000s and 2010s, the product life cycle of HDDs entered a mature phase, and slowing sales may indicate the onset of the declining phase.
The 2011 Thailand floods damaged the manufacturing plants and impacted hard disk drive cost adversely between 2011 and 2013.
In 2019, Western Digital closed its last Malaysian HDD factory due to decreasing demand, to focus on SSD production. All three remaining HDD manufacturers have had decreasing demand for their HDDs since 2014.
A modern HDD records data by magnetizing a thin film of ferromagnetic material on both sides of a disk. Sequential changes in the direction of magnetization represent binary data bits. The data is read from the disk by detecting the transitions in magnetization. User data is encoded using an encoding scheme, such as run-length limited encoding, which determines how the data is represented by the magnetic transitions.
A typical HDD design consists of a spindle that holds flat circular disks, called platters, which hold the recorded data. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually aluminum alloy, glass, or ceramic. They are coated with a shallow layer of magnetic material typically 10–20 nm in depth, with an outer layer of carbon for protection. For reference, a standard piece of copy paper is 0.07–0.18 mm (70,000–180,000 nm) thick.
The platters in contemporary HDDs are spun at speeds varying from 4,200 RPM in energy-efficient portable devices, to 15,000 rpm for high-performance servers. The first HDDs spun at 1,200 rpm and, for many years, 3,600 rpm was the norm. As of November 2019, the platters in most consumer-grade HDDs spin at 5,400 or 7,200 RPM.
Information is written to and read from a platter as it rotates past devices called read-and-write heads that are positioned to operate very close to the magnetic surface, with their flying height often in the range of tens of nanometers. The read-and-write head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material passing immediately under it.
In modern drives, there is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle, mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a voice coil actuator or, in some older designs, a stepper motor. Early hard disk drives wrote data at some constant bits per second, resulting in all tracks having the same amount of data per track, but modern drives (since the 1990s) use zone bit recording, increasing the write speed from inner to outer zone and thereby storing more data per track in the outer zones.
In modern drives, the small size of the magnetic regions creates the danger that their magnetic state might be lost because of thermal effects — thermally induced magnetic instability which is commonly known as the "superparamagnetic limit". To counter this, the platters are coated with two parallel magnetic layers, separated by a three-atom layer of the non-magnetic element ruthenium, and the two layers are magnetized in opposite orientation, thus reinforcing each other. Another technology used to overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is perpendicular recording, first shipped in 2005, and as of 2007, used in certain HDDs.
In 2004, a higher-density recording media was introduced, consisting of coupled soft and hard magnetic layers. So-called exchange spring media magnetic storage technology, also known as exchange coupled composite media, allows good writability due to the write-assist nature of the soft layer. However, the thermal stability is determined only by the hardest layer and not influenced by the soft layer.
A typical HDD has two electric motors: a spindle motor that spins the disks and an actuator (motor) that positions the read/write head assembly across the spinning disks. The disk motor has an external rotor attached to the disks; the stator windings are fixed in place. Opposite the actuator at the end of the head support arm is the read-write head; thin printed-circuit cables connect the read-write heads to amplifier electronics mounted at the pivot of the actuator. The head support arm is very light, but also stiff; in modern drives, acceleration at the head reaches 550 g.
The actuator is a permanent magnet and moving coil motor that swings the heads to the desired position. A metal plate supports a squat neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) high-flux magnet. Beneath this plate is the moving coil, often referred to as the voice coil by analogy to the coil in loudspeakers, which is attached to the actuator hub, and beneath that is a second NIB magnet, mounted on the bottom plate of the motor (some drives have only one magnet).
The voice coil itself is shaped rather like an arrowhead and is made of doubly coated copper magnet wire. The inner layer is insulation, and the outer is thermoplastic, which bonds the coil together after it is wound on a form, making it self-supporting. The portions of the coil along the two sides of the arrowhead (which point to the center of the actuator bearing) then interact with the magnetic field of the fixed magnet. Current flowing radially outward along one side of the arrowhead and radially inward on the other produces the tangential force. If the magnetic field were uniform, each side would generate opposing forces that would cancel each other out. Therefore, the surface of the magnet is half north pole and half south pole, with the radial dividing line in the middle, causing the two sides of the coil to see opposite magnetic fields and produce forces that add instead of canceling. Currents along the top and bottom of the coil produce radial forces that do not rotate the head.
The HDD's electronics control the movement of the actuator and the rotation of the disk and perform reads and writes on demand from the disk controller. Feedback of the drive electronics is accomplished by means of special segments of the disk dedicated to servo feedback. These are either complete concentric circles (in the case of dedicated servo technology) or segments interspersed with real data (in the case of embedded servo, otherwise known as sector servo technology). The servo feedback optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio of the GMR sensors by adjusting the voice coil motor to rotate the arm. A more modern servo system also employs milli and/or micro actuators to more accurately position the read/write heads. The spinning of the disks uses fluid-bearing spindle motors. Modern disk firmware is capable of scheduling reads and writes efficiently on the platter surfaces and remapping sectors of the media that have failed.
Modern drives make extensive use of error correction codes (ECCs), particularly Reed–Solomon error correction. These techniques store extra bits, determined by mathematical formulas, for each block of data; the extra bits allow many errors to be corrected invisibly. The extra bits themselves take up space on the HDD, but allow higher recording densities to be employed without causing uncorrectable errors, resulting in much larger storage capacity. For example, a typical 1 TB hard disk with 512-byte sectors provides additional capacity of about 93 GB for the ECC data.
In the newest drives, as of 2009, low-density parity-check codes (LDPC) were supplanting Reed–Solomon; LDPC codes enable performance close to the Shannon limit and thus provide the highest storage density available.
Typical hard disk drives attempt to "remap" the data in a physical sector that is failing to a spare physical sector provided by the drive's "spare sector pool" (also called "reserve pool"), while relying on the ECC to recover stored data while the number of errors in a bad sector is still low enough. The S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature counts the total number of errors in the entire HDD fixed by ECC (although not on all hard drives as the related S.M.A.R.T attributes "Hardware ECC Recovered" and "Soft ECC Correction" are not consistently supported), and the total number of performed sector remappings, as the occurrence of many such errors may predict an HDD failure.
The "No-ID Format", developed by IBM in the mid-1990s, contains information about which sectors are bad and where remapped sectors have been located.
Only a tiny fraction of the detected errors end up as not correctable. Examples of specified uncorrected bit read error rates include:
Within a given manufacturers model the uncorrected bit error rate is typically the same regardless of capacity of the drive.
The worst type of errors are silent data corruptions which are errors undetected by the disk firmware or the host operating system; some of these errors may be caused by hard disk drive malfunctions while others originate elsewhere in the connection between the drive and the host.
The rate of areal density advancement was similar to Moore's law (doubling every two years) through 2010: 60% per year during 1988–1996, 100% during 1996–2003 and 30% during 2003–2010. Speaking in 1997, Gordon Moore called the increase "flabbergasting", while observing later that growth cannot continue forever. Price improvement decelerated to −12% per year during 2010–2017, as the growth of areal density slowed. The rate of advancement for areal density slowed to 10% per year during 2010–2016, and there was difficulty in migrating from perpendicular recording to newer technologies.
As bit cell size decreases, more data can be put onto a single drive platter. In 2013, a production desktop 3 TB HDD (with four platters) would have had an areal density of about 500 Gbit/in which would have amounted to a bit cell comprising about 18 magnetic grains (11 by 1.6 grains). Since the mid-2000s, areal density progress has been challenged by a superparamagnetic trilemma involving grain size, grain magnetic strength and ability of the head to write. In order to maintain acceptable signal-to-noise, smaller grains are required; smaller grains may self-reverse (electrothermal instability) unless their magnetic strength is increased, but known write head materials are unable to generate a strong enough magnetic field sufficient to write the medium in the increasingly smaller space taken by grains.
Magnetic storage technologies are being developed to address this trilemma, and compete with flash memory–based solid-state drives (SSDs). In 2013, Seagate introduced shingled magnetic recording (SMR), intended as something of a "stopgap" technology between PMR and Seagate's intended successor heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). SMR utilises overlapping tracks for increased data density, at the cost of design complexity and lower data access speeds (particularly write speeds and random access 4k speeds).
By contrast, HGST (now part of Western Digital) focused on developing ways to seal helium-filled drives instead of the usual filtered air. Since turbulence and friction are reduced, higher areal densities can be achieved due to using a smaller track width, and the energy dissipated due to friction is lower as well, resulting in a lower power draw. Furthermore, more platters can be fit into the same enclosure space, although helium gas is notoriously difficult to prevent escaping. Thus, helium drives are completely sealed and do not have a breather port, unlike their air-filled counterparts.
Other recording technologies are either under research or have been commercially implemented to increase areal density, including Seagate's heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). HAMR requires a different architecture with redesigned media and read/write heads, new lasers, and new near-field optical transducers. HAMR is expected to ship commercially in late 2020 or 2021. Technical issues delayed the introduction of HAMR by a decade, from earlier projections of 2009, 2015, 2016, and the first half of 2019. Some drives have adopted dual independent actuator arms to increase read/write speeds and compete with SSDs. HAMR's planned successor, bit-patterned recording (BPR), has been removed from the roadmaps of Western Digital and Seagate. Western Digital's microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR), also referred to as energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR), was sampled in 2020, with the first EAMR drive, the Ultrastar HC550, shipping in late 2020. Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) and "current perpendicular to plane" giant magnetoresistance (CPP/GMR) heads have appeared in research papers. A 3D-actuated vacuum drive (3DHD) concept has been proposed.
Depending upon assumptions on feasibility and timing of these technologies, Seagate forecasts that areal density will grow 20% per year during 2020–2034.
The highest-capacity HDDs shipping commercially in 2022 are 26 TB. The capacity of a hard disk drive, as reported by an operating system to the end user, is smaller than the amount stated by the manufacturer for several reasons, e.g. the operating system using some space, use of some space for data redundancy, space use for file system structures. Confusion of decimal prefixes and binary prefixes can also lead to errors.
Modern hard disk drives appear to their host controller as a contiguous set of logical blocks, and the gross drive capacity is calculated by multiplying the number of blocks by the block size. This information is available from the manufacturer's product specification, and from the drive itself through use of operating system functions that invoke low-level drive commands. Older IBM and compatible drives, e.g. IBM 3390 using the CKD record format, have variable length records; such drive capacity calculations must take into account the characteristics of the records. Some newer DASD simulate CKD, and the same capacity formulae apply.
The gross capacity of older sector-oriented HDDs is calculated as the product of the number of cylinders per recording zone, the number of bytes per sector (most commonly 512), and the count of zones of the drive. Some modern SATA drives also report cylinder-head-sector (CHS) capacities, but these are not physical parameters because the reported values are constrained by historic operating system interfaces. The C/H/S scheme has been replaced by logical block addressing (LBA), a simple linear addressing scheme that locates blocks by an integer index, which starts at LBA 0 for the first block and increments thereafter. When using the C/H/S method to describe modern large drives, the number of heads is often set to 64, although a typical modern hard disk drive has between one and four platters. In modern HDDs, spare capacity for defect management is not included in the published capacity; however, in many early HDDs, a certain number of sectors were reserved as spares, thereby reducing the capacity available to the operating system. Furthermore, many HDDs store their firmware in a reserved service zone, which is typically not accessible by the user, and is not included in the capacity calculation.
For RAID subsystems, data integrity and fault-tolerance requirements also reduce the realized capacity. For example, a RAID 1 array has about half the total capacity as a result of data mirroring, while a RAID 5 array with n drives loses 1/n of capacity (which equals to the capacity of a single drive) due to storing parity information. RAID subsystems are multiple drives that appear to be one drive or more drives to the user, but provide fault tolerance. Most RAID vendors use checksums to improve data integrity at the block level. Some vendors design systems using HDDs with sectors of 520 bytes to contain 512 bytes of user data and eight checksum bytes, or by using separate 512-byte sectors for the checksum data.
Some systems may use hidden partitions for system recovery, reducing the capacity available to the end user without knowledge of special disk partitioning utilities like diskpart in Windows.
Data is stored on a hard drive in a series of logical blocks. Each block is delimited by markers identifying its start and end, error detecting and correcting information, and space between blocks to allow for minor timing variations. These blocks often contained 512 bytes of usable data, but other sizes have been used. As drive density increased, an initiative known as Advanced Format extended the block size to 4096 bytes of usable data, with a resulting significant reduction in the amount of disk space used for block headers, error checking data, and spacing.
The process of initializing these logical blocks on the physical disk platters is called low-level formatting, which is usually performed at the factory and is not normally changed in the field. High-level formatting writes data structures used by the operating system to organize data files on the disk. This includes writing partition and file system structures into selected logical blocks. For example, some of the disk space will be used to hold a directory of disk file names and a list of logical blocks associated with a particular file.
Examples of partition mapping scheme include Master boot record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT). Examples of data structures stored on disk to retrieve files include the File Allocation Table (FAT) in the DOS file system and inodes in many UNIX file systems, as well as other operating system data structures (also known as metadata). As a consequence, not all the space on an HDD is available for user files, but this system overhead is usually small compared with user data.
In the early days of computing, the total capacity of HDDs was specified in seven to nine decimal digits frequently truncated with the idiom millions. By the 1970s, the total capacity of HDDs was given by manufacturers using SI decimal prefixes such as megabytes (1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes), gigabytes (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) and terabytes (1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes). However, capacities of memory are usually quoted using a binary interpretation of the prefixes, i.e. using powers of 1024 instead of 1000.
Software reports hard disk drive or memory capacity in different forms using either decimal or binary prefixes. The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems uses the binary convention when reporting storage capacity, so an HDD offered by its manufacturer as a 1 TB drive is reported by these operating systems as a 931 GB HDD. Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") uses decimal convention when reporting HDD capacity. The default behavior of the df command-line utility on Linux is to report the HDD capacity as a number of 1024-byte units.
The difference between the decimal and binary prefix interpretation caused some consumer confusion and led to class action suits against HDD manufacturers. The plaintiffs argued that the use of decimal prefixes effectively misled consumers, while the defendants denied any wrongdoing or liability, asserting that their marketing and advertising complied in all respects with the law and that no class member sustained any damages or injuries. In 2020, a California court ruled that use of the decimal prefixes with a decimal meaning was not misleading.
IBM's first hard disk drive, the IBM 350, used a stack of fifty 24-inch platters, stored 3.75 MB of data (approximately the size of one modern digital picture), and was of a size comparable to two large refrigerators. In 1962, IBM introduced its model 1311 disk, which used six 14-inch (nominal size) platters in a removable pack and was roughly the size of a washing machine. This became a standard platter size for many years, used also by other manufacturers. The IBM 2314 used platters of the same size in an eleven-high pack and introduced the "drive in a drawer" layout, sometimes called the "pizza oven", although the "drawer" was not the complete drive. Into the 1970s, HDDs were offered in standalone cabinets of varying dimensions containing from one to four HDDs.
Beginning in the late 1960s, drives were offered that fit entirely into a chassis that would mount in a 19-inch rack. Digital's RK05 and RL01 were early examples using single 14-inch platters in removable packs, the entire drive fitting in a 10.5-inch-high rack space (six rack units). In the mid-to-late 1980s, the similarly sized Fujitsu Eagle, which used (coincidentally) 10.5-inch platters, was a popular product.
With increasing sales of microcomputers having built-in floppy-disk drives (FDDs), HDDs that would fit to the FDD mountings became desirable. Starting with the Shugart Associates SA1000, HDD form factors initially followed those of 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disk drives. Although referred to by these nominal sizes, the actual sizes for those three drives respectively are 9.5", 5.75" and 4" wide. Because there were no smaller floppy disk drives, smaller HDD form factors such as 2½-inch drives (actually 2.75" wide) developed from product offerings or industry standards.
As of 2019, 2½-inch and 3½-inch hard disks are the most popular sizes. By 2009, all manufacturers had discontinued the development of new products for the 1.3-inch, 1-inch and 0.85-inch form factors due to falling prices of flash memory, which has no moving parts. While nominal sizes are in inches, actual dimensions are specified in millimeters.
The factors that limit the time to access the data on an HDD are mostly related to the mechanical nature of the rotating disks and moving heads, including:
Delay may also occur if the drive disks are stopped to save energy.
Defragmentation is a procedure used to minimize delay in retrieving data by moving related items to physically proximate areas on the disk. Some computer operating systems perform defragmentation automatically. Although automatic defragmentation is intended to reduce access delays, performance will be temporarily reduced while the procedure is in progress.
Time to access data can be improved by increasing rotational speed (thus reducing latency) or by reducing the time spent seeking. Increasing areal density increases throughput by increasing data rate and by increasing the amount of data under a set of heads, thereby potentially reducing seek activity for a given amount of data. The time to access data has not kept up with throughput increases, which themselves have not kept up with growth in bit density and storage capacity.
As of 2010, a typical 7,200-rpm desktop HDD has a sustained "disk-to-buffer" data transfer rate up to 1,030 Mbit/s. This rate depends on the track location; the rate is higher for data on the outer tracks (where there are more data sectors per rotation) and lower toward the inner tracks (where there are fewer data sectors per rotation); and is generally somewhat higher for 10,000-rpm drives. A current, widely-used standard for the "buffer-to-computer" interface is 3.0 Gbit/s SATA, which can send about 300 megabyte/s (10-bit encoding) from the buffer to the computer, and thus is still comfortably ahead of today's disk-to-buffer transfer rates. Data transfer rate (read/write) can be measured by writing a large file to disk using special file-generator tools, then reading back the file. Transfer rate can be influenced by file system fragmentation and the layout of the files.
HDD data transfer rate depends upon the rotational speed of the platters and the data recording density. Because heat and vibration limit rotational speed, advancing density becomes the main method to improve sequential transfer rates. Higher speeds require a more powerful spindle motor, which creates more heat. While areal density advances by increasing both the number of tracks across the disk and the number of sectors per track, only the latter increases the data transfer rate for a given rpm. Since data transfer rate performance tracks only one of the two components of areal density, its performance improves at a lower rate.
Other performance considerations include quality-adjusted price, power consumption, audible noise, and both operating and non-operating shock resistance.
Current hard drives connect to a computer over one of several bus types, including parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and Fibre Channel. Some drives, especially external portable drives, use IEEE 1394, or USB. All of these interfaces are digital; electronics on the drive process the analog signals from the read/write heads. Current drives present a consistent interface to the rest of the computer, independent of the data encoding scheme used internally, and independent of the physical number of disks and heads within the drive.
Typically, a DSP in the electronics inside the drive takes the raw analog voltages from the read head and uses PRML and Reed–Solomon error correction to decode the data, then sends that data out the standard interface. That DSP also watches the error rate detected by error detection and correction, and performs bad sector remapping, data collection for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, and other internal tasks.
Modern interfaces connect the drive to the host interface with a single data/control cable. Each drive also has an additional power cable, usually direct to the power supply unit. Older interfaces had separate cables for data signals and for drive control signals.
Due to the extremely close spacing between the heads and the disk surface, HDDs are vulnerable to being damaged by a head crash – a failure of the disk in which the head scrapes across the platter surface, often grinding away the thin magnetic film and causing data loss. Head crashes can be caused by electronic failure, a sudden power failure, physical shock, contamination of the drive's internal enclosure, wear and tear, corrosion, or poorly manufactured platters and heads.
The HDD's spindle system relies on air density inside the disk enclosure to support the heads at their proper flying height while the disk rotates. HDDs require a certain range of air densities to operate properly. The connection to the external environment and density occurs through a small hole in the enclosure (about 0.5 mm in breadth), usually with a filter on the inside (the breather filter). If the air density is too low, then there is not enough lift for the flying head, so the head gets too close to the disk, and there is a risk of head crashes and data loss. Specially manufactured sealed and pressurized disks are needed for reliable high-altitude operation, above about 3,000 m (9,800 ft). Modern disks include temperature sensors and adjust their operation to the operating environment. Breather holes can be seen on all disk drives – they usually have a sticker next to them, warning the user not to cover the holes. The air inside the operating drive is constantly moving too, being swept in motion by friction with the spinning platters. This air passes through an internal recirculation (or "recirc") filter to remove any leftover contaminants from manufacture, any particles or chemicals that may have somehow entered the enclosure, and any particles or outgassing generated internally in normal operation. Very high humidity present for extended periods of time can corrode the heads and platters. An exception to this are hermetically sealed, helium filled HDDs that largely eliminate environmental issues that can arise due to humidity or atmospheric pressure changes. Such HDDs were introduced by HGST in their first successful high volume implementation in 2013.
For giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads in particular, a minor head crash from contamination (that does not remove the magnetic surface of the disk) still results in the head temporarily overheating, due to friction with the disk surface, and can render the data unreadable for a short period until the head temperature stabilizes (so called "thermal asperity", a problem which can partially be dealt with by proper electronic filtering of the read signal).
When the logic board of a hard disk fails, the drive can often be restored to functioning order and the data recovered by replacing the circuit board with one of an identical hard disk. In the case of read-write head faults, they can be replaced using specialized tools in a dust-free environment. If the disk platters are undamaged, they can be transferred into an identical enclosure and the data can be copied or cloned onto a new drive. In the event of disk-platter failures, disassembly and imaging of the disk platters may be required. For logical damage to file systems, a variety of tools, including fsck on UNIX-like systems and CHKDSK on Windows, can be used for data recovery. Recovery from logical damage can require file carving.
A common expectation is that hard disk drives designed and marketed for server use will fail less frequently than consumer-grade drives usually used in desktop computers. However, two independent studies by Carnegie Mellon University and Google found that the "grade" of a drive does not relate to the drive's failure rate.
A 2011 summary of research, into SSD and magnetic disk failure patterns by Tom's Hardware summarized research findings as follows:
As of 2019, Backblaze, a storage provider, reported an annualized failure rate of two percent per year for a storage farm with 110,000 off-the-shelf HDDs with the reliability varying widely between models and manufacturers. Backblaze subsequently reported that the failure rate for HDDs and SSD of equivalent age was similar.
To minimize cost and overcome failures of individual HDDs, storage systems providers rely on redundant HDD arrays. HDDs that fail are replaced on an ongoing basis.
These drives typically spin at 5400 RPM and include:
HDD price per byte decreased at the rate of 40% per year during 1988–1996, 51% per year during 1996–2003 and 34% per year during 2003–2010. The price decrease slowed down to 13% per year during 2011–2014, as areal density increase slowed and the 2011 Thailand floods damaged manufacturing facilities and have held at 11% per year during 2010–2017.
The Federal Reserve Board has published a quality-adjusted price index for large-scale enterprise storage systems including three or more enterprise HDDs and associated controllers, racks and cables. Prices for these large-scale storage systems decreased at the rate of 30% per year during 2004–2009 and 22% per year during 2009–2014.
More than 200 companies have manufactured HDDs over time, but consolidations have concentrated production to just three manufacturers today: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. Production is mainly in the Pacific rim.
HDD unit shipments peaked at 651 million units in 2010 and have been declining since then to 166 million units in 2022 Seagate at 43% of units had the largest market share.
HDDs are being superseded by solid-state drives (SSDs) in markets where the higher speed (up to 7 gigabytes per second for M.2 (NGFF) NVMe drives and 2.5 gigabytes per second for PCIe expansion card drives)), ruggedness, and lower power of SSDs are more important than price, since the bit cost of SSDs is four to nine times higher than HDDs. As of 2016, HDDs are reported to have a failure rate of 2–9% per year, while SSDs have fewer failures: 1–3% per year. However, SSDs have more un-correctable data errors than HDDs.
SSDs offer larger capacities (up to 100 TB) than the largest HDD and/or higher storage densities (100 TB and 30 TB SSDs are housed in 2.5 inch HDD cases but with the same height as a 3.5-inch HDD), although their cost remains prohibitive.
A laboratory demonstration of a 1.33-Tb 3D NAND chip with 96 layers (NAND commonly used in solid state drives (SSDs)) had 5.5 Tbit/in as of 2019, while the maximum areal density for HDDs is 1.5 Tbit/in. The areal density of flash memory is doubling every two years, similar to Moore's law (40% per year) and faster than the 10–20% per year for HDDs. As of 2018, the maximum capacity was 16 terabytes for an HDD, and 100 terabytes for an SSD. HDDs were used in 70% of the desktop and notebook computers produced in 2016, and SSDs were used in 30%. The usage share of HDDs is declining and could drop below 50% in 2018–2019 according to one forecast, because SSDs are replacing smaller-capacity (less than one-terabyte) HDDs in desktop and notebook computers and MP3 players.
The market for silicon-based flash memory (NAND) chips, used in SSDs and other applications, is growing faster than for HDDs. Worldwide NAND revenue grew 16% per year from $22 billion to $57 billion during 2011–2017, while production grew 45% per year from 19 exabytes to 175 exabytes. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk, is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data when powered off. Modern HDDs are typically in the form of a small rectangular box.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs were the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers beginning in the early 1960s. HDDs maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers, though personal computing devices produced in large volume, like mobile phones and tablets, rely on flash memory storage devices. More than 224 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation, most units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. HDDs dominate the volume of storage produced (exabytes per year) for servers. Though production is growing slowly (by exabytes shipped), sales revenues and unit shipments are declining, because solid-state drives (SSDs) have higher data-transfer rates, higher areal storage density, somewhat better reliability, and much lower latency and access times.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The revenues for SSDs, most of which use NAND flash memory, slightly exceeded those for HDDs in 2018. Flash storage products had more than twice the revenue of hard disk drives as of 2017. Though SSDs have four to nine times higher cost per bit, they are replacing HDDs in applications where speed, power consumption, small size, high capacity and durability are important. As of 2019, the cost per bit of SSDs is falling, and the price premium over HDDs has narrowed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000: a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of 1,000 gigabytes (GB; where 1 gigabyte = 1 000 megabytes = 1 000 000 kilobytes (1 million) = 1 000 000 000 bytes (1 billion)). Typically, some of an HDD's capacity is unavailable to the user because it is used by the file system and the computer operating system, and possibly inbuilt redundancy for error correction and recovery. There can be confusion regarding storage capacity, since capacities are stated in decimal gigabytes (powers of 1000) by HDD manufacturers, whereas the most commonly used operating systems report capacities in powers of 1024, which results in a smaller number than advertised. Performance is specified as the time required to move the heads to a track or cylinder (average access time), the time it takes for the desired sector to move under the head (average latency, which is a function of the physical rotational speed in revolutions per minute), and finally, the speed at which the data is transmitted (data rate).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3.5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2.5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA (Parallel ATA), SATA (Serial ATA), USB or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) cables.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The first production IBM hard disk drive, the 350 disk storage, shipped in 1957 as a component of the IBM 305 RAMAC system. It was approximately the size of two large refrigerators and stored five million six-bit characters (3.75 megabytes) on a stack of 52 disks (100 surfaces used). The 350 had a single arm with two read/write heads, one facing up and the other down, that moved both horizontally between a pair of adjacent platters and vertically from one pair of platters to a second set. Variants of the IBM 350 were the IBM 355, IBM 7300 and IBM 1405.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1961, IBM announced, and in 1962 shipped, the IBM 1301 disk storage unit, which superseded the IBM 350 and similar drives. The 1301 consisted of one (for Model 1) or two (for model 2) modules, each containing 25 platters, each platter about 1⁄8-inch (3.2 mm) thick and 24 inches (610 mm) in diameter. While the earlier IBM disk drives used only two read/write heads per arm, the 1301 used an array of 48 heads (comb), each array moving horizontally as a single unit, one head per surface used. Cylinder-mode read/write operations were supported, and the heads flew about 250 micro-inches (about 6 µm) above the platter surface. Motion of the head array depended upon a binary adder system of hydraulic actuators which assured repeatable positioning. The 1301 cabinet was about the size of three large refrigerators placed side by side, storing the equivalent of about 21 million eight-bit bytes per module. Access time was about a quarter of a second.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Also in 1962, IBM introduced the model 1311 disk drive, which was about the size of a washing machine and stored two million characters on a removable disk pack. Users could buy additional packs and interchange them as needed, much like reels of magnetic tape. Later models of removable pack drives, from IBM and others, became the norm in most computer installations and reached capacities of 300 megabytes by the early 1980s. Non-removable HDDs were called \"fixed disk\" drives.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1963, IBM introduced the 1302, with twice the track capacity and twice as many tracks per cylinder as the 1301. The 1302 had one (for Model 1) or two (for Model 2) modules, each containing a separate comb for the first 250 tracks and the last 250 tracks.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Some high-performance HDDs were manufactured with one head per track, e.g., Burroughs B-475 in 1964, IBM 2305 in 1970, so that no time was lost physically moving the heads to a track and the only latency was the time for the desired block of data to rotate into position under the head. Known as fixed-head or head-per-track disk drives, they were very expensive and are no longer in production.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1973, IBM introduced a new type of HDD code-named \"Winchester\". Its primary distinguishing feature was that the disk heads were not withdrawn completely from the stack of disk platters when the drive was powered down. Instead, the heads were allowed to \"land\" on a special area of the disk surface upon spin-down, \"taking off\" again when the disk was later powered on. This greatly reduced the cost of the head actuator mechanism, but precluded removing just the disks from the drive as was done with the disk packs of the day. Instead, the first models of \"Winchester technology\" drives featured a removable disk module, which included both the disk pack and the head assembly, leaving the actuator motor in the drive upon removal. Later \"Winchester\" drives abandoned the removable media concept and returned to non-removable platters.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1974, IBM introduced the swinging arm actuator, made feasible because the Winchester recording heads function well when skewed to the recorded tracks. The simple design of the IBM GV (Gulliver) drive, invented at IBM's UK Hursley Labs, became IBM's most licensed electro-mechanical invention of all time, the actuator and filtration system being adopted in the 1980s eventually for all HDDs, and still universal nearly 40 years and 10 billion arms later.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Like the first removable pack drive, the first \"Winchester\" drives used platters 14 inches (360 mm) in diameter. In 1978, IBM introduced a swing arm drive, the IBM 0680 (Piccolo), with eight inch platters, exploring the possibility that smaller platters might offer advantages. Other eight inch drives followed, then 5+1⁄4 in (130 mm) drives, sized to replace the contemporary floppy disk drives. The latter were primarily intended for the then fledgling personal computer (PC) market.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Over time, as recording densities were greatly increased, further reductions in disk diameter to 3.5\" and 2.5\" were found to be optimum. Powerful rare earth magnet materials became affordable during this period, and were complementary to the swing arm actuator design to make possible the compact form factors of modern HDDs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "As the 1980s began, HDDs were a rare and very expensive additional feature in PCs, but by the late 1980s, their cost had been reduced to the point where they were standard on all but the cheapest computers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Most HDDs in the early 1980s were sold to PC end users as an external, add-on subsystem. The subsystem was not sold under the drive manufacturer's name but under the subsystem manufacturer's name such as Corvus Systems and Tallgrass Technologies, or under the PC system manufacturer's name such as the Apple ProFile. The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal 10 MB HDD, and soon thereafter, internal HDDs proliferated on personal computers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "External HDDs remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh. Many Macintosh computers made between 1986 and 1998 featured a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion simple. Older compact Macintosh computers did not have user-accessible hard drive bays (indeed, the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512K, and Macintosh Plus did not feature a hard drive bay at all), so on those models, external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option for expanding upon any internal storage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "HDD improvements have been driven by increasing areal density, listed in the table above. Applications expanded through the 2000s, from the mainframe computers of the late 1950s to most mass storage applications including computers and consumer applications such as storage of entertainment content.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In the 2000s and 2010s, NAND began supplanting HDDs in applications requiring portability or high performance. NAND performance is improving faster than HDDs, and applications for HDDs are eroding. In 2018, the largest hard drive had a capacity of 15 TB, while the largest capacity SSD had a capacity of 100 TB. As of 2018, HDDs were forecast to reach 100 TB capacities around 2025, but as of 2019, the expected pace of improvement was pared back to 50 TB by 2026. Smaller form factors, 1.8-inches and below, were discontinued around 2010. The cost of solid-state storage (NAND), represented by Moore's law, is improving faster than HDDs. NAND has a higher price elasticity of demand than HDDs, and this drives market growth. During the late 2000s and 2010s, the product life cycle of HDDs entered a mature phase, and slowing sales may indicate the onset of the declining phase.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The 2011 Thailand floods damaged the manufacturing plants and impacted hard disk drive cost adversely between 2011 and 2013.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 2019, Western Digital closed its last Malaysian HDD factory due to decreasing demand, to focus on SSD production. All three remaining HDD manufacturers have had decreasing demand for their HDDs since 2014.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A modern HDD records data by magnetizing a thin film of ferromagnetic material on both sides of a disk. Sequential changes in the direction of magnetization represent binary data bits. The data is read from the disk by detecting the transitions in magnetization. User data is encoded using an encoding scheme, such as run-length limited encoding, which determines how the data is represented by the magnetic transitions.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A typical HDD design consists of a spindle that holds flat circular disks, called platters, which hold the recorded data. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually aluminum alloy, glass, or ceramic. They are coated with a shallow layer of magnetic material typically 10–20 nm in depth, with an outer layer of carbon for protection. For reference, a standard piece of copy paper is 0.07–0.18 mm (70,000–180,000 nm) thick.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The platters in contemporary HDDs are spun at speeds varying from 4,200 RPM in energy-efficient portable devices, to 15,000 rpm for high-performance servers. The first HDDs spun at 1,200 rpm and, for many years, 3,600 rpm was the norm. As of November 2019, the platters in most consumer-grade HDDs spin at 5,400 or 7,200 RPM.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Information is written to and read from a platter as it rotates past devices called read-and-write heads that are positioned to operate very close to the magnetic surface, with their flying height often in the range of tens of nanometers. The read-and-write head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material passing immediately under it.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In modern drives, there is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle, mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a voice coil actuator or, in some older designs, a stepper motor. Early hard disk drives wrote data at some constant bits per second, resulting in all tracks having the same amount of data per track, but modern drives (since the 1990s) use zone bit recording, increasing the write speed from inner to outer zone and thereby storing more data per track in the outer zones.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In modern drives, the small size of the magnetic regions creates the danger that their magnetic state might be lost because of thermal effects — thermally induced magnetic instability which is commonly known as the \"superparamagnetic limit\". To counter this, the platters are coated with two parallel magnetic layers, separated by a three-atom layer of the non-magnetic element ruthenium, and the two layers are magnetized in opposite orientation, thus reinforcing each other. Another technology used to overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is perpendicular recording, first shipped in 2005, and as of 2007, used in certain HDDs.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 2004, a higher-density recording media was introduced, consisting of coupled soft and hard magnetic layers. So-called exchange spring media magnetic storage technology, also known as exchange coupled composite media, allows good writability due to the write-assist nature of the soft layer. However, the thermal stability is determined only by the hardest layer and not influenced by the soft layer.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A typical HDD has two electric motors: a spindle motor that spins the disks and an actuator (motor) that positions the read/write head assembly across the spinning disks. The disk motor has an external rotor attached to the disks; the stator windings are fixed in place. Opposite the actuator at the end of the head support arm is the read-write head; thin printed-circuit cables connect the read-write heads to amplifier electronics mounted at the pivot of the actuator. The head support arm is very light, but also stiff; in modern drives, acceleration at the head reaches 550 g.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The actuator is a permanent magnet and moving coil motor that swings the heads to the desired position. A metal plate supports a squat neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) high-flux magnet. Beneath this plate is the moving coil, often referred to as the voice coil by analogy to the coil in loudspeakers, which is attached to the actuator hub, and beneath that is a second NIB magnet, mounted on the bottom plate of the motor (some drives have only one magnet).",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The voice coil itself is shaped rather like an arrowhead and is made of doubly coated copper magnet wire. The inner layer is insulation, and the outer is thermoplastic, which bonds the coil together after it is wound on a form, making it self-supporting. The portions of the coil along the two sides of the arrowhead (which point to the center of the actuator bearing) then interact with the magnetic field of the fixed magnet. Current flowing radially outward along one side of the arrowhead and radially inward on the other produces the tangential force. If the magnetic field were uniform, each side would generate opposing forces that would cancel each other out. Therefore, the surface of the magnet is half north pole and half south pole, with the radial dividing line in the middle, causing the two sides of the coil to see opposite magnetic fields and produce forces that add instead of canceling. Currents along the top and bottom of the coil produce radial forces that do not rotate the head.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The HDD's electronics control the movement of the actuator and the rotation of the disk and perform reads and writes on demand from the disk controller. Feedback of the drive electronics is accomplished by means of special segments of the disk dedicated to servo feedback. These are either complete concentric circles (in the case of dedicated servo technology) or segments interspersed with real data (in the case of embedded servo, otherwise known as sector servo technology). The servo feedback optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio of the GMR sensors by adjusting the voice coil motor to rotate the arm. A more modern servo system also employs milli and/or micro actuators to more accurately position the read/write heads. The spinning of the disks uses fluid-bearing spindle motors. Modern disk firmware is capable of scheduling reads and writes efficiently on the platter surfaces and remapping sectors of the media that have failed.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Modern drives make extensive use of error correction codes (ECCs), particularly Reed–Solomon error correction. These techniques store extra bits, determined by mathematical formulas, for each block of data; the extra bits allow many errors to be corrected invisibly. The extra bits themselves take up space on the HDD, but allow higher recording densities to be employed without causing uncorrectable errors, resulting in much larger storage capacity. For example, a typical 1 TB hard disk with 512-byte sectors provides additional capacity of about 93 GB for the ECC data.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the newest drives, as of 2009, low-density parity-check codes (LDPC) were supplanting Reed–Solomon; LDPC codes enable performance close to the Shannon limit and thus provide the highest storage density available.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Typical hard disk drives attempt to \"remap\" the data in a physical sector that is failing to a spare physical sector provided by the drive's \"spare sector pool\" (also called \"reserve pool\"), while relying on the ECC to recover stored data while the number of errors in a bad sector is still low enough. The S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature counts the total number of errors in the entire HDD fixed by ECC (although not on all hard drives as the related S.M.A.R.T attributes \"Hardware ECC Recovered\" and \"Soft ECC Correction\" are not consistently supported), and the total number of performed sector remappings, as the occurrence of many such errors may predict an HDD failure.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The \"No-ID Format\", developed by IBM in the mid-1990s, contains information about which sectors are bad and where remapped sectors have been located.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Only a tiny fraction of the detected errors end up as not correctable. Examples of specified uncorrected bit read error rates include:",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Within a given manufacturers model the uncorrected bit error rate is typically the same regardless of capacity of the drive.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The worst type of errors are silent data corruptions which are errors undetected by the disk firmware or the host operating system; some of these errors may be caused by hard disk drive malfunctions while others originate elsewhere in the connection between the drive and the host.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The rate of areal density advancement was similar to Moore's law (doubling every two years) through 2010: 60% per year during 1988–1996, 100% during 1996–2003 and 30% during 2003–2010. Speaking in 1997, Gordon Moore called the increase \"flabbergasting\", while observing later that growth cannot continue forever. Price improvement decelerated to −12% per year during 2010–2017, as the growth of areal density slowed. The rate of advancement for areal density slowed to 10% per year during 2010–2016, and there was difficulty in migrating from perpendicular recording to newer technologies.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "As bit cell size decreases, more data can be put onto a single drive platter. In 2013, a production desktop 3 TB HDD (with four platters) would have had an areal density of about 500 Gbit/in which would have amounted to a bit cell comprising about 18 magnetic grains (11 by 1.6 grains). Since the mid-2000s, areal density progress has been challenged by a superparamagnetic trilemma involving grain size, grain magnetic strength and ability of the head to write. In order to maintain acceptable signal-to-noise, smaller grains are required; smaller grains may self-reverse (electrothermal instability) unless their magnetic strength is increased, but known write head materials are unable to generate a strong enough magnetic field sufficient to write the medium in the increasingly smaller space taken by grains.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Magnetic storage technologies are being developed to address this trilemma, and compete with flash memory–based solid-state drives (SSDs). In 2013, Seagate introduced shingled magnetic recording (SMR), intended as something of a \"stopgap\" technology between PMR and Seagate's intended successor heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). SMR utilises overlapping tracks for increased data density, at the cost of design complexity and lower data access speeds (particularly write speeds and random access 4k speeds).",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "By contrast, HGST (now part of Western Digital) focused on developing ways to seal helium-filled drives instead of the usual filtered air. Since turbulence and friction are reduced, higher areal densities can be achieved due to using a smaller track width, and the energy dissipated due to friction is lower as well, resulting in a lower power draw. Furthermore, more platters can be fit into the same enclosure space, although helium gas is notoriously difficult to prevent escaping. Thus, helium drives are completely sealed and do not have a breather port, unlike their air-filled counterparts.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Other recording technologies are either under research or have been commercially implemented to increase areal density, including Seagate's heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). HAMR requires a different architecture with redesigned media and read/write heads, new lasers, and new near-field optical transducers. HAMR is expected to ship commercially in late 2020 or 2021. Technical issues delayed the introduction of HAMR by a decade, from earlier projections of 2009, 2015, 2016, and the first half of 2019. Some drives have adopted dual independent actuator arms to increase read/write speeds and compete with SSDs. HAMR's planned successor, bit-patterned recording (BPR), has been removed from the roadmaps of Western Digital and Seagate. Western Digital's microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR), also referred to as energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR), was sampled in 2020, with the first EAMR drive, the Ultrastar HC550, shipping in late 2020. Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) and \"current perpendicular to plane\" giant magnetoresistance (CPP/GMR) heads have appeared in research papers. A 3D-actuated vacuum drive (3DHD) concept has been proposed.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Depending upon assumptions on feasibility and timing of these technologies, Seagate forecasts that areal density will grow 20% per year during 2020–2034.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The highest-capacity HDDs shipping commercially in 2022 are 26 TB. The capacity of a hard disk drive, as reported by an operating system to the end user, is smaller than the amount stated by the manufacturer for several reasons, e.g. the operating system using some space, use of some space for data redundancy, space use for file system structures. Confusion of decimal prefixes and binary prefixes can also lead to errors.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Modern hard disk drives appear to their host controller as a contiguous set of logical blocks, and the gross drive capacity is calculated by multiplying the number of blocks by the block size. This information is available from the manufacturer's product specification, and from the drive itself through use of operating system functions that invoke low-level drive commands. Older IBM and compatible drives, e.g. IBM 3390 using the CKD record format, have variable length records; such drive capacity calculations must take into account the characteristics of the records. Some newer DASD simulate CKD, and the same capacity formulae apply.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The gross capacity of older sector-oriented HDDs is calculated as the product of the number of cylinders per recording zone, the number of bytes per sector (most commonly 512), and the count of zones of the drive. Some modern SATA drives also report cylinder-head-sector (CHS) capacities, but these are not physical parameters because the reported values are constrained by historic operating system interfaces. The C/H/S scheme has been replaced by logical block addressing (LBA), a simple linear addressing scheme that locates blocks by an integer index, which starts at LBA 0 for the first block and increments thereafter. When using the C/H/S method to describe modern large drives, the number of heads is often set to 64, although a typical modern hard disk drive has between one and four platters. In modern HDDs, spare capacity for defect management is not included in the published capacity; however, in many early HDDs, a certain number of sectors were reserved as spares, thereby reducing the capacity available to the operating system. Furthermore, many HDDs store their firmware in a reserved service zone, which is typically not accessible by the user, and is not included in the capacity calculation.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "For RAID subsystems, data integrity and fault-tolerance requirements also reduce the realized capacity. For example, a RAID 1 array has about half the total capacity as a result of data mirroring, while a RAID 5 array with n drives loses 1/n of capacity (which equals to the capacity of a single drive) due to storing parity information. RAID subsystems are multiple drives that appear to be one drive or more drives to the user, but provide fault tolerance. Most RAID vendors use checksums to improve data integrity at the block level. Some vendors design systems using HDDs with sectors of 520 bytes to contain 512 bytes of user data and eight checksum bytes, or by using separate 512-byte sectors for the checksum data.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Some systems may use hidden partitions for system recovery, reducing the capacity available to the end user without knowledge of special disk partitioning utilities like diskpart in Windows.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Data is stored on a hard drive in a series of logical blocks. Each block is delimited by markers identifying its start and end, error detecting and correcting information, and space between blocks to allow for minor timing variations. These blocks often contained 512 bytes of usable data, but other sizes have been used. As drive density increased, an initiative known as Advanced Format extended the block size to 4096 bytes of usable data, with a resulting significant reduction in the amount of disk space used for block headers, error checking data, and spacing.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The process of initializing these logical blocks on the physical disk platters is called low-level formatting, which is usually performed at the factory and is not normally changed in the field. High-level formatting writes data structures used by the operating system to organize data files on the disk. This includes writing partition and file system structures into selected logical blocks. For example, some of the disk space will be used to hold a directory of disk file names and a list of logical blocks associated with a particular file.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Examples of partition mapping scheme include Master boot record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT). Examples of data structures stored on disk to retrieve files include the File Allocation Table (FAT) in the DOS file system and inodes in many UNIX file systems, as well as other operating system data structures (also known as metadata). As a consequence, not all the space on an HDD is available for user files, but this system overhead is usually small compared with user data.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In the early days of computing, the total capacity of HDDs was specified in seven to nine decimal digits frequently truncated with the idiom millions. By the 1970s, the total capacity of HDDs was given by manufacturers using SI decimal prefixes such as megabytes (1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes), gigabytes (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) and terabytes (1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes). However, capacities of memory are usually quoted using a binary interpretation of the prefixes, i.e. using powers of 1024 instead of 1000.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Software reports hard disk drive or memory capacity in different forms using either decimal or binary prefixes. The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems uses the binary convention when reporting storage capacity, so an HDD offered by its manufacturer as a 1 TB drive is reported by these operating systems as a 931 GB HDD. Mac OS X 10.6 (\"Snow Leopard\") uses decimal convention when reporting HDD capacity. The default behavior of the df command-line utility on Linux is to report the HDD capacity as a number of 1024-byte units.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The difference between the decimal and binary prefix interpretation caused some consumer confusion and led to class action suits against HDD manufacturers. The plaintiffs argued that the use of decimal prefixes effectively misled consumers, while the defendants denied any wrongdoing or liability, asserting that their marketing and advertising complied in all respects with the law and that no class member sustained any damages or injuries. In 2020, a California court ruled that use of the decimal prefixes with a decimal meaning was not misleading.",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "",
"title": "Capacity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "IBM's first hard disk drive, the IBM 350, used a stack of fifty 24-inch platters, stored 3.75 MB of data (approximately the size of one modern digital picture), and was of a size comparable to two large refrigerators. In 1962, IBM introduced its model 1311 disk, which used six 14-inch (nominal size) platters in a removable pack and was roughly the size of a washing machine. This became a standard platter size for many years, used also by other manufacturers. The IBM 2314 used platters of the same size in an eleven-high pack and introduced the \"drive in a drawer\" layout, sometimes called the \"pizza oven\", although the \"drawer\" was not the complete drive. Into the 1970s, HDDs were offered in standalone cabinets of varying dimensions containing from one to four HDDs.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Beginning in the late 1960s, drives were offered that fit entirely into a chassis that would mount in a 19-inch rack. Digital's RK05 and RL01 were early examples using single 14-inch platters in removable packs, the entire drive fitting in a 10.5-inch-high rack space (six rack units). In the mid-to-late 1980s, the similarly sized Fujitsu Eagle, which used (coincidentally) 10.5-inch platters, was a popular product.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "With increasing sales of microcomputers having built-in floppy-disk drives (FDDs), HDDs that would fit to the FDD mountings became desirable. Starting with the Shugart Associates SA1000, HDD form factors initially followed those of 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disk drives. Although referred to by these nominal sizes, the actual sizes for those three drives respectively are 9.5\", 5.75\" and 4\" wide. Because there were no smaller floppy disk drives, smaller HDD form factors such as 2½-inch drives (actually 2.75\" wide) developed from product offerings or industry standards.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "As of 2019, 2½-inch and 3½-inch hard disks are the most popular sizes. By 2009, all manufacturers had discontinued the development of new products for the 1.3-inch, 1-inch and 0.85-inch form factors due to falling prices of flash memory, which has no moving parts. While nominal sizes are in inches, actual dimensions are specified in millimeters.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The factors that limit the time to access the data on an HDD are mostly related to the mechanical nature of the rotating disks and moving heads, including:",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Delay may also occur if the drive disks are stopped to save energy.",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Defragmentation is a procedure used to minimize delay in retrieving data by moving related items to physically proximate areas on the disk. Some computer operating systems perform defragmentation automatically. Although automatic defragmentation is intended to reduce access delays, performance will be temporarily reduced while the procedure is in progress.",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Time to access data can be improved by increasing rotational speed (thus reducing latency) or by reducing the time spent seeking. Increasing areal density increases throughput by increasing data rate and by increasing the amount of data under a set of heads, thereby potentially reducing seek activity for a given amount of data. The time to access data has not kept up with throughput increases, which themselves have not kept up with growth in bit density and storage capacity.",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "As of 2010, a typical 7,200-rpm desktop HDD has a sustained \"disk-to-buffer\" data transfer rate up to 1,030 Mbit/s. This rate depends on the track location; the rate is higher for data on the outer tracks (where there are more data sectors per rotation) and lower toward the inner tracks (where there are fewer data sectors per rotation); and is generally somewhat higher for 10,000-rpm drives. A current, widely-used standard for the \"buffer-to-computer\" interface is 3.0 Gbit/s SATA, which can send about 300 megabyte/s (10-bit encoding) from the buffer to the computer, and thus is still comfortably ahead of today's disk-to-buffer transfer rates. Data transfer rate (read/write) can be measured by writing a large file to disk using special file-generator tools, then reading back the file. Transfer rate can be influenced by file system fragmentation and the layout of the files.",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "HDD data transfer rate depends upon the rotational speed of the platters and the data recording density. Because heat and vibration limit rotational speed, advancing density becomes the main method to improve sequential transfer rates. Higher speeds require a more powerful spindle motor, which creates more heat. While areal density advances by increasing both the number of tracks across the disk and the number of sectors per track, only the latter increases the data transfer rate for a given rpm. Since data transfer rate performance tracks only one of the two components of areal density, its performance improves at a lower rate.",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Other performance considerations include quality-adjusted price, power consumption, audible noise, and both operating and non-operating shock resistance.",
"title": "Performance characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Current hard drives connect to a computer over one of several bus types, including parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and Fibre Channel. Some drives, especially external portable drives, use IEEE 1394, or USB. All of these interfaces are digital; electronics on the drive process the analog signals from the read/write heads. Current drives present a consistent interface to the rest of the computer, independent of the data encoding scheme used internally, and independent of the physical number of disks and heads within the drive.",
"title": "Access and interfaces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Typically, a DSP in the electronics inside the drive takes the raw analog voltages from the read head and uses PRML and Reed–Solomon error correction to decode the data, then sends that data out the standard interface. That DSP also watches the error rate detected by error detection and correction, and performs bad sector remapping, data collection for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, and other internal tasks.",
"title": "Access and interfaces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Modern interfaces connect the drive to the host interface with a single data/control cable. Each drive also has an additional power cable, usually direct to the power supply unit. Older interfaces had separate cables for data signals and for drive control signals.",
"title": "Access and interfaces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Due to the extremely close spacing between the heads and the disk surface, HDDs are vulnerable to being damaged by a head crash – a failure of the disk in which the head scrapes across the platter surface, often grinding away the thin magnetic film and causing data loss. Head crashes can be caused by electronic failure, a sudden power failure, physical shock, contamination of the drive's internal enclosure, wear and tear, corrosion, or poorly manufactured platters and heads.",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The HDD's spindle system relies on air density inside the disk enclosure to support the heads at their proper flying height while the disk rotates. HDDs require a certain range of air densities to operate properly. The connection to the external environment and density occurs through a small hole in the enclosure (about 0.5 mm in breadth), usually with a filter on the inside (the breather filter). If the air density is too low, then there is not enough lift for the flying head, so the head gets too close to the disk, and there is a risk of head crashes and data loss. Specially manufactured sealed and pressurized disks are needed for reliable high-altitude operation, above about 3,000 m (9,800 ft). Modern disks include temperature sensors and adjust their operation to the operating environment. Breather holes can be seen on all disk drives – they usually have a sticker next to them, warning the user not to cover the holes. The air inside the operating drive is constantly moving too, being swept in motion by friction with the spinning platters. This air passes through an internal recirculation (or \"recirc\") filter to remove any leftover contaminants from manufacture, any particles or chemicals that may have somehow entered the enclosure, and any particles or outgassing generated internally in normal operation. Very high humidity present for extended periods of time can corrode the heads and platters. An exception to this are hermetically sealed, helium filled HDDs that largely eliminate environmental issues that can arise due to humidity or atmospheric pressure changes. Such HDDs were introduced by HGST in their first successful high volume implementation in 2013.",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "For giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads in particular, a minor head crash from contamination (that does not remove the magnetic surface of the disk) still results in the head temporarily overheating, due to friction with the disk surface, and can render the data unreadable for a short period until the head temperature stabilizes (so called \"thermal asperity\", a problem which can partially be dealt with by proper electronic filtering of the read signal).",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "When the logic board of a hard disk fails, the drive can often be restored to functioning order and the data recovered by replacing the circuit board with one of an identical hard disk. In the case of read-write head faults, they can be replaced using specialized tools in a dust-free environment. If the disk platters are undamaged, they can be transferred into an identical enclosure and the data can be copied or cloned onto a new drive. In the event of disk-platter failures, disassembly and imaging of the disk platters may be required. For logical damage to file systems, a variety of tools, including fsck on UNIX-like systems and CHKDSK on Windows, can be used for data recovery. Recovery from logical damage can require file carving.",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "A common expectation is that hard disk drives designed and marketed for server use will fail less frequently than consumer-grade drives usually used in desktop computers. However, two independent studies by Carnegie Mellon University and Google found that the \"grade\" of a drive does not relate to the drive's failure rate.",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "A 2011 summary of research, into SSD and magnetic disk failure patterns by Tom's Hardware summarized research findings as follows:",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "As of 2019, Backblaze, a storage provider, reported an annualized failure rate of two percent per year for a storage farm with 110,000 off-the-shelf HDDs with the reliability varying widely between models and manufacturers. Backblaze subsequently reported that the failure rate for HDDs and SSD of equivalent age was similar.",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "To minimize cost and overcome failures of individual HDDs, storage systems providers rely on redundant HDD arrays. HDDs that fail are replaced on an ongoing basis.",
"title": "Integrity and failure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "These drives typically spin at 5400 RPM and include:",
"title": "Market segments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "HDD price per byte decreased at the rate of 40% per year during 1988–1996, 51% per year during 1996–2003 and 34% per year during 2003–2010. The price decrease slowed down to 13% per year during 2011–2014, as areal density increase slowed and the 2011 Thailand floods damaged manufacturing facilities and have held at 11% per year during 2010–2017.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The Federal Reserve Board has published a quality-adjusted price index for large-scale enterprise storage systems including three or more enterprise HDDs and associated controllers, racks and cables. Prices for these large-scale storage systems decreased at the rate of 30% per year during 2004–2009 and 22% per year during 2009–2014.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "More than 200 companies have manufactured HDDs over time, but consolidations have concentrated production to just three manufacturers today: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. Production is mainly in the Pacific rim.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "HDD unit shipments peaked at 651 million units in 2010 and have been declining since then to 166 million units in 2022 Seagate at 43% of units had the largest market share.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "HDDs are being superseded by solid-state drives (SSDs) in markets where the higher speed (up to 7 gigabytes per second for M.2 (NGFF) NVMe drives and 2.5 gigabytes per second for PCIe expansion card drives)), ruggedness, and lower power of SSDs are more important than price, since the bit cost of SSDs is four to nine times higher than HDDs. As of 2016, HDDs are reported to have a failure rate of 2–9% per year, while SSDs have fewer failures: 1–3% per year. However, SSDs have more un-correctable data errors than HDDs.",
"title": "Competition from SSDs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "SSDs offer larger capacities (up to 100 TB) than the largest HDD and/or higher storage densities (100 TB and 30 TB SSDs are housed in 2.5 inch HDD cases but with the same height as a 3.5-inch HDD), although their cost remains prohibitive.",
"title": "Competition from SSDs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "A laboratory demonstration of a 1.33-Tb 3D NAND chip with 96 layers (NAND commonly used in solid state drives (SSDs)) had 5.5 Tbit/in as of 2019, while the maximum areal density for HDDs is 1.5 Tbit/in. The areal density of flash memory is doubling every two years, similar to Moore's law (40% per year) and faster than the 10–20% per year for HDDs. As of 2018, the maximum capacity was 16 terabytes for an HDD, and 100 terabytes for an SSD. HDDs were used in 70% of the desktop and notebook computers produced in 2016, and SSDs were used in 30%. The usage share of HDDs is declining and could drop below 50% in 2018–2019 according to one forecast, because SSDs are replacing smaller-capacity (less than one-terabyte) HDDs in desktop and notebook computers and MP3 players.",
"title": "Competition from SSDs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The market for silicon-based flash memory (NAND) chips, used in SSDs and other applications, is growing faster than for HDDs. Worldwide NAND revenue grew 16% per year from $22 billion to $57 billion during 2011–2017, while production grew 45% per year from 19 exabytes to 175 exabytes.",
"title": "Competition from SSDs"
}
]
| A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk, is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data when powered off. Modern HDDs are typically in the form of a small rectangular box. Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs were the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers beginning in the early 1960s. HDDs maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers, though personal computing devices produced in large volume, like mobile phones and tablets, rely on flash memory storage devices. More than 224 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation, most units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. HDDs dominate the volume of storage produced for servers. Though production is growing slowly, sales revenues and unit shipments are declining, because solid-state drives (SSDs) have higher data-transfer rates, higher areal storage density, somewhat better reliability, and much lower latency and access times. The revenues for SSDs, most of which use NAND flash memory, slightly exceeded those for HDDs in 2018. Flash storage products had more than twice the revenue of hard disk drives as of 2017. Though SSDs have four to nine times higher cost per bit, they are replacing HDDs in applications where speed, power consumption, small size, high capacity and durability are important. As of 2019, the cost per bit of SSDs is falling, and the price premium over HDDs has narrowed. The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of 1000: a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of 1,000 gigabytes. Typically, some of an HDD's capacity is unavailable to the user because it is used by the file system and the computer operating system, and possibly inbuilt redundancy for error correction and recovery. There can be confusion regarding storage capacity, since capacities are stated in decimal gigabytes by HDD manufacturers, whereas the most commonly used operating systems report capacities in powers of 1024, which results in a smaller number than advertised. Performance is specified as the time required to move the heads to a track or cylinder, the time it takes for the desired sector to move under the head, and finally, the speed at which the data is transmitted. The two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3.5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2.5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA, SATA, USB or SAS cables. | 2001-09-18T17:37:27Z | 2023-12-30T04:37:19Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive |
13,782 | Hebrew calendar | The Hebrew calendar (Hebrew: הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, romanized: HaLuah HaIvri), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as yahrzeits and the schedule of public Torah readings. In Israel, it is used for religious purposes, provides a time frame for agriculture, and is an official calendar for civil holidays alongside the Gregorian calendar.
Like other lunisolar calendars, the Hebrew calendar consists of months of 29 or 30 days which begin and end at approximately the time of the new moon. As 12 such months comprise a total of just 354 days, an extra lunar month is added every 2 or 3 years so that the long-term average year length closely approximates the actual length of the solar year.
Originally, the beginning of each month was determined based on physical observation of a new moon, while the decision of whether to add the leap month was based on observation of natural agriculture-related events in ancient Israel. Between the years 70 and 1178, these empirical criteria were gradually replaced with a set of mathematical rules. Month length now follows a fixed schedule which is adjusted based on the molad interval (a mathematical approximation of the mean time between new moons) and several other rules, while leap months are now added in 7 out of every 19 years according to the Metonic cycle.
Nowadays, Hebrew years are generally counted according to the system of Anno Mundi (Latin: "in the year of the world"; Hebrew: לבריאת העולם, "from the creation of the world", abbreviated AM). This system attempts to calculate the number of years since the creation of the world, according to the Genesis creation narrative and subsequent Biblical stories. The current Hebrew year, AM 5784, began at sunset on 15 September 2023 and will end at sunset on 2 October 2024.
Based on the classic rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 1:5 ("There was evening and there was morning, one day"), a day in the rabbinic Hebrew calendar runs from sunset (the start of "the evening") to the next sunset. Similarly, the holidays of Yom Kippur and Passover are described in the Bible as lasting "from evening to evening". The days are therefore figured locally.
Halachically, the exact time when days begin or end is uncertain: this time could be either sundown (shekiah) or else nightfall (tzait ha'kochavim, "when the stars appear"). The time between sundown and nightfall (bein hashmashot) is of uncertain status. Thus (for example) observance of Shabbat begins before sundown on Friday and ends after nightfall on Saturday, to be sure that Shabbat is not violated no matter when the transition between days occurs.
Instead of the international date line convention, there are varying opinions as to where the day changes. One opinion uses the antimeridian of Jerusalem (located at 144°47' W, passing through eastern Alaska). Other opinions exist as well. (See International date line in Judaism.)
Judaism uses multiple systems for dividing hours. In one system, the 24-hour day is divided into fixed hours equal to 1⁄24 of a day, while each hour is divided into 1080 halakim (parts, singular: helek). A part is 3+1⁄3 seconds (1⁄18 minute). The ultimate ancestor of the helek was a Babylonian time period called a barleycorn, equal to 1⁄72 of a Babylonian time degree (1° of celestial rotation). These measures are not generally used for everyday purposes; their best-known use is for calculating and announcing the molad.
In another system, the daytime period is divided into 12 relative hours (sha'ah z'manit, also sometimes called "halachic hours"). A relative hour is defined as 1⁄12 of the time from sunrise to sunset, or dawn to dusk, as per the two opinions in this regard. Therefore, an hour can be less than 60 minutes in winter, and more than 60 minutes in summer; similarly, the 6th hour ends at solar noon, which generally differs from 12:00. Relative hours are used for the calculation of prayer times (zmanim); for example, the Shema must be recited in the first three relative hours of the day.
Neither system is commonly used in ordinary life; rather, the local civil clock is used. This is even the case for ritual times (e.g. "The latest time to recite Shema today is 9:38 AM").
The Hebrew week (שבוע, shavua) is a cycle of seven days, mirroring the seven-day period of the Book of Genesis in which the world is created.
The names for the days of the week are simply the day number within the week. The week begins with Day 1 (Sunday) and ends with Shabbat (Saturday). (More precisely, since days begin in the evening, weeks begin and end on Saturday evening. Day 1 lasts from Saturday evening to Sunday evening, while Shabbat lasts from Friday evening to Saturday evening.)
Since some calculations use division, a remainder of 0 signifies Saturday.
In Hebrew, these names may be abbreviated using the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, for example יום א׳ (Day 1, or Yom Rishon (יום ראשון)):
The names of the days of the week are modeled on the seven days mentioned in the Genesis creation account. For example, Genesis 1:8 "... And there was evening and there was morning, a second day" corresponds to Yom Sheni meaning "second day". (However, for days 1, 6, and 7 the modern name differs slightly from the version in Genesis.)
The seventh day, Shabbat, as its Hebrew name indicates, is a day of rest in Judaism. In Talmudic Hebrew, the word Shabbat (שַׁבָּת) can also mean "week", so that in ritual liturgy a phrase like "Yom Reviʻi beShabbat" means "the fourth day in the week".
Jewish holidays can only fall on the weekdays shown in the following table:
The period from 1 Adar (or Adar II, in leap years) to 29 Marcheshvan contains all of the festivals specified in the Bible (Purim, Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret). The lengths of months in this period are fixed, meaning that the day of week of Passover dictates the day of week of the other Biblical holidays. However, the lengths of the months of Marcheshvan and Kislev can each vary by a day (due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules which are used to adjust the year length). As a result, the holidays falling after Marcheshvan (starting with Chanukah) can fall on multiple days for a given row of the table.
The Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar, meaning that months are based on lunar months, but years are based on solar years. The calendar year features twelve lunar months of 29 or 30 days, with an additional lunar month ("leap month") added periodically to synchronize the twelve lunar cycles with the longer solar year. These extra months are added in seven years (3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19) out of a 19-year cycle, known as the Metonic cycle (See Leap months, below).
The beginning of each Jewish lunar month is based on the appearance of the new moon. Although originally the new lunar crescent had to be observed and certified by witnesses (as is still done in Karaite Judaism and Islam), nowadays Jewish months have generally fixed lengths which approximate the period between new moons. For these reasons, a given month does not always begin on the same day as its astronomical conjunction.
The mean period of the lunar month (precisely, the synodic month) is very close to 29.5 days. Accordingly, the basic Hebrew calendar year is one of twelve lunar months alternating between 29 and 30 days:
Thus, the year normally contains twelve months with a total of 354 days. In such a year, the month of Marcheshvan has 29 days and Kislev has 30 days. However, due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules, in some years Kislev may lose a day to have 29 days, or Marcheshvan may acquire an additional day to have 30 days.
Normally the 12th month is named Adar. During leap years, the 12th and 13th months are named Adar I and Adar II (Hebrew: Adar Aleph and Adar Bet—"first Adar" and "second adar"). Sources disagree as to which of these months is the "real" Adar, and which is the added leap month.
The Bible does not directly mention the addition of leap months (also known as "embolismic" or "intercalary" months). The insertion of the leap month is based on the requirement that Passover occur at the same time of year as the spring barley harvest (aviv). (Since 12 lunar months make up less than a solar year, the date of Passover would gradually move throughout the solar year if leap months were not occasionally added.) According to the rabbinic calculation, this requirement means that Passover (or at least most of Passover) should fall after the March equinox. Similarly, the holidays of Shavuot and Sukkot are presumed by the Torah to fall in specific agricultural seasons.
Maimonides, discussing the calendrical rules in his Mishneh Torah (1178), notes:
By how much does the solar year exceed the lunar year? By approximately 11 days. Therefore, whenever this excess accumulates to about 30 days, or a little more or less, one month is added and the particular year is made to consist of 13 months, and this is the so-called embolismic (intercalated) year. For the year could not consist of twelve months plus so-and-so many days, since it is said: "throughout the months of the year", which implies that we should count the year by months and not by days.
The Hebrew calendar year conventionally begins on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of Tishrei. However, the Jewish calendar also defines several additional new years, used for different purposes. The use of multiple starting dates for a year is comparable to different starting dates for civil "calendar years", "tax or fiscal years", "academic years", and so on. The Mishnah (c. 200 CE) identifies four new-year dates:
The 1st of Nisan is the new year for kings and festivals; the 1st of Elul is the new year for the cattle tithe... the 1st of Tishri is the new year for years, of the years of release and Jubilee years, for the planting and for vegetables; and the 1st of Shevat is the new year for trees—so the school of Shammai; and the school of Hillel say: On the 15th thereof.
Two of these dates are especially prominent:
For the dates of the Jewish New Year see Jewish and Israeli holidays 2000–2050.
The Jewish year number is generally given by Anno Mundi (from Latin "in the year of the world", often abbreviated AM or A.M.). In this calendar era, the year number equals the number of years that have passed since the creation of the world, according to an interpretation of Biblical accounts of the creation and subsequent history. From the eleventh century, anno mundi dating became the dominant method of counting years throughout most of the world's Jewish communities, replacing earlier systems such as the Seleucid era. As with Anno Domini (A.D. or AD), the words or abbreviation for Anno Mundi (A.M. or AM) for the era should properly precede the date rather than follow it.
According to rabbinic reckoning, the beginning of "year 1" (1 Tishrei AM 1, or Monday, 7 October 3761 BCE in the proleptic Julian calendar) is not Creation, but about one year "before" Creation, with the new moon of its first month (Tishrei) to be called molad tohu (the mean new moon of chaos or nothing). It is about one year before the traditional Jewish date of Creation on 25 Elul AM 1, based upon the Seder Olam Rabbah. Thus, adding 3760 before Rosh Hashanah or 3761 after to a Julian calendar year number starting from 1 CE will yield the Hebrew year. For earlier years there may be a discrepancy; see Missing years (Jewish calendar).
The reference junction of the Sun and the Moon (Molad 1) is considered to be at 5 hours and 204 halakim, or 11:11:20 p.m., on the evening of Sunday, 6 October 3761 BCE.
In Hebrew there are two common ways of writing the year number: with the thousands, called לפרט גדול ("major era"), and without the thousands, called לפרט קטן ("minor era"). Thus, the current year is written as ה'תשפ"ד (5784) using the "major era" and תשפ"ד (784) using the "minor era".
Since the Jewish calendar has been fixed, leap months have been added according to the Metonic cycle of 19 years, of which 12 are common (non-leap) years of 12 months, and 7 are leap years of 13 months. This 19-year cycle is known in Hebrew as the Machzor Katan ("small cycle").
Because the Julian years are 365 and 1/4 days long, every 28 years the weekday pattern repeats. This is called the sun cycle, or the Machzor Gadol ("great cycle") in Hebrew. The beginning of this cycle is arbitrary. Its main use is for determining the time of Birkat Hachama.
Because every 50 years is a Jubilee year, there is a jubilee (yovel) cycle. Because every seven years is a sabbatical year, there is a seven-year release cycle. The placement of these cycles is debated. Historically, there is enough evidence to fix the sabbatical years in the Second Temple Period. But it may not match with the sabbatical cycle derived from the biblical period; and there is no consensus on whether or not the Jubilee year is the fiftieth year or the latter half of the forty ninth year.
Every 247 years, or 13 cycles of 19 years, form a period known as an iggul, or the Iggul of Rabbi Nahshon. This period is notable in that the precise details of the calendar almost always (but not always) repeat over this period. This occurs because the molad interval (the average length of a Hebrew month) is 29.530594 days, which over 247 years results in a total of 90215.965 days. This is almost exactly 90216 days - a whole number and multiple of 7 (equalling the days of the week). So over 247 years, not only does the 19-year leap year cycle repeat itself, but the days of the week (and thus the days of Rosh Hashanah and the year length) typically repeat themselves.
To determine whether a Jewish year is a leap year, one must find its position in the 19-year Metonic cycle. This position is calculated by dividing the Jewish year number by 19 and finding the remainder. (Since there is no year 0, a remainder of 0 indicates that the year is year 19 of the cycle.) For example, the Jewish year 5784 divided by 19 results in a remainder of 8, indicating that it is year 8 of the Metonic cycle. The Jewish year used is the anno mundi year, in which the year of creation according to the Rabbinical Chronology (3761 BCE) is taken as year 1. Years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 of the Metonic cycle are leap years. The Hebrew mnemonic GUCHADZaT גוחאדז״ט refers to these years, while another memory aid refers to musical notation.
Whether a year is a leap year can also be determined by a simple calculation (which also gives the fraction of a month by which the calendar is behind the seasons, useful for agricultural purposes). To determine whether year n of the calendar is a leap year, find the remainder on dividing [(7 × n) + 1] by 19. If the remainder is 6 or less it is a leap year; if it is 7 or more it is not. For example, the remainder on dividing [(7 × 5784) + 1] by 19 is 0, so the year 5784 is a leap year. The remainder on dividing [(7 × 5785) + 1] by 19 is 7, so the year 5785 is not a leap year. This works because as there are seven leap years in nineteen years the difference between the solar and lunar years increases by 7/19-month per year. When the difference goes above 18/19-month this signifies a leap year, and the difference is reduced by one month.
The Hebrew calendar assumes that a month is uniformly of the length of an average synodic month, taken as exactly 2913753⁄25920 days (about 29.530594 days, which is less than half a second from the modern scientific estimate); it also assumes that a tropical year is exactly 127⁄19 times that, i.e., about 365.2468 days. Thus it overestimates the length of the tropical year (365.2422 days) by 0.0046 days (about 7 minutes) per year, or about one day in 216 years. This error is less than the Julian years (365.2500 days) make (0.0078 days/year, or one day in 128 years), but much more than what the Gregorian years (365.2425 days/year) make (0.0003 days/year, or one day in 3333 years).
Besides the adding of leap months, the year length is sometimes adjusted by adding one day to the month of Marcheshvan, or removing one day from the month of Kislev. Because each calendar year begins with Rosh Hashanah, adjusting the year length is equivalent to moving the day of the next Rosh Hashanah. Several rules are used to determine when this is performed.
To calculate the day on which Rosh Hashanah of a given year will fall, the expected molad (moment of lunar conjunction or new moon) of Tishrei in that year is calculated. The molad is calculated by multiplying the number of months that will have elapsed since some (preceding) molad (whose weekday is known) by the mean length of a (synodic) lunar month, which is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 parts (there are 1080 "parts" in an hour, so that one part is equal to 3+1⁄3 seconds). The very first molad, the molad tohu, fell on Sunday evening at 11:11:20 PM in the local time of Jerusalem, 6 October 3761 BCE (Proleptic Julian calendar) 20:50:23.1 UTC, or in Jewish terms Day 2, 5 hours, and 204 parts. The exact time of a molad in terms of days after midnight between 29 and 30 December 1899 (the form used by many spreadsheets for date and time) is
where N is the number of lunar months since the beginning. (N equals 71440 for the beginning of the 305th Machzor Katan on 1 October 2016.) Adding 0.25 to this converts it to the Jewish system in which the day begins at 6 PM.
In calculating the number of months that will have passed since the known molad that one uses as the starting point, one must remember to include any leap months that falls within the elapsed interval, according to the cycle of leap years. A 19-year cycle of 235 synodic months has 991 weeks 2 days 16 hours 595 parts, a common year of 12 synodic months has 50 weeks 4 days 8 hours 876 parts, while a leap year of 13 synodic months has 54 weeks 5 days 21 hours 589 parts.
Four conditions are considered to determine whether the date of Rosh Hashanah must be postponed. These are called the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules, or deḥiyyot. The two most important conditions are:
Another two rules are applied much less frequently and serve to prevent impermissible year lengths. Their names are Hebrew acronyms that refer to the ways they are calculated:
The rules of postponement of Rosh HaShanah make it that a Jewish common year will have 353, 354, or 355 days while a leap year (with the addition of Adar I which always has 30 days) has 383, 384, or 385 days.
Whether a year is deficient, regular, or complete is determined by the time between two adjacent Rosh Hashanah observances and the leap year.
A Metonic cycle equates to 235 lunar months in each 19-year cycle. This gives an average of 6,939 days, 16 hours, and 595 parts for each cycle. But due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules (preceding section) a cycle of 19 Jewish years can be either 6,939, 6,940, 6,941, or 6,942 days in duration. For any given year in the Metonic cycle, the molad moves forward in the week by 2 days, 16 hours, and 595 parts every 19 years. The greatest common divisor of this and a week is 5 parts, so the Jewish calendar repeats exactly following a number of Metonic cycles equal to the number of parts in a week divided by 5, namely 7×24×216 = 36,288 Metonic cycles, or 689,472 Jewish years. There is a near-repetition every 247 years, except for an excess of 50 minutes 16+2⁄3 seconds (905 parts).
Contrary to popular impression, one's Hebrew birthday does not necessarily fall on the same Gregorian date every 19 years, since the length of the Metonic cycle varies by several days (as does the length of a 19-year Gregorian period, depending whether it contains 4 or 5 leap years).
There are three qualities that distinguish one year from another: whether it is a leap year or a common year; on which of four permissible days of the week the year begins; and whether it is a deficient, regular, or complete year. Mathematically, there are 24 (2×4×3) possible combinations, but only 14 of them are valid.
Each of these patterns is known by a kevi'ah (Hebrew: קביעה for 'a setting' or 'an established thing'), which is a code consisting of two numbers and a letter. In English, the code consists of the following:
The kevi'ah in Hebrew letters is written right-to-left, so their days of the week are reversed, the right number for 1 Tishrei and the left for 15 Nisan.
The kevi'ah also determines the Torah reading cycle (which parshiyot are read together or separately.
The keviah, and thus the annual calendar, of a numbered Hebrew year can be determined by consulting the table of Four Gates, whose inputs are the year's position in the 19-year cycle and its molad Tishrei. In this table, the years of a 19-year cycle are organized into four groups (or "gates"): common years after a leap year but before a common year (1 4 9 12 15); common years between two leap years (7 18); common years after a common year but before a leap year (2 5 10 13 16); and leap years (3 6 8 11 14 17 19).
This table numbers the days of the week and hours for the limits of molad Tishrei in the Hebrew manner for calendrical calculations, that is, both begin at 6 pm, thus 7d 18h 0p is noon Saturday. The oldest surviving table of Four Gates was written by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in 824.
Comparing the days of the week of molad Tishrei with those in the kevi'ah shows that during 39% of years 1 Tishrei is not postponed beyond the day of the week of its molad Tishrei, 47% are postponed one day, and 14% are postponed two days. This table also identifies the seven types of common years and seven types of leap years. Most are represented in any 19-year cycle, except one or two may be in neighboring cycles. The most likely type of year is 5R7 in 18.1% of years, whereas the least likely is 5C1 in 3.3% of years. The day of the week of 15 Nisan is later than that of 1 Tishrei by one, two or three days for common years and three, four or five days for leap years in deficient, regular or complete years, respectively.
Given the length of the year, the length of each month is fixed as described above, so the real problem in determining the calendar for a year is determining the number of days in the year. In the modern calendar, this is determined in the following manner.
The day of Rosh Hashanah and the length of the year are determined by the time and the day of the week of the Tishrei molad, that is, the moment of the average conjunction. Given the Tishrei molad of a certain year, the length of the year is determined as follows:
First, one must determine whether each year is an ordinary or leap year by its position in the 19-year Metonic cycle. Years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 are leap years.
Secondly, one must determine the number of days between the starting Tishrei molad (TM1) and the Tishrei molad of the next year (TM2). For calendar descriptions in general the day begins at 6 p.m., but for the purpose of determining Rosh Hashanah, a molad occurring on or after noon is treated as belonging to the next day (the first deḥiyyah). All months are calculated as 29d, 12h, 44m, 31⁄3s long (MonLen). Therefore, in an ordinary year TM2 occurs 12 × MonLen days after TM1. This is usually 354 calendar days after TM1, but if TM1 is on or after 3:11:20 a.m. and before noon, it will be 355 days. Similarly, in a leap year, TM2 occurs 13 × MonLen days after TM1. This is usually 384 days after TM1, but if TM1 is on or after noon and before 2:27:162⁄3 p.m., TM2 will be only 383 days after TM1. In the same way, from TM2 one calculates TM3. Thus the four natural year lengths are 354, 355, 383, and 384 days.
However, because of the holiday rules, Rosh Hashanah cannot fall on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday, so if TM2 is one of those days, Rosh Hashanah in year 2 is postponed by adding one day to year 1 (the second deḥiyyah). To compensate, one day is subtracted from year 2. It is to allow for these adjustments that the system allows 385-day years (long leap) and 353-day years (short ordinary) besides the four natural year lengths.
But how can year 1 be lengthened if it is already a long ordinary year of 355 days or year 2 be shortened if it is a short leap year of 383 days? That is why the third and fourth deḥiyyahs are needed.
If year 1 is already a long ordinary year of 355 days, there will be a problem if TM1 is on a Tuesday, as that means TM2 falls on a Sunday and will have to be postponed, creating a 356-day year. In this case, Rosh Hashanah in year 1 is postponed from Tuesday (the third deḥiyyah). As it cannot be postponed to Wednesday, it is postponed to Thursday, and year 1 ends up with 354 days.
On the other hand, if year 2 is already a short year of 383 days, there will be a problem if TM2 is on a Wednesday. because Rosh Hashanah in year 2 will have to be postponed from Wednesday to Thursday and this will cause year 2 to be only 382 days long. In this case, year 2 is extended by one day by postponing Rosh Hashanah in year 3 from Monday to Tuesday (the fourth deḥiyyah), and year 2 will have 383 days.
For calculated dates of Jewish holidays, see Jewish and Israeli holidays 2000–2050
A "new moon" (astronomically called a lunar conjunction and, in Hebrew, a molad) is the moment at which the sun and moon have the same ecliptic longitude (i.e. they are aligned horizontally with respect to a north–south line). The period between two new moons is a synodic month. The actual length of a synodic month varies from about 29 days 6 hours and 30 minutes (29.27 days) to about 29 days and 20 hours (29.83 days), a variation range of about 13 hours and 30 minutes. Accordingly, for convenience, the Hebrew calendar uses a long-term average month length, known as the molad interval, which equals the mean synodic month of ancient times. The molad interval is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 "parts" (1 "part" = /18 minute = 3/3 seconds) (i.e., 29.530594 days), and is the same value determined by the Babylonians in their System B about 300 BCE and was adopted by Hipparchus (2nd century BCE) and by Ptolemy in the Almagest (2nd century CE). Its remarkable accuracy (less than one second from the current true value) is thought to have been achieved using records of lunar eclipses from the 8th to 5th centuries BCE. In the Talmudic era, when the mean synodic month was slightly shorter than at present, the molad interval was even more accurate, being "essentially a perfect fit" for the mean synodic month at the time.
Currently, the accumulated drift in the moladot since the Talmudic era has reached a total of approximately 97 minutes. This means that the molad of Tishrei lands one day later than it ought to in (97 minutes) ÷ (1440 minutes per day) = nearly 7% of years. Therefore, the seemingly small drift of the moladot is already significant enough to affect the date of Rosh Hashanah, which then cascades to many other dates in the calendar year, and sometimes (due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules) also interacts with the dates of the prior or next year.
The rate of calendar drift is increasing with time, since the mean synodic month is progressively shortening due to gravitational tidal effects. Measured on a strictly uniform time scale (such as that provided by an atomic clock) the mean synodic month is becoming gradually longer, but since the tides slow Earth's rotation rate even more, the mean synodic month is becoming gradually shorter in terms of mean solar time.
A larger source of error is the inaccuracy of the Metonic cycle. Nineteen Jewish years average 6939d 16h 33m 031⁄3s, compared to the 6939d 14h 26m 15s of nineteen mean solar years. Thus, the Hebrew calendar drifts by just over 2 hours every 19 years, or approximately one day every 216 years. Due to accumulation of this discrepancy, the earliest date on which Passover can fall has drifted by roughly eight days since the 4th century, and the 15th of Nisan now falls only on or after 26 March (the date in 2013), five days after the actual equinox on 21 March. In the distant future, this drift is projected to move Passover much further in the year. If the calendar is not amended, then Passover will start to land on or after the summer solstice around approximately AM 16652 (12892 CE).
When the calendar was fixed in the 4th century, the earliest Passover (in year 16 of the Metonic cycle) began on the first full moon after the March equinox. This is still the case in about 80% of years; but, in about 20% of years, Passover is a month late by this criterion. Presently, this occurs after the "premature" insertion of a leap month in years 8, 11, and 19 of each 19-year cycle, which causes Passover to fall especially far after the March equinox in such years. Calendar drift also impacts the observance of Sukkot, which will shift into Israel's winter rainy season, making dwelling in the sukkah less practical, and affecting the logic of the Shemini Atzeret prayer for rain which will be more often recited once rains are already underway.
Modern scholars have debated at which point the drift could become ritually problematic, and proposed adjustments to the fixed calendar to keep Passover in its proper season. The seriousness of the calendar drift is discounted by many, on the grounds that Passover will remain in the spring season for many millennia, and the Torah is generally not interpreted as having specified tight calendrical limits. However, some writers and researchers have proposed "corrected" calendars (with modifications to the leap year cycle, molad interval, or both) which would compensate for these issues:
Religious questions abound about how such a system might be implemented and administered throughout the diverse aspects of the world Jewish community.
While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Jews made every effort to observe Jewish tradition in the camps, despite the monumental dangers in doing so. The Hebrew calendar, which is a tradition with great importance to Jewish practice and rituals was particularly dangerous since no tools of telling of time, such as watches and calendars, were permitted in the camps. The keeping of a Hebrew calendar was a rarity amongst prisoners and there are only two known surviving calendars that were made in Auschwitz, both of which were made by women. Before this, the tradition of making a Hebrew calendar was greatly assumed to be the job of a man in Jewish society.
Early Zionist pioneers were impressed by the fact that the calendar preserved by Jews over many centuries in far-flung diasporas, as a matter of religious ritual, was geared to the climate of their original country: major Jewish holidays such as Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot correspond to major points of the country's agricultural year such as planting and harvest. Accordingly, in the early 20th century the Hebrew calendar was re-interpreted as an agricultural rather than religious calendar.
After the creation of the State of Israel, the Hebrew calendar became one of the official calendars of Israel, along with the Gregorian calendar. Holidays and commemorations not derived from previous Jewish tradition were to be fixed according to the Hebrew calendar date. For example, the Israeli Independence Day falls on 5 Iyar, Jerusalem Reunification Day on 28 Iyar, Yom HaAliyah on 10 Nisan, and the Holocaust Commemoration Day on 27 Nisan.
The Hebrew calendar is still widely acknowledged, appearing in public venues such as banks (where it is legal for use on cheques and other documents), and on the mastheads of newspapers.
The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is a two-day public holiday in Israel. However, since the 1980s an increasing number of secular Israelis celebrate the Gregorian New Year (usually known as "Silvester Night"—ליל סילבסטר) on the night between 31 December and 1 January. Prominent rabbis have on several occasions sharply denounced this practice, but with no noticeable effect on the secularist celebrants.
Wall calendars commonly used in Israel are hybrids. Most are organised according to Gregorian rather than Jewish months, but begin in September, when the Jewish New Year usually falls, and provide the Jewish date in small characters.
Lunisolar calendars similar to the Hebrew calendar, consisting of twelve lunar months plus an occasional 13th intercalary month to synchronize with the solar/agricultural cycle, were used in all ancient Middle Eastern civilizations except Egypt, and likely date to the 3rd millennium BCE. While there is no mention of this 13th month anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, still most Biblical scholars hold that the intercalation process was almost certainly a regularly occurring aspect of the early Hebrew calendar keeping process.
Biblical references to the pre-exilic calendar include ten of the twelve months identified by number rather than by name.
Prior to the Babylonian captivity, the names of only four months are referred to in the Tanakh: Aviv (first month), Ziv (second month), Ethanim (seventh month), and Bul (eighth month). All of these are believed to be Canaanite names. The last three of these names are only mentioned in connection with the building of the First Temple and Håkan Ulfgard suggests that the use of what are rarely used Canaanite (or in the case of Ethanim perhaps Northwest Semitic) names indicates that "the author is consciously utilizing an archaizing terminology, thus giving the impression of an ancient story...". Alternatively, these names may be attributed to the presence of Phoenician scribes in Solomon's court at the time of the building of the Temple.
During the Babylonian captivity, the Jewish people adopted the Babylonian names for the months. The Babylonian calendar descended directly from the Sumerian calendar. These Babylonian month-names (such as Nisan, Iyyar, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tishri and Adar) are shared with the modern Levantine solar calendar (currently used in the Arabic-speaking countries of the Fertile Crescent) and the modern Assyrian calendar, indicating a common origin. The origin is thought to be the Babylonian calendar.
According to some Christian and Karaite sources, the tradition in ancient Israel was that 1 Nisan would not start until the barley is ripe, being the test for the onset of spring. If the barley was not ripe, an intercalary month would be added before Nisan.
In the 1st century, Josephus stated that while –
Moses...appointed Nisan...as the first month for the festivals...the commencement of the year for everything relating to divine worship, but for selling and buying and other ordinary affairs he preserved the ancient order [i. e. the year beginning with Tishrei]."
Edwin Thiele concluded that the ancient northern Kingdom of Israel counted years using the ecclesiastical new year starting on 1 Aviv/Nisan (Nisan-years), while the southern Kingdom of Judah counted years using the civil new year starting on 1 Tishrei (Tishri-years). The practice of the Kingdom of Israel was also that of Babylon, as well as other countries of the region. The practice of Judah is continued in modern Judaism and is celebrated as Rosh Hashana.
Before the adoption of the current Anno Mundi year numbering system, other systems were used. In early times, the years were counted from some significant event such as the Exodus. During the period of the monarchy, it was the widespread practice in western Asia to use era year numbers according to the accession year of the monarch of the country involved. This practice was followed by the united kingdom of Israel, kingdom of Judah, kingdom of Israel, Persia, and others. Besides, the author of Kings coordinated dates in the two kingdoms by giving the accession year of a monarch in terms of the year of the monarch of the other kingdom, though some commentators note that these dates do not always synchronise. Other era dating systems have been used at other times. For example, Jewish communities in the Babylonian diaspora counted the years from the first deportation from Israel, that of Jehoiachin in 597 BCE. The era year was then called "year of the captivity of Jehoiachin".
During the Hellenistic Maccabean period, Seleucid era counting was used, at least in Land of Israel (under Greek influence at the time). The Books of the Maccabees used Seleucid era dating exclusively, as did Josephus writing in the Roman period. From the 1st-10th centuries, the center of world Judaism was in the Middle East (primarily Iraq and Palestine), and Jews in these regions also used Seleucid era dating, which they called the "Era of Contracts [or Documents]". The Talmud states:
Rav Aha bar Jacob then put this question: How do we know that our Era [of Documents] is connected with the Kingdom of Greece at all? Why not say that it is reckoned from the Exodus from Egypt, omitting the first thousand years and giving the years of the next thousand? In that case, the document is really post-dated!Said Rav Nahman: In the Diaspora the Greek Era alone is used.He [Rav Aha] thought that Rav Nahman wanted to dispose of him anyhow, but when he went and studied it thoroughly he found that it is indeed taught [in a Baraita]: In the Diaspora the Greek Era alone is used.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, as the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to Europe, counting using the Seleucid era "became meaningless", and thus was replaced by the anno mundi system. The use of the Seleucid era continued till the 16th century in the East, and was employed even in the 19th century among Yemenite Jews.
Occasionally in Talmudic writings, reference was made to other starting points for eras, such as destruction era dating, being the number of years since the 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple. There is indication that Jews of the Rhineland in the early Middle Ages used the "years after the destruction of the Temple".
According to normative Judaism, Exodus 12:1–2 requires that the months be determined by a proper court with the necessary authority to sanctify the months. Hence the court, not the astronomy, has the final decision. When the observational form of the calendar was in use, whether or not a leap month was added depended on three factors: 'aviv [i.e., the ripeness of barley], fruits of trees, and the equinox. On two of these grounds it should be intercalated, but not on one of them alone. It may be noted that in the Bible the name of the first month, Aviv, literally means "spring". Thus, if Adar was over and spring had not yet arrived, an additional month was observed.
The Tanakh contains several commandments related to the keeping of the calendar and the lunar cycle, and records changes that have taken place to the Hebrew calendar. Numbers 10:10 stresses the importance in Israelite religious observance of the new month (Hebrew: ראש חודש, Rosh Chodesh, "beginning of the month"): "... in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings..." Similarly in Numbers 28:11. "The beginning of the month" meant the appearance of a new moon, and in Exodus 12:2. "This month is to you".
According to the Mishnah and Tosefta, in the Maccabean, Herodian, and Mishnaic periods, new months were determined by the sighting of a new crescent, with two eyewitnesses required to testify to the Sanhedrin to having seen the new lunar crescent at sunset. The practice in the time of Gamaliel II (c. 100 CE) was for witnesses to select the appearance of the moon from a collection of drawings that depicted the crescent in a variety of orientations, only a few of which could be valid in any given month. These observations were compared against calculations.
At first the beginning of each Jewish month was signaled to the communities of Israel and beyond by fires lit on mountaintops, but after the Samaritans began to light false fires, messengers were sent. The inability of the messengers to reach communities outside Israel before mid-month High Holy Days (Succot and Passover) led outlying communities to celebrate scriptural festivals for two days rather than one, observing the second feast-day of the Jewish diaspora because of uncertainty of whether the previous month ended after 29 or 30 days. It has been noted that the procedures described in the Mishnah and Tosefta are all plausible procedures for regulating an empirical lunar calendar. Fire-signals, for example, or smoke-signals, are known from the pre-exilic Lachish ostraca. Furthermore, the Mishnah contains laws that reflect the uncertainties of an empirical calendar. Mishnah Sanhedrin, for example, holds that when one witness holds that an event took place on a certain day of the month, and another that the same event took place on the following day, their testimony can be held to agree, since the length of the preceding month was uncertain. Another Mishnah takes it for granted that it cannot be known in advance whether a year's lease is for twelve or thirteen months. Hence it is a reasonable conclusion that the Mishnaic calendar was actually used in the Mishnaic period.
The accuracy of the Mishnah's claim that the Mishnaic calendar was also used in the late Second Temple period is less certain. One scholar has noted that there are no laws from Second Temple period sources that indicate any doubts about the length of a month or of a year. This led him to propose that the priests must have had some form of computed calendar or calendrical rules that allowed them to know in advance whether a month would have 30 or 29 days, and whether a year would have 12 or 13 months.
Between 70 and 1178 CE, the observation-based calendar was gradually replaced by a mathematically calculated one.
The Talmuds indicate at least the beginnings of a transition from a purely empirical to a computed calendar. Samuel of Nehardea (c. 165–254) stated that he could determine the dates of the holidays by calculation rather than observation. According to a statement attributed to Yose (late 3rd century), Purim could not fall on a Sabbath nor a Monday, lest Yom Kippur fall on a Friday or a Sunday. This indicates that, by the time of the redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud (c. 400 CE), there were a fixed number of days in all months from Adar to Elul, also implying that the extra month was already a second Adar added before the regular Adar. Elsewhere, Shimon ben Pazi is reported to have counseled "those who make the computations" not to set Rosh Hashana or Hoshana Rabbah on Shabbat. This indicates that there was a group who "made computations" and controlled, to some extent, the day of the week on which Rosh Hashana would fall.
There is a tradition, first mentioned by Hai Gaon (died 1038 CE), that Hillel II was responsible for the new calculated calendar with a fixed intercalation cycle "in the year 670 of the Seleucid era" (i.e., 358–359 CE). Later writers, such as Nachmanides, explained Hai Gaon's words to mean that the entire computed calendar was due to Hillel II in response to persecution of Jews. Maimonides (12th century) stated that the Mishnaic calendar was used "until the days of Abaye and Rava" (c. 320–350 CE), and that the change came when "the land of Israel was destroyed, and no permanent court was left." Taken together, these two traditions suggest that Hillel II (whom they identify with the mid-4th-century Jewish patriarch Ioulos, attested in a letter of the Emperor Julian, and the Jewish patriarch Ellel, mentioned by Epiphanius) instituted the computed Hebrew calendar because of persecution. H. Graetz linked the introduction of the computed calendar to a sharp repression following a failed Jewish insurrection that occurred during the rule of the Christian emperor Constantius and Gallus. Saul Lieberman argued instead that the introduction of the fixed calendar was due to measures taken by Christian Roman authorities to prevent the Jewish patriarch from sending calendrical messengers.
Both the tradition that Hillel II instituted the complete computed calendar, and the theory that the computed calendar was introduced due to repression or persecution, have been questioned. Furthermore, two Jewish dates during post-Talmudic times (specifically in 506 and 776) are impossible under the rules of the modern calendar, indicating that some of its arithmetic rules were established in Babylonia during the times of the Geonim (7th to 8th centuries). Most likely, the procedure established in 359 involved a fixed molad interval slightly different from the current one, Rosh Hashana postponement rules similar but not identical to current rules, and leap months were added based on when Passover preceded a fixed cutoff date rather than through a repeated 19-year cycle. The Rosh Hashana rules apparently reached their modern form between 629 and 648, the modern molad interval was likely fixed in 776, while the fixed 19-year cycle also likely dates to the late 8th century.
Except for the epoch year number (the fixed reference point at the beginning of year 1, which at that time was one year later than the epoch of the modern calendar), the calendar rules reached their current form by the beginning of the 9th century, as described by the Persian Muslim astronomer Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in 823. Al-Khwarizmi's study of the Jewish calendar describes the 19-year intercalation cycle, the rules for determining on what day of the week the first day of the month Tishrei shall fall, the interval between the Jewish era (creation of Adam) and the Seleucid era, and the rules for determining the mean longitude of the sun and the moon using the Jewish calendar. Not all the rules were in place by 835.
In 921, Aaron ben Meïr proposed changes to the calendar. Though the proposals were rejected, they indicate that all of the rules of the modern calendar (except for the epoch) were in place before that date. In 1000, the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni described all of the modern rules of the Hebrew calendar, except that he specified three different epochs used by various Jewish communities being one, two, or three years later than the modern epoch.
In 1178, Maimonides included all the rules for the calculated calendar and their scriptural basis, including the modern epochal year, in his work Mishneh Torah. He wrote that he had chosen the epoch from which calculations of all dates should be as "the third day of Nisan in this present year ... which is the year 4938 of the creation of the world" (22 March 1178). Today, these rules are generally used by Jewish communities throughout the world.
Outside of Rabbinic Judaism, evidence shows a diversity of practice.
Karaites use the lunar month and the solar year, but the Karaite calendar differs from the current Rabbinic calendar in a number of ways. The Karaite calendar is identical to the Rabbinic calendar used before the Sanhedrin changed the Rabbinic calendar from the lunar, observation based, calendar to the current, mathematically based, calendar used in Rabbinic Judaism today.
In the lunar Karaite calendar, the beginning of each month, the Rosh Chodesh, can be calculated, but is confirmed by the observation in Israel of the first sightings of the new moon. This may result in an occasional variation of a maximum of one day, depending on the inability to observe the new moon. The day is usually "picked up" in the next month.
The addition of the leap month (Adar II) is determined by observing in Israel the ripening of barley at a specific stage (defined by Karaite tradition) (called aviv), rather than using the calculated and fixed calendar of rabbinic Judaism. Occasionally this results in Karaites being one month ahead of other Jews using the calculated rabbinic calendar. The "lost" month would be "picked up" in the next cycle when Karaites would observe a leap month while other Jews would not.
Furthermore, the seasonal drift of the rabbinic calendar is avoided, resulting in the years affected by the drift starting one month earlier in the Karaite calendar.
Also, the four rules of postponement of the rabbinic calendar are not applied, since they are not mentioned in the Tanakh. This can affect the dates observed for all the Jewish holidays in a particular year by one or two days.
In the Middle Ages many Karaite Jews outside Israel followed the calculated rabbinic calendar, because it was not possible to retrieve accurate aviv barley data from the land of Israel. However, since the establishment of the State of Israel, and especially since the Six-Day War, the Karaite Jews that have made aliyah can now again use the observational calendar.
The Samaritan community's calendar also relies on lunar months and solar years. Calculation of the Samaritan calendar has historically been a secret reserved to the priestly family alone, and was based on observations of the new crescent moon. More recently, a 20th-century Samaritan High Priest transferred the calculation to a computer algorithm. The current High Priest confirms the results twice a year, and then distributes calendars to the community.
The epoch of the Samaritan calendar is year of the entry of the Children of Israel into the Land of Israel with Joshua. The month of Passover is the first month in the Samaritan calendar, but the year number increments in the sixth month. Like in the Rabbinic calendar, there are seven leap years within each 19-year cycle. However, the Rabbinic and Samaritan calendars' cycles are not synchronized, so Samaritan festivals—notionally the same as the Rabbinic festivals of Torah origin—are frequently one month off from the date according to the Rabbinic calendar. Additionally, as in the Karaite calendar, the Samaritan calendar does not apply the four rules of postponement, since they are not mentioned in the Tanakh. This can affect the dates observed for all the Jewish holidays in a particular year by one or two days.
Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls have references to a unique calendar, used by the people there, who are often assumed to be Essenes. The year of this calendar used the ideal Mesopotamian calendar of twelve 30-day months, to which were added 4 days at the equinoxes and solstices (cardinal points), making a total of 364 days.
With only 364 days, the calendar would be very noticeably different from the actual seasons after a few years, but there is nothing to indicate what was done about this problem. Various scholars have suggested that nothing was done and the calendar was allowed to change with respect to the seasons, or that changes were made irregularly when the seasonal anomaly was too great to be ignored any longer.
Calendrical evidence for the postexilic Persian period is found in papyri from the Jewish colony at Elephantine, in Egypt. These documents show that the Jewish community of Elephantine used the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars.
The Sardica paschal table shows that the Jewish community of some eastern city, possibly Antioch, used a calendrical scheme that kept Nisan 14 within the limits of the Julian month of March. Some of the dates in the document are clearly corrupt, but they can be emended to make the sixteen years in the table consistent with a regular intercalation scheme. Peter, the bishop of Alexandria (early 4th century CE), mentions that the Jews of his city "hold their Passover according to the course of the moon in the month of Phamenoth, or according to the intercalary month every third year in the month of Pharmuthi", suggesting a fairly consistent intercalation scheme that kept Nisan 14 approximately between Phamenoth 10 (6 March in the 4th century CE) and Pharmuthi 10 (5 April).
Jewish funerary inscriptions from Zoar (south of the Dead Sea), dated from the 3rd to the 5th century, indicate that when years were intercalated, the intercalary month was at least sometimes a repeated month of Adar. The inscriptions, however, reveal no clear pattern of regular intercalations, nor do they indicate any consistent rule for determining the start of the lunar month. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Hebrew calendar (Hebrew: הַלּוּחַ הָעִבְרִי, romanized: HaLuah HaIvri), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as yahrzeits and the schedule of public Torah readings. In Israel, it is used for religious purposes, provides a time frame for agriculture, and is an official calendar for civil holidays alongside the Gregorian calendar.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Like other lunisolar calendars, the Hebrew calendar consists of months of 29 or 30 days which begin and end at approximately the time of the new moon. As 12 such months comprise a total of just 354 days, an extra lunar month is added every 2 or 3 years so that the long-term average year length closely approximates the actual length of the solar year.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Originally, the beginning of each month was determined based on physical observation of a new moon, while the decision of whether to add the leap month was based on observation of natural agriculture-related events in ancient Israel. Between the years 70 and 1178, these empirical criteria were gradually replaced with a set of mathematical rules. Month length now follows a fixed schedule which is adjusted based on the molad interval (a mathematical approximation of the mean time between new moons) and several other rules, while leap months are now added in 7 out of every 19 years according to the Metonic cycle.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Nowadays, Hebrew years are generally counted according to the system of Anno Mundi (Latin: \"in the year of the world\"; Hebrew: לבריאת העולם, \"from the creation of the world\", abbreviated AM). This system attempts to calculate the number of years since the creation of the world, according to the Genesis creation narrative and subsequent Biblical stories. The current Hebrew year, AM 5784, began at sunset on 15 September 2023 and will end at sunset on 2 October 2024.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Based on the classic rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 1:5 (\"There was evening and there was morning, one day\"), a day in the rabbinic Hebrew calendar runs from sunset (the start of \"the evening\") to the next sunset. Similarly, the holidays of Yom Kippur and Passover are described in the Bible as lasting \"from evening to evening\". The days are therefore figured locally.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Halachically, the exact time when days begin or end is uncertain: this time could be either sundown (shekiah) or else nightfall (tzait ha'kochavim, \"when the stars appear\"). The time between sundown and nightfall (bein hashmashot) is of uncertain status. Thus (for example) observance of Shabbat begins before sundown on Friday and ends after nightfall on Saturday, to be sure that Shabbat is not violated no matter when the transition between days occurs.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Instead of the international date line convention, there are varying opinions as to where the day changes. One opinion uses the antimeridian of Jerusalem (located at 144°47' W, passing through eastern Alaska). Other opinions exist as well. (See International date line in Judaism.)",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Judaism uses multiple systems for dividing hours. In one system, the 24-hour day is divided into fixed hours equal to 1⁄24 of a day, while each hour is divided into 1080 halakim (parts, singular: helek). A part is 3+1⁄3 seconds (1⁄18 minute). The ultimate ancestor of the helek was a Babylonian time period called a barleycorn, equal to 1⁄72 of a Babylonian time degree (1° of celestial rotation). These measures are not generally used for everyday purposes; their best-known use is for calculating and announcing the molad.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In another system, the daytime period is divided into 12 relative hours (sha'ah z'manit, also sometimes called \"halachic hours\"). A relative hour is defined as 1⁄12 of the time from sunrise to sunset, or dawn to dusk, as per the two opinions in this regard. Therefore, an hour can be less than 60 minutes in winter, and more than 60 minutes in summer; similarly, the 6th hour ends at solar noon, which generally differs from 12:00. Relative hours are used for the calculation of prayer times (zmanim); for example, the Shema must be recited in the first three relative hours of the day.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Neither system is commonly used in ordinary life; rather, the local civil clock is used. This is even the case for ritual times (e.g. \"The latest time to recite Shema today is 9:38 AM\").",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Hebrew week (שבוע, shavua) is a cycle of seven days, mirroring the seven-day period of the Book of Genesis in which the world is created.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The names for the days of the week are simply the day number within the week. The week begins with Day 1 (Sunday) and ends with Shabbat (Saturday). (More precisely, since days begin in the evening, weeks begin and end on Saturday evening. Day 1 lasts from Saturday evening to Sunday evening, while Shabbat lasts from Friday evening to Saturday evening.)",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Since some calculations use division, a remainder of 0 signifies Saturday.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In Hebrew, these names may be abbreviated using the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, for example יום א׳ (Day 1, or Yom Rishon (יום ראשון)):",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The names of the days of the week are modeled on the seven days mentioned in the Genesis creation account. For example, Genesis 1:8 \"... And there was evening and there was morning, a second day\" corresponds to Yom Sheni meaning \"second day\". (However, for days 1, 6, and 7 the modern name differs slightly from the version in Genesis.)",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The seventh day, Shabbat, as its Hebrew name indicates, is a day of rest in Judaism. In Talmudic Hebrew, the word Shabbat (שַׁבָּת) can also mean \"week\", so that in ritual liturgy a phrase like \"Yom Reviʻi beShabbat\" means \"the fourth day in the week\".",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Jewish holidays can only fall on the weekdays shown in the following table:",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The period from 1 Adar (or Adar II, in leap years) to 29 Marcheshvan contains all of the festivals specified in the Bible (Purim, Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret). The lengths of months in this period are fixed, meaning that the day of week of Passover dictates the day of week of the other Biblical holidays. However, the lengths of the months of Marcheshvan and Kislev can each vary by a day (due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules which are used to adjust the year length). As a result, the holidays falling after Marcheshvan (starting with Chanukah) can fall on multiple days for a given row of the table.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar, meaning that months are based on lunar months, but years are based on solar years. The calendar year features twelve lunar months of 29 or 30 days, with an additional lunar month (\"leap month\") added periodically to synchronize the twelve lunar cycles with the longer solar year. These extra months are added in seven years (3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19) out of a 19-year cycle, known as the Metonic cycle (See Leap months, below).",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The beginning of each Jewish lunar month is based on the appearance of the new moon. Although originally the new lunar crescent had to be observed and certified by witnesses (as is still done in Karaite Judaism and Islam), nowadays Jewish months have generally fixed lengths which approximate the period between new moons. For these reasons, a given month does not always begin on the same day as its astronomical conjunction.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The mean period of the lunar month (precisely, the synodic month) is very close to 29.5 days. Accordingly, the basic Hebrew calendar year is one of twelve lunar months alternating between 29 and 30 days:",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Thus, the year normally contains twelve months with a total of 354 days. In such a year, the month of Marcheshvan has 29 days and Kislev has 30 days. However, due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules, in some years Kislev may lose a day to have 29 days, or Marcheshvan may acquire an additional day to have 30 days.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Normally the 12th month is named Adar. During leap years, the 12th and 13th months are named Adar I and Adar II (Hebrew: Adar Aleph and Adar Bet—\"first Adar\" and \"second adar\"). Sources disagree as to which of these months is the \"real\" Adar, and which is the added leap month.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Bible does not directly mention the addition of leap months (also known as \"embolismic\" or \"intercalary\" months). The insertion of the leap month is based on the requirement that Passover occur at the same time of year as the spring barley harvest (aviv). (Since 12 lunar months make up less than a solar year, the date of Passover would gradually move throughout the solar year if leap months were not occasionally added.) According to the rabbinic calculation, this requirement means that Passover (or at least most of Passover) should fall after the March equinox. Similarly, the holidays of Shavuot and Sukkot are presumed by the Torah to fall in specific agricultural seasons.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Maimonides, discussing the calendrical rules in his Mishneh Torah (1178), notes:",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "By how much does the solar year exceed the lunar year? By approximately 11 days. Therefore, whenever this excess accumulates to about 30 days, or a little more or less, one month is added and the particular year is made to consist of 13 months, and this is the so-called embolismic (intercalated) year. For the year could not consist of twelve months plus so-and-so many days, since it is said: \"throughout the months of the year\", which implies that we should count the year by months and not by days.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Hebrew calendar year conventionally begins on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of Tishrei. However, the Jewish calendar also defines several additional new years, used for different purposes. The use of multiple starting dates for a year is comparable to different starting dates for civil \"calendar years\", \"tax or fiscal years\", \"academic years\", and so on. The Mishnah (c. 200 CE) identifies four new-year dates:",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The 1st of Nisan is the new year for kings and festivals; the 1st of Elul is the new year for the cattle tithe... the 1st of Tishri is the new year for years, of the years of release and Jubilee years, for the planting and for vegetables; and the 1st of Shevat is the new year for trees—so the school of Shammai; and the school of Hillel say: On the 15th thereof.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Two of these dates are especially prominent:",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "For the dates of the Jewish New Year see Jewish and Israeli holidays 2000–2050.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Jewish year number is generally given by Anno Mundi (from Latin \"in the year of the world\", often abbreviated AM or A.M.). In this calendar era, the year number equals the number of years that have passed since the creation of the world, according to an interpretation of Biblical accounts of the creation and subsequent history. From the eleventh century, anno mundi dating became the dominant method of counting years throughout most of the world's Jewish communities, replacing earlier systems such as the Seleucid era. As with Anno Domini (A.D. or AD), the words or abbreviation for Anno Mundi (A.M. or AM) for the era should properly precede the date rather than follow it.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "According to rabbinic reckoning, the beginning of \"year 1\" (1 Tishrei AM 1, or Monday, 7 October 3761 BCE in the proleptic Julian calendar) is not Creation, but about one year \"before\" Creation, with the new moon of its first month (Tishrei) to be called molad tohu (the mean new moon of chaos or nothing). It is about one year before the traditional Jewish date of Creation on 25 Elul AM 1, based upon the Seder Olam Rabbah. Thus, adding 3760 before Rosh Hashanah or 3761 after to a Julian calendar year number starting from 1 CE will yield the Hebrew year. For earlier years there may be a discrepancy; see Missing years (Jewish calendar).",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The reference junction of the Sun and the Moon (Molad 1) is considered to be at 5 hours and 204 halakim, or 11:11:20 p.m., on the evening of Sunday, 6 October 3761 BCE.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In Hebrew there are two common ways of writing the year number: with the thousands, called לפרט גדול (\"major era\"), and without the thousands, called לפרט קטן (\"minor era\"). Thus, the current year is written as ה'תשפ\"ד (5784) using the \"major era\" and תשפ\"ד (784) using the \"minor era\".",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Since the Jewish calendar has been fixed, leap months have been added according to the Metonic cycle of 19 years, of which 12 are common (non-leap) years of 12 months, and 7 are leap years of 13 months. This 19-year cycle is known in Hebrew as the Machzor Katan (\"small cycle\").",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Because the Julian years are 365 and 1/4 days long, every 28 years the weekday pattern repeats. This is called the sun cycle, or the Machzor Gadol (\"great cycle\") in Hebrew. The beginning of this cycle is arbitrary. Its main use is for determining the time of Birkat Hachama.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Because every 50 years is a Jubilee year, there is a jubilee (yovel) cycle. Because every seven years is a sabbatical year, there is a seven-year release cycle. The placement of these cycles is debated. Historically, there is enough evidence to fix the sabbatical years in the Second Temple Period. But it may not match with the sabbatical cycle derived from the biblical period; and there is no consensus on whether or not the Jubilee year is the fiftieth year or the latter half of the forty ninth year.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Every 247 years, or 13 cycles of 19 years, form a period known as an iggul, or the Iggul of Rabbi Nahshon. This period is notable in that the precise details of the calendar almost always (but not always) repeat over this period. This occurs because the molad interval (the average length of a Hebrew month) is 29.530594 days, which over 247 years results in a total of 90215.965 days. This is almost exactly 90216 days - a whole number and multiple of 7 (equalling the days of the week). So over 247 years, not only does the 19-year leap year cycle repeat itself, but the days of the week (and thus the days of Rosh Hashanah and the year length) typically repeat themselves.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "To determine whether a Jewish year is a leap year, one must find its position in the 19-year Metonic cycle. This position is calculated by dividing the Jewish year number by 19 and finding the remainder. (Since there is no year 0, a remainder of 0 indicates that the year is year 19 of the cycle.) For example, the Jewish year 5784 divided by 19 results in a remainder of 8, indicating that it is year 8 of the Metonic cycle. The Jewish year used is the anno mundi year, in which the year of creation according to the Rabbinical Chronology (3761 BCE) is taken as year 1. Years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 of the Metonic cycle are leap years. The Hebrew mnemonic GUCHADZaT גוחאדז״ט refers to these years, while another memory aid refers to musical notation.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Whether a year is a leap year can also be determined by a simple calculation (which also gives the fraction of a month by which the calendar is behind the seasons, useful for agricultural purposes). To determine whether year n of the calendar is a leap year, find the remainder on dividing [(7 × n) + 1] by 19. If the remainder is 6 or less it is a leap year; if it is 7 or more it is not. For example, the remainder on dividing [(7 × 5784) + 1] by 19 is 0, so the year 5784 is a leap year. The remainder on dividing [(7 × 5785) + 1] by 19 is 7, so the year 5785 is not a leap year. This works because as there are seven leap years in nineteen years the difference between the solar and lunar years increases by 7/19-month per year. When the difference goes above 18/19-month this signifies a leap year, and the difference is reduced by one month.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Hebrew calendar assumes that a month is uniformly of the length of an average synodic month, taken as exactly 2913753⁄25920 days (about 29.530594 days, which is less than half a second from the modern scientific estimate); it also assumes that a tropical year is exactly 127⁄19 times that, i.e., about 365.2468 days. Thus it overestimates the length of the tropical year (365.2422 days) by 0.0046 days (about 7 minutes) per year, or about one day in 216 years. This error is less than the Julian years (365.2500 days) make (0.0078 days/year, or one day in 128 years), but much more than what the Gregorian years (365.2425 days/year) make (0.0003 days/year, or one day in 3333 years).",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Besides the adding of leap months, the year length is sometimes adjusted by adding one day to the month of Marcheshvan, or removing one day from the month of Kislev. Because each calendar year begins with Rosh Hashanah, adjusting the year length is equivalent to moving the day of the next Rosh Hashanah. Several rules are used to determine when this is performed.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "To calculate the day on which Rosh Hashanah of a given year will fall, the expected molad (moment of lunar conjunction or new moon) of Tishrei in that year is calculated. The molad is calculated by multiplying the number of months that will have elapsed since some (preceding) molad (whose weekday is known) by the mean length of a (synodic) lunar month, which is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 parts (there are 1080 \"parts\" in an hour, so that one part is equal to 3+1⁄3 seconds). The very first molad, the molad tohu, fell on Sunday evening at 11:11:20 PM in the local time of Jerusalem, 6 October 3761 BCE (Proleptic Julian calendar) 20:50:23.1 UTC, or in Jewish terms Day 2, 5 hours, and 204 parts. The exact time of a molad in terms of days after midnight between 29 and 30 December 1899 (the form used by many spreadsheets for date and time) is",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "where N is the number of lunar months since the beginning. (N equals 71440 for the beginning of the 305th Machzor Katan on 1 October 2016.) Adding 0.25 to this converts it to the Jewish system in which the day begins at 6 PM.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In calculating the number of months that will have passed since the known molad that one uses as the starting point, one must remember to include any leap months that falls within the elapsed interval, according to the cycle of leap years. A 19-year cycle of 235 synodic months has 991 weeks 2 days 16 hours 595 parts, a common year of 12 synodic months has 50 weeks 4 days 8 hours 876 parts, while a leap year of 13 synodic months has 54 weeks 5 days 21 hours 589 parts.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Four conditions are considered to determine whether the date of Rosh Hashanah must be postponed. These are called the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules, or deḥiyyot. The two most important conditions are:",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Another two rules are applied much less frequently and serve to prevent impermissible year lengths. Their names are Hebrew acronyms that refer to the ways they are calculated:",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The rules of postponement of Rosh HaShanah make it that a Jewish common year will have 353, 354, or 355 days while a leap year (with the addition of Adar I which always has 30 days) has 383, 384, or 385 days.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Whether a year is deficient, regular, or complete is determined by the time between two adjacent Rosh Hashanah observances and the leap year.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "A Metonic cycle equates to 235 lunar months in each 19-year cycle. This gives an average of 6,939 days, 16 hours, and 595 parts for each cycle. But due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules (preceding section) a cycle of 19 Jewish years can be either 6,939, 6,940, 6,941, or 6,942 days in duration. For any given year in the Metonic cycle, the molad moves forward in the week by 2 days, 16 hours, and 595 parts every 19 years. The greatest common divisor of this and a week is 5 parts, so the Jewish calendar repeats exactly following a number of Metonic cycles equal to the number of parts in a week divided by 5, namely 7×24×216 = 36,288 Metonic cycles, or 689,472 Jewish years. There is a near-repetition every 247 years, except for an excess of 50 minutes 16+2⁄3 seconds (905 parts).",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Contrary to popular impression, one's Hebrew birthday does not necessarily fall on the same Gregorian date every 19 years, since the length of the Metonic cycle varies by several days (as does the length of a 19-year Gregorian period, depending whether it contains 4 or 5 leap years).",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "There are three qualities that distinguish one year from another: whether it is a leap year or a common year; on which of four permissible days of the week the year begins; and whether it is a deficient, regular, or complete year. Mathematically, there are 24 (2×4×3) possible combinations, but only 14 of them are valid.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Each of these patterns is known by a kevi'ah (Hebrew: קביעה for 'a setting' or 'an established thing'), which is a code consisting of two numbers and a letter. In English, the code consists of the following:",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The kevi'ah in Hebrew letters is written right-to-left, so their days of the week are reversed, the right number for 1 Tishrei and the left for 15 Nisan.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The kevi'ah also determines the Torah reading cycle (which parshiyot are read together or separately.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The keviah, and thus the annual calendar, of a numbered Hebrew year can be determined by consulting the table of Four Gates, whose inputs are the year's position in the 19-year cycle and its molad Tishrei. In this table, the years of a 19-year cycle are organized into four groups (or \"gates\"): common years after a leap year but before a common year (1 4 9 12 15); common years between two leap years (7 18); common years after a common year but before a leap year (2 5 10 13 16); and leap years (3 6 8 11 14 17 19).",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "This table numbers the days of the week and hours for the limits of molad Tishrei in the Hebrew manner for calendrical calculations, that is, both begin at 6 pm, thus 7d 18h 0p is noon Saturday. The oldest surviving table of Four Gates was written by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in 824.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Comparing the days of the week of molad Tishrei with those in the kevi'ah shows that during 39% of years 1 Tishrei is not postponed beyond the day of the week of its molad Tishrei, 47% are postponed one day, and 14% are postponed two days. This table also identifies the seven types of common years and seven types of leap years. Most are represented in any 19-year cycle, except one or two may be in neighboring cycles. The most likely type of year is 5R7 in 18.1% of years, whereas the least likely is 5C1 in 3.3% of years. The day of the week of 15 Nisan is later than that of 1 Tishrei by one, two or three days for common years and three, four or five days for leap years in deficient, regular or complete years, respectively.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Given the length of the year, the length of each month is fixed as described above, so the real problem in determining the calendar for a year is determining the number of days in the year. In the modern calendar, this is determined in the following manner.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The day of Rosh Hashanah and the length of the year are determined by the time and the day of the week of the Tishrei molad, that is, the moment of the average conjunction. Given the Tishrei molad of a certain year, the length of the year is determined as follows:",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "First, one must determine whether each year is an ordinary or leap year by its position in the 19-year Metonic cycle. Years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 are leap years.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Secondly, one must determine the number of days between the starting Tishrei molad (TM1) and the Tishrei molad of the next year (TM2). For calendar descriptions in general the day begins at 6 p.m., but for the purpose of determining Rosh Hashanah, a molad occurring on or after noon is treated as belonging to the next day (the first deḥiyyah). All months are calculated as 29d, 12h, 44m, 31⁄3s long (MonLen). Therefore, in an ordinary year TM2 occurs 12 × MonLen days after TM1. This is usually 354 calendar days after TM1, but if TM1 is on or after 3:11:20 a.m. and before noon, it will be 355 days. Similarly, in a leap year, TM2 occurs 13 × MonLen days after TM1. This is usually 384 days after TM1, but if TM1 is on or after noon and before 2:27:162⁄3 p.m., TM2 will be only 383 days after TM1. In the same way, from TM2 one calculates TM3. Thus the four natural year lengths are 354, 355, 383, and 384 days.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "However, because of the holiday rules, Rosh Hashanah cannot fall on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday, so if TM2 is one of those days, Rosh Hashanah in year 2 is postponed by adding one day to year 1 (the second deḥiyyah). To compensate, one day is subtracted from year 2. It is to allow for these adjustments that the system allows 385-day years (long leap) and 353-day years (short ordinary) besides the four natural year lengths.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "But how can year 1 be lengthened if it is already a long ordinary year of 355 days or year 2 be shortened if it is a short leap year of 383 days? That is why the third and fourth deḥiyyahs are needed.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "If year 1 is already a long ordinary year of 355 days, there will be a problem if TM1 is on a Tuesday, as that means TM2 falls on a Sunday and will have to be postponed, creating a 356-day year. In this case, Rosh Hashanah in year 1 is postponed from Tuesday (the third deḥiyyah). As it cannot be postponed to Wednesday, it is postponed to Thursday, and year 1 ends up with 354 days.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "On the other hand, if year 2 is already a short year of 383 days, there will be a problem if TM2 is on a Wednesday. because Rosh Hashanah in year 2 will have to be postponed from Wednesday to Thursday and this will cause year 2 to be only 382 days long. In this case, year 2 is extended by one day by postponing Rosh Hashanah in year 3 from Monday to Tuesday (the fourth deḥiyyah), and year 2 will have 383 days.",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "For calculated dates of Jewish holidays, see Jewish and Israeli holidays 2000–2050",
"title": "Calculations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "A \"new moon\" (astronomically called a lunar conjunction and, in Hebrew, a molad) is the moment at which the sun and moon have the same ecliptic longitude (i.e. they are aligned horizontally with respect to a north–south line). The period between two new moons is a synodic month. The actual length of a synodic month varies from about 29 days 6 hours and 30 minutes (29.27 days) to about 29 days and 20 hours (29.83 days), a variation range of about 13 hours and 30 minutes. Accordingly, for convenience, the Hebrew calendar uses a long-term average month length, known as the molad interval, which equals the mean synodic month of ancient times. The molad interval is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 \"parts\" (1 \"part\" = /18 minute = 3/3 seconds) (i.e., 29.530594 days), and is the same value determined by the Babylonians in their System B about 300 BCE and was adopted by Hipparchus (2nd century BCE) and by Ptolemy in the Almagest (2nd century CE). Its remarkable accuracy (less than one second from the current true value) is thought to have been achieved using records of lunar eclipses from the 8th to 5th centuries BCE. In the Talmudic era, when the mean synodic month was slightly shorter than at present, the molad interval was even more accurate, being \"essentially a perfect fit\" for the mean synodic month at the time.",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Currently, the accumulated drift in the moladot since the Talmudic era has reached a total of approximately 97 minutes. This means that the molad of Tishrei lands one day later than it ought to in (97 minutes) ÷ (1440 minutes per day) = nearly 7% of years. Therefore, the seemingly small drift of the moladot is already significant enough to affect the date of Rosh Hashanah, which then cascades to many other dates in the calendar year, and sometimes (due to the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules) also interacts with the dates of the prior or next year.",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The rate of calendar drift is increasing with time, since the mean synodic month is progressively shortening due to gravitational tidal effects. Measured on a strictly uniform time scale (such as that provided by an atomic clock) the mean synodic month is becoming gradually longer, but since the tides slow Earth's rotation rate even more, the mean synodic month is becoming gradually shorter in terms of mean solar time.",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "A larger source of error is the inaccuracy of the Metonic cycle. Nineteen Jewish years average 6939d 16h 33m 031⁄3s, compared to the 6939d 14h 26m 15s of nineteen mean solar years. Thus, the Hebrew calendar drifts by just over 2 hours every 19 years, or approximately one day every 216 years. Due to accumulation of this discrepancy, the earliest date on which Passover can fall has drifted by roughly eight days since the 4th century, and the 15th of Nisan now falls only on or after 26 March (the date in 2013), five days after the actual equinox on 21 March. In the distant future, this drift is projected to move Passover much further in the year. If the calendar is not amended, then Passover will start to land on or after the summer solstice around approximately AM 16652 (12892 CE).",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "When the calendar was fixed in the 4th century, the earliest Passover (in year 16 of the Metonic cycle) began on the first full moon after the March equinox. This is still the case in about 80% of years; but, in about 20% of years, Passover is a month late by this criterion. Presently, this occurs after the \"premature\" insertion of a leap month in years 8, 11, and 19 of each 19-year cycle, which causes Passover to fall especially far after the March equinox in such years. Calendar drift also impacts the observance of Sukkot, which will shift into Israel's winter rainy season, making dwelling in the sukkah less practical, and affecting the logic of the Shemini Atzeret prayer for rain which will be more often recited once rains are already underway.",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Modern scholars have debated at which point the drift could become ritually problematic, and proposed adjustments to the fixed calendar to keep Passover in its proper season. The seriousness of the calendar drift is discounted by many, on the grounds that Passover will remain in the spring season for many millennia, and the Torah is generally not interpreted as having specified tight calendrical limits. However, some writers and researchers have proposed \"corrected\" calendars (with modifications to the leap year cycle, molad interval, or both) which would compensate for these issues:",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Religious questions abound about how such a system might be implemented and administered throughout the diverse aspects of the world Jewish community.",
"title": "Accuracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Jews made every effort to observe Jewish tradition in the camps, despite the monumental dangers in doing so. The Hebrew calendar, which is a tradition with great importance to Jewish practice and rituals was particularly dangerous since no tools of telling of time, such as watches and calendars, were permitted in the camps. The keeping of a Hebrew calendar was a rarity amongst prisoners and there are only two known surviving calendars that were made in Auschwitz, both of which were made by women. Before this, the tradition of making a Hebrew calendar was greatly assumed to be the job of a man in Jewish society.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Early Zionist pioneers were impressed by the fact that the calendar preserved by Jews over many centuries in far-flung diasporas, as a matter of religious ritual, was geared to the climate of their original country: major Jewish holidays such as Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot correspond to major points of the country's agricultural year such as planting and harvest. Accordingly, in the early 20th century the Hebrew calendar was re-interpreted as an agricultural rather than religious calendar.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "After the creation of the State of Israel, the Hebrew calendar became one of the official calendars of Israel, along with the Gregorian calendar. Holidays and commemorations not derived from previous Jewish tradition were to be fixed according to the Hebrew calendar date. For example, the Israeli Independence Day falls on 5 Iyar, Jerusalem Reunification Day on 28 Iyar, Yom HaAliyah on 10 Nisan, and the Holocaust Commemoration Day on 27 Nisan.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Hebrew calendar is still widely acknowledged, appearing in public venues such as banks (where it is legal for use on cheques and other documents), and on the mastheads of newspapers.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is a two-day public holiday in Israel. However, since the 1980s an increasing number of secular Israelis celebrate the Gregorian New Year (usually known as \"Silvester Night\"—ליל סילבסטר) on the night between 31 December and 1 January. Prominent rabbis have on several occasions sharply denounced this practice, but with no noticeable effect on the secularist celebrants.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Wall calendars commonly used in Israel are hybrids. Most are organised according to Gregorian rather than Jewish months, but begin in September, when the Jewish New Year usually falls, and provide the Jewish date in small characters.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Lunisolar calendars similar to the Hebrew calendar, consisting of twelve lunar months plus an occasional 13th intercalary month to synchronize with the solar/agricultural cycle, were used in all ancient Middle Eastern civilizations except Egypt, and likely date to the 3rd millennium BCE. While there is no mention of this 13th month anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, still most Biblical scholars hold that the intercalation process was almost certainly a regularly occurring aspect of the early Hebrew calendar keeping process.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Biblical references to the pre-exilic calendar include ten of the twelve months identified by number rather than by name.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Prior to the Babylonian captivity, the names of only four months are referred to in the Tanakh: Aviv (first month), Ziv (second month), Ethanim (seventh month), and Bul (eighth month). All of these are believed to be Canaanite names. The last three of these names are only mentioned in connection with the building of the First Temple and Håkan Ulfgard suggests that the use of what are rarely used Canaanite (or in the case of Ethanim perhaps Northwest Semitic) names indicates that \"the author is consciously utilizing an archaizing terminology, thus giving the impression of an ancient story...\". Alternatively, these names may be attributed to the presence of Phoenician scribes in Solomon's court at the time of the building of the Temple.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "During the Babylonian captivity, the Jewish people adopted the Babylonian names for the months. The Babylonian calendar descended directly from the Sumerian calendar. These Babylonian month-names (such as Nisan, Iyyar, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tishri and Adar) are shared with the modern Levantine solar calendar (currently used in the Arabic-speaking countries of the Fertile Crescent) and the modern Assyrian calendar, indicating a common origin. The origin is thought to be the Babylonian calendar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "According to some Christian and Karaite sources, the tradition in ancient Israel was that 1 Nisan would not start until the barley is ripe, being the test for the onset of spring. If the barley was not ripe, an intercalary month would be added before Nisan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In the 1st century, Josephus stated that while –",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Moses...appointed Nisan...as the first month for the festivals...the commencement of the year for everything relating to divine worship, but for selling and buying and other ordinary affairs he preserved the ancient order [i. e. the year beginning with Tishrei].\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Edwin Thiele concluded that the ancient northern Kingdom of Israel counted years using the ecclesiastical new year starting on 1 Aviv/Nisan (Nisan-years), while the southern Kingdom of Judah counted years using the civil new year starting on 1 Tishrei (Tishri-years). The practice of the Kingdom of Israel was also that of Babylon, as well as other countries of the region. The practice of Judah is continued in modern Judaism and is celebrated as Rosh Hashana.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Before the adoption of the current Anno Mundi year numbering system, other systems were used. In early times, the years were counted from some significant event such as the Exodus. During the period of the monarchy, it was the widespread practice in western Asia to use era year numbers according to the accession year of the monarch of the country involved. This practice was followed by the united kingdom of Israel, kingdom of Judah, kingdom of Israel, Persia, and others. Besides, the author of Kings coordinated dates in the two kingdoms by giving the accession year of a monarch in terms of the year of the monarch of the other kingdom, though some commentators note that these dates do not always synchronise. Other era dating systems have been used at other times. For example, Jewish communities in the Babylonian diaspora counted the years from the first deportation from Israel, that of Jehoiachin in 597 BCE. The era year was then called \"year of the captivity of Jehoiachin\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "During the Hellenistic Maccabean period, Seleucid era counting was used, at least in Land of Israel (under Greek influence at the time). The Books of the Maccabees used Seleucid era dating exclusively, as did Josephus writing in the Roman period. From the 1st-10th centuries, the center of world Judaism was in the Middle East (primarily Iraq and Palestine), and Jews in these regions also used Seleucid era dating, which they called the \"Era of Contracts [or Documents]\". The Talmud states:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Rav Aha bar Jacob then put this question: How do we know that our Era [of Documents] is connected with the Kingdom of Greece at all? Why not say that it is reckoned from the Exodus from Egypt, omitting the first thousand years and giving the years of the next thousand? In that case, the document is really post-dated!Said Rav Nahman: In the Diaspora the Greek Era alone is used.He [Rav Aha] thought that Rav Nahman wanted to dispose of him anyhow, but when he went and studied it thoroughly he found that it is indeed taught [in a Baraita]: In the Diaspora the Greek Era alone is used.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In the 8th and 9th centuries, as the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to Europe, counting using the Seleucid era \"became meaningless\", and thus was replaced by the anno mundi system. The use of the Seleucid era continued till the 16th century in the East, and was employed even in the 19th century among Yemenite Jews.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Occasionally in Talmudic writings, reference was made to other starting points for eras, such as destruction era dating, being the number of years since the 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple. There is indication that Jews of the Rhineland in the early Middle Ages used the \"years after the destruction of the Temple\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "According to normative Judaism, Exodus 12:1–2 requires that the months be determined by a proper court with the necessary authority to sanctify the months. Hence the court, not the astronomy, has the final decision. When the observational form of the calendar was in use, whether or not a leap month was added depended on three factors: 'aviv [i.e., the ripeness of barley], fruits of trees, and the equinox. On two of these grounds it should be intercalated, but not on one of them alone. It may be noted that in the Bible the name of the first month, Aviv, literally means \"spring\". Thus, if Adar was over and spring had not yet arrived, an additional month was observed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The Tanakh contains several commandments related to the keeping of the calendar and the lunar cycle, and records changes that have taken place to the Hebrew calendar. Numbers 10:10 stresses the importance in Israelite religious observance of the new month (Hebrew: ראש חודש, Rosh Chodesh, \"beginning of the month\"): \"... in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings...\" Similarly in Numbers 28:11. \"The beginning of the month\" meant the appearance of a new moon, and in Exodus 12:2. \"This month is to you\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "According to the Mishnah and Tosefta, in the Maccabean, Herodian, and Mishnaic periods, new months were determined by the sighting of a new crescent, with two eyewitnesses required to testify to the Sanhedrin to having seen the new lunar crescent at sunset. The practice in the time of Gamaliel II (c. 100 CE) was for witnesses to select the appearance of the moon from a collection of drawings that depicted the crescent in a variety of orientations, only a few of which could be valid in any given month. These observations were compared against calculations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "At first the beginning of each Jewish month was signaled to the communities of Israel and beyond by fires lit on mountaintops, but after the Samaritans began to light false fires, messengers were sent. The inability of the messengers to reach communities outside Israel before mid-month High Holy Days (Succot and Passover) led outlying communities to celebrate scriptural festivals for two days rather than one, observing the second feast-day of the Jewish diaspora because of uncertainty of whether the previous month ended after 29 or 30 days. It has been noted that the procedures described in the Mishnah and Tosefta are all plausible procedures for regulating an empirical lunar calendar. Fire-signals, for example, or smoke-signals, are known from the pre-exilic Lachish ostraca. Furthermore, the Mishnah contains laws that reflect the uncertainties of an empirical calendar. Mishnah Sanhedrin, for example, holds that when one witness holds that an event took place on a certain day of the month, and another that the same event took place on the following day, their testimony can be held to agree, since the length of the preceding month was uncertain. Another Mishnah takes it for granted that it cannot be known in advance whether a year's lease is for twelve or thirteen months. Hence it is a reasonable conclusion that the Mishnaic calendar was actually used in the Mishnaic period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The accuracy of the Mishnah's claim that the Mishnaic calendar was also used in the late Second Temple period is less certain. One scholar has noted that there are no laws from Second Temple period sources that indicate any doubts about the length of a month or of a year. This led him to propose that the priests must have had some form of computed calendar or calendrical rules that allowed them to know in advance whether a month would have 30 or 29 days, and whether a year would have 12 or 13 months.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Between 70 and 1178 CE, the observation-based calendar was gradually replaced by a mathematically calculated one.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The Talmuds indicate at least the beginnings of a transition from a purely empirical to a computed calendar. Samuel of Nehardea (c. 165–254) stated that he could determine the dates of the holidays by calculation rather than observation. According to a statement attributed to Yose (late 3rd century), Purim could not fall on a Sabbath nor a Monday, lest Yom Kippur fall on a Friday or a Sunday. This indicates that, by the time of the redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud (c. 400 CE), there were a fixed number of days in all months from Adar to Elul, also implying that the extra month was already a second Adar added before the regular Adar. Elsewhere, Shimon ben Pazi is reported to have counseled \"those who make the computations\" not to set Rosh Hashana or Hoshana Rabbah on Shabbat. This indicates that there was a group who \"made computations\" and controlled, to some extent, the day of the week on which Rosh Hashana would fall.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "There is a tradition, first mentioned by Hai Gaon (died 1038 CE), that Hillel II was responsible for the new calculated calendar with a fixed intercalation cycle \"in the year 670 of the Seleucid era\" (i.e., 358–359 CE). Later writers, such as Nachmanides, explained Hai Gaon's words to mean that the entire computed calendar was due to Hillel II in response to persecution of Jews. Maimonides (12th century) stated that the Mishnaic calendar was used \"until the days of Abaye and Rava\" (c. 320–350 CE), and that the change came when \"the land of Israel was destroyed, and no permanent court was left.\" Taken together, these two traditions suggest that Hillel II (whom they identify with the mid-4th-century Jewish patriarch Ioulos, attested in a letter of the Emperor Julian, and the Jewish patriarch Ellel, mentioned by Epiphanius) instituted the computed Hebrew calendar because of persecution. H. Graetz linked the introduction of the computed calendar to a sharp repression following a failed Jewish insurrection that occurred during the rule of the Christian emperor Constantius and Gallus. Saul Lieberman argued instead that the introduction of the fixed calendar was due to measures taken by Christian Roman authorities to prevent the Jewish patriarch from sending calendrical messengers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Both the tradition that Hillel II instituted the complete computed calendar, and the theory that the computed calendar was introduced due to repression or persecution, have been questioned. Furthermore, two Jewish dates during post-Talmudic times (specifically in 506 and 776) are impossible under the rules of the modern calendar, indicating that some of its arithmetic rules were established in Babylonia during the times of the Geonim (7th to 8th centuries). Most likely, the procedure established in 359 involved a fixed molad interval slightly different from the current one, Rosh Hashana postponement rules similar but not identical to current rules, and leap months were added based on when Passover preceded a fixed cutoff date rather than through a repeated 19-year cycle. The Rosh Hashana rules apparently reached their modern form between 629 and 648, the modern molad interval was likely fixed in 776, while the fixed 19-year cycle also likely dates to the late 8th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Except for the epoch year number (the fixed reference point at the beginning of year 1, which at that time was one year later than the epoch of the modern calendar), the calendar rules reached their current form by the beginning of the 9th century, as described by the Persian Muslim astronomer Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in 823. Al-Khwarizmi's study of the Jewish calendar describes the 19-year intercalation cycle, the rules for determining on what day of the week the first day of the month Tishrei shall fall, the interval between the Jewish era (creation of Adam) and the Seleucid era, and the rules for determining the mean longitude of the sun and the moon using the Jewish calendar. Not all the rules were in place by 835.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "In 921, Aaron ben Meïr proposed changes to the calendar. Though the proposals were rejected, they indicate that all of the rules of the modern calendar (except for the epoch) were in place before that date. In 1000, the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni described all of the modern rules of the Hebrew calendar, except that he specified three different epochs used by various Jewish communities being one, two, or three years later than the modern epoch.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In 1178, Maimonides included all the rules for the calculated calendar and their scriptural basis, including the modern epochal year, in his work Mishneh Torah. He wrote that he had chosen the epoch from which calculations of all dates should be as \"the third day of Nisan in this present year ... which is the year 4938 of the creation of the world\" (22 March 1178). Today, these rules are generally used by Jewish communities throughout the world.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Outside of Rabbinic Judaism, evidence shows a diversity of practice.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Karaites use the lunar month and the solar year, but the Karaite calendar differs from the current Rabbinic calendar in a number of ways. The Karaite calendar is identical to the Rabbinic calendar used before the Sanhedrin changed the Rabbinic calendar from the lunar, observation based, calendar to the current, mathematically based, calendar used in Rabbinic Judaism today.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In the lunar Karaite calendar, the beginning of each month, the Rosh Chodesh, can be calculated, but is confirmed by the observation in Israel of the first sightings of the new moon. This may result in an occasional variation of a maximum of one day, depending on the inability to observe the new moon. The day is usually \"picked up\" in the next month.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The addition of the leap month (Adar II) is determined by observing in Israel the ripening of barley at a specific stage (defined by Karaite tradition) (called aviv), rather than using the calculated and fixed calendar of rabbinic Judaism. Occasionally this results in Karaites being one month ahead of other Jews using the calculated rabbinic calendar. The \"lost\" month would be \"picked up\" in the next cycle when Karaites would observe a leap month while other Jews would not.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Furthermore, the seasonal drift of the rabbinic calendar is avoided, resulting in the years affected by the drift starting one month earlier in the Karaite calendar.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Also, the four rules of postponement of the rabbinic calendar are not applied, since they are not mentioned in the Tanakh. This can affect the dates observed for all the Jewish holidays in a particular year by one or two days.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In the Middle Ages many Karaite Jews outside Israel followed the calculated rabbinic calendar, because it was not possible to retrieve accurate aviv barley data from the land of Israel. However, since the establishment of the State of Israel, and especially since the Six-Day War, the Karaite Jews that have made aliyah can now again use the observational calendar.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "The Samaritan community's calendar also relies on lunar months and solar years. Calculation of the Samaritan calendar has historically been a secret reserved to the priestly family alone, and was based on observations of the new crescent moon. More recently, a 20th-century Samaritan High Priest transferred the calculation to a computer algorithm. The current High Priest confirms the results twice a year, and then distributes calendars to the community.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "The epoch of the Samaritan calendar is year of the entry of the Children of Israel into the Land of Israel with Joshua. The month of Passover is the first month in the Samaritan calendar, but the year number increments in the sixth month. Like in the Rabbinic calendar, there are seven leap years within each 19-year cycle. However, the Rabbinic and Samaritan calendars' cycles are not synchronized, so Samaritan festivals—notionally the same as the Rabbinic festivals of Torah origin—are frequently one month off from the date according to the Rabbinic calendar. Additionally, as in the Karaite calendar, the Samaritan calendar does not apply the four rules of postponement, since they are not mentioned in the Tanakh. This can affect the dates observed for all the Jewish holidays in a particular year by one or two days.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls have references to a unique calendar, used by the people there, who are often assumed to be Essenes. The year of this calendar used the ideal Mesopotamian calendar of twelve 30-day months, to which were added 4 days at the equinoxes and solstices (cardinal points), making a total of 364 days.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "With only 364 days, the calendar would be very noticeably different from the actual seasons after a few years, but there is nothing to indicate what was done about this problem. Various scholars have suggested that nothing was done and the calendar was allowed to change with respect to the seasons, or that changes were made irregularly when the seasonal anomaly was too great to be ignored any longer.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Calendrical evidence for the postexilic Persian period is found in papyri from the Jewish colony at Elephantine, in Egypt. These documents show that the Jewish community of Elephantine used the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars.",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The Sardica paschal table shows that the Jewish community of some eastern city, possibly Antioch, used a calendrical scheme that kept Nisan 14 within the limits of the Julian month of March. Some of the dates in the document are clearly corrupt, but they can be emended to make the sixteen years in the table consistent with a regular intercalation scheme. Peter, the bishop of Alexandria (early 4th century CE), mentions that the Jews of his city \"hold their Passover according to the course of the moon in the month of Phamenoth, or according to the intercalary month every third year in the month of Pharmuthi\", suggesting a fairly consistent intercalation scheme that kept Nisan 14 approximately between Phamenoth 10 (6 March in the 4th century CE) and Pharmuthi 10 (5 April).",
"title": "Other calendars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Jewish funerary inscriptions from Zoar (south of the Dead Sea), dated from the 3rd to the 5th century, indicate that when years were intercalated, the intercalary month was at least sometimes a repeated month of Adar. The inscriptions, however, reveal no clear pattern of regular intercalations, nor do they indicate any consistent rule for determining the start of the lunar month.",
"title": "Other calendars"
}
]
| The Hebrew calendar, also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as yahrzeits and the schedule of public Torah readings. In Israel, it is used for religious purposes, provides a time frame for agriculture, and is an official calendar for civil holidays alongside the Gregorian calendar. Like other lunisolar calendars, the Hebrew calendar consists of months of 29 or 30 days which begin and end at approximately the time of the new moon. As 12 such months comprise a total of just 354 days, an extra lunar month is added every 2 or 3 years so that the long-term average year length closely approximates the actual length of the solar year. Originally, the beginning of each month was determined based on physical observation of a new moon, while the decision of whether to add the leap month was based on observation of natural agriculture-related events in ancient Israel. Between the years 70 and 1178, these empirical criteria were gradually replaced with a set of mathematical rules. Month length now follows a fixed schedule which is adjusted based on the molad interval and several other rules, while leap months are now added in 7 out of every 19 years according to the Metonic cycle. Nowadays, Hebrew years are generally counted according to the system of Anno Mundi. This system attempts to calculate the number of years since the creation of the world, according to the Genesis creation narrative and subsequent Biblical stories. The current Hebrew year, AM 5784, began at sunset on 15 September 2023 and will end at sunset on 2 October 2024. | 2001-09-18T22:08:12Z | 2023-12-22T00:30:48Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar |
13,786 | The Holocaust Industry | The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a 2000 book by Norman Finkelstein arguing that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests. According to Finkelstein, this "Holocaust industry" has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.
The book was controversial, attracting praise and criticism. While supporters describe the book as a substantive engagement with issues such as the politics of memory, critics argue that it either reuses antisemitic tropes, empowers them, or does both, and that the book's style is harsh and not respectful enough considering the delicate subject.
The book began as a journal review of The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick.
Finkelstein states that his consciousness of "the Nazi holocaust" is rooted in his parents' experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto; with the exception of his parents themselves, "every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis". Nonetheless, during his childhood, no one ever asked any questions about what his mother and father had suffered. He suggests, "This was not a respectful silence. It was indifference." It was only after the establishment of "the Holocaust industry", he suggests, that outpourings of anguish over the plight of the Jews in World War II began. This ideology in turn served to endow Israel with a status as "'victim' state" despite its "horrendous" human rights record.
According to Finkelstein, his book is "an anatomy and an indictment of the Holocaust industry". He argues that "'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust".
In the foreword to the first paperback edition, Finkelstein notes that the first hardback edition had been a considerable hit in several European countries and many languages, but had been largely ignored in the United States. He sees The New York Times as the main promotional vehicle of the "Holocaust industry", and says that the 1999 Index listed 273 entries for the Holocaust and just 32 entries for the entire continent of Africa.
The second (2003) edition contained 100 pages of new material, primarily in chapter 3 on the World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks. Finkelstein set out to provide a guide to the relevant sections of the case. He feels that the presiding judge elected not to docket crucial documents, and that the Claims Resolution Tribunal could no longer be trusted. Finkelstein claims the CRT was on course to vindicate the Swiss banks before it changed tack in order to "protect the blackmailers' reputation".
The book has been controversial, receiving a number of both positive and negative reviews. The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg praised Finkelstein's book:
I refer now to the part of the book that deals with the claims against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the research, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results. I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years, will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough.
Israeli historian Moshe Zuckermann welcomed his book as an "irreplaceable critique of the ‘instrumentalisation of the past’ and underlined its ‘liberating potential’".
Oren Baruch Stier reviewing the book for the journal Prooftexts summarized the book as a "small and pungent manifesto" and concluded his review by writing that "there are worthwhile arguments here, if one can stomach the bile in which they float".
Enzo Traverso reviewing the book for the journal Historical Materialism wrote that the book has proven controversial, concluding that it "contains a core of truth that must be recognised, but it lends itself, due to its style and several of its main arguments, to the worst uses and instrumentalisations." He suggested that the book should be seen as an opportunity for stimulating public debates about difficult topics related to "the politics of memory and on the public uses of history"
Donald D. Denton reviewing the book for Terrorism and Political Violence journal noted that it "will be valuable as an historical piece of research and of interest to those who now attempt to deal with the contemporary genocides and the subsequent generations of children of those who endured such horrors".
According to Israeli journalist Yair Sheleg, in August 2000, German historian Hans Mommsen called it "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices."
Wolfgang Benz stated to Le Monde: "It is impossible to learn anything from Finkelstein's book. At best, it is interesting for a psychotherapist." Jean Birnbaum publishing in the same venue added that Norman Finkelstein "hardly cares about nuance" and Rony Brauman wrote in the preface to the French edition (L'Industrie de l'Holocauste, Paris, La Fabrique, 2001) that some assertions of Finkelstein (especially on the impact of the Six-days war) are wrong, others being pieces of "propaganda".
Historian Peter Novick, whose work Finkelstein described as providing the "initial stimulus" for The Holocaust Industry, said in the July 28, 2000 issue of London's The Jewish Chronicle that Finkelstein's book is replete with "false accusations", "egregious misrepresentations", "absurd claims" and "repeated mis-statements" ("A charge into darkness that sheds no light"). Finkelstein replied to the allegations by Novick on his website, replying to five "specific charges", and criticizing his opponents' "intellectual standards". Jonathan Freedland in a column for The Guardian wrote The Holocaust Industry does not share Novick's book's "sensitivity or human empathy - surely prerequisites of any meaningful debate about the Holocaust". Freedland accused Finkelstein of having constructed "an elaborate conspiracy theory, in which the Jews were pushed from apathy to obsession about the Holocaust by a corrupt Jewish leadership bent on building international support for Israel".
Hasia Diner described Peter Novick and Finkelstein of being "harsh critics of American Jewry from the left," and challenged the notion in their books that American Jews did not begin to commemorate the Holocaust until after 1967.
Wolfgang Wippermann criticized Finkelstein as "‘a useful idiot’ for all kinds of anti-semites."
Andrew Ross, reviewing the book for Salon, wrote:
On the issue of reparations, he barely acknowledges the wrongs committed by the Swiss and German institutions — the burying of Jewish bank accounts, the use of slave labor — that gave rise to the recent reparations drive. The fear that the reparations will not wind up in the hands of those who need and deserve them most is a legitimate concern. But the idea that survivors have been routinely swindled by Jewish institutions is a gross distortion. The chief reason why survivors have so far seen nothing of the $1.25 billion Swiss settlement, reached in 1998, is that U.S. courts have yet to rule on a method of distribution. On other reparations and compensation settlements, the Claims Conference, a particular bete noire of Finkelstein, says that it distributed approximately $220 million to individual survivors in 1999 alone.
Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld wrote that The Holocaust Industry "is representative of a polemical engagement with the Holocaust" that places it in line with a number of other works by "critics of Holocaust consciousness, all of whom stress the utilitarian function of memory", and who see many modern references to The Holocaust as "means of enhancing ethnic identity and advancing political agendas of one kind or another". Rosenfeld also noted that the book presents those ideas in a very "harsh and inflammatory way."
It has been suggested that the book "probably cost [Finkelstein] ... tenure at DePaul University".
Finkelstein responded to his critics in the foreword to the second edition (published in 2003), writing "Mainstream critics allege that I conjured a 'conspiracy theory' while those on the Left ridicule the book as a defense of 'the banks'. None, so far as I can tell, question my actual findings." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a 2000 book by Norman Finkelstein arguing that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests. According to Finkelstein, this \"Holocaust industry\" has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The book was controversial, attracting praise and criticism. While supporters describe the book as a substantive engagement with issues such as the politics of memory, critics argue that it either reuses antisemitic tropes, empowers them, or does both, and that the book's style is harsh and not respectful enough considering the delicate subject.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The book began as a journal review of The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick.",
"title": "Conception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Finkelstein states that his consciousness of \"the Nazi holocaust\" is rooted in his parents' experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto; with the exception of his parents themselves, \"every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis\". Nonetheless, during his childhood, no one ever asked any questions about what his mother and father had suffered. He suggests, \"This was not a respectful silence. It was indifference.\" It was only after the establishment of \"the Holocaust industry\", he suggests, that outpourings of anguish over the plight of the Jews in World War II began. This ideology in turn served to endow Israel with a status as \"'victim' state\" despite its \"horrendous\" human rights record.",
"title": "Finkelstein on the book"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "According to Finkelstein, his book is \"an anatomy and an indictment of the Holocaust industry\". He argues that \"'The Holocaust' is an ideological representation of the Nazi holocaust\".",
"title": "Finkelstein on the book"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the foreword to the first paperback edition, Finkelstein notes that the first hardback edition had been a considerable hit in several European countries and many languages, but had been largely ignored in the United States. He sees The New York Times as the main promotional vehicle of the \"Holocaust industry\", and says that the 1999 Index listed 273 entries for the Holocaust and just 32 entries for the entire continent of Africa.",
"title": "Finkelstein on the book"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The second (2003) edition contained 100 pages of new material, primarily in chapter 3 on the World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks. Finkelstein set out to provide a guide to the relevant sections of the case. He feels that the presiding judge elected not to docket crucial documents, and that the Claims Resolution Tribunal could no longer be trusted. Finkelstein claims the CRT was on course to vindicate the Swiss banks before it changed tack in order to \"protect the blackmailers' reputation\".",
"title": "Chapters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The book has been controversial, receiving a number of both positive and negative reviews. The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg praised Finkelstein's book:",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "I refer now to the part of the book that deals with the claims against the Swiss banks, and the other claims pertaining to forced labor. I would now say in retrospect that he was actually conservative, moderate and that his conclusions are trustworthy. He is a well-trained political scientist, has the ability to do the research, did it carefully, and has come up with the right results. I am by no means the only one who, in the coming months or years, will totally agree with Finkelstein's breakthrough.",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Israeli historian Moshe Zuckermann welcomed his book as an \"irreplaceable critique of the ‘instrumentalisation of the past’ and underlined its ‘liberating potential’\".",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Oren Baruch Stier reviewing the book for the journal Prooftexts summarized the book as a \"small and pungent manifesto\" and concluded his review by writing that \"there are worthwhile arguments here, if one can stomach the bile in which they float\".",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Enzo Traverso reviewing the book for the journal Historical Materialism wrote that the book has proven controversial, concluding that it \"contains a core of truth that must be recognised, but it lends itself, due to its style and several of its main arguments, to the worst uses and instrumentalisations.\" He suggested that the book should be seen as an opportunity for stimulating public debates about difficult topics related to \"the politics of memory and on the public uses of history\"",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Donald D. Denton reviewing the book for Terrorism and Political Violence journal noted that it \"will be valuable as an historical piece of research and of interest to those who now attempt to deal with the contemporary genocides and the subsequent generations of children of those who endured such horrors\".",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "According to Israeli journalist Yair Sheleg, in August 2000, German historian Hans Mommsen called it \"a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices.\"",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Wolfgang Benz stated to Le Monde: \"It is impossible to learn anything from Finkelstein's book. At best, it is interesting for a psychotherapist.\" Jean Birnbaum publishing in the same venue added that Norman Finkelstein \"hardly cares about nuance\" and Rony Brauman wrote in the preface to the French edition (L'Industrie de l'Holocauste, Paris, La Fabrique, 2001) that some assertions of Finkelstein (especially on the impact of the Six-days war) are wrong, others being pieces of \"propaganda\".",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Historian Peter Novick, whose work Finkelstein described as providing the \"initial stimulus\" for The Holocaust Industry, said in the July 28, 2000 issue of London's The Jewish Chronicle that Finkelstein's book is replete with \"false accusations\", \"egregious misrepresentations\", \"absurd claims\" and \"repeated mis-statements\" (\"A charge into darkness that sheds no light\"). Finkelstein replied to the allegations by Novick on his website, replying to five \"specific charges\", and criticizing his opponents' \"intellectual standards\". Jonathan Freedland in a column for The Guardian wrote The Holocaust Industry does not share Novick's book's \"sensitivity or human empathy - surely prerequisites of any meaningful debate about the Holocaust\". Freedland accused Finkelstein of having constructed \"an elaborate conspiracy theory, in which the Jews were pushed from apathy to obsession about the Holocaust by a corrupt Jewish leadership bent on building international support for Israel\".",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Hasia Diner described Peter Novick and Finkelstein of being \"harsh critics of American Jewry from the left,\" and challenged the notion in their books that American Jews did not begin to commemorate the Holocaust until after 1967.",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Wolfgang Wippermann criticized Finkelstein as \"‘a useful idiot’ for all kinds of anti-semites.\"",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Andrew Ross, reviewing the book for Salon, wrote:",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On the issue of reparations, he barely acknowledges the wrongs committed by the Swiss and German institutions — the burying of Jewish bank accounts, the use of slave labor — that gave rise to the recent reparations drive. The fear that the reparations will not wind up in the hands of those who need and deserve them most is a legitimate concern. But the idea that survivors have been routinely swindled by Jewish institutions is a gross distortion. The chief reason why survivors have so far seen nothing of the $1.25 billion Swiss settlement, reached in 1998, is that U.S. courts have yet to rule on a method of distribution. On other reparations and compensation settlements, the Claims Conference, a particular bete noire of Finkelstein, says that it distributed approximately $220 million to individual survivors in 1999 alone.",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld wrote that The Holocaust Industry \"is representative of a polemical engagement with the Holocaust\" that places it in line with a number of other works by \"critics of Holocaust consciousness, all of whom stress the utilitarian function of memory\", and who see many modern references to The Holocaust as \"means of enhancing ethnic identity and advancing political agendas of one kind or another\". Rosenfeld also noted that the book presents those ideas in a very \"harsh and inflammatory way.\"",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "It has been suggested that the book \"probably cost [Finkelstein] ... tenure at DePaul University\".",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Finkelstein responded to his critics in the foreword to the second edition (published in 2003), writing \"Mainstream critics allege that I conjured a 'conspiracy theory' while those on the Left ridicule the book as a defense of 'the banks'. None, so far as I can tell, question my actual findings.\"",
"title": "Reviews and critiques"
}
]
| The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a 2000 book by Norman Finkelstein arguing that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain and to further Israeli interests. According to Finkelstein, this "Holocaust industry" has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust. The book was controversial, attracting praise and criticism. While supporters describe the book as a substantive engagement with issues such as the politics of memory, critics argue that it either reuses antisemitic tropes, empowers them, or does both, and that the book's style is harsh and not respectful enough considering the delicate subject. | 2001-09-26T05:36:30Z | 2023-12-21T03:52:27Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry |
13,787 | Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn | The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Latin: Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae), more commonly the Golden Dawn (Aurora Aurea), is a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics from the late 19th century to the modern day. Known as a magical order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain and focused its practices on theurgy and spiritual development from the late 19th to late 20th century. Many present-day concepts of ritual and magic that are at the centre of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn, which became one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism.
The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell Mathers, were Freemasons and members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Westcott appears to have been the initial driving force behind the establishment of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn system was based on hierarchy and initiation (similar to Masonic lodges) and the grade structure was based on the S.R.I.A, however, women were admitted on an equal basis with men.
The "Golden Dawn" was the first of three Orders, although all three are often collectively referred to as the "Golden Dawn". The First Order taught esoteric philosophy based on the Hermetic Qabalah and personal development through study and awareness of the four classical elements, as well as the basics of astrology, tarot divination, and geomancy. The Second or Inner Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, taught magic, including scrying, astral travel, and alchemy. The Third Order was that of the Secret Chiefs, who were said to be highly skilled; they supposedly directed the activities of the lower two orders by spirit communication with the Chiefs of the Second Order.
The foundational documents of the original Order of the Golden Dawn, known as the Cipher Manuscripts, are written in English using the Trithemius cipher. The manuscripts give the specific outlines of the Grade Rituals of the Order and prescribe a curriculum of graduated teachings that encompass the Hermetic Qabalah, astrology, occult tarot, geomancy, and alchemy.
According to the records of the Order, the manuscripts passed from Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, a Masonic scholar, to the Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, whom British occult writer Francis King describes as the fourth founder (although Woodford died shortly after the Order was founded). The documents did not excite Woodford, and in February 1886 he passed them on to Freemason William Wynn Westcott, who managed to decode them in 1887. Westcott, pleased with his discovery, called on fellow Freemason Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers for a second opinion. Westcott asked for Mathers' help to turn the manuscripts into a coherent system for lodge work. Mathers, in turn, asked fellow Freemason William Robert Woodman to assist the two, and he accepted. Mathers and Westcott have been credited with developing the ritual outlines in the Cipher Manuscripts into a workable format. Mathers, however, is generally credited with the design of the curriculum and rituals of the Second Order, which he called the Rosae Rubae et Aureae Crucis ("Ruby Rose and Golden Cross" or the RR et AC).
In October 1887, Westcott claimed to have written to a German countess and prominent Rosicrucian named Anna Sprengel, whose address was said to have been found in the decoded Cipher Manuscripts. According to Westcott, Sprengel claimed the ability to contact certain supernatural entities, known as the Secret Chiefs, that were considered the authorities over any magical order or esoteric organization. Westcott purportedly received a reply from Sprengel granting permission to establish a Golden Dawn temple and conferring honorary grades of Adeptus Exemptus on Westcott, Mathers, and Woodman. The temple was to consist of the five grades outlined in the manuscripts.
In 1888, the Isis-Urania Temple was founded in London. In contrast to the S.R.I.A. and Masonry, women were allowed and welcome to participate in the Order in "perfect equality" with men. The Order was more of a philosophical and metaphysical teaching order in its early years. Other than certain rituals and meditations found in the Cipher manuscripts and developed further, "magical practices" were generally not taught at the first temple.
For the first four years, the Golden Dawn was one cohesive group later known as the "First Order" or "Outer Order". A "Second Order" or "Inner Order" was established and became active in 1892. The Second Order consisted of members known as "adepts", who had completed the entire course of study for the First Order. The Second Order was formally established under the name Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (the Order of the Red Rose and the Golden Cross).
Eventually, the Osiris temple in Weston-super-Mare, the Horus temple in Bradford (both in 1888), and the Amen-Ra temple in Edinburgh (1893) were founded. In 1893 Mathers founded the Ahathoor temple in Paris.
In 1890, Westcott's alleged correspondence with Anna Sprengel suddenly ceased. He claimed to have received word from Germany that she was dead and that her companions did not approve of the founding of the Order and no further contact was to be made. If the founders were to contact the Secret Chiefs, apparently, it had to be done on their own. In 1892, Mathers professed that a link to the Secret Chiefs had been established. Subsequently, he supplied rituals for the Second Order. The rituals were based on the tradition of the tomb of Christian Rosenkreuz, and a Vault of Adepts became the controlling force behind the Outer Order. Later in 1916, Westcott claimed that Mathers also constructed these rituals from materials he received from Frater Lux ex Tenebris, a purported Continental Adept.
Some followers of the Golden Dawn tradition believe that the Secret Chiefs were not human or supernatural beings, but rather symbolic representations of actual or legendary sources of spiritual esotericism. The term came to stand for a great leader or teacher of a spiritual path or practice that found its way into the teachings of the Order.
By the mid-1890s, the Golden Dawn was well established in Great Britain, with over one hundred members from every class of Victorian society. Many celebrities belonged to the Golden Dawn, such as the actress Florence Farr, the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, the Welsh author Arthur Machen, and the English authors Evelyn Underhill and Aleister Crowley.
In 1896 or 1897, Westcott broke all ties to the Golden Dawn, leaving Mathers in control. It has been speculated that his departure was due to his having lost a number of occult-related papers in a hansom cab. Apparently, when the papers were found, Westcott's connection to the Golden Dawn was discovered and brought to the attention of his employers. He may have been told to either resign from the Order or to give up his occupation as coroner. After Westcott's departure, Mathers appointed Florence Farr to be Chief Adept in Anglia. Dr. Henry B. Pullen Burry succeeded Westcott as Cancellarius—one of the three Chiefs of the Order.
Mathers was the only active founding member after Westcott's departure. Due to personality clashes with other members and frequent absences from the center of Lodge activity in Great Britain, however, challenges to Mathers's authority as leader developed among the members of the Second Order.
Towards the end of 1899, the Adepts of the Isis-Urania and Amen-Ra temples had become dissatisfied with Mathers' leadership, as well as his growing friendship with Aleister Crowley. They had also become anxious to make contact with the Secret Chiefs themselves, instead of relying on Mathers as an intermediary. Within the Isis-Urania temple, disputes were arising between Farr's The Sphere, a secret society within the Isis-Urania, and the rest of the Adepti Minores.
Crowley was refused initiation into the Adeptus Minor grade by the London officials. Mathers overrode their decision and quickly initiated him at the Ahathoor temple in Paris on 16 January 1900. Upon his return to the London temple, Crowley requested from Miss Cracknell, the acting secretary, the papers acknowledging his grade, to which he was now entitled. To the London Adepts, this was the final straw. Farr, already of the opinion that the London temple should be closed, wrote to Mathers expressing her wish to resign as his representative, although she was willing to carry on until a successor was found. Mathers believed Westcott was behind this turn of events and replied on 16 February. On 3 March a committee of seven Adepts was elected in London and requested a full investigation of the matter. Mathers sent an immediate reply, declining to provide proof, refusing to acknowledge the London temple, and dismissing Farr as his representative on 23 March. In response, a general meeting was called on 29 March in London to remove Mathers as chief and expel him from the Order.
In 1901, W. B. Yeats privately published a pamphlet titled Is the Order of R. R. & A. C. to Remain a Magical Order? After the Isis-Urania temple claimed its independence, there were even more disputes, leading to Yeats resigning. A committee of three was to temporarily govern, which included P.W. Bullock, M.W. Blackden and J. W. Brodie-Innes. After a short time, Bullock resigned, and Dr. Robert Felkin took his place.
In 1903, A. E. Waite and Blackden joined forces to retain the name Isis-Urania, while Felkin and other London members formed the Stella Matutina. Yeats remained in the Stella Matutina until 1921, while Brodie-Innes continued his Amen-Ra membership in Edinburgh.
Once Mathers realised that reconciliation was impossible, he made efforts to reestablish himself in London. The Bradford and Weston-super-Mare temples remained loyal to him, but their numbers were few. He then appointed Edward Berridge as his representative. According to Francis King, historical evidence shows that there were "twenty three members of a flourishing Second Order under Berridge-Mathers in 1913."
J.W. Brodie-Innes continued leading the Amen-Ra temple, deciding that the revolt was unjustified. By 1908, Mathers and Brodie-Innes were in complete accord. According to sources that differ regarding the actual date, sometime between 1901 and 1913 Mathers renamed the branch of the Golden Dawn remaining loyal to his leadership to Alpha et Omega. Brodie-Innes assumed command of the English and Scottish temples, while Mathers concentrated on building up his Ahathoor temple and extending his American connections. According to occultist Israel Regardie, the Golden Dawn had spread to the United States of America before 1900 and a Thoth-Hermes temple had been founded in Chicago. By the beginning of the First World War in 1914, Mathers had established two to three American temples.
Most temples of the Alpha et Omega and Stella Matutina closed or went into abeyance by the end of the 1930s, with the exceptions of two Stella Matutina temples: Hermes Temple in Bristol, which operated sporadically until 1970, and the Smaragdum Thallasses Temple (commonly referred to as Whare Ra) in Havelock North, New Zealand, which operated regularly until its closure in 1978.
Much of the hierarchical structure for the Golden Dawn came from the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, which was itself derived from the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross.
The paired numbers attached to the Grades relate to positions on the Tree of Life. The Neophyte Grade of "0=0" indicates no position on the Tree. In the other pairs, the first numeral is the number of steps up from the bottom (Malkuth), and the second numeral is the number of steps down from the top (Kether).
The First Order Grades were related to the four elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, respectively. The Aspirant to a Grade received instruction on the metaphysical meaning of each of these Elements and had to pass a written examination and demonstrate certain skills to receive admission to that Grade.
While no temples in the original chartered lineage of the Golden Dawn survived past the 1970s, several organizations have since revived its teachings and rituals. Among these, the following are notable:
The Golden Dawn, by Israel Regardie; was published in 1937. The book is divided into several basic sections. First are the knowledge lectures, which describe the basic teaching of the Kabalah, symbolism, meditation, geomancy, etc. This is followed by the rituals of the Outer Order, consisting of five initiation rituals into the degrees of the Golden Dawn. The next section covers the rituals of the Inner Order including two initiation rituals and equinox ceremonies. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (Latin: Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae), more commonly the Golden Dawn (Aurora Aurea), is a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics from the late 19th century to the modern day. Known as a magical order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain and focused its practices on theurgy and spiritual development from the late 19th to late 20th century. Many present-day concepts of ritual and magic that are at the centre of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn, which became one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell Mathers, were Freemasons and members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Westcott appears to have been the initial driving force behind the establishment of the Golden Dawn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Golden Dawn system was based on hierarchy and initiation (similar to Masonic lodges) and the grade structure was based on the S.R.I.A, however, women were admitted on an equal basis with men.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The \"Golden Dawn\" was the first of three Orders, although all three are often collectively referred to as the \"Golden Dawn\". The First Order taught esoteric philosophy based on the Hermetic Qabalah and personal development through study and awareness of the four classical elements, as well as the basics of astrology, tarot divination, and geomancy. The Second or Inner Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, taught magic, including scrying, astral travel, and alchemy. The Third Order was that of the Secret Chiefs, who were said to be highly skilled; they supposedly directed the activities of the lower two orders by spirit communication with the Chiefs of the Second Order.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The foundational documents of the original Order of the Golden Dawn, known as the Cipher Manuscripts, are written in English using the Trithemius cipher. The manuscripts give the specific outlines of the Grade Rituals of the Order and prescribe a curriculum of graduated teachings that encompass the Hermetic Qabalah, astrology, occult tarot, geomancy, and alchemy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "According to the records of the Order, the manuscripts passed from Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, a Masonic scholar, to the Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, whom British occult writer Francis King describes as the fourth founder (although Woodford died shortly after the Order was founded). The documents did not excite Woodford, and in February 1886 he passed them on to Freemason William Wynn Westcott, who managed to decode them in 1887. Westcott, pleased with his discovery, called on fellow Freemason Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers for a second opinion. Westcott asked for Mathers' help to turn the manuscripts into a coherent system for lodge work. Mathers, in turn, asked fellow Freemason William Robert Woodman to assist the two, and he accepted. Mathers and Westcott have been credited with developing the ritual outlines in the Cipher Manuscripts into a workable format. Mathers, however, is generally credited with the design of the curriculum and rituals of the Second Order, which he called the Rosae Rubae et Aureae Crucis (\"Ruby Rose and Golden Cross\" or the RR et AC).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In October 1887, Westcott claimed to have written to a German countess and prominent Rosicrucian named Anna Sprengel, whose address was said to have been found in the decoded Cipher Manuscripts. According to Westcott, Sprengel claimed the ability to contact certain supernatural entities, known as the Secret Chiefs, that were considered the authorities over any magical order or esoteric organization. Westcott purportedly received a reply from Sprengel granting permission to establish a Golden Dawn temple and conferring honorary grades of Adeptus Exemptus on Westcott, Mathers, and Woodman. The temple was to consist of the five grades outlined in the manuscripts.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1888, the Isis-Urania Temple was founded in London. In contrast to the S.R.I.A. and Masonry, women were allowed and welcome to participate in the Order in \"perfect equality\" with men. The Order was more of a philosophical and metaphysical teaching order in its early years. Other than certain rituals and meditations found in the Cipher manuscripts and developed further, \"magical practices\" were generally not taught at the first temple.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "For the first four years, the Golden Dawn was one cohesive group later known as the \"First Order\" or \"Outer Order\". A \"Second Order\" or \"Inner Order\" was established and became active in 1892. The Second Order consisted of members known as \"adepts\", who had completed the entire course of study for the First Order. The Second Order was formally established under the name Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (the Order of the Red Rose and the Golden Cross).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Eventually, the Osiris temple in Weston-super-Mare, the Horus temple in Bradford (both in 1888), and the Amen-Ra temple in Edinburgh (1893) were founded. In 1893 Mathers founded the Ahathoor temple in Paris.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1890, Westcott's alleged correspondence with Anna Sprengel suddenly ceased. He claimed to have received word from Germany that she was dead and that her companions did not approve of the founding of the Order and no further contact was to be made. If the founders were to contact the Secret Chiefs, apparently, it had to be done on their own. In 1892, Mathers professed that a link to the Secret Chiefs had been established. Subsequently, he supplied rituals for the Second Order. The rituals were based on the tradition of the tomb of Christian Rosenkreuz, and a Vault of Adepts became the controlling force behind the Outer Order. Later in 1916, Westcott claimed that Mathers also constructed these rituals from materials he received from Frater Lux ex Tenebris, a purported Continental Adept.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Some followers of the Golden Dawn tradition believe that the Secret Chiefs were not human or supernatural beings, but rather symbolic representations of actual or legendary sources of spiritual esotericism. The term came to stand for a great leader or teacher of a spiritual path or practice that found its way into the teachings of the Order.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By the mid-1890s, the Golden Dawn was well established in Great Britain, with over one hundred members from every class of Victorian society. Many celebrities belonged to the Golden Dawn, such as the actress Florence Farr, the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, the Welsh author Arthur Machen, and the English authors Evelyn Underhill and Aleister Crowley.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1896 or 1897, Westcott broke all ties to the Golden Dawn, leaving Mathers in control. It has been speculated that his departure was due to his having lost a number of occult-related papers in a hansom cab. Apparently, when the papers were found, Westcott's connection to the Golden Dawn was discovered and brought to the attention of his employers. He may have been told to either resign from the Order or to give up his occupation as coroner. After Westcott's departure, Mathers appointed Florence Farr to be Chief Adept in Anglia. Dr. Henry B. Pullen Burry succeeded Westcott as Cancellarius—one of the three Chiefs of the Order.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Mathers was the only active founding member after Westcott's departure. Due to personality clashes with other members and frequent absences from the center of Lodge activity in Great Britain, however, challenges to Mathers's authority as leader developed among the members of the Second Order.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Towards the end of 1899, the Adepts of the Isis-Urania and Amen-Ra temples had become dissatisfied with Mathers' leadership, as well as his growing friendship with Aleister Crowley. They had also become anxious to make contact with the Secret Chiefs themselves, instead of relying on Mathers as an intermediary. Within the Isis-Urania temple, disputes were arising between Farr's The Sphere, a secret society within the Isis-Urania, and the rest of the Adepti Minores.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Crowley was refused initiation into the Adeptus Minor grade by the London officials. Mathers overrode their decision and quickly initiated him at the Ahathoor temple in Paris on 16 January 1900. Upon his return to the London temple, Crowley requested from Miss Cracknell, the acting secretary, the papers acknowledging his grade, to which he was now entitled. To the London Adepts, this was the final straw. Farr, already of the opinion that the London temple should be closed, wrote to Mathers expressing her wish to resign as his representative, although she was willing to carry on until a successor was found. Mathers believed Westcott was behind this turn of events and replied on 16 February. On 3 March a committee of seven Adepts was elected in London and requested a full investigation of the matter. Mathers sent an immediate reply, declining to provide proof, refusing to acknowledge the London temple, and dismissing Farr as his representative on 23 March. In response, a general meeting was called on 29 March in London to remove Mathers as chief and expel him from the Order.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1901, W. B. Yeats privately published a pamphlet titled Is the Order of R. R. & A. C. to Remain a Magical Order? After the Isis-Urania temple claimed its independence, there were even more disputes, leading to Yeats resigning. A committee of three was to temporarily govern, which included P.W. Bullock, M.W. Blackden and J. W. Brodie-Innes. After a short time, Bullock resigned, and Dr. Robert Felkin took his place.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1903, A. E. Waite and Blackden joined forces to retain the name Isis-Urania, while Felkin and other London members formed the Stella Matutina. Yeats remained in the Stella Matutina until 1921, while Brodie-Innes continued his Amen-Ra membership in Edinburgh.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Once Mathers realised that reconciliation was impossible, he made efforts to reestablish himself in London. The Bradford and Weston-super-Mare temples remained loyal to him, but their numbers were few. He then appointed Edward Berridge as his representative. According to Francis King, historical evidence shows that there were \"twenty three members of a flourishing Second Order under Berridge-Mathers in 1913.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "J.W. Brodie-Innes continued leading the Amen-Ra temple, deciding that the revolt was unjustified. By 1908, Mathers and Brodie-Innes were in complete accord. According to sources that differ regarding the actual date, sometime between 1901 and 1913 Mathers renamed the branch of the Golden Dawn remaining loyal to his leadership to Alpha et Omega. Brodie-Innes assumed command of the English and Scottish temples, while Mathers concentrated on building up his Ahathoor temple and extending his American connections. According to occultist Israel Regardie, the Golden Dawn had spread to the United States of America before 1900 and a Thoth-Hermes temple had been founded in Chicago. By the beginning of the First World War in 1914, Mathers had established two to three American temples.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Most temples of the Alpha et Omega and Stella Matutina closed or went into abeyance by the end of the 1930s, with the exceptions of two Stella Matutina temples: Hermes Temple in Bristol, which operated sporadically until 1970, and the Smaragdum Thallasses Temple (commonly referred to as Whare Ra) in Havelock North, New Zealand, which operated regularly until its closure in 1978.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Much of the hierarchical structure for the Golden Dawn came from the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, which was itself derived from the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross.",
"title": "Structure and grades"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The paired numbers attached to the Grades relate to positions on the Tree of Life. The Neophyte Grade of \"0=0\" indicates no position on the Tree. In the other pairs, the first numeral is the number of steps up from the bottom (Malkuth), and the second numeral is the number of steps down from the top (Kether).",
"title": "Structure and grades"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The First Order Grades were related to the four elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, respectively. The Aspirant to a Grade received instruction on the metaphysical meaning of each of these Elements and had to pass a written examination and demonstrate certain skills to receive admission to that Grade.",
"title": "Structure and grades"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "While no temples in the original chartered lineage of the Golden Dawn survived past the 1970s, several organizations have since revived its teachings and rituals. Among these, the following are notable:",
"title": "Contemporary Golden Dawn orders"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Golden Dawn, by Israel Regardie; was published in 1937. The book is divided into several basic sections. First are the knowledge lectures, which describe the basic teaching of the Kabalah, symbolism, meditation, geomancy, etc. This is followed by the rituals of the Outer Order, consisting of five initiation rituals into the degrees of the Golden Dawn. The next section covers the rituals of the Inner Order including two initiation rituals and equinox ceremonies.",
"title": "The Golden Dawn book"
}
]
| The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, more commonly the Golden Dawn, is a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics from the late 19th century to the modern day. Known as a magical order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain and focused its practices on theurgy and spiritual development from the late 19th to late 20th century. Many present-day concepts of ritual and magic that are at the centre of contemporary traditions, such as Wicca and Thelema, were inspired by the Golden Dawn, which became one of the largest single influences on 20th-century Western occultism. The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell Mathers, were Freemasons and members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Westcott appears to have been the initial driving force behind the establishment of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn system was based on hierarchy and initiation and the grade structure was based on the S.R.I.A, however, women were admitted on an equal basis with men. The "Golden Dawn" was the first of three Orders, although all three are often collectively referred to as the "Golden Dawn". The First Order taught esoteric philosophy based on the Hermetic Qabalah and personal development through study and awareness of the four classical elements, as well as the basics of astrology, tarot divination, and geomancy. The Second or Inner Order, the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, taught magic, including scrying, astral travel, and alchemy. The Third Order was that of the Secret Chiefs, who were said to be highly skilled; they supposedly directed the activities of the lower two orders by spirit communication with the Chiefs of the Second Order. | 2001-09-21T14:15:34Z | 2023-12-30T23:26:56Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn |
13,790 | Hash function | A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values, though there are some hash functions that support variable length output. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values, hash codes, digests, or simply hashes. The values are usually used to index a fixed-size table called a hash table. Use of a hash function to index a hash table is called hashing or scatter storage addressing.
Hash functions and their associated hash tables are used in data storage and retrieval applications to access data in a small and nearly constant time per retrieval. They require an amount of storage space only fractionally greater than the total space required for the data or records themselves. Hashing is a computationally and storage space-efficient form of data access that avoids the non-constant access time of ordered and unordered lists and structured trees, and the often exponential storage requirements of direct access of state spaces of large or variable-length keys.
Use of hash functions relies on statistical properties of key and function interaction: worst-case behaviour is intolerably bad but rare, and average-case behaviour can be nearly optimal (minimal collision).
Hash functions are related to (and often confused with) checksums, check digits, fingerprints, lossy compression, randomization functions, error-correcting codes, and ciphers. Although the concepts overlap to some extent, each one has its own uses and requirements and is designed and optimized differently. The hash function differs from these concepts mainly in terms of data integrity.
A hash function takes a key as an input, which is associated with a datum or record and used to identify it to the data storage and retrieval application. The keys may be fixed length, like an integer, or variable length, like a name. In some cases, the key is the datum itself. The output is a hash code used to index a hash table holding the data or records, or pointers to them.
A hash function may be considered to perform three functions:
A good hash function satisfies two basic properties: 1) it should be very fast to compute; 2) it should minimize duplication of output values (collisions). Hash functions rely on generating favourable probability distributions for their effectiveness, reducing access time to nearly constant. High table loading factors, pathological key sets and poorly designed hash functions can result in access times approaching linear in the number of items in the table. Hash functions can be designed to give the best worst-case performance, good performance under high table loading factors, and in special cases, perfect (collisionless) mapping of keys into hash codes. Implementation is based on parity-preserving bit operations (XOR and ADD), multiply, or divide. A necessary adjunct to the hash function is a collision-resolution method that employs an auxiliary data structure like linked lists, or systematic probing of the table to find an empty slot.
Hash functions are used in conjunction with hash tables to store and retrieve data items or data records. The hash function translates the key associated with each datum or record into a hash code, which is used to index the hash table. When an item is to be added to the table, the hash code may index an empty slot (also called a bucket), in which case the item is added to the table there. If the hash code indexes a full slot, some kind of collision resolution is required: the new item may be omitted (not added to the table), or replace the old item, or it can be added to the table in some other location by a specified procedure. That procedure depends on the structure of the hash table: In chained hashing, each slot is the head of a linked list or chain, and items that collide at the slot are added to the chain. Chains may be kept in random order and searched linearly, or in serial order, or as a self-ordering list by frequency to speed up access. In open address hashing, the table is probed starting from the occupied slot in a specified manner, usually by linear probing, quadratic probing, or double hashing until an open slot is located or the entire table is probed (overflow). Searching for the item follows the same procedure until the item is located, an open slot is found or the entire table has been searched (item not in table).
Hash functions are also used to build caches for large data sets stored in slow media. A cache is generally simpler than a hashed search table since any collision can be resolved by discarding or writing back the older of the two colliding items.
Hash functions are an essential ingredient of the Bloom filter, a space-efficient probabilistic data structure that is used to test whether an element is a member of a set.
A special case of hashing is known as geometric hashing or the grid method. In these applications, the set of all inputs is some sort of metric space, and the hashing function can be interpreted as a partition of that space into a grid of cells. The table is often an array with two or more indices (called a grid file, grid index, bucket grid, and similar names), and the hash function returns an index tuple. This principle is widely used in computer graphics, computational geometry and many other disciplines, to solve many proximity problems in the plane or in three-dimensional space, such as finding closest pairs in a set of points, similar shapes in a list of shapes, similar images in an image database, and so on.
Hash tables are also used to implement associative arrays and dynamic sets.
A good hash function should map the expected inputs as evenly as possible over its output range. That is, every hash value in the output range should be generated with roughly the same probability. The reason for this last requirement is that the cost of hashing-based methods goes up sharply as the number of collisions—pairs of inputs that are mapped to the same hash value—increases. If some hash values are more likely to occur than others, a larger fraction of the lookup operations will have to search through a larger set of colliding table entries.
This criterion only requires the value to be uniformly distributed, not random in any sense. A good randomizing function is (barring computational efficiency concerns) generally a good choice as a hash function, but the converse need not be true.
Hash tables often contain only a small subset of the valid inputs. For instance, a club membership list may contain only a hundred or so member names, out of the very large set of all possible names. In these cases, the uniformity criterion should hold for almost all typical subsets of entries that may be found in the table, not just for the global set of all possible entries.
In other words, if a typical set of m records is hashed to n table slots, the probability of a bucket receiving many more than m/n records should be vanishingly small. In particular, if m is less than n, very few buckets should have more than one or two records. A small number of collisions is virtually inevitable, even if n is much larger than m – see the birthday problem.
In special cases when the keys are known in advance and the key set is static, a hash function can be found that achieves absolute (or collisionless) uniformity. Such a hash function is said to be perfect. There is no algorithmic way of constructing such a function - searching for one is a factorial function of the number of keys to be mapped versus the number of table slots they're tapped into. Finding a perfect hash function over more than a very small set of keys is usually computationally infeasible; the resulting function is likely to be more computationally complex than a standard hash function and provides only a marginal advantage over a function with good statistical properties that yields a minimum number of collisions. See universal hash function.
When testing a hash function, the uniformity of the distribution of hash values can be evaluated by the chi-squared test. This test is a goodness-of-fit measure: it's the actual distribution of items in buckets versus the expected (or uniform) distribution of items. The formula is: ∑ j = 0 m − 1 ( b j ) ( b j + 1 ) / 2 ( n / 2 m ) ( n + 2 m − 1 ) {\displaystyle {\frac {\sum _{j=0}^{m-1}(b_{j})(b_{j}+1)/2}{(n/2m)(n+2m-1)}}}
where: n {\displaystyle n} is the number of keys, m {\displaystyle m} is the number of buckets, b j {\displaystyle b_{j}} is the number of items in bucket j {\displaystyle j}
A ratio within one confidence interval (0.95 - 1.05) is indicative that the hash function evaluated has an expected uniform distribution.
Hash functions can have some technical properties that make it more likely that they'll have a uniform distribution when applied. One is the strict avalanche criterion: whenever a single input bit is complemented, each of the output bits changes with a 50% probability. The reason for this property is that selected subsets of the keyspace may have low variability. For the output to be uniformly distributed, a low amount of variability, even one bit, should translate into a high amount of variability (i.e. distribution over the tablespace) in the output. Each bit should change with a probability of 50% because if some bits are reluctant to change, the keys become clustered around those values. If the bits want to change too readily, the mapping is approaching a fixed XOR function of a single bit. Standard tests for this property have been described in the literature. The relevance of the criterion to a multiplicative hash function is assessed here.
In data storage and retrieval applications, the use of a hash function is a trade-off between search time and data storage space. If search time were unbounded, a very compact unordered linear list would be the best medium; if storage space were unbounded, a randomly accessible structure indexable by the key-value would be very large, very sparse, but very fast. A hash function takes a finite amount of time to map a potentially large keyspace to a feasible amount of storage space searchable in a bounded amount of time regardless of the number of keys. In most applications, the hash function should be computable with minimum latency and secondarily in a minimum number of instructions.
Computational complexity varies with the number of instructions required and latency of individual instructions, with the simplest being the bitwise methods (folding), followed by the multiplicative methods, and the most complex (slowest) are the division-based methods.
Because collisions should be infrequent, and cause a marginal delay but are otherwise harmless, it's usually preferable to choose a faster hash function over one that needs more computation but saves a few collisions.
Division-based implementations can be of particular concern because the division is microprogrammed on nearly all chip architectures. Divide (modulo) by a constant can be inverted to become a multiply by the word-size multiplicative-inverse of the constant. This can be done by the programmer, or by the compiler. Divide can also be reduced directly into a series of shift-subtracts and shift-adds, though minimizing the number of such operations required is a daunting problem; the number of assembly instructions resulting may be more than a dozen, and swamp the pipeline. If the architecture has hardware multiply functional units, the multiply-by-inverse is likely a better approach.
We can allow the table size n to not be a power of 2 and still not have to perform any remainder or division operation, as these computations are sometimes costly. For example, let n be significantly less than 2. Consider a pseudorandom number generator function P(key) that is uniform on the interval [0, 2 − 1]. A hash function uniform on the interval [0, n-1] is n P(key)/2. We can replace the division by a (possibly faster) right bit shift: nP(key) >> b.
If keys are being hashed repeatedly, and the hash function is costly, computing time can be saved by precomputing the hash codes and storing them with the keys. Matching hash codes almost certainly means the keys are identical. This technique is used for the transposition table in game-playing programs, which stores a 64-bit hashed representation of the board position.
A universal hashing scheme is a randomized algorithm that selects a hashing function h among a family of such functions, in such a way that the probability of a collision of any two distinct keys is 1/m, where m is the number of distinct hash values desired—independently of the two keys. Universal hashing ensures (in a probabilistic sense) that the hash function application will behave as well as if it were using a random function, for any distribution of the input data. It will, however, have more collisions than perfect hashing and may require more operations than a special-purpose hash function.
A hash function that allows only certain table sizes, strings only up to a certain length, or can't accept a seed (i.e. allow double hashing) isn't as useful as one that does.
A hash function is applicable in a variety of situations. Particularly within cryptography, notable applications include:
A hash procedure must be deterministic—meaning that for a given input value it must always generate the same hash value. In other words, it must be a function of the data to be hashed, in the mathematical sense of the term. This requirement excludes hash functions that depend on external variable parameters, such as pseudo-random number generators or the time of day. It also excludes functions that depend on the memory address of the object being hashed in cases that the address may change during execution (as may happen on systems that use certain methods of garbage collection), although sometimes rehashing of the item is possible.
The determinism is in the context of the reuse of the function. For example, Python adds the feature that hash functions make use of a randomized seed that is generated once when the Python process starts in addition to the input to be hashed. The Python hash (SipHash) is still a valid hash function when used within a single run. But if the values are persisted (for example, written to disk) they can no longer be treated as valid hash values, since in the next run the random value might differ.
It is often desirable that the output of a hash function have fixed size (but see below). If, for example, the output is constrained to 32-bit integer values, the hash values can be used to index into an array. Such hashing is commonly used to accelerate data searches. Producing fixed-length output from variable length input can be accomplished by breaking the input data into chunks of specific size. Hash functions used for data searches use some arithmetic expression that iteratively processes chunks of the input (such as the characters in a string) to produce the hash value.
In many applications, the range of hash values may be different for each run of the program or may change along the same run (for instance, when a hash table needs to be expanded). In those situations, one needs a hash function which takes two parameters—the input data z, and the number n of allowed hash values.
A common solution is to compute a fixed hash function with a very large range (say, 0 to 2 − 1), divide the result by n, and use the division's remainder. If n is itself a power of 2, this can be done by bit masking and bit shifting. When this approach is used, the hash function must be chosen so that the result has fairly uniform distribution between 0 and n − 1, for any value of n that may occur in the application. Depending on the function, the remainder may be uniform only for certain values of n, e.g. odd or prime numbers.
When the hash function is used to store values in a hash table that outlives the run of the program, and the hash table needs to be expanded or shrunk, the hash table is referred to as a dynamic hash table.
A hash function that will relocate the minimum number of records when the table is resized is desirable. What is needed is a hash function H(z,n) – where z is the key being hashed and n is the number of allowed hash values – such that H(z,n + 1) = H(z,n) with probability close to n/(n + 1).
Linear hashing and spiral hashing are examples of dynamic hash functions that execute in constant time but relax the property of uniformity to achieve the minimal movement property. Extendible hashing uses a dynamic hash function that requires space proportional to n to compute the hash function, and it becomes a function of the previous keys that have been inserted. Several algorithms that preserve the uniformity property but require time proportional to n to compute the value of H(z,n) have been invented.
A hash function with minimal movement is especially useful in distributed hash tables.
In some applications, the input data may contain features that are irrelevant for comparison purposes. For example, when looking up a personal name, it may be desirable to ignore the distinction between upper and lower case letters. For such data, one must use a hash function that is compatible with the data equivalence criterion being used: that is, any two inputs that are considered equivalent must yield the same hash value. This can be accomplished by normalizing the input before hashing it, as by upper-casing all letters.
There are several common algorithms for hashing integers. The method giving the best distribution is data-dependent. One of the simplest and most common methods in practice is the modulo division method.
If the data to be hashed is small enough, one can use the data itself (reinterpreted as an integer) as the hashed value. The cost of computing this identity hash function is effectively zero. This hash function is perfect, as it maps each input to a distinct hash value.
The meaning of "small enough" depends on the size of the type that is used as the hashed value. For example, in Java, the hash code is a 32-bit integer. Thus the 32-bit integer Integer and 32-bit floating-point Float objects can simply use the value directly; whereas the 64-bit integer Long and 64-bit floating-point Double cannot use this method.
Other types of data can also use this hashing scheme. For example, when mapping character strings between upper and lower case, one can use the binary encoding of each character, interpreted as an integer, to index a table that gives the alternative form of that character ("A" for "a", "8" for "8", etc.). If each character is stored in 8 bits (as in extended ASCII or ISO Latin 1), the table has only 2 = 256 entries; in the case of Unicode characters, the table would have 17×2 = 1114112 entries.
The same technique can be used to map two-letter country codes like "us" or "za" to country names (26 = 676 table entries), 5-digit zip codes like 13083 to city names (100000 entries), etc. Invalid data values (such as the country code "xx" or the zip code 00000) may be left undefined in the table or mapped to some appropriate "null" value.
If the keys are uniformly or sufficiently uniformly distributed over the key space, so that the key values are essentially random, they may be considered to be already 'hashed'. In this case, any number of any bits in the key may be extracted and collated as an index into the hash table. For example, a simple hash function might mask off the least significant m bits and use the result as an index into a hash table of size 2.
A folding hash code is produced by dividing the input into n sections of m bits, where 2 is the table size, and using a parity-preserving bitwise operation such as ADD or XOR to combine the sections, followed by a mask or shifts to trim off any excess bits at the high or low end. For example, for a table size of 15 bits and key value of 0x0123456789ABCDEF, there are five sections consisting of 0x4DEF, 0x1357, 0x159E, 0x091A and 0x8. Adding, we obtain 0x7AA4, a 15-bit value.
A mid-squares hash code is produced by squaring the input and extracting an appropriate number of middle digits or bits. For example, if the input is 123,456,789 and the hash table size 10,000, squaring the key produces 15,241,578,750,190,521, so the hash code is taken as the middle 4 digits of the 17-digit number (ignoring the high digit) 8750. The mid-squares method produces a reasonable hash code if there is not a lot of leading or trailing zeros in the key. This is a variant of multiplicative hashing, but not as good because an arbitrary key is not a good multiplier.
A standard technique is to use a modulo function on the key, by selecting a divisor M {\displaystyle M} which is a prime number close to the table size, so h ( K ) = K mod M {\displaystyle h(K)=K{\bmod {M}}} . The table size is usually a power of 2. This gives a distribution from { 0 , M − 1 } {\displaystyle \{0,M-1\}} . This gives good results over a large number of key sets. A significant drawback of division hashing is that division is microprogrammed on most modern architectures including x86 and can be 10 times slower than multiply. A second drawback is that it won't break up clustered keys. For example, the keys 123000, 456000, 789000, etc. modulo 1000 all map to the same address. This technique works well in practice because many key sets are sufficiently random already, and the probability that a key set will be cyclical by a large prime number is small.
Algebraic coding is a variant of the division method of hashing which uses division by a polynomial modulo 2 instead of an integer to map n bits to m bits. In this approach, M = 2 m {\displaystyle M=2^{m}} and we postulate an m {\displaystyle m} th degree polynomial Z ( x ) = x m + ζ m − 1 x m − 1 + . . . + ζ 0 {\displaystyle \mathrm {Z} (x)=x^{m}+\zeta _{m-1}x^{m-1}+...+\zeta _{0}} . A key K = ( k n − 1 . . . k 1 k 0 ) 2 {\displaystyle K=(k_{n-1}...k_{1}k_{0})_{2}} can be regarded as the polynomial K ( x ) = k n − 1 x n − 1 + . . . + k 1 x + k 0 {\displaystyle K(x)=k_{n-1}x^{n-1}+...+k_{1}x+k_{0}} . The remainder using polynomial arithmetic modulo 2 is K ( x ) mod Z ( x ) = h m − 1 x m − 1 + . . . + h 1 x + h 0 {\displaystyle K(x){\bmod {Z}}(x)=h_{m-1}x^{m-1}+...+h_{1}x+h_{0}} . Then h ( K ) = ( h m − 1 . . . h 1 h 0 ) 2 {\displaystyle h(K)=(h_{m-1}...h_{1}h_{0})_{2}} . If Z ( x ) {\displaystyle Z(x)} is constructed to have t {\displaystyle t} or fewer non-zero coefficients, then keys which share less than t {\displaystyle t} bits are guaranteed to not collide.
Z {\displaystyle Z} a function of k {\displaystyle k} , t {\displaystyle t} and n {\displaystyle n} , a divisor of 2 k − 1 {\displaystyle 2^{k}-1} , is constructed from the G F ( 2 k ) {\displaystyle GF(2^{k})} field. Knuth gives an example: for n=15, m=10 and t=7, Z ( x ) = x 10 + x 8 + x 5 + x 4 + x 2 + x + 1 {\displaystyle Z(x)=x^{10}+x^{8}+x^{5}+x^{4}+x^{2}+x+1} . The derivation is as follows:
Let S {\displaystyle S} be the smallest set of integers such that { 1 , 2 , . . . , t } ⊆ S {\displaystyle \{1,2,...,t\}\subseteq S} and ( 2 j mod n ) ∈ S ∀ j ∈ S {\displaystyle (2j{\bmod {n}})\in S\quad \forall j\in S} .
Define P ( x ) = ∏ j ∈ S ( x − α j ) {\displaystyle P(x)=\prod _{j\in S}(x-\alpha ^{j})} where α ∈ n G F ( 2 k ) {\displaystyle \alpha \in ^{n}GF(2^{k})} and where the coefficients of P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} are computed in this field. Then the degree of P ( x ) = | S | {\displaystyle P(x)=|S|} . Since α 2 j {\displaystyle \alpha ^{2j}} is a root of P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} whenever α j {\displaystyle \alpha ^{j}} is a root, it follows that the coefficients p i {\displaystyle p^{i}} of P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} satisfy p i 2 = p i {\displaystyle p_{i}^{2}=p_{i}} so they are all 0 or 1. If R ( x ) = r ( n − 1 ) x n − 1 + . . . + r 1 x + r 0 {\displaystyle R(x)=r_{(n-1)}x^{n-1}+...+r_{1}x+r_{0}} is any nonzero polynomial modulo 2 with at most t {\displaystyle t} nonzero coefficients, then R ( x ) {\displaystyle R(x)} is not a multiple of P ( x ) {\displaystyle P(x)} modulo 2. If follows that the corresponding hash function will map keys with fewer than t {\displaystyle t} bits in common to unique indices.
The usual outcome is that either n {\displaystyle n} will get large, or t {\displaystyle t} will get large, or both, for the scheme to be computationally feasible. Therefore, it's more suited to hardware or microcode implementation.
See also unique permutation hashing, which has a guaranteed best worst-case insertion time.
Standard multiplicative hashing uses the formula h a ( K ) = ⌊ ( a K mod W ) / ( W / M ) ⌋ {\displaystyle h_{a}(K)=\lfloor (aK{\bmod {W}})/(W/M)\rfloor } which produces a hash value in { 0 , … , M − 1 } {\displaystyle \{0,\ldots ,M-1\}} . The value a {\displaystyle a} is an appropriately chosen value that should be relatively prime to W {\displaystyle W} ; it should be large and its binary representation a random mix of 1's and 0's. An important practical special case occurs when W = 2 w {\displaystyle W=2^{w}} and M = 2 m {\displaystyle M=2^{m}} are powers of 2 and w {\displaystyle w} is the machine word size. In this case this formula becomes h a ( K ) = ⌊ ( a K mod 2 w ) / 2 w − m ⌋ {\displaystyle h_{a}(K)=\lfloor (aK{\bmod {2}}^{w})/2^{w-m}\rfloor } . This is special because arithmetic modulo 2 w {\displaystyle 2^{w}} is done by default in low-level programming languages and integer division by a power of 2 is simply a right-shift, so, in C, for example, this function becomes
and for fixed m {\displaystyle m} and w {\displaystyle w} this translates into a single integer multiplication and right-shift making it one of the fastest hash functions to compute.
Multiplicative hashing is susceptible to a "common mistake" that leads to poor diffusion—higher-value input bits do not affect lower-value output bits. A transmutation on the input which shifts the span of retained top bits down and XORs or ADDs them to the key before the multiplication step corrects for this. So the resulting function looks like:
Fibonacci hashing is a form of multiplicative hashing in which the multiplier is 2 w / ϕ {\displaystyle 2^{w}/\phi } , where w {\displaystyle w} is the machine word length and ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } (phi) is the golden ratio (approximately 5/3). A property of this multiplier is that it uniformly distributes over the table space, blocks of consecutive keys with respect to any block of bits in the key. Consecutive keys within the high bits or low bits of the key (or some other field) are relatively common. The multipliers for various word lengths w {\displaystyle ^{w}} are:
Tabulation hashing, more generally known as Zobrist hashing after Albert Zobrist, an American computer scientist, is a method for constructing universal families of hash functions by combining table lookup with XOR operations. This algorithm has proven to be very fast and of high quality for hashing purposes (especially hashing of integer-number keys).
Zobrist hashing was originally introduced as a means of compactly representing chess positions in computer game-playing programs. A unique random number was assigned to represent each type of piece (six each for black and white) on each space of the board. Thus a table of 64×12 such numbers is initialized at the start of the program. The random numbers could be any length, but 64 bits was natural due to the 64 squares on the board. A position was transcribed by cycling through the pieces in a position, indexing the corresponding random numbers (vacant spaces were not included in the calculation), and XORing them together (the starting value could be 0, the identity value for XOR, or a random seed). The resulting value was reduced by modulo, folding or some other operation to produce a hash table index. The original Zobrist hash was stored in the table as the representation of the position.
Later, the method was extended to hashing integers by representing each byte in each of 4 possible positions in the word by a unique 32-bit random number. Thus, a table of 2×4 of such random numbers is constructed. A 32-bit hashed integer is transcribed by successively indexing the table with the value of each byte of the plain text integer and XORing the loaded values together (again, the starting value can be the identity value or a random seed). The natural extension to 64-bit integers is by use of a table of 2×8 64-bit random numbers.
This kind of function has some nice theoretical properties, one of which is called 3-tuple independence meaning every 3-tuple of keys is equally likely to be mapped to any 3-tuple of hash values.
A hash function can be designed to exploit existing entropy in the keys. If the keys have leading or trailing zeros, or particular fields that are unused, always zero or some other constant, or generally vary little, then masking out only the volatile bits and hashing on those will provide a better and possibly faster hash function. Selected divisors or multipliers in the division and multiplicative schemes may make more uniform hash functions if the keys are cyclic or have other redundancies.
When the data values are long (or variable-length) character strings—such as personal names, web page addresses, or mail messages—their distribution is usually very uneven, with complicated dependencies. For example, text in any natural language has highly non-uniform distributions of characters, and character pairs, characteristic of the language. For such data, it is prudent to use a hash function that depends on all characters of the string—and depends on each character in a different way.
Simplistic hash functions may add the first and last n characters of a string along with the length, or form a word-size hash from the middle 4 characters of a string. This saves iterating over the (potentially long) string, but hash functions that do not hash on all characters of a string can readily become linear due to redundancies, clustering or other pathologies in the key set. Such strategies may be effective as a custom hash function if the structure of the keys is such that either the middle, ends or other fields are zero or some other invariant constant that doesn't differentiate the keys; then the invariant parts of the keys can be ignored.
The paradigmatic example of folding by characters is to add up the integer values of all the characters in the string. A better idea is to multiply the hash total by a constant, typically a sizable prime number, before adding in the next character, ignoring overflow. Using exclusive 'or' instead of add is also a plausible alternative. The final operation would be a modulo, mask, or other function to reduce the word value to an index the size of the table. The weakness of this procedure is that information may cluster in the upper or lower bits of the bytes, which clustering will remain in the hashed result and cause more collisions than a proper randomizing hash. ASCII byte codes, for example, have an upper bit of 0 and printable strings don't use the first 32 byte codes, so the information (95-byte codes) is clustered in the remaining bits in an unobvious manner.
The classic approach dubbed the PJW hash based on the work of Peter. J. Weinberger at ATT Bell Labs in the 1970s, was originally designed for hashing identifiers into compiler symbol tables as given in the "Dragon Book". This hash function offsets the bytes 4 bits before ADDing them together. When the quantity wraps, the high 4 bits are shifted out and if non-zero, XORed back into the low byte of the cumulative quantity. The result is a word size hash code to which a modulo or other reducing operation can be applied to produce the final hash index.
Today, especially with the advent of 64-bit word sizes, much more efficient variable-length string hashing by word chunks is available.
Modern microprocessors will allow for much faster processing if 8-bit character strings are not hashed by processing one character at a time, but by interpreting the string as an array of 32 bit or 64-bit integers and hashing/accumulating these "wide word" integer values by means of arithmetic operations (e.g. multiplication by constant and bit-shifting). The final word, which may have unoccupied byte positions, is filled with zeros or a specified "randomizing" value before being folded into the hash. The accumulated hash code is reduced by a final modulo or other operation to yield an index into the table.
Analogous to the way an ASCII or EBCDIC character string representing a decimal number is converted to a numeric quantity for computing, a variable length string can be converted as (x0a+x1a+...+xk−2a+xk−1). This is simply a polynomial in a radix a > 1 that takes the components (x0,x1,...,xk−1) as the characters of the input string of length k. It can be used directly as the hash code, or a hash function applied to it to map the potentially large value to the hash table size. The value of a is usually a prime number at least large enough to hold the number of different characters in the character set of potential keys. Radix conversion hashing of strings minimizes the number of collisions. Available data sizes may restrict the maximum length of string that can be hashed with this method. For example, a 128-bit double long word will hash only a 26 character alphabetic string (ignoring case) with a radix of 29; a printable ASCII string is limited to 9 characters using radix 97 and a 64-bit long word. However, alphabetic keys are usually of modest length, because keys must be stored in the hash table. Numeric character strings are usually not a problem; 64 bits can count up to 10, or 19 decimal digits with radix 10.
In some applications, such as substring search, one can compute a hash function h for every k-character substring of a given n-character string by advancing a window of width k characters along the string; where k is a fixed integer, and n is greater than k. The straightforward solution, which is to extract such a substring at every character position in the text and compute h separately, requires a number of operations proportional to k·n. However, with the proper choice of h, one can use the technique of rolling hash to compute all those hashes with an effort proportional to mk + n where m is the number of occurrences of the substring.
The most familiar algorithm of this type is Rabin-Karp with best and average case performance O(n+mk) and worst case O(n·k) (in all fairness, the worst case here is gravely pathological: both the text string and substring are composed of a repeated single character, such as t="AAAAAAAAAAA", and s="AAA"). The hash function used for the algorithm is usually the Rabin fingerprint, designed to avoid collisions in 8-bit character strings, but other suitable hash functions are also used.
Worst case result for a hash function can be assessed two ways: theoretical and practical. Theoretical worst case is the probability that all keys map to a single slot. Practical worst case is expected longest probe sequence (hash function + collision resolution method). This analysis considers uniform hashing, that is, any key will map to any particular slot with probability 1/m, characteristic of universal hash functions.
While Knuth worries about adversarial attack on real time systems, Gonnet has shown that the probability of such a case is "ridiculously small". His representation was that the probability of k of n keys mapping to a single slot is e − α α k k ! {\displaystyle {\frac {e^{-\alpha }\alpha ^{k}}{k!}}} where α is the load factor, n/m.
The term hash offers a natural analogy with its non-technical meaning (to chop up or make a mess out of something), given how hash functions scramble their input data to derive their output. In his research for the precise origin of the term, Donald Knuth notes that, while Hans Peter Luhn of IBM appears to have been the first to use the concept of a hash function in a memo dated January 1953, the term itself would only appear in published literature in the late 1960s, in Herbert Hellerman's Digital Computer System Principles, even though it was already widespread jargon by then. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values, though there are some hash functions that support variable length output. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values, hash codes, digests, or simply hashes. The values are usually used to index a fixed-size table called a hash table. Use of a hash function to index a hash table is called hashing or scatter storage addressing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hash functions and their associated hash tables are used in data storage and retrieval applications to access data in a small and nearly constant time per retrieval. They require an amount of storage space only fractionally greater than the total space required for the data or records themselves. Hashing is a computationally and storage space-efficient form of data access that avoids the non-constant access time of ordered and unordered lists and structured trees, and the often exponential storage requirements of direct access of state spaces of large or variable-length keys.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Use of hash functions relies on statistical properties of key and function interaction: worst-case behaviour is intolerably bad but rare, and average-case behaviour can be nearly optimal (minimal collision).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hash functions are related to (and often confused with) checksums, check digits, fingerprints, lossy compression, randomization functions, error-correcting codes, and ciphers. Although the concepts overlap to some extent, each one has its own uses and requirements and is designed and optimized differently. The hash function differs from these concepts mainly in terms of data integrity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A hash function takes a key as an input, which is associated with a datum or record and used to identify it to the data storage and retrieval application. The keys may be fixed length, like an integer, or variable length, like a name. In some cases, the key is the datum itself. The output is a hash code used to index a hash table holding the data or records, or pointers to them.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A hash function may be considered to perform three functions:",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A good hash function satisfies two basic properties: 1) it should be very fast to compute; 2) it should minimize duplication of output values (collisions). Hash functions rely on generating favourable probability distributions for their effectiveness, reducing access time to nearly constant. High table loading factors, pathological key sets and poorly designed hash functions can result in access times approaching linear in the number of items in the table. Hash functions can be designed to give the best worst-case performance, good performance under high table loading factors, and in special cases, perfect (collisionless) mapping of keys into hash codes. Implementation is based on parity-preserving bit operations (XOR and ADD), multiply, or divide. A necessary adjunct to the hash function is a collision-resolution method that employs an auxiliary data structure like linked lists, or systematic probing of the table to find an empty slot.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Hash functions are used in conjunction with hash tables to store and retrieve data items or data records. The hash function translates the key associated with each datum or record into a hash code, which is used to index the hash table. When an item is to be added to the table, the hash code may index an empty slot (also called a bucket), in which case the item is added to the table there. If the hash code indexes a full slot, some kind of collision resolution is required: the new item may be omitted (not added to the table), or replace the old item, or it can be added to the table in some other location by a specified procedure. That procedure depends on the structure of the hash table: In chained hashing, each slot is the head of a linked list or chain, and items that collide at the slot are added to the chain. Chains may be kept in random order and searched linearly, or in serial order, or as a self-ordering list by frequency to speed up access. In open address hashing, the table is probed starting from the occupied slot in a specified manner, usually by linear probing, quadratic probing, or double hashing until an open slot is located or the entire table is probed (overflow). Searching for the item follows the same procedure until the item is located, an open slot is found or the entire table has been searched (item not in table).",
"title": "Hash tables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hash functions are also used to build caches for large data sets stored in slow media. A cache is generally simpler than a hashed search table since any collision can be resolved by discarding or writing back the older of the two colliding items.",
"title": "Hash tables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hash functions are an essential ingredient of the Bloom filter, a space-efficient probabilistic data structure that is used to test whether an element is a member of a set.",
"title": "Hash tables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "A special case of hashing is known as geometric hashing or the grid method. In these applications, the set of all inputs is some sort of metric space, and the hashing function can be interpreted as a partition of that space into a grid of cells. The table is often an array with two or more indices (called a grid file, grid index, bucket grid, and similar names), and the hash function returns an index tuple. This principle is widely used in computer graphics, computational geometry and many other disciplines, to solve many proximity problems in the plane or in three-dimensional space, such as finding closest pairs in a set of points, similar shapes in a list of shapes, similar images in an image database, and so on.",
"title": "Hash tables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hash tables are also used to implement associative arrays and dynamic sets.",
"title": "Hash tables"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "A good hash function should map the expected inputs as evenly as possible over its output range. That is, every hash value in the output range should be generated with roughly the same probability. The reason for this last requirement is that the cost of hashing-based methods goes up sharply as the number of collisions—pairs of inputs that are mapped to the same hash value—increases. If some hash values are more likely to occur than others, a larger fraction of the lookup operations will have to search through a larger set of colliding table entries.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "This criterion only requires the value to be uniformly distributed, not random in any sense. A good randomizing function is (barring computational efficiency concerns) generally a good choice as a hash function, but the converse need not be true.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hash tables often contain only a small subset of the valid inputs. For instance, a club membership list may contain only a hundred or so member names, out of the very large set of all possible names. In these cases, the uniformity criterion should hold for almost all typical subsets of entries that may be found in the table, not just for the global set of all possible entries.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In other words, if a typical set of m records is hashed to n table slots, the probability of a bucket receiving many more than m/n records should be vanishingly small. In particular, if m is less than n, very few buckets should have more than one or two records. A small number of collisions is virtually inevitable, even if n is much larger than m – see the birthday problem.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In special cases when the keys are known in advance and the key set is static, a hash function can be found that achieves absolute (or collisionless) uniformity. Such a hash function is said to be perfect. There is no algorithmic way of constructing such a function - searching for one is a factorial function of the number of keys to be mapped versus the number of table slots they're tapped into. Finding a perfect hash function over more than a very small set of keys is usually computationally infeasible; the resulting function is likely to be more computationally complex than a standard hash function and provides only a marginal advantage over a function with good statistical properties that yields a minimum number of collisions. See universal hash function.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "When testing a hash function, the uniformity of the distribution of hash values can be evaluated by the chi-squared test. This test is a goodness-of-fit measure: it's the actual distribution of items in buckets versus the expected (or uniform) distribution of items. The formula is: ∑ j = 0 m − 1 ( b j ) ( b j + 1 ) / 2 ( n / 2 m ) ( n + 2 m − 1 ) {\\displaystyle {\\frac {\\sum _{j=0}^{m-1}(b_{j})(b_{j}+1)/2}{(n/2m)(n+2m-1)}}}",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "where: n {\\displaystyle n} is the number of keys, m {\\displaystyle m} is the number of buckets, b j {\\displaystyle b_{j}} is the number of items in bucket j {\\displaystyle j}",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A ratio within one confidence interval (0.95 - 1.05) is indicative that the hash function evaluated has an expected uniform distribution.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Hash functions can have some technical properties that make it more likely that they'll have a uniform distribution when applied. One is the strict avalanche criterion: whenever a single input bit is complemented, each of the output bits changes with a 50% probability. The reason for this property is that selected subsets of the keyspace may have low variability. For the output to be uniformly distributed, a low amount of variability, even one bit, should translate into a high amount of variability (i.e. distribution over the tablespace) in the output. Each bit should change with a probability of 50% because if some bits are reluctant to change, the keys become clustered around those values. If the bits want to change too readily, the mapping is approaching a fixed XOR function of a single bit. Standard tests for this property have been described in the literature. The relevance of the criterion to a multiplicative hash function is assessed here.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In data storage and retrieval applications, the use of a hash function is a trade-off between search time and data storage space. If search time were unbounded, a very compact unordered linear list would be the best medium; if storage space were unbounded, a randomly accessible structure indexable by the key-value would be very large, very sparse, but very fast. A hash function takes a finite amount of time to map a potentially large keyspace to a feasible amount of storage space searchable in a bounded amount of time regardless of the number of keys. In most applications, the hash function should be computable with minimum latency and secondarily in a minimum number of instructions.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Computational complexity varies with the number of instructions required and latency of individual instructions, with the simplest being the bitwise methods (folding), followed by the multiplicative methods, and the most complex (slowest) are the division-based methods.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Because collisions should be infrequent, and cause a marginal delay but are otherwise harmless, it's usually preferable to choose a faster hash function over one that needs more computation but saves a few collisions.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Division-based implementations can be of particular concern because the division is microprogrammed on nearly all chip architectures. Divide (modulo) by a constant can be inverted to become a multiply by the word-size multiplicative-inverse of the constant. This can be done by the programmer, or by the compiler. Divide can also be reduced directly into a series of shift-subtracts and shift-adds, though minimizing the number of such operations required is a daunting problem; the number of assembly instructions resulting may be more than a dozen, and swamp the pipeline. If the architecture has hardware multiply functional units, the multiply-by-inverse is likely a better approach.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "We can allow the table size n to not be a power of 2 and still not have to perform any remainder or division operation, as these computations are sometimes costly. For example, let n be significantly less than 2. Consider a pseudorandom number generator function P(key) that is uniform on the interval [0, 2 − 1]. A hash function uniform on the interval [0, n-1] is n P(key)/2. We can replace the division by a (possibly faster) right bit shift: nP(key) >> b.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "If keys are being hashed repeatedly, and the hash function is costly, computing time can be saved by precomputing the hash codes and storing them with the keys. Matching hash codes almost certainly means the keys are identical. This technique is used for the transposition table in game-playing programs, which stores a 64-bit hashed representation of the board position.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "A universal hashing scheme is a randomized algorithm that selects a hashing function h among a family of such functions, in such a way that the probability of a collision of any two distinct keys is 1/m, where m is the number of distinct hash values desired—independently of the two keys. Universal hashing ensures (in a probabilistic sense) that the hash function application will behave as well as if it were using a random function, for any distribution of the input data. It will, however, have more collisions than perfect hashing and may require more operations than a special-purpose hash function.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A hash function that allows only certain table sizes, strings only up to a certain length, or can't accept a seed (i.e. allow double hashing) isn't as useful as one that does.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A hash function is applicable in a variety of situations. Particularly within cryptography, notable applications include:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A hash procedure must be deterministic—meaning that for a given input value it must always generate the same hash value. In other words, it must be a function of the data to be hashed, in the mathematical sense of the term. This requirement excludes hash functions that depend on external variable parameters, such as pseudo-random number generators or the time of day. It also excludes functions that depend on the memory address of the object being hashed in cases that the address may change during execution (as may happen on systems that use certain methods of garbage collection), although sometimes rehashing of the item is possible.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The determinism is in the context of the reuse of the function. For example, Python adds the feature that hash functions make use of a randomized seed that is generated once when the Python process starts in addition to the input to be hashed. The Python hash (SipHash) is still a valid hash function when used within a single run. But if the values are persisted (for example, written to disk) they can no longer be treated as valid hash values, since in the next run the random value might differ.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "It is often desirable that the output of a hash function have fixed size (but see below). If, for example, the output is constrained to 32-bit integer values, the hash values can be used to index into an array. Such hashing is commonly used to accelerate data searches. Producing fixed-length output from variable length input can be accomplished by breaking the input data into chunks of specific size. Hash functions used for data searches use some arithmetic expression that iteratively processes chunks of the input (such as the characters in a string) to produce the hash value.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In many applications, the range of hash values may be different for each run of the program or may change along the same run (for instance, when a hash table needs to be expanded). In those situations, one needs a hash function which takes two parameters—the input data z, and the number n of allowed hash values.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A common solution is to compute a fixed hash function with a very large range (say, 0 to 2 − 1), divide the result by n, and use the division's remainder. If n is itself a power of 2, this can be done by bit masking and bit shifting. When this approach is used, the hash function must be chosen so that the result has fairly uniform distribution between 0 and n − 1, for any value of n that may occur in the application. Depending on the function, the remainder may be uniform only for certain values of n, e.g. odd or prime numbers.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "When the hash function is used to store values in a hash table that outlives the run of the program, and the hash table needs to be expanded or shrunk, the hash table is referred to as a dynamic hash table.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "A hash function that will relocate the minimum number of records when the table is resized is desirable. What is needed is a hash function H(z,n) – where z is the key being hashed and n is the number of allowed hash values – such that H(z,n + 1) = H(z,n) with probability close to n/(n + 1).",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Linear hashing and spiral hashing are examples of dynamic hash functions that execute in constant time but relax the property of uniformity to achieve the minimal movement property. Extendible hashing uses a dynamic hash function that requires space proportional to n to compute the hash function, and it becomes a function of the previous keys that have been inserted. Several algorithms that preserve the uniformity property but require time proportional to n to compute the value of H(z,n) have been invented.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "A hash function with minimal movement is especially useful in distributed hash tables.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In some applications, the input data may contain features that are irrelevant for comparison purposes. For example, when looking up a personal name, it may be desirable to ignore the distinction between upper and lower case letters. For such data, one must use a hash function that is compatible with the data equivalence criterion being used: that is, any two inputs that are considered equivalent must yield the same hash value. This can be accomplished by normalizing the input before hashing it, as by upper-casing all letters.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "There are several common algorithms for hashing integers. The method giving the best distribution is data-dependent. One of the simplest and most common methods in practice is the modulo division method.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "If the data to be hashed is small enough, one can use the data itself (reinterpreted as an integer) as the hashed value. The cost of computing this identity hash function is effectively zero. This hash function is perfect, as it maps each input to a distinct hash value.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The meaning of \"small enough\" depends on the size of the type that is used as the hashed value. For example, in Java, the hash code is a 32-bit integer. Thus the 32-bit integer Integer and 32-bit floating-point Float objects can simply use the value directly; whereas the 64-bit integer Long and 64-bit floating-point Double cannot use this method.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Other types of data can also use this hashing scheme. For example, when mapping character strings between upper and lower case, one can use the binary encoding of each character, interpreted as an integer, to index a table that gives the alternative form of that character (\"A\" for \"a\", \"8\" for \"8\", etc.). If each character is stored in 8 bits (as in extended ASCII or ISO Latin 1), the table has only 2 = 256 entries; in the case of Unicode characters, the table would have 17×2 = 1114112 entries.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The same technique can be used to map two-letter country codes like \"us\" or \"za\" to country names (26 = 676 table entries), 5-digit zip codes like 13083 to city names (100000 entries), etc. Invalid data values (such as the country code \"xx\" or the zip code 00000) may be left undefined in the table or mapped to some appropriate \"null\" value.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "If the keys are uniformly or sufficiently uniformly distributed over the key space, so that the key values are essentially random, they may be considered to be already 'hashed'. In this case, any number of any bits in the key may be extracted and collated as an index into the hash table. For example, a simple hash function might mask off the least significant m bits and use the result as an index into a hash table of size 2.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "A folding hash code is produced by dividing the input into n sections of m bits, where 2 is the table size, and using a parity-preserving bitwise operation such as ADD or XOR to combine the sections, followed by a mask or shifts to trim off any excess bits at the high or low end. For example, for a table size of 15 bits and key value of 0x0123456789ABCDEF, there are five sections consisting of 0x4DEF, 0x1357, 0x159E, 0x091A and 0x8. Adding, we obtain 0x7AA4, a 15-bit value.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "A mid-squares hash code is produced by squaring the input and extracting an appropriate number of middle digits or bits. For example, if the input is 123,456,789 and the hash table size 10,000, squaring the key produces 15,241,578,750,190,521, so the hash code is taken as the middle 4 digits of the 17-digit number (ignoring the high digit) 8750. The mid-squares method produces a reasonable hash code if there is not a lot of leading or trailing zeros in the key. This is a variant of multiplicative hashing, but not as good because an arbitrary key is not a good multiplier.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "A standard technique is to use a modulo function on the key, by selecting a divisor M {\\displaystyle M} which is a prime number close to the table size, so h ( K ) = K mod M {\\displaystyle h(K)=K{\\bmod {M}}} . The table size is usually a power of 2. This gives a distribution from { 0 , M − 1 } {\\displaystyle \\{0,M-1\\}} . This gives good results over a large number of key sets. A significant drawback of division hashing is that division is microprogrammed on most modern architectures including x86 and can be 10 times slower than multiply. A second drawback is that it won't break up clustered keys. For example, the keys 123000, 456000, 789000, etc. modulo 1000 all map to the same address. This technique works well in practice because many key sets are sufficiently random already, and the probability that a key set will be cyclical by a large prime number is small.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Algebraic coding is a variant of the division method of hashing which uses division by a polynomial modulo 2 instead of an integer to map n bits to m bits. In this approach, M = 2 m {\\displaystyle M=2^{m}} and we postulate an m {\\displaystyle m} th degree polynomial Z ( x ) = x m + ζ m − 1 x m − 1 + . . . + ζ 0 {\\displaystyle \\mathrm {Z} (x)=x^{m}+\\zeta _{m-1}x^{m-1}+...+\\zeta _{0}} . A key K = ( k n − 1 . . . k 1 k 0 ) 2 {\\displaystyle K=(k_{n-1}...k_{1}k_{0})_{2}} can be regarded as the polynomial K ( x ) = k n − 1 x n − 1 + . . . + k 1 x + k 0 {\\displaystyle K(x)=k_{n-1}x^{n-1}+...+k_{1}x+k_{0}} . The remainder using polynomial arithmetic modulo 2 is K ( x ) mod Z ( x ) = h m − 1 x m − 1 + . . . + h 1 x + h 0 {\\displaystyle K(x){\\bmod {Z}}(x)=h_{m-1}x^{m-1}+...+h_{1}x+h_{0}} . Then h ( K ) = ( h m − 1 . . . h 1 h 0 ) 2 {\\displaystyle h(K)=(h_{m-1}...h_{1}h_{0})_{2}} . If Z ( x ) {\\displaystyle Z(x)} is constructed to have t {\\displaystyle t} or fewer non-zero coefficients, then keys which share less than t {\\displaystyle t} bits are guaranteed to not collide.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Z {\\displaystyle Z} a function of k {\\displaystyle k} , t {\\displaystyle t} and n {\\displaystyle n} , a divisor of 2 k − 1 {\\displaystyle 2^{k}-1} , is constructed from the G F ( 2 k ) {\\displaystyle GF(2^{k})} field. Knuth gives an example: for n=15, m=10 and t=7, Z ( x ) = x 10 + x 8 + x 5 + x 4 + x 2 + x + 1 {\\displaystyle Z(x)=x^{10}+x^{8}+x^{5}+x^{4}+x^{2}+x+1} . The derivation is as follows:",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Let S {\\displaystyle S} be the smallest set of integers such that { 1 , 2 , . . . , t } ⊆ S {\\displaystyle \\{1,2,...,t\\}\\subseteq S} and ( 2 j mod n ) ∈ S ∀ j ∈ S {\\displaystyle (2j{\\bmod {n}})\\in S\\quad \\forall j\\in S} .",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Define P ( x ) = ∏ j ∈ S ( x − α j ) {\\displaystyle P(x)=\\prod _{j\\in S}(x-\\alpha ^{j})} where α ∈ n G F ( 2 k ) {\\displaystyle \\alpha \\in ^{n}GF(2^{k})} and where the coefficients of P ( x ) {\\displaystyle P(x)} are computed in this field. Then the degree of P ( x ) = | S | {\\displaystyle P(x)=|S|} . Since α 2 j {\\displaystyle \\alpha ^{2j}} is a root of P ( x ) {\\displaystyle P(x)} whenever α j {\\displaystyle \\alpha ^{j}} is a root, it follows that the coefficients p i {\\displaystyle p^{i}} of P ( x ) {\\displaystyle P(x)} satisfy p i 2 = p i {\\displaystyle p_{i}^{2}=p_{i}} so they are all 0 or 1. If R ( x ) = r ( n − 1 ) x n − 1 + . . . + r 1 x + r 0 {\\displaystyle R(x)=r_{(n-1)}x^{n-1}+...+r_{1}x+r_{0}} is any nonzero polynomial modulo 2 with at most t {\\displaystyle t} nonzero coefficients, then R ( x ) {\\displaystyle R(x)} is not a multiple of P ( x ) {\\displaystyle P(x)} modulo 2. If follows that the corresponding hash function will map keys with fewer than t {\\displaystyle t} bits in common to unique indices.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The usual outcome is that either n {\\displaystyle n} will get large, or t {\\displaystyle t} will get large, or both, for the scheme to be computationally feasible. Therefore, it's more suited to hardware or microcode implementation.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "See also unique permutation hashing, which has a guaranteed best worst-case insertion time.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Standard multiplicative hashing uses the formula h a ( K ) = ⌊ ( a K mod W ) / ( W / M ) ⌋ {\\displaystyle h_{a}(K)=\\lfloor (aK{\\bmod {W}})/(W/M)\\rfloor } which produces a hash value in { 0 , … , M − 1 } {\\displaystyle \\{0,\\ldots ,M-1\\}} . The value a {\\displaystyle a} is an appropriately chosen value that should be relatively prime to W {\\displaystyle W} ; it should be large and its binary representation a random mix of 1's and 0's. An important practical special case occurs when W = 2 w {\\displaystyle W=2^{w}} and M = 2 m {\\displaystyle M=2^{m}} are powers of 2 and w {\\displaystyle w} is the machine word size. In this case this formula becomes h a ( K ) = ⌊ ( a K mod 2 w ) / 2 w − m ⌋ {\\displaystyle h_{a}(K)=\\lfloor (aK{\\bmod {2}}^{w})/2^{w-m}\\rfloor } . This is special because arithmetic modulo 2 w {\\displaystyle 2^{w}} is done by default in low-level programming languages and integer division by a power of 2 is simply a right-shift, so, in C, for example, this function becomes",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "and for fixed m {\\displaystyle m} and w {\\displaystyle w} this translates into a single integer multiplication and right-shift making it one of the fastest hash functions to compute.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Multiplicative hashing is susceptible to a \"common mistake\" that leads to poor diffusion—higher-value input bits do not affect lower-value output bits. A transmutation on the input which shifts the span of retained top bits down and XORs or ADDs them to the key before the multiplication step corrects for this. So the resulting function looks like:",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Fibonacci hashing is a form of multiplicative hashing in which the multiplier is 2 w / ϕ {\\displaystyle 2^{w}/\\phi } , where w {\\displaystyle w} is the machine word length and ϕ {\\displaystyle \\phi } (phi) is the golden ratio (approximately 5/3). A property of this multiplier is that it uniformly distributes over the table space, blocks of consecutive keys with respect to any block of bits in the key. Consecutive keys within the high bits or low bits of the key (or some other field) are relatively common. The multipliers for various word lengths w {\\displaystyle ^{w}} are:",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Tabulation hashing, more generally known as Zobrist hashing after Albert Zobrist, an American computer scientist, is a method for constructing universal families of hash functions by combining table lookup with XOR operations. This algorithm has proven to be very fast and of high quality for hashing purposes (especially hashing of integer-number keys).",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Zobrist hashing was originally introduced as a means of compactly representing chess positions in computer game-playing programs. A unique random number was assigned to represent each type of piece (six each for black and white) on each space of the board. Thus a table of 64×12 such numbers is initialized at the start of the program. The random numbers could be any length, but 64 bits was natural due to the 64 squares on the board. A position was transcribed by cycling through the pieces in a position, indexing the corresponding random numbers (vacant spaces were not included in the calculation), and XORing them together (the starting value could be 0, the identity value for XOR, or a random seed). The resulting value was reduced by modulo, folding or some other operation to produce a hash table index. The original Zobrist hash was stored in the table as the representation of the position.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Later, the method was extended to hashing integers by representing each byte in each of 4 possible positions in the word by a unique 32-bit random number. Thus, a table of 2×4 of such random numbers is constructed. A 32-bit hashed integer is transcribed by successively indexing the table with the value of each byte of the plain text integer and XORing the loaded values together (again, the starting value can be the identity value or a random seed). The natural extension to 64-bit integers is by use of a table of 2×8 64-bit random numbers.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "This kind of function has some nice theoretical properties, one of which is called 3-tuple independence meaning every 3-tuple of keys is equally likely to be mapped to any 3-tuple of hash values.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "A hash function can be designed to exploit existing entropy in the keys. If the keys have leading or trailing zeros, or particular fields that are unused, always zero or some other constant, or generally vary little, then masking out only the volatile bits and hashing on those will provide a better and possibly faster hash function. Selected divisors or multipliers in the division and multiplicative schemes may make more uniform hash functions if the keys are cyclic or have other redundancies.",
"title": "Hashing integer data types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "When the data values are long (or variable-length) character strings—such as personal names, web page addresses, or mail messages—their distribution is usually very uneven, with complicated dependencies. For example, text in any natural language has highly non-uniform distributions of characters, and character pairs, characteristic of the language. For such data, it is prudent to use a hash function that depends on all characters of the string—and depends on each character in a different way.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Simplistic hash functions may add the first and last n characters of a string along with the length, or form a word-size hash from the middle 4 characters of a string. This saves iterating over the (potentially long) string, but hash functions that do not hash on all characters of a string can readily become linear due to redundancies, clustering or other pathologies in the key set. Such strategies may be effective as a custom hash function if the structure of the keys is such that either the middle, ends or other fields are zero or some other invariant constant that doesn't differentiate the keys; then the invariant parts of the keys can be ignored.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The paradigmatic example of folding by characters is to add up the integer values of all the characters in the string. A better idea is to multiply the hash total by a constant, typically a sizable prime number, before adding in the next character, ignoring overflow. Using exclusive 'or' instead of add is also a plausible alternative. The final operation would be a modulo, mask, or other function to reduce the word value to an index the size of the table. The weakness of this procedure is that information may cluster in the upper or lower bits of the bytes, which clustering will remain in the hashed result and cause more collisions than a proper randomizing hash. ASCII byte codes, for example, have an upper bit of 0 and printable strings don't use the first 32 byte codes, so the information (95-byte codes) is clustered in the remaining bits in an unobvious manner.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The classic approach dubbed the PJW hash based on the work of Peter. J. Weinberger at ATT Bell Labs in the 1970s, was originally designed for hashing identifiers into compiler symbol tables as given in the \"Dragon Book\". This hash function offsets the bytes 4 bits before ADDing them together. When the quantity wraps, the high 4 bits are shifted out and if non-zero, XORed back into the low byte of the cumulative quantity. The result is a word size hash code to which a modulo or other reducing operation can be applied to produce the final hash index.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Today, especially with the advent of 64-bit word sizes, much more efficient variable-length string hashing by word chunks is available.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Modern microprocessors will allow for much faster processing if 8-bit character strings are not hashed by processing one character at a time, but by interpreting the string as an array of 32 bit or 64-bit integers and hashing/accumulating these \"wide word\" integer values by means of arithmetic operations (e.g. multiplication by constant and bit-shifting). The final word, which may have unoccupied byte positions, is filled with zeros or a specified \"randomizing\" value before being folded into the hash. The accumulated hash code is reduced by a final modulo or other operation to yield an index into the table.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Analogous to the way an ASCII or EBCDIC character string representing a decimal number is converted to a numeric quantity for computing, a variable length string can be converted as (x0a+x1a+...+xk−2a+xk−1). This is simply a polynomial in a radix a > 1 that takes the components (x0,x1,...,xk−1) as the characters of the input string of length k. It can be used directly as the hash code, or a hash function applied to it to map the potentially large value to the hash table size. The value of a is usually a prime number at least large enough to hold the number of different characters in the character set of potential keys. Radix conversion hashing of strings minimizes the number of collisions. Available data sizes may restrict the maximum length of string that can be hashed with this method. For example, a 128-bit double long word will hash only a 26 character alphabetic string (ignoring case) with a radix of 29; a printable ASCII string is limited to 9 characters using radix 97 and a 64-bit long word. However, alphabetic keys are usually of modest length, because keys must be stored in the hash table. Numeric character strings are usually not a problem; 64 bits can count up to 10, or 19 decimal digits with radix 10.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In some applications, such as substring search, one can compute a hash function h for every k-character substring of a given n-character string by advancing a window of width k characters along the string; where k is a fixed integer, and n is greater than k. The straightforward solution, which is to extract such a substring at every character position in the text and compute h separately, requires a number of operations proportional to k·n. However, with the proper choice of h, one can use the technique of rolling hash to compute all those hashes with an effort proportional to mk + n where m is the number of occurrences of the substring.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The most familiar algorithm of this type is Rabin-Karp with best and average case performance O(n+mk) and worst case O(n·k) (in all fairness, the worst case here is gravely pathological: both the text string and substring are composed of a repeated single character, such as t=\"AAAAAAAAAAA\", and s=\"AAA\"). The hash function used for the algorithm is usually the Rabin fingerprint, designed to avoid collisions in 8-bit character strings, but other suitable hash functions are also used.",
"title": "Hashing variable-length data"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Worst case result for a hash function can be assessed two ways: theoretical and practical. Theoretical worst case is the probability that all keys map to a single slot. Practical worst case is expected longest probe sequence (hash function + collision resolution method). This analysis considers uniform hashing, that is, any key will map to any particular slot with probability 1/m, characteristic of universal hash functions.",
"title": "Analysis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "While Knuth worries about adversarial attack on real time systems, Gonnet has shown that the probability of such a case is \"ridiculously small\". His representation was that the probability of k of n keys mapping to a single slot is e − α α k k ! {\\displaystyle {\\frac {e^{-\\alpha }\\alpha ^{k}}{k!}}} where α is the load factor, n/m.",
"title": "Analysis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The term hash offers a natural analogy with its non-technical meaning (to chop up or make a mess out of something), given how hash functions scramble their input data to derive their output. In his research for the precise origin of the term, Donald Knuth notes that, while Hans Peter Luhn of IBM appears to have been the first to use the concept of a hash function in a memo dated January 1953, the term itself would only appear in published literature in the late 1960s, in Herbert Hellerman's Digital Computer System Principles, even though it was already widespread jargon by then.",
"title": "History"
}
]
| A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values, though there are some hash functions that support variable length output. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values, hash codes, digests, or simply hashes. The values are usually used to index a fixed-size table called a hash table. Use of a hash function to index a hash table is called hashing or scatter storage addressing. Hash functions and their associated hash tables are used in data storage and retrieval applications to access data in a small and nearly constant time per retrieval. They require an amount of storage space only fractionally greater than the total space required for the data or records themselves. Hashing is a computationally and storage space-efficient form of data access that avoids the non-constant access time of ordered and unordered lists and structured trees, and the often exponential storage requirements of direct access of state spaces of large or variable-length keys. Use of hash functions relies on statistical properties of key and function interaction: worst-case behaviour is intolerably bad but rare, and average-case behaviour can be nearly optimal. Hash functions are related to checksums, check digits, fingerprints, lossy compression, randomization functions, error-correcting codes, and ciphers. Although the concepts overlap to some extent, each one has its own uses and requirements and is designed and optimized differently. The hash function differs from these concepts mainly in terms of data integrity. | 2001-09-27T02:55:39Z | 2023-12-11T16:49:27Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function |
13,791 | High jump | The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form, and the current universally preferred method is the Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.
The discipline is, alongside the pole vault, one of two vertical clearance events in the Olympic athletics program. It is contested at the World Championships in Athletics and the World Athletics Indoor Championships, and is a common occurrence at track and field meets. The high jump was among the first events deemed acceptable for women, having been held at the 1928 Olympic Games.
Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) is the current world record holder with a jump of 2.45 m (8 ft 1⁄4 in) set in 1993 – the longest-standing record in the history of the men's high jump. Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) has held the women's world record of 2.09 m (6 ft 10+1⁄4 in) since 1987, also the longest-held record in the event.
The rules set for the high jump by World Athletics (previously named the IAAF) are Technical Rules TR26 and TR27 (previously Rules 181 and 182). Jumpers must take off from one foot. A jump is considered a failure if the jumper dislodges the bar or touches the ground or any object behind the bar before clearance.
Competitors may begin jumping at any height announced by the chief judge, or may pass at their own discretion. Most competitions state that three consecutive missed jumps, at any height or combination of heights, will eliminate the jumper from contention. The victory goes to the jumper who clears the greatest height during the final.
If two or more jumpers tie for any place, the tie-breakers are: 1) the fewest misses at the height at which the tie occurred; and 2) the fewest misses throughout the competition. If the event remains tied for first place (or a limited-advancement position to a subsequent meet), the jumpers have a jump-off, beginning at the next height above their highest success. Jumpers have one attempt at each height. If only one succeeds, he or she wins; if more than one does, these try with the bar raised; if none does, all try with the bar lowered. This process was followed at the 2015 World Championship men's event.
In the example jump-off above, the final cleared height is 1.88m, at which A B C and D each have one failure. D has two failures at lower heights compared to one each for the other three, who proceed to a jump-off at the next height above the final cleared height. C is eliminated in the second round of the jump-off 1.89m, then B wins in the third round.
A 2009 rule-change makes the jump-off optional, so that first place can be shared by agreement among tied athletes. This rule led to shared gold in the 2020 Olympic men's event held in 2021.
The first recorded high jump event took place in Scotland in the 19th century. Early jumpers used either an elaborate straight-on approach or a scissors technique. In later years, the bar was approached diagonally, and the jumper threw first the inside leg and then the other over the bar in a scissoring motion.
Around the turn of the 20th century, techniques began to change, beginning with the Irish-American Michael Sweeney's Eastern cut-off as a variation of the scissors technique. By taking off as in the scissors method, extending his spine and flattening out over the bar, Sweeney raised the world record to 1.97 m (6 ft 5+1⁄2 in) in 1895. Even in 1948, John Winter of Australia won the gold medal of the 1948 London Olympics with this style. Besides, one of the most successful female high jumper, Iolanda Balaș of Romania, used this style to dominate women's high jump for about 10 years until her retirement at 1967.
Another American, George Horine, developed an even more efficient technique, the Western roll. In this style, the bar again is approached on a diagonal, but the inner leg is used for the take-off, while the outer leg is thrust up to lead the body sideways over the bar. Horine increased the world standard to 2.01 m (6 ft 7 in) in 1912. His technique was predominant through the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in which the event was won by Cornelius Johnson at 2.03 m (6 ft 7+3⁄4 in).
American and Soviet jumpers were the most successful for the next four decades, and they pioneered the straddle technique. Straddle jumpers took off as in the Western roll but rotated their torso, belly-down, around the bar, obtaining the most efficient and highest clearance up to that time. Straddle jumper Charles Dumas was the first to clear 7ft (2.13m), in 1956. American John Thomas pushed the world mark to 2.23 m (7 ft 3+3⁄4 in) in 1960. Valeriy Brumel of the Soviet Union took over the event for the next four years, radically speeding up his approach run. He took the record up to 2.28 m (7 ft 5+3⁄4 in) and won the gold medal of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, before a motorcycle accident ended his career in 1965.
American coaches, including two-time NCAA champion Frank Costello of the University of Maryland, flocked to Russia to learn from Brumel and his coaches like Vladimir Dyachkov. However, it would be a solitary innovator at Oregon State University, Dick Fosbury, who would bring the high jump into the next century.
Taking advantage of the raised, softer, artificially-cushioned landing areas that were in use by then, Fosbury added a new twist to the outmoded Eastern cut-off. He directed himself over the bar head and shoulders first, going over on his back and landing in a fashion that would likely have resulted in serious injury in the old ground-level landing pits, which were usually filled with sawdust or sand mixtures. Around the same time, Debbie Brill independently came up with the same technique, which she called the 'Brill Bend'.
Since Fosbury used his new style, called the Fosbury flop, to win the gold medal of the 1968 Mexico Olympics, its use spread quickly, and soon "floppers" were dominating international high jump competitions. The first flopper setting a world record was the American Dwight Stones, who cleared 2.30 m (7 ft 6+1⁄2 in) in 1973. In the female side, the 16-year-old flopper Ulrike Meyfarth from West Germany won the gold medal of the 1972 Munich Olympics at 1.92 m (6 ft 3+1⁄2 in), which tied the women's world record at that time (held by the Austrian straddler Ilona Gusenbauer a year before). However, it was not until 1978 when a flopper, Sara Simeoni of Italy, broke the women's world record.
Successful high jumpers following Fosbury's lead also included the rival of Dwight Stones, 1.73 metres (5 ft 8 in)-tall Franklin Jacobs of Paterson, New Jersey, who cleared 2.32 m (7 ft 7+1⁄4 in), 0.59 metres (1 ft 11 in) over his head (a feat equalled 27 years later by Stefan Holm of Sweden); Chinese record-setters Ni-chi Chin and Zhu Jianhua; Germans Gerd Wessig and Dietmar Mögenburg; Swedish Olympic medalist and former world record holder Patrik Sjöberg; female jumpers Ulrike Meyfarth of West Germany and Sara Simeoni of Italy.
In spite of this, the straddle technique did not disappear at once. In 1977, the 18-year-old Soviet straddler Vladimir Yashchenko set a new world record 2.33 m (7 ft 7+1⁄2 in). In 1978, he raised the record to 2.34 m (7 ft 8 in), and 2.35 m (7 ft 8+1⁄2 in) indoor, just before a knee injury effectively ended his career when he was only 20 years old. In the female side, the straddler Rosemarie Ackermann of East Germany, who was the first female jumper ever to clear 2 m (6 ft 6+1⁄2 in), raised the world record from 1.95 m (6 ft 4+3⁄4 in) to 2.00 m (6 ft 6+1⁄2 in) during 1974 to 1977. In fact, from 2 June 1977 to 3 August 1978, almost 10 years after Fosbury's success, the men's and women's world records were still held by straddle jumpers Yashchenko and Ackermann respectively. However, they were the last world record holders using the straddle technique. Ackermann also won the gold medal of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which was the last time for a straddle jumper (male or female) to win an Olympic medal.
In 1980, the Polish flopper, 1976 Olympic gold medalist Jacek Wszoła, broke Yashchenko's world record at 2.35 m (7 ft 8+1⁄2 in). Two years before, the female Italian flopper Sara Simeoni, the long-term rival of Ackermann, broke Ackermann's world record at 2.01 m (6 ft 7 in) and became the first female flopper to break the women's world record. She also won the gold medal of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, where Ackermann placed fourth. Since then, the flop style has been completely dominant. All other techniques were almost extinct in serious high jump competitions after late 1980s.
Technique and form have evolved greatly over the history of high jump. The Fosbury Flop is currently considered the most efficient way for competitors to propel themselves over the bar.
For a Fosbury Flop, depending on the athlete's jump foot, they start on the right or left of the high jump mat, placing their jump foot farthest away from the mat. They take an eight- to ten-step approach, with the first three to five steps being in a straight line and the last five being on a curve. Athletes generally mark their approach in order to find as much consistency as possible.
The approach run can be more important than the takeoff. If a high jumper runs with bad timing or without enough aggression, clearing the bar becomes more of a challenge. The approach requires a certain shape or curve, the right amount of speed, and the correct number of strides. The approach angle is also critical for optimal height.
The straight run builds the momentum and sets the tone for a jump. The athlete starts by pushing off their takeoff foot with slow, powerful steps, then begins to accelerate. They should be running upright by the end of the straight portion.
The athlete's takeoff foot will be landing on the first step of the curve, and they will continue to accelerate, focusing their body towards the opposite back corner of the high jump mat. While staying erect and leaning away from the mat, the athlete takes their final two steps flat-footed, rolling from the heel to the toe.
Most great straddle jumpers run at angles of about 30 to 40 degrees. The length of the run is determined by the speed of the approach. A slower run requires about eight strides, but a faster high jumper might need about 13 strides. Greater speed allows a greater part of the body's forward momentum to be converted upward.
The J approach favored by Fosbury floppers allows for speed, the ability to turn in the air (centripetal force), and a good takeoff position, which helps turn horizontal momentum into vertical momentum. The approach should be a hard, controlled stride so that the athlete does not fall from running at an angle. Athletes should lean into the curve from their ankles, not their hips. This allows their hips to rotate during takeoff, which in turn allows their center of gravity to pass under the bar.
The takeoff can be double-arm or single-arm. In both cases, the plant foot should be the foot farthest from the bar, angled towards the opposite back corner of the mat, as they drive up the knee on their non-takeoff leg. This is accompanied by a one- or two-arm swing while driving the knee.
Unlike the straddle technique, where the takeoff foot is "planted" in the same spot regardless of the height of the bar, flop-style jumpers must adjust their approach run as the bar is raised so that their takeoff spot is slightly farther out from the bar. Jumpers attempting to reach record heights commonly fail when most of their energy is directed into the vertical effort and they knock the bar off the standards with the backs of their legs as they stall.
An effective approach shape can be derived from physics. For example, the rate of backward spin required as the jumper crosses the bar in order to facilitate shoulder clearance on the way up and foot clearance on the way down can be determined by computer simulation. This rotation rate can be back-calculated to determine the required angle of lean away from the bar at the moment of planting, based on how long the jumper is on the takeoff foot. This information, together with the jumper's speed, can be used to calculate the radius of the curved part of the approach. One can also work in the opposite direction by assuming a certain approach radius and determining the resulting backward rotation.
Drills can be practiced to solidify the approach. One drill is to run in a straight line and then run two to three circles spiraling into one another. Another is to run or skip a circle of any size two to three times in a row. It is important to leap upwards without first leaning into the bar, allowing the momentum of the J approach to carry the body across the bar.
The knee on the athlete's non-takeoff leg naturally turns their body, placing them in the air with their back to the bar. The athlete then drives their shoulders towards the back of their feet, arching their body over the bar. They can look over their shoulder to judge when to kick both feet over their head, causing their body to clear the bar and land on the mat.
The following athletes have had their personal best annulled due to doping offences:
The following athletes have had their personal best annulled due to doping offences:
Athletes who have won multiple titles at the two most important competitions, the Olympic Games and the World Championships:
Kostadinova and Sotomayor are the only high jumpers to have been Olympic Champion, World Champion and broken the world record. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form, and the current universally preferred method is the Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The discipline is, alongside the pole vault, one of two vertical clearance events in the Olympic athletics program. It is contested at the World Championships in Athletics and the World Athletics Indoor Championships, and is a common occurrence at track and field meets. The high jump was among the first events deemed acceptable for women, having been held at the 1928 Olympic Games.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) is the current world record holder with a jump of 2.45 m (8 ft 1⁄4 in) set in 1993 – the longest-standing record in the history of the men's high jump. Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) has held the women's world record of 2.09 m (6 ft 10+1⁄4 in) since 1987, also the longest-held record in the event.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The rules set for the high jump by World Athletics (previously named the IAAF) are Technical Rules TR26 and TR27 (previously Rules 181 and 182). Jumpers must take off from one foot. A jump is considered a failure if the jumper dislodges the bar or touches the ground or any object behind the bar before clearance.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Competitors may begin jumping at any height announced by the chief judge, or may pass at their own discretion. Most competitions state that three consecutive missed jumps, at any height or combination of heights, will eliminate the jumper from contention. The victory goes to the jumper who clears the greatest height during the final.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "If two or more jumpers tie for any place, the tie-breakers are: 1) the fewest misses at the height at which the tie occurred; and 2) the fewest misses throughout the competition. If the event remains tied for first place (or a limited-advancement position to a subsequent meet), the jumpers have a jump-off, beginning at the next height above their highest success. Jumpers have one attempt at each height. If only one succeeds, he or she wins; if more than one does, these try with the bar raised; if none does, all try with the bar lowered. This process was followed at the 2015 World Championship men's event.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the example jump-off above, the final cleared height is 1.88m, at which A B C and D each have one failure. D has two failures at lower heights compared to one each for the other three, who proceed to a jump-off at the next height above the final cleared height. C is eliminated in the second round of the jump-off 1.89m, then B wins in the third round.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A 2009 rule-change makes the jump-off optional, so that first place can be shared by agreement among tied athletes. This rule led to shared gold in the 2020 Olympic men's event held in 2021.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first recorded high jump event took place in Scotland in the 19th century. Early jumpers used either an elaborate straight-on approach or a scissors technique. In later years, the bar was approached diagonally, and the jumper threw first the inside leg and then the other over the bar in a scissoring motion.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Around the turn of the 20th century, techniques began to change, beginning with the Irish-American Michael Sweeney's Eastern cut-off as a variation of the scissors technique. By taking off as in the scissors method, extending his spine and flattening out over the bar, Sweeney raised the world record to 1.97 m (6 ft 5+1⁄2 in) in 1895. Even in 1948, John Winter of Australia won the gold medal of the 1948 London Olympics with this style. Besides, one of the most successful female high jumper, Iolanda Balaș of Romania, used this style to dominate women's high jump for about 10 years until her retirement at 1967.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Another American, George Horine, developed an even more efficient technique, the Western roll. In this style, the bar again is approached on a diagonal, but the inner leg is used for the take-off, while the outer leg is thrust up to lead the body sideways over the bar. Horine increased the world standard to 2.01 m (6 ft 7 in) in 1912. His technique was predominant through the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in which the event was won by Cornelius Johnson at 2.03 m (6 ft 7+3⁄4 in).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "American and Soviet jumpers were the most successful for the next four decades, and they pioneered the straddle technique. Straddle jumpers took off as in the Western roll but rotated their torso, belly-down, around the bar, obtaining the most efficient and highest clearance up to that time. Straddle jumper Charles Dumas was the first to clear 7ft (2.13m), in 1956. American John Thomas pushed the world mark to 2.23 m (7 ft 3+3⁄4 in) in 1960. Valeriy Brumel of the Soviet Union took over the event for the next four years, radically speeding up his approach run. He took the record up to 2.28 m (7 ft 5+3⁄4 in) and won the gold medal of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, before a motorcycle accident ended his career in 1965.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "American coaches, including two-time NCAA champion Frank Costello of the University of Maryland, flocked to Russia to learn from Brumel and his coaches like Vladimir Dyachkov. However, it would be a solitary innovator at Oregon State University, Dick Fosbury, who would bring the high jump into the next century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Taking advantage of the raised, softer, artificially-cushioned landing areas that were in use by then, Fosbury added a new twist to the outmoded Eastern cut-off. He directed himself over the bar head and shoulders first, going over on his back and landing in a fashion that would likely have resulted in serious injury in the old ground-level landing pits, which were usually filled with sawdust or sand mixtures. Around the same time, Debbie Brill independently came up with the same technique, which she called the 'Brill Bend'.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Since Fosbury used his new style, called the Fosbury flop, to win the gold medal of the 1968 Mexico Olympics, its use spread quickly, and soon \"floppers\" were dominating international high jump competitions. The first flopper setting a world record was the American Dwight Stones, who cleared 2.30 m (7 ft 6+1⁄2 in) in 1973. In the female side, the 16-year-old flopper Ulrike Meyfarth from West Germany won the gold medal of the 1972 Munich Olympics at 1.92 m (6 ft 3+1⁄2 in), which tied the women's world record at that time (held by the Austrian straddler Ilona Gusenbauer a year before). However, it was not until 1978 when a flopper, Sara Simeoni of Italy, broke the women's world record.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Successful high jumpers following Fosbury's lead also included the rival of Dwight Stones, 1.73 metres (5 ft 8 in)-tall Franklin Jacobs of Paterson, New Jersey, who cleared 2.32 m (7 ft 7+1⁄4 in), 0.59 metres (1 ft 11 in) over his head (a feat equalled 27 years later by Stefan Holm of Sweden); Chinese record-setters Ni-chi Chin and Zhu Jianhua; Germans Gerd Wessig and Dietmar Mögenburg; Swedish Olympic medalist and former world record holder Patrik Sjöberg; female jumpers Ulrike Meyfarth of West Germany and Sara Simeoni of Italy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In spite of this, the straddle technique did not disappear at once. In 1977, the 18-year-old Soviet straddler Vladimir Yashchenko set a new world record 2.33 m (7 ft 7+1⁄2 in). In 1978, he raised the record to 2.34 m (7 ft 8 in), and 2.35 m (7 ft 8+1⁄2 in) indoor, just before a knee injury effectively ended his career when he was only 20 years old. In the female side, the straddler Rosemarie Ackermann of East Germany, who was the first female jumper ever to clear 2 m (6 ft 6+1⁄2 in), raised the world record from 1.95 m (6 ft 4+3⁄4 in) to 2.00 m (6 ft 6+1⁄2 in) during 1974 to 1977. In fact, from 2 June 1977 to 3 August 1978, almost 10 years after Fosbury's success, the men's and women's world records were still held by straddle jumpers Yashchenko and Ackermann respectively. However, they were the last world record holders using the straddle technique. Ackermann also won the gold medal of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which was the last time for a straddle jumper (male or female) to win an Olympic medal.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1980, the Polish flopper, 1976 Olympic gold medalist Jacek Wszoła, broke Yashchenko's world record at 2.35 m (7 ft 8+1⁄2 in). Two years before, the female Italian flopper Sara Simeoni, the long-term rival of Ackermann, broke Ackermann's world record at 2.01 m (6 ft 7 in) and became the first female flopper to break the women's world record. She also won the gold medal of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, where Ackermann placed fourth. Since then, the flop style has been completely dominant. All other techniques were almost extinct in serious high jump competitions after late 1980s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Technique and form have evolved greatly over the history of high jump. The Fosbury Flop is currently considered the most efficient way for competitors to propel themselves over the bar.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For a Fosbury Flop, depending on the athlete's jump foot, they start on the right or left of the high jump mat, placing their jump foot farthest away from the mat. They take an eight- to ten-step approach, with the first three to five steps being in a straight line and the last five being on a curve. Athletes generally mark their approach in order to find as much consistency as possible.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The approach run can be more important than the takeoff. If a high jumper runs with bad timing or without enough aggression, clearing the bar becomes more of a challenge. The approach requires a certain shape or curve, the right amount of speed, and the correct number of strides. The approach angle is also critical for optimal height.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The straight run builds the momentum and sets the tone for a jump. The athlete starts by pushing off their takeoff foot with slow, powerful steps, then begins to accelerate. They should be running upright by the end of the straight portion.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The athlete's takeoff foot will be landing on the first step of the curve, and they will continue to accelerate, focusing their body towards the opposite back corner of the high jump mat. While staying erect and leaning away from the mat, the athlete takes their final two steps flat-footed, rolling from the heel to the toe.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Most great straddle jumpers run at angles of about 30 to 40 degrees. The length of the run is determined by the speed of the approach. A slower run requires about eight strides, but a faster high jumper might need about 13 strides. Greater speed allows a greater part of the body's forward momentum to be converted upward.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The J approach favored by Fosbury floppers allows for speed, the ability to turn in the air (centripetal force), and a good takeoff position, which helps turn horizontal momentum into vertical momentum. The approach should be a hard, controlled stride so that the athlete does not fall from running at an angle. Athletes should lean into the curve from their ankles, not their hips. This allows their hips to rotate during takeoff, which in turn allows their center of gravity to pass under the bar.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The takeoff can be double-arm or single-arm. In both cases, the plant foot should be the foot farthest from the bar, angled towards the opposite back corner of the mat, as they drive up the knee on their non-takeoff leg. This is accompanied by a one- or two-arm swing while driving the knee.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Unlike the straddle technique, where the takeoff foot is \"planted\" in the same spot regardless of the height of the bar, flop-style jumpers must adjust their approach run as the bar is raised so that their takeoff spot is slightly farther out from the bar. Jumpers attempting to reach record heights commonly fail when most of their energy is directed into the vertical effort and they knock the bar off the standards with the backs of their legs as they stall.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "An effective approach shape can be derived from physics. For example, the rate of backward spin required as the jumper crosses the bar in order to facilitate shoulder clearance on the way up and foot clearance on the way down can be determined by computer simulation. This rotation rate can be back-calculated to determine the required angle of lean away from the bar at the moment of planting, based on how long the jumper is on the takeoff foot. This information, together with the jumper's speed, can be used to calculate the radius of the curved part of the approach. One can also work in the opposite direction by assuming a certain approach radius and determining the resulting backward rotation.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Drills can be practiced to solidify the approach. One drill is to run in a straight line and then run two to three circles spiraling into one another. Another is to run or skip a circle of any size two to three times in a row. It is important to leap upwards without first leaning into the bar, allowing the momentum of the J approach to carry the body across the bar.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The knee on the athlete's non-takeoff leg naturally turns their body, placing them in the air with their back to the bar. The athlete then drives their shoulders towards the back of their feet, arching their body over the bar. They can look over their shoulder to judge when to kick both feet over their head, causing their body to clear the bar and land on the mat.",
"title": "Technical aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The following athletes have had their personal best annulled due to doping offences:",
"title": "All-time top 25"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The following athletes have had their personal best annulled due to doping offences:",
"title": "All-time top 25"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Athletes who have won multiple titles at the two most important competitions, the Olympic Games and the World Championships:",
"title": "Athletes with most medals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Kostadinova and Sotomayor are the only high jumpers to have been Olympic Champion, World Champion and broken the world record.",
"title": "Athletes with most medals"
}
]
| The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form, and the current universally preferred method is the Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar. The discipline is, alongside the pole vault, one of two vertical clearance events in the Olympic athletics program. It is contested at the World Championships in Athletics and the World Athletics Indoor Championships, and is a common occurrence at track and field meets. The high jump was among the first events deemed acceptable for women, having been held at the 1928 Olympic Games. Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) is the current world record holder with a jump of 2.45 m set in 1993 – the longest-standing record in the history of the men's high jump. Stefka Kostadinova (Bulgaria) has held the women's world record of 2.09 m since 1987, also the longest-held record in the event. | 2001-09-28T15:55:10Z | 2023-12-22T03:08:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_jump |
13,792 | Heraclitus | Heraclitus (/ˌhɛrəˈklaɪtəs/; Greek: Ἡράκλειτος Herákleitos; fl. c. 500 BC) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire.
Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Most of the ancient stories about him are thought to be later fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments. His paradoxical philosophy and appreciation for wordplay and cryptic, oracular epigrams has earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure" since antiquity. He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher".
The central ideas of Heraclitus' philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. He also saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" (Greek: πάντα ρει, panta rei) and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in "being" and in the static nature of reality.
Like the Milesians before him – Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air – Heraclitus chose fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. He also saw the logos as giving structure to the world.
Heraclitus, the son of Blyson, was from the Ionian city of Ephesus, a port on the Kayster River, on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). In the 6th century BC, Ephesus, like other cities in Ionia, lived under the effects of both the rise of Lydia under Croesus and his overthrow by Cyrus the Great c. 547 BC. Ephesus appears to have subsequently cultivated a close relationship with the Persian Empire; during the suppression of the Ionian revolt by Darius the Great in 494 BC, Ephesus was spared and emerged as the dominant Greek city in Ionia. Miletus, the home to the previous philosophers, was sacked and captured.
The main source for the life of Heraclitus is the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius. Although most of the information provided by Laertius is unreliable, the anecdote that Heraclitus relinquished the hereditary title of "king" to his younger brother may at least imply that Heraclitus was from an aristocratic family in Ephesus. Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for democracy or the masses. However, it is unclear whether he was "an unconditional partisan of the rich," or if, like the sage Solon, he was "withdrawn from competing factions".
Since antiquity, Heraclitus has been labeled an arrogant misanthrope. The skeptic Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus a "mob-abuser" (ochloloidoros). Heraclitus considered himself self-taught. He did not consider others incapable, but unwilling: "And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves." Heraclitus did not seem to like the prevailing religion of the time, criticizing the popular mystery cults. He also criticized Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus. He endorsed the sage Bias of Priene, who is quoted as saying "Most men are bad". He praised one Hermodorus as the best among the Ephesians, who he says should all kill themselves for exiling him.
Heraclitus is traditionally considered to have flourished in the 69th Olympiad (504–501 BC), but this date may simply be based on a prior account synchronizing his life with the reign of Darius the Great. However, this date can be considered "roughly accurate" based on a fragment that references Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus as older contemporaries, placing him near the end of the sixth century BC.
According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus died covered in dung after failing to cure himself from dropsy. This may be to parody his doctrine that for souls it is death to become water, and that a dry soul is best.
Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on papyrus, which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors. The title is unknown, but many later writers refer to this work, and works by other pre-Socratics, as On Nature.
According to Diogenes Laërtius, Heraclitus deposited the book in the Artemision – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – as a dedication. Classicist Charles Kahn states: "Down to the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out." Yet, by the time of Simplicius of Cilicia, a 6th century neoplatonic philosopher, who mentions Heraclitus 32 times but never quotes from him, Heraclitus' work was so rare that it was unavailable even to Simplicius and the other scholars at the Platonic Academy in Athens.
Diogenes Laertius wrote that the book was divided into three parts: the universe, politics, and theology, but, classicists have challenged that division. John Burnet has argued that "it is not to be supposed that this division is due to [Heraclitus] himself; all we can infer is that the work fell naturally into these parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in hand". The Stoics divided their own philosophy into three parts: ethics, logic, and physics. Philologist Karl Deichgräber has argued that the Stoic Cleanthes divided philosophy into dialectics, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, and theology, with the last three the same as the alleged division of Heraclitus. The philosopher Paul Schuster has argued that the division came from the Pinakes.
Scholar Martin Litchfield West claims that while the existing fragments do not give much of an idea of the overall structure, the beginning of the discourse can probably be determined, starting with the opening lines, which are quoted by Sextus Empiricus:
Of the logos being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.
Heraclitus's style has been compared to a Sibyl, who "with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her". Kahn characterized the main features of Heraclitus's writing as "linguistic density", meaning that single words and phrases have multiple meanings, and "resonance", meaning that expressions evoke one another. Heraclitus used literary devices like alliteration and chiasmus. Aristotle quotes part of the opening line in the Rhetoric to outline the difficulty in punctuating Heraclitus without ambiguity; he debated whether "forever" applied to "being" or to "prove". Theophrastus says that "some parts of his work [are] half-finished, while other parts [made] a strange medley". Theophrastus thought an inability to finish the work showed Heraclitus was melancholic.
According to Diogenes Laërtius, Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus "the Riddler" (αἰνικτής; ainiktēs) a likely reference to an alleged similarity to Pythagorean riddles. Timon said Heraclitus wrote his book "rather unclearly" (asaphesteron); according to Timon, this was intended to allow only the "capable" to attempt it. By the time of Cicero, this epithet became "The Dark" (ὁ Σκοτεινός; ho Skoteinós) or "The Obscure" as he had spoken nimis obscurē ("too obscurely") concerning nature and had done so deliberately in order to be misunderstood.
Heraclitus has been the subject of numerous interpretations. According to the entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Heraclitus has been seen as a "material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician and a religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, a mystic; a conventional thinker and a revolutionary; a developer of logic – one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher and an anti-intellectual obscurantist".
The hallmarks of Heraclitus' philosophy are the unity of opposites and change, or flux. Diogenes Laërtius summarizes Heraclitus's philosophy as follows: "All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα ta hola ('the whole')) flows like a stream." According to Aristotle, Heraclitus was a dialetheist, or one who denies the law of noncontradiction. (a law of thought in logic which states that one cannot say of what is and that it is not at the same time)
Several fragments seem to relate to these two concepts. For example, on the unity of opposites: "The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same"; "The way up is the way down"; "Beginning and end, on a circle's circumference, are common"; and "Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things."
Over time, the opposites change into each other: "Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life"; "As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these"; and "Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet."
It also seems they change into each other depending on one's point of view, a case of relativism or perspectivism. Heraclitus states: "Disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest." While men drink and wash with water, fish prefer to drink saltwater, pigs prefer to wash in mud, and fowls prefer to wash in dust. "Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat" and "asses would rather have refuse than gold."
Jonathan Barnes states that "Panta rhei, 'everything flows' is probably the most familiar of Heraclitus' sayings, yet few modern scholars think he said it". Barnes observes that although the exact phrase was not ascribed to Heraclitus until the 6th century by Simplicius, a similar saying expressing the same idea, panta chorei, or "everything moves" is ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato in the Cratylus.
Since Plato, Heraclitus's theory of flux has been associated with the metaphor of a flowing river, which cannot be stepped into twice. This fragment from Heraclitus's writings has survived in three different forms:
"On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow" — Arius Didymus, quoted in Stobaeus "We both step and do not step into the same, we both are and are not" — Heraclitus Homericus, Homeric Allegories "It is not possible to step into the same river twice" — Plutarch, On the E at Delphi
Heraclitus illustrated the same point using the Sun: "the Sun is new each day." The river fragments (especially the second "we both are and are not") seem to suggest not only is the river constantly changing, but we do as well, perhaps commenting on existential questions about humanity and personhood.
The classicist Karl Reinhardt identified the first river quote as the genuine one. Scholars such as Reinhardt also interpreted the metaphor as illustrating what is stable, rather than the usual interpretation of illustrating change. Classicist Karl-Martin Dietz [de] has said: "You will not find anything, in which the river remains constant ... Just the fact, that there is a particular river bed, that there is a source and an estuary etc. is something, that stays identical. And this is ... the concept of a river."
Attempting to follow Aristotle, Guthrie interprets flux versus stability as a question of matter versus form. Thus, Heraclitus is a flux theorist because he is a materialist. Since there are no unchanging forms like Plato, but only the material world, then everything changes. According to American philosopher W. V. O. Quine, the river parable illustrates that the river is a process through time. One cannot step twice into the same river-stage.
Professor M. M. McCabe has argued that the three statements on rivers should all be read as fragments from a discourse. McCabe suggests reading them as though they arose in succession. The three fragments "could be retained, and arranged in an argumentative sequence". In McCabe's reading of the fragments, Heraclitus can be read as a philosopher capable of sustained argument, rather than just aphorism.
Heraclitus said "strife is justice" and "all things take place by strife". He called the opposites in conflict ἔρις (eris), "strife", and theorized that the apparently unitary state, δίκη (dikê), "justice", results in "the most beautiful harmony", in contrast to Anaximander, who described the same as injustice.
Aristotle said Heraclitus disagreed with Homer because Homer wished that strife would leave the world, which according to Heraclitus would destroy the world; "there would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites". It may also explain why he disagreed with the Pythagorean emphasis on harmony, but not on strife.
Heraclitus suggests that the world and its various parts are kept together through the tension produced by the unity of opposites, like the string of a bow or a lyre. On one account, this is the earliest use of the concept of force. A quote about the bow shows his appreciation for wordplay: "The bow's name is life, but its work is death." Each substance contains its opposite, making for a continual circular exchange of generation, destruction, and motion that results in the stability of the world. This can be illustrated by the quote "Even the barley-drink separates if it is not stirred."
According to Abraham Schoener: "War is the central principle in Heraclitus' thought." Another of Heraclitus' famous sayings highlights the idea that the unity of opposites is also a conflict of opposites: "War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free"; war is a creative tension that brings things into existence. Heraclitus says further "Gods and men honour those slain in war"; "Greater deaths gain greater portions"; and "Every beast is tended by blows."
Heraclitus may also have been the first advocate of natural law: "People ought to fight to keep their law as to defend the city walls. For all human laws get nourishment from the one divine law."
While considered an ancient cosmologist, Heraclitus did not seem as interested in astronomy, meteorology, or mathematics as his predecessors. It is surmised Heraclitus believed that the earth was flat and extended infinitely in all directions. He also believed that the Sun is as large as it looks, and that if it "exceeds the due times of the year" (the seasons), then "Erinyes, the ministers of Justice, will find him out". On one account, he believed the Sun and Moon were bowls containing fire, with lunar phases explained by the turning of the bowl. His study of the moon near the end of the month is contained in one of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the best evidence of Heraclitean astronomy.
The Milesians before Heraclitus conceived of certain elements as the arche – Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air – Many philosophers concluded that Heraclitus construed of fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. However, it is also argued by many that he never identified Fire as the arche rather, he only use fire to explain his notion of flux. Pre-Socratic scholar Eduard Zeller has argued that Heraclitus believed that heat in general and dry exhalation in particular, rather than visible fire, was the arche.
In one fragment, Heraclitus writes:
"This world-order [Kosmos], the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures."
This is the oldest extant quote using kosmos, or order, to mean the world. Fire is the one thing eternal in the universe. From fire all things originate and all things return again in a process of never-ending cycles. He describes the transformations:
"Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth that of water." and "The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fireburst. [Earth] is liquefied as sea and measured into the same proportion as it had before it became earth."
On one interpretation, rejecting both the flux and stability interpretation, Heraclitus is not a material monist, but a revolutionary process philosopher who chooses fire in an attempt to say there is no arche. Fire is a symbol or metaphor for change, rather than the basic stuff which changes the most. Perspectives of this sort emphasize his statements on change such as "The way up is the way down", as well as the quote "All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares", which has been understood as stating that while all can be transformed into fire, not everything comes from fire, just as not everything comes from gold.
Heraclitus' description of a doctrine of purification of fire has also been investigated for influence from the Zoroastrian concept of Atar. Many of the doctrines of Zoroastrian fire do not match exactly with those of Heraclitus, such as the relation of fire to earth, but he may have taken some inspiration from them. Zoroastrian parallels to Heraclitus are often difficult to identify specifically due to a lack of surviving Zoroastrian literature from the period and mutual influence with Greek philosophy.
The interchange of other elements with fire also has parallels in Vedic literature from the same time period, such as the Kaushitaki Upanishad and Taittiriya Upanishad. West stresses that these doctrines of the interchange of elements were common throughout written works on philosophy that have survived from that period, so Heraclitus' doctrine of fire can not be definitively be said to have been influenced by any other particular Iranian or Indian influence, but may have been part of a mutual interchange of influence over time across the Ancient Near East.
Philosopher Gustav Teichmüller sought to prove Heraclitus was influenced by the Egyptians, either directly, by reading the Book of the Dead, or indirectly through the Greek mystery cults. "As the sun of Heraclitus was daily generated from water, so Horus, as Ra of the sun, daily proceeded from Lotus the water." Paul Tannery took up Teichmüller's interpretation. They thought Heraclitus's book was an offering rather than deposited, and only for initiates. Edmund Pfleiderer argued that Heraclitus was influenced by the mystery cults. He interprets Heraclitus seeming condemning of the mysteries as the condemning of abuses rather than the idea itself.
Heraclitus said that the "thunderbolt steers all things", a rare comment on meteorology and likely a reference to Zeus as the supreme being. "Wisdom is one thing: [to understand the intelligence by which all things are steered through all things]; it is willing and it is unwilling to be called by the name Zeus." He invokes relativism with the divine too: God sees man the same way man sees children and apes; and he seems to give a theodicy, "for god all things are fair and good and just, but men suppose that some are unjust and others just".
Heraclitus regarded the soul (psyche) as a mixture of fire and water, and believed that fire was the noble part of the soul and water the ignoble part. He considered mastery of one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit that purified the soul's fire, while drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist.
Heraclitus also compares the soul to a spider and the body to the web. Heraclitus believed the soul is also what unifies the body and grants linguistic understanding, departing from Homer's conception of it as merely the breath of life. Heraclitus ridicules Homer's conception of the soul leaving the body out of the nose to become a shade by saying "Souls smell in Hades" and "If all things should become smoke, then perception would be by the nostrils". His own views on the afterlife remain unclear, but he did state: "There await men after they are dead things which they do not expect or imagine."
A fundamental concept for Heraclitus is logos, an ancient Greek word literally meaning "word, speech, discourse, or meaning", but with a wide variety of other uses, such that Heraclitus might have a different meaning of the word for each usage in his book. Kahn has argued that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses, whereas Guthrie has argued that there is no evidence Heraclitus used it in a way that was significantly different from that in which it was used by contemporaneous speakers of Greek.
For Heraclitus, the logos provided the link between rational discourse and the world's rational structure. Logos was like a universal law that unites the cosmos, according to one fragment: "Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are one." Another fragment reads: "[hoi polloi] ... do not know how to listen [to Logos] or how to speak [the truth]."
Professor Michael Stokes interprets Heraclitus' use of logos as a public fact like a proposition or formula; like Guthrie, he views Heraclitus as a materialist, and he grants Heraclitus would not have considered these as abstract objects or immaterial things. Another possibility is the logos referred to the truth or the book itself. Classicist Walther Kranz translated it as "sense".
The phrase Ethos anthropoi daimon ("man's character is [his] fate"), attributed to Heraclitus, has led to numerous interpretations, and might mean one's luck is related to one's character. The translation of daimon in this context to mean "fate" is disputed. Another translation on offer is supported by Charles Kahn and Philip Wheelwright: "a man's character is his guardian divinity." Rather than being followed around by a guardian angel, one's character is his fate.
Heraclitus said "Time (Aion) is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's." It is disputed whether this means time and life is determined by rules like a game, by conflict like a game, or by arbitrary whims of the gods like a child plays.
Heraclitus' writings have exerted a wide influence on Western philosophy, including the works of Plato and Aristotle, who interpreted him in terms of their own doctrines. Heraclitus is also considered a potential source for understanding the Ancient Greek religion since the discovery of the Derveni papyrus. His influence also extends into art, literature, and medicine, as writings in the Hippocratic corpus show signs of Heraclitean themes.
It is unknown whether or not Heraclitus had any students in his lifetime. In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato presented Cratylus as a Heraclitean and as a linguistic naturalist who believed that names must apply naturally to their objects. According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said that one cannot step into the same river once. He took the view that nothing can be said about the ever-changing world and "ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger". To explain both characterizations by Plato and Aristotle, Cratylus may have thought continuous change warrants skepticism because one cannot define a thing that does not have a permanent nature. Diogenes Laertius lists an otherwise historically obscure Antisthenes who wrote a commentary on Heraclitus. According to one author, "there were no doubt other Heracliteans whose names are now lost to us".
Parmenides of Elea, a philosopher and near-contemporary, proposed a doctrine of changelessness, in contrast to the doctrine of flux put forth by Heraclitus. He is generally agreed to either have influenced or been influenced by Heraclitus. Different philosophers have argued that either one of them may have substantially influenced each other, some taking Heraclitus to be responding to Parmenides, but more often Parmenides is seen as responding to Heraclitus. Some also argue that any direct chain of influence between the two is impossible to determine. Although Heraclitus refers to older figures such as Pythagoras, neither Parmenides or Heraclitus refer to each other by name in any surviving fragments, so any speculation on influence must be based on interpretation.
The surviving fragments of several other pre-Socratic philosophers show Heraclitean themes. Diogenes of Apollonia thought the action of one thing on another meant they were made of one substance. The pluralists may have been influenced by Heraclitus. The philosopher Anaxagoras refuses to separate the opposites in the "one cosmos". Empedocles has forces (arguably the first since Heraclitus's tension) which are in opposition, known as Love and Hate, or more accurately, Harmony and Strife. Democritus and the atomists were also influenced by Heraclitus. The atomists and Heraclitus both believed that everything was in motion. On one interpretation: "Essentially what the atomists did was try to find a middle-way between the contradictory philosophical schemes of Heraclitus and Parmenides."
The sophists, inclusing as Protagoras of Abdera and Gorgias of Leontini, may also have been influenced by Heraclitus. One tradition associated their concern with politics and preventing party strife with Heraclitus. Gorgias seems to have been influenced by the Heraclitean idea of the logos, when he argued in his work On Non-Being, possibly parodying the Eleatics, that being cannot exist or be communicated. According to one author, Gorgias "in a sense ... completes Heraclitus."
Plato knew of the teachings of Heraclitus through the Heraclitean philosopher Cratylus. Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects, and thus the need for the imperceptible Forms as objects of knowledge. Aristotle accused Heraclitus of denying the law of noncontradiction, and that he thereby failed in his reasoning. However, Aristotle's material monist and world conflagration interpretation of Heraclitus also influenced the Stoics.
The Stoics believed major tenets of their philosophy derived from the thought of Heraclitus; especially the logos, used to support their belief that rational law governs the universe. A four-volume work titled Interpretation of Heraclitus was written by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, but has not survived. In surviving stoic writings, this is most evident in the writings of Marcus Aurelius. According to one author, "Heraclitus of Ephesus was the father of Stoic physics." Many of the later Stoics interpreted the logos as the arche, as a creative fire that ran through all things; Marcus Aurelius understood the Logos as "the account which governs everything." Heraclitus also states, "We should not act and speak like children of our parents", which Marcus Aurelius interpreted to mean one should not simply accept what others believe. West observes that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Sextus Empiricus all make no mention of this doctrine, and concludes that the language and thought are "obviously Stoic" and not attributable to Heraclitus. Long concludes the earliest Stoic fragments are also "modifications of Heraclitus". Burnet cautions that these Stoic modifications of Heraclitus make it harder to interpret Heraclitus himself, as the Stoics ascribed their own interpretations of terms like logos and ekpyrosis to Heraclitus.
The Cynics were influenced by Heraclitus, such as by his condemnation of the mystery cults. The Cynics attributed several of the later Cynic epistles to his authorship. Heraclitus wrote: "Dogs bark at every one they do not know." Similarly, Diogenes the Cynic, when asked by Alexander why he considered himself a dog, responded that he "barks at those who give me nothing".
The Pyrrhonists were also influenced by Heraclitus. He may be the predecessor to Pyrrho's doctrine "No More This than That". Aenesidemus, one of the major ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers, claimed in a now-lost work that Pyrrhonism was a way to Heraclitean philosophy because Pyrrhonist practice helps one to see how opposites appear to be the case about the same thing. Once one sees this, it leads to understanding the Heraclitean view of opposites being the case about the same thing. A later Pyrrhonist philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, disagreed, arguing opposites appearing to be the case about the same thing is not a dogma of the Pyrrhonists but a matter occurring to the Pyrrhonists, to the other philosophers, and to all of humanity.
Heraclitus was often read by early Christian philosophers, who following the Stoics, interpreted the logos as meaning the Christian "Word of God", such as in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Word was God." Hippolytus of Rome, one of the early Church Fathers of the Christian Church, identified Heraclitus along with the other Pre-Socratics and Academics as a source of heresy, in Heraclitus's case namely the heresy of Noetus. The Christian apologist Justin Martyr took a more positive view of Heraclitus. In his First Apology, he said both Socrates and Heraclitus were Christians before Christ: "those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them." Modern scholars such as John Burnet have viewed the relationship between Heraclitean logos and Johannine logos as fallacious, saying; "the Johannine doctrine of the logos has nothing to do with Herakleitos or with anything at all in Greek philosophy, but comes from the Hebrew Wisdom literature". When Heraclitus speaks of "God" he does not mean a single deity as an omnipotent and omniscient or God as Creator, the universe being eternal; he meant the divine as opposed to human, the immortal as opposed to the mortal, and the cyclical as opposed to the transient. Thus, it is arguably more accurate to speak of "the Divine" and not of "God".
Heraclitus's influence also extends outside of philosophy. A motif found in art and literature is Heraclitus as the "weeping philosopher" and Democritus as the "laughing philosopher", which may have originated with the Cynic philosopher Menippus, generally references their reactions to the folly of mankind.
For example, in Lucian of Samosata's "Philosophies for Sale", Heraclitus is auctioned off as the "weeping philosopher" and Democritus as the "laughing philosopher". The Roman poet Juvenal wrote: "Heraclitus, weep at life much more than you did while alive, for now life is more pitiable."
Heraclitus also appears in painter Raphael's School of Athens, in which he is represented by Michelangelo, since they shared a "sour temper and bitter scorn for all rivals".
Modern interest in early Greek philosophy can be traced back to 1573, when French printer Henri Estienne (also known as Henricus Stephanus) collected a number of pre-Socratic fragments, including those of Heraclitus, and published them in Latin in Poesis philosophica. Renaissance skeptic Michel de Montaigne's essay On Democritus and Heraclitus, in which he sided with the laughing philosopher over the weeping philosopher, was probably written soon after. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare features the melancholic character of Antonio, who some critics contend is modeled after Heraclitus. Additionally, in one scene of the play Portia assesses her potential suitors, and says of one County Palatine: "I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old".
According to Bernard Freyberg, "both Parmenides and Heraclitus are direct if distant ancestors of Spinoza", since they both said all is one. David Hume wrote while discussing personal identity: "Thus as the nature of a river consists in the motion and change of parts; tho' in less than four and twenty hours these be totally alter'd; this hinders not the river from continuing the same during several ages."
Since Kant, philosophers have sometimes been divided into rationalists and empiricists. Heraclitus has been considered each by different scholars. For rationalism, philosophers cite fragments like "Poor witnesses for men are the eyes and ears of those who have barbarian souls." For empiricism, they cite fragments like "The things that can be seen, heard, and learned are what I prize the most." Gottlob Mayer has argued that the philosophical pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer recapitulated the thought of Heraclitus.
The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was one of the first to collect the fragments of Heraclitus specifically and write them out in his native tongue, the "pioneer of Heraclitean studies". Schleiermacher was also one of the first to posit Persian influence upon Heraclitus, a question taken up by succeeding scholars Friedrich Creuzer and August Gladisch.
The influence of Heraclitus on German idealist G. W. F. Hegel was so profound that he remarked in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy: "there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic." Hegel interpreted Heraclitus as a dialetheist and as a process philosopher, seeing the "becoming" in Heraclitus as a natural result of the ontology of "being" and "non-being" in Parmenides. He also doubted the world-conflagaration interpretation, which had been popular since Aristotle. The Young Hegelian and socialist Ferdinand Lassalle wrote a book on Heraclitus. "Lassalle follows Hegel in styling the doctrine of Heraclitus 'the philosophy of the logical law of the identity of contradictories.'" Lassalle also thought Persian theology influenced Heraclitus. Marx compared Lasalle's work to that of "a schoolboy" and Lenin accused him of "sheer plagiarism".
Classical philologist Jakob Bernays also wrote a work on Heraclitus. Inspired by Bernays, the English scholar Ingram Bywater collected all fragments of Heraclitus in a critical edition, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae (1877). An English translation was provided by G. T. W. Patrick in 1889. Hermann Diels wrote "Bywater's book has come to be accounted ... as the only reliable collection of the remains of that philosopher." Diels published the first edition of the authoritative Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics) in 1903, later revised and expanded three times, and finally revised in two subsequent editions by Walther Kranz. Diels–Kranz is used in academia to cite pre-Socratic philosophers. In Diels–Kranz, each ancient personality and each passage is assigned a number to uniquely identify it; Heraclitus is traditionally catalogued as philosopher number 22.
The existentialist and classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche preferred Heraclitus above all the other pre-Socratics. The nationalist philosopher of history Oswald Spengler wrote his (failed) dissertation on Heraclitus. Existentialist and phenomenologist Martin Heidegger was also influenced by Heraclitus, as seen in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Heidegger believed that the thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides was the origin of philosophy and misunderstood by Plato and Aristotle, leading all of Western philosophy astray.
The Irish author Oscar Wilde was influenced by Heraclitus. Wilde is credited with the saying "expect the unexpected", though Heraclitus said "If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult."
In the 1950s, a term originating with Heraclitus, "idios kosmos", meaning "private world" as distinguished from the "common world" (koinos kosmos) was adopted by phenomenological and existential psychologists, such as Ludwig Binswanger and Rollo May, to refer to the experience of people with delusions, or other problems, who have trouble seeing beyond the limits of their own minds, or who confuse this private world with shared reality. It was an important part of novelist Philip K. Dick's views on schizophrenia. Those thinkers have relied on Heraclitus statement that "The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own."
The British idealist J. M. E. McTaggart is best known for his paper "The Unreality of Time" (1908), in which he argues that time is unreal. His "A series", also known as presentism or "temporal becoming", which conceptualizes of time as tensed (i.e., having the properties of being past, present, or future), has been described as Heraclitean. By contrast, his " "B-theory", under which time is tenseless (i.e., earlier than, simultaneous to, or later than), has been associated with Parmenides Advocates of presentism include Arthur Prior and William Lane Craig.
The British philosopher A. N. Whitehead has been called a process philosopher in the tradition of Heraclitus. In Bertrand Russell's essay Mysticism and Logic, he contends Heraclitus proves himself a metaphysician by his blending of mystical and scientific impulses. Ludwig Wittgenstein was known to read Plato and in his return to philosophy in 1929 he made several remarks resembling those of Heraclitus: "The fundamental thing expressed grammatically: What about the sentence: One cannot step into the same river twice?" He then seemed to make a dramatic shift by 1931, saying one can step twice into the same river. The philosopher Peter Geach was inspired by Heraclitus's comments on the river to formulate his idea of relative identity, which he also used to solve such issues as the Trinity.
Recent approaches in logic, such as paraconsistent logic, have led to some philosophers advancing logical pluralism and dialetheism, such as Graham Priest and JC Beall. Priest agrees with Hegel's contradictory account of motion, based on Zeno of Elea's Paradox of the Arrow, which is arguably Heraclitus' account of flux. On this account of motion, to move is to be both here and not here.
This article uses the Diels–Kranz numbering system for testimony (labeled A), fragments (labeled B), and imitation (labeled C) of Pre-Socratic philosophy. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Heraclitus (/ˌhɛrəˈklaɪtəs/; Greek: Ἡράκλειτος Herákleitos; fl. c. 500 BC) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Most of the ancient stories about him are thought to be later fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments. His paradoxical philosophy and appreciation for wordplay and cryptic, oracular epigrams has earned him the epithets \"the dark\" and \"the obscure\" since antiquity. He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as \"the weeping philosopher\" in contrast to the ancient philosopher Democritus, who was known as \"the laughing philosopher\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The central ideas of Heraclitus' philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. He also saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always \"becoming\" but never \"being\". He expressed this in sayings like \"Everything flows\" (Greek: πάντα ρει, panta rei) and \"No man ever steps in the same river twice\". This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in \"being\" and in the static nature of reality.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Like the Milesians before him – Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air – Heraclitus chose fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. He also saw the logos as giving structure to the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Heraclitus, the son of Blyson, was from the Ionian city of Ephesus, a port on the Kayster River, on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). In the 6th century BC, Ephesus, like other cities in Ionia, lived under the effects of both the rise of Lydia under Croesus and his overthrow by Cyrus the Great c. 547 BC. Ephesus appears to have subsequently cultivated a close relationship with the Persian Empire; during the suppression of the Ionian revolt by Darius the Great in 494 BC, Ephesus was spared and emerged as the dominant Greek city in Ionia. Miletus, the home to the previous philosophers, was sacked and captured.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The main source for the life of Heraclitus is the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius. Although most of the information provided by Laertius is unreliable, the anecdote that Heraclitus relinquished the hereditary title of \"king\" to his younger brother may at least imply that Heraclitus was from an aristocratic family in Ephesus. Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for democracy or the masses. However, it is unclear whether he was \"an unconditional partisan of the rich,\" or if, like the sage Solon, he was \"withdrawn from competing factions\".",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Since antiquity, Heraclitus has been labeled an arrogant misanthrope. The skeptic Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus a \"mob-abuser\" (ochloloidoros). Heraclitus considered himself self-taught. He did not consider others incapable, but unwilling: \"And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves.\" Heraclitus did not seem to like the prevailing religion of the time, criticizing the popular mystery cults. He also criticized Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus. He endorsed the sage Bias of Priene, who is quoted as saying \"Most men are bad\". He praised one Hermodorus as the best among the Ephesians, who he says should all kill themselves for exiling him.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Heraclitus is traditionally considered to have flourished in the 69th Olympiad (504–501 BC), but this date may simply be based on a prior account synchronizing his life with the reign of Darius the Great. However, this date can be considered \"roughly accurate\" based on a fragment that references Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus as older contemporaries, placing him near the end of the sixth century BC.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus died covered in dung after failing to cure himself from dropsy. This may be to parody his doctrine that for souls it is death to become water, and that a dry soul is best.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on papyrus, which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors. The title is unknown, but many later writers refer to this work, and works by other pre-Socratics, as On Nature.",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "According to Diogenes Laërtius, Heraclitus deposited the book in the Artemision – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – as a dedication. Classicist Charles Kahn states: \"Down to the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out.\" Yet, by the time of Simplicius of Cilicia, a 6th century neoplatonic philosopher, who mentions Heraclitus 32 times but never quotes from him, Heraclitus' work was so rare that it was unavailable even to Simplicius and the other scholars at the Platonic Academy in Athens.",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Diogenes Laertius wrote that the book was divided into three parts: the universe, politics, and theology, but, classicists have challenged that division. John Burnet has argued that \"it is not to be supposed that this division is due to [Heraclitus] himself; all we can infer is that the work fell naturally into these parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in hand\". The Stoics divided their own philosophy into three parts: ethics, logic, and physics. Philologist Karl Deichgräber has argued that the Stoic Cleanthes divided philosophy into dialectics, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, and theology, with the last three the same as the alleged division of Heraclitus. The philosopher Paul Schuster has argued that the division came from the Pinakes.",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Scholar Martin Litchfield West claims that while the existing fragments do not give much of an idea of the overall structure, the beginning of the discourse can probably be determined, starting with the opening lines, which are quoted by Sextus Empiricus:",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Of the logos being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Heraclitus's style has been compared to a Sibyl, who \"with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her\". Kahn characterized the main features of Heraclitus's writing as \"linguistic density\", meaning that single words and phrases have multiple meanings, and \"resonance\", meaning that expressions evoke one another. Heraclitus used literary devices like alliteration and chiasmus. Aristotle quotes part of the opening line in the Rhetoric to outline the difficulty in punctuating Heraclitus without ambiguity; he debated whether \"forever\" applied to \"being\" or to \"prove\". Theophrastus says that \"some parts of his work [are] half-finished, while other parts [made] a strange medley\". Theophrastus thought an inability to finish the work showed Heraclitus was melancholic.",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "According to Diogenes Laërtius, Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus \"the Riddler\" (αἰνικτής; ainiktēs) a likely reference to an alleged similarity to Pythagorean riddles. Timon said Heraclitus wrote his book \"rather unclearly\" (asaphesteron); according to Timon, this was intended to allow only the \"capable\" to attempt it. By the time of Cicero, this epithet became \"The Dark\" (ὁ Σκοτεινός; ho Skoteinós) or \"The Obscure\" as he had spoken nimis obscurē (\"too obscurely\") concerning nature and had done so deliberately in order to be misunderstood.",
"title": "On Nature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Heraclitus has been the subject of numerous interpretations. According to the entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Heraclitus has been seen as a \"material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician and a religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, a mystic; a conventional thinker and a revolutionary; a developer of logic – one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher and an anti-intellectual obscurantist\".",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The hallmarks of Heraclitus' philosophy are the unity of opposites and change, or flux. Diogenes Laërtius summarizes Heraclitus's philosophy as follows: \"All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα ta hola ('the whole')) flows like a stream.\" According to Aristotle, Heraclitus was a dialetheist, or one who denies the law of noncontradiction. (a law of thought in logic which states that one cannot say of what is and that it is not at the same time)",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Several fragments seem to relate to these two concepts. For example, on the unity of opposites: \"The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same\"; \"The way up is the way down\"; \"Beginning and end, on a circle's circumference, are common\"; and \"Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Over time, the opposites change into each other: \"Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life\"; \"As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these\"; and \"Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "It also seems they change into each other depending on one's point of view, a case of relativism or perspectivism. Heraclitus states: \"Disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest.\" While men drink and wash with water, fish prefer to drink saltwater, pigs prefer to wash in mud, and fowls prefer to wash in dust. \"Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat\" and \"asses would rather have refuse than gold.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Jonathan Barnes states that \"Panta rhei, 'everything flows' is probably the most familiar of Heraclitus' sayings, yet few modern scholars think he said it\". Barnes observes that although the exact phrase was not ascribed to Heraclitus until the 6th century by Simplicius, a similar saying expressing the same idea, panta chorei, or \"everything moves\" is ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato in the Cratylus.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Since Plato, Heraclitus's theory of flux has been associated with the metaphor of a flowing river, which cannot be stepped into twice. This fragment from Heraclitus's writings has survived in three different forms:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "\"On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow\" — Arius Didymus, quoted in Stobaeus \"We both step and do not step into the same, we both are and are not\" — Heraclitus Homericus, Homeric Allegories \"It is not possible to step into the same river twice\" — Plutarch, On the E at Delphi",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Heraclitus illustrated the same point using the Sun: \"the Sun is new each day.\" The river fragments (especially the second \"we both are and are not\") seem to suggest not only is the river constantly changing, but we do as well, perhaps commenting on existential questions about humanity and personhood.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The classicist Karl Reinhardt identified the first river quote as the genuine one. Scholars such as Reinhardt also interpreted the metaphor as illustrating what is stable, rather than the usual interpretation of illustrating change. Classicist Karl-Martin Dietz [de] has said: \"You will not find anything, in which the river remains constant ... Just the fact, that there is a particular river bed, that there is a source and an estuary etc. is something, that stays identical. And this is ... the concept of a river.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Attempting to follow Aristotle, Guthrie interprets flux versus stability as a question of matter versus form. Thus, Heraclitus is a flux theorist because he is a materialist. Since there are no unchanging forms like Plato, but only the material world, then everything changes. According to American philosopher W. V. O. Quine, the river parable illustrates that the river is a process through time. One cannot step twice into the same river-stage.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Professor M. M. McCabe has argued that the three statements on rivers should all be read as fragments from a discourse. McCabe suggests reading them as though they arose in succession. The three fragments \"could be retained, and arranged in an argumentative sequence\". In McCabe's reading of the fragments, Heraclitus can be read as a philosopher capable of sustained argument, rather than just aphorism.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Heraclitus said \"strife is justice\" and \"all things take place by strife\". He called the opposites in conflict ἔρις (eris), \"strife\", and theorized that the apparently unitary state, δίκη (dikê), \"justice\", results in \"the most beautiful harmony\", in contrast to Anaximander, who described the same as injustice.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Aristotle said Heraclitus disagreed with Homer because Homer wished that strife would leave the world, which according to Heraclitus would destroy the world; \"there would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites\". It may also explain why he disagreed with the Pythagorean emphasis on harmony, but not on strife.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Heraclitus suggests that the world and its various parts are kept together through the tension produced by the unity of opposites, like the string of a bow or a lyre. On one account, this is the earliest use of the concept of force. A quote about the bow shows his appreciation for wordplay: \"The bow's name is life, but its work is death.\" Each substance contains its opposite, making for a continual circular exchange of generation, destruction, and motion that results in the stability of the world. This can be illustrated by the quote \"Even the barley-drink separates if it is not stirred.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "According to Abraham Schoener: \"War is the central principle in Heraclitus' thought.\" Another of Heraclitus' famous sayings highlights the idea that the unity of opposites is also a conflict of opposites: \"War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free\"; war is a creative tension that brings things into existence. Heraclitus says further \"Gods and men honour those slain in war\"; \"Greater deaths gain greater portions\"; and \"Every beast is tended by blows.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Heraclitus may also have been the first advocate of natural law: \"People ought to fight to keep their law as to defend the city walls. For all human laws get nourishment from the one divine law.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "While considered an ancient cosmologist, Heraclitus did not seem as interested in astronomy, meteorology, or mathematics as his predecessors. It is surmised Heraclitus believed that the earth was flat and extended infinitely in all directions. He also believed that the Sun is as large as it looks, and that if it \"exceeds the due times of the year\" (the seasons), then \"Erinyes, the ministers of Justice, will find him out\". On one account, he believed the Sun and Moon were bowls containing fire, with lunar phases explained by the turning of the bowl. His study of the moon near the end of the month is contained in one of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the best evidence of Heraclitean astronomy.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Milesians before Heraclitus conceived of certain elements as the arche – Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air – Many philosophers concluded that Heraclitus construed of fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. However, it is also argued by many that he never identified Fire as the arche rather, he only use fire to explain his notion of flux. Pre-Socratic scholar Eduard Zeller has argued that Heraclitus believed that heat in general and dry exhalation in particular, rather than visible fire, was the arche.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In one fragment, Heraclitus writes:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "\"This world-order [Kosmos], the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "This is the oldest extant quote using kosmos, or order, to mean the world. Fire is the one thing eternal in the universe. From fire all things originate and all things return again in a process of never-ending cycles. He describes the transformations:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "\"Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth that of water.\" and \"The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fireburst. [Earth] is liquefied as sea and measured into the same proportion as it had before it became earth.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On one interpretation, rejecting both the flux and stability interpretation, Heraclitus is not a material monist, but a revolutionary process philosopher who chooses fire in an attempt to say there is no arche. Fire is a symbol or metaphor for change, rather than the basic stuff which changes the most. Perspectives of this sort emphasize his statements on change such as \"The way up is the way down\", as well as the quote \"All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares\", which has been understood as stating that while all can be transformed into fire, not everything comes from fire, just as not everything comes from gold.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Heraclitus' description of a doctrine of purification of fire has also been investigated for influence from the Zoroastrian concept of Atar. Many of the doctrines of Zoroastrian fire do not match exactly with those of Heraclitus, such as the relation of fire to earth, but he may have taken some inspiration from them. Zoroastrian parallels to Heraclitus are often difficult to identify specifically due to a lack of surviving Zoroastrian literature from the period and mutual influence with Greek philosophy.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The interchange of other elements with fire also has parallels in Vedic literature from the same time period, such as the Kaushitaki Upanishad and Taittiriya Upanishad. West stresses that these doctrines of the interchange of elements were common throughout written works on philosophy that have survived from that period, so Heraclitus' doctrine of fire can not be definitively be said to have been influenced by any other particular Iranian or Indian influence, but may have been part of a mutual interchange of influence over time across the Ancient Near East.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Philosopher Gustav Teichmüller sought to prove Heraclitus was influenced by the Egyptians, either directly, by reading the Book of the Dead, or indirectly through the Greek mystery cults. \"As the sun of Heraclitus was daily generated from water, so Horus, as Ra of the sun, daily proceeded from Lotus the water.\" Paul Tannery took up Teichmüller's interpretation. They thought Heraclitus's book was an offering rather than deposited, and only for initiates. Edmund Pfleiderer argued that Heraclitus was influenced by the mystery cults. He interprets Heraclitus seeming condemning of the mysteries as the condemning of abuses rather than the idea itself.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Heraclitus said that the \"thunderbolt steers all things\", a rare comment on meteorology and likely a reference to Zeus as the supreme being. \"Wisdom is one thing: [to understand the intelligence by which all things are steered through all things]; it is willing and it is unwilling to be called by the name Zeus.\" He invokes relativism with the divine too: God sees man the same way man sees children and apes; and he seems to give a theodicy, \"for god all things are fair and good and just, but men suppose that some are unjust and others just\".",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Heraclitus regarded the soul (psyche) as a mixture of fire and water, and believed that fire was the noble part of the soul and water the ignoble part. He considered mastery of one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit that purified the soul's fire, while drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Heraclitus also compares the soul to a spider and the body to the web. Heraclitus believed the soul is also what unifies the body and grants linguistic understanding, departing from Homer's conception of it as merely the breath of life. Heraclitus ridicules Homer's conception of the soul leaving the body out of the nose to become a shade by saying \"Souls smell in Hades\" and \"If all things should become smoke, then perception would be by the nostrils\". His own views on the afterlife remain unclear, but he did state: \"There await men after they are dead things which they do not expect or imagine.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "A fundamental concept for Heraclitus is logos, an ancient Greek word literally meaning \"word, speech, discourse, or meaning\", but with a wide variety of other uses, such that Heraclitus might have a different meaning of the word for each usage in his book. Kahn has argued that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses, whereas Guthrie has argued that there is no evidence Heraclitus used it in a way that was significantly different from that in which it was used by contemporaneous speakers of Greek.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "For Heraclitus, the logos provided the link between rational discourse and the world's rational structure. Logos was like a universal law that unites the cosmos, according to one fragment: \"Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are one.\" Another fragment reads: \"[hoi polloi] ... do not know how to listen [to Logos] or how to speak [the truth].\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Professor Michael Stokes interprets Heraclitus' use of logos as a public fact like a proposition or formula; like Guthrie, he views Heraclitus as a materialist, and he grants Heraclitus would not have considered these as abstract objects or immaterial things. Another possibility is the logos referred to the truth or the book itself. Classicist Walther Kranz translated it as \"sense\".",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The phrase Ethos anthropoi daimon (\"man's character is [his] fate\"), attributed to Heraclitus, has led to numerous interpretations, and might mean one's luck is related to one's character. The translation of daimon in this context to mean \"fate\" is disputed. Another translation on offer is supported by Charles Kahn and Philip Wheelwright: \"a man's character is his guardian divinity.\" Rather than being followed around by a guardian angel, one's character is his fate.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Heraclitus said \"Time (Aion) is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's.\" It is disputed whether this means time and life is determined by rules like a game, by conflict like a game, or by arbitrary whims of the gods like a child plays.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Heraclitus' writings have exerted a wide influence on Western philosophy, including the works of Plato and Aristotle, who interpreted him in terms of their own doctrines. Heraclitus is also considered a potential source for understanding the Ancient Greek religion since the discovery of the Derveni papyrus. His influence also extends into art, literature, and medicine, as writings in the Hippocratic corpus show signs of Heraclitean themes.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "It is unknown whether or not Heraclitus had any students in his lifetime. In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato presented Cratylus as a Heraclitean and as a linguistic naturalist who believed that names must apply naturally to their objects. According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said that one cannot step into the same river once. He took the view that nothing can be said about the ever-changing world and \"ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger\". To explain both characterizations by Plato and Aristotle, Cratylus may have thought continuous change warrants skepticism because one cannot define a thing that does not have a permanent nature. Diogenes Laertius lists an otherwise historically obscure Antisthenes who wrote a commentary on Heraclitus. According to one author, \"there were no doubt other Heracliteans whose names are now lost to us\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Parmenides of Elea, a philosopher and near-contemporary, proposed a doctrine of changelessness, in contrast to the doctrine of flux put forth by Heraclitus. He is generally agreed to either have influenced or been influenced by Heraclitus. Different philosophers have argued that either one of them may have substantially influenced each other, some taking Heraclitus to be responding to Parmenides, but more often Parmenides is seen as responding to Heraclitus. Some also argue that any direct chain of influence between the two is impossible to determine. Although Heraclitus refers to older figures such as Pythagoras, neither Parmenides or Heraclitus refer to each other by name in any surviving fragments, so any speculation on influence must be based on interpretation.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The surviving fragments of several other pre-Socratic philosophers show Heraclitean themes. Diogenes of Apollonia thought the action of one thing on another meant they were made of one substance. The pluralists may have been influenced by Heraclitus. The philosopher Anaxagoras refuses to separate the opposites in the \"one cosmos\". Empedocles has forces (arguably the first since Heraclitus's tension) which are in opposition, known as Love and Hate, or more accurately, Harmony and Strife. Democritus and the atomists were also influenced by Heraclitus. The atomists and Heraclitus both believed that everything was in motion. On one interpretation: \"Essentially what the atomists did was try to find a middle-way between the contradictory philosophical schemes of Heraclitus and Parmenides.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The sophists, inclusing as Protagoras of Abdera and Gorgias of Leontini, may also have been influenced by Heraclitus. One tradition associated their concern with politics and preventing party strife with Heraclitus. Gorgias seems to have been influenced by the Heraclitean idea of the logos, when he argued in his work On Non-Being, possibly parodying the Eleatics, that being cannot exist or be communicated. According to one author, Gorgias \"in a sense ... completes Heraclitus.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Plato knew of the teachings of Heraclitus through the Heraclitean philosopher Cratylus. Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects, and thus the need for the imperceptible Forms as objects of knowledge. Aristotle accused Heraclitus of denying the law of noncontradiction, and that he thereby failed in his reasoning. However, Aristotle's material monist and world conflagration interpretation of Heraclitus also influenced the Stoics.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Stoics believed major tenets of their philosophy derived from the thought of Heraclitus; especially the logos, used to support their belief that rational law governs the universe. A four-volume work titled Interpretation of Heraclitus was written by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, but has not survived. In surviving stoic writings, this is most evident in the writings of Marcus Aurelius. According to one author, \"Heraclitus of Ephesus was the father of Stoic physics.\" Many of the later Stoics interpreted the logos as the arche, as a creative fire that ran through all things; Marcus Aurelius understood the Logos as \"the account which governs everything.\" Heraclitus also states, \"We should not act and speak like children of our parents\", which Marcus Aurelius interpreted to mean one should not simply accept what others believe. West observes that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Sextus Empiricus all make no mention of this doctrine, and concludes that the language and thought are \"obviously Stoic\" and not attributable to Heraclitus. Long concludes the earliest Stoic fragments are also \"modifications of Heraclitus\". Burnet cautions that these Stoic modifications of Heraclitus make it harder to interpret Heraclitus himself, as the Stoics ascribed their own interpretations of terms like logos and ekpyrosis to Heraclitus.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Cynics were influenced by Heraclitus, such as by his condemnation of the mystery cults. The Cynics attributed several of the later Cynic epistles to his authorship. Heraclitus wrote: \"Dogs bark at every one they do not know.\" Similarly, Diogenes the Cynic, when asked by Alexander why he considered himself a dog, responded that he \"barks at those who give me nothing\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Pyrrhonists were also influenced by Heraclitus. He may be the predecessor to Pyrrho's doctrine \"No More This than That\". Aenesidemus, one of the major ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers, claimed in a now-lost work that Pyrrhonism was a way to Heraclitean philosophy because Pyrrhonist practice helps one to see how opposites appear to be the case about the same thing. Once one sees this, it leads to understanding the Heraclitean view of opposites being the case about the same thing. A later Pyrrhonist philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, disagreed, arguing opposites appearing to be the case about the same thing is not a dogma of the Pyrrhonists but a matter occurring to the Pyrrhonists, to the other philosophers, and to all of humanity.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Heraclitus was often read by early Christian philosophers, who following the Stoics, interpreted the logos as meaning the Christian \"Word of God\", such as in John 1:1: \"In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Word was God.\" Hippolytus of Rome, one of the early Church Fathers of the Christian Church, identified Heraclitus along with the other Pre-Socratics and Academics as a source of heresy, in Heraclitus's case namely the heresy of Noetus. The Christian apologist Justin Martyr took a more positive view of Heraclitus. In his First Apology, he said both Socrates and Heraclitus were Christians before Christ: \"those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them.\" Modern scholars such as John Burnet have viewed the relationship between Heraclitean logos and Johannine logos as fallacious, saying; \"the Johannine doctrine of the logos has nothing to do with Herakleitos or with anything at all in Greek philosophy, but comes from the Hebrew Wisdom literature\". When Heraclitus speaks of \"God\" he does not mean a single deity as an omnipotent and omniscient or God as Creator, the universe being eternal; he meant the divine as opposed to human, the immortal as opposed to the mortal, and the cyclical as opposed to the transient. Thus, it is arguably more accurate to speak of \"the Divine\" and not of \"God\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Heraclitus's influence also extends outside of philosophy. A motif found in art and literature is Heraclitus as the \"weeping philosopher\" and Democritus as the \"laughing philosopher\", which may have originated with the Cynic philosopher Menippus, generally references their reactions to the folly of mankind.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "For example, in Lucian of Samosata's \"Philosophies for Sale\", Heraclitus is auctioned off as the \"weeping philosopher\" and Democritus as the \"laughing philosopher\". The Roman poet Juvenal wrote: \"Heraclitus, weep at life much more than you did while alive, for now life is more pitiable.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Heraclitus also appears in painter Raphael's School of Athens, in which he is represented by Michelangelo, since they shared a \"sour temper and bitter scorn for all rivals\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Modern interest in early Greek philosophy can be traced back to 1573, when French printer Henri Estienne (also known as Henricus Stephanus) collected a number of pre-Socratic fragments, including those of Heraclitus, and published them in Latin in Poesis philosophica. Renaissance skeptic Michel de Montaigne's essay On Democritus and Heraclitus, in which he sided with the laughing philosopher over the weeping philosopher, was probably written soon after. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare features the melancholic character of Antonio, who some critics contend is modeled after Heraclitus. Additionally, in one scene of the play Portia assesses her potential suitors, and says of one County Palatine: \"I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "According to Bernard Freyberg, \"both Parmenides and Heraclitus are direct if distant ancestors of Spinoza\", since they both said all is one. David Hume wrote while discussing personal identity: \"Thus as the nature of a river consists in the motion and change of parts; tho' in less than four and twenty hours these be totally alter'd; this hinders not the river from continuing the same during several ages.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Since Kant, philosophers have sometimes been divided into rationalists and empiricists. Heraclitus has been considered each by different scholars. For rationalism, philosophers cite fragments like \"Poor witnesses for men are the eyes and ears of those who have barbarian souls.\" For empiricism, they cite fragments like \"The things that can be seen, heard, and learned are what I prize the most.\" Gottlob Mayer has argued that the philosophical pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer recapitulated the thought of Heraclitus.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was one of the first to collect the fragments of Heraclitus specifically and write them out in his native tongue, the \"pioneer of Heraclitean studies\". Schleiermacher was also one of the first to posit Persian influence upon Heraclitus, a question taken up by succeeding scholars Friedrich Creuzer and August Gladisch.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The influence of Heraclitus on German idealist G. W. F. Hegel was so profound that he remarked in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy: \"there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic.\" Hegel interpreted Heraclitus as a dialetheist and as a process philosopher, seeing the \"becoming\" in Heraclitus as a natural result of the ontology of \"being\" and \"non-being\" in Parmenides. He also doubted the world-conflagaration interpretation, which had been popular since Aristotle. The Young Hegelian and socialist Ferdinand Lassalle wrote a book on Heraclitus. \"Lassalle follows Hegel in styling the doctrine of Heraclitus 'the philosophy of the logical law of the identity of contradictories.'\" Lassalle also thought Persian theology influenced Heraclitus. Marx compared Lasalle's work to that of \"a schoolboy\" and Lenin accused him of \"sheer plagiarism\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Classical philologist Jakob Bernays also wrote a work on Heraclitus. Inspired by Bernays, the English scholar Ingram Bywater collected all fragments of Heraclitus in a critical edition, Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae (1877). An English translation was provided by G. T. W. Patrick in 1889. Hermann Diels wrote \"Bywater's book has come to be accounted ... as the only reliable collection of the remains of that philosopher.\" Diels published the first edition of the authoritative Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics) in 1903, later revised and expanded three times, and finally revised in two subsequent editions by Walther Kranz. Diels–Kranz is used in academia to cite pre-Socratic philosophers. In Diels–Kranz, each ancient personality and each passage is assigned a number to uniquely identify it; Heraclitus is traditionally catalogued as philosopher number 22.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The existentialist and classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche preferred Heraclitus above all the other pre-Socratics. The nationalist philosopher of history Oswald Spengler wrote his (failed) dissertation on Heraclitus. Existentialist and phenomenologist Martin Heidegger was also influenced by Heraclitus, as seen in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Heidegger believed that the thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides was the origin of philosophy and misunderstood by Plato and Aristotle, leading all of Western philosophy astray.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Irish author Oscar Wilde was influenced by Heraclitus. Wilde is credited with the saying \"expect the unexpected\", though Heraclitus said \"If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In the 1950s, a term originating with Heraclitus, \"idios kosmos\", meaning \"private world\" as distinguished from the \"common world\" (koinos kosmos) was adopted by phenomenological and existential psychologists, such as Ludwig Binswanger and Rollo May, to refer to the experience of people with delusions, or other problems, who have trouble seeing beyond the limits of their own minds, or who confuse this private world with shared reality. It was an important part of novelist Philip K. Dick's views on schizophrenia. Those thinkers have relied on Heraclitus statement that \"The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The British idealist J. M. E. McTaggart is best known for his paper \"The Unreality of Time\" (1908), in which he argues that time is unreal. His \"A series\", also known as presentism or \"temporal becoming\", which conceptualizes of time as tensed (i.e., having the properties of being past, present, or future), has been described as Heraclitean. By contrast, his \" \"B-theory\", under which time is tenseless (i.e., earlier than, simultaneous to, or later than), has been associated with Parmenides Advocates of presentism include Arthur Prior and William Lane Craig.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The British philosopher A. N. Whitehead has been called a process philosopher in the tradition of Heraclitus. In Bertrand Russell's essay Mysticism and Logic, he contends Heraclitus proves himself a metaphysician by his blending of mystical and scientific impulses. Ludwig Wittgenstein was known to read Plato and in his return to philosophy in 1929 he made several remarks resembling those of Heraclitus: \"The fundamental thing expressed grammatically: What about the sentence: One cannot step into the same river twice?\" He then seemed to make a dramatic shift by 1931, saying one can step twice into the same river. The philosopher Peter Geach was inspired by Heraclitus's comments on the river to formulate his idea of relative identity, which he also used to solve such issues as the Trinity.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Recent approaches in logic, such as paraconsistent logic, have led to some philosophers advancing logical pluralism and dialetheism, such as Graham Priest and JC Beall. Priest agrees with Hegel's contradictory account of motion, based on Zeno of Elea's Paradox of the Arrow, which is arguably Heraclitus' account of flux. On this account of motion, to move is to be both here and not here.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "This article uses the Diels–Kranz numbering system for testimony (labeled A), fragments (labeled B), and imitation (labeled C) of Pre-Socratic philosophy.",
"title": "References"
}
]
| Heraclitus was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Most of the ancient stories about him are thought to be later fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments. His paradoxical philosophy and appreciation for wordplay and cryptic, oracular epigrams has earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure" since antiquity. He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher". The central ideas of Heraclitus' philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. He also saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in "being" and in the static nature of reality. Like the Milesians before him – Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air – Heraclitus chose fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. He also saw the logos as giving structure to the world. | 2001-09-22T17:04:56Z | 2023-12-25T01:53:52Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus |
13,793 | Harrison Schmitt | Harrison Hagan Schmitt (born July 3, 1935) is an American geologist, retired NASA astronaut, university professor, former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon.
In December 1972, as one of the crew on board Apollo 17, Schmitt became the first member of NASA's first scientist-astronaut group to fly in space. As Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo missions, he also became the twelfth and second-youngest person to set foot on the Moon and the second-to-last person to step off of the Moon (he boarded the Lunar Module shortly before commander Eugene Cernan). Schmitt also remains the only professional scientist to have flown beyond low Earth orbit and to have visited the Moon. He was influential within the community of geologists supporting the Apollo program and, before starting his own preparations for an Apollo mission, had been one of the scientists training those Apollo astronauts chosen to visit the lunar surface.
Schmitt resigned from NASA in August 1975 to run for election to the United States Senate as a member from New Mexico. As the Republican candidate in the 1976 election, he defeated Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya. In the 1982 election, Schmitt was defeated by Democrat Jeff Bingaman.
Born July 3, 1935, in Santa Rita, New Mexico, Schmitt grew up in nearby Silver City, and is a graduate of the Western High School (class of 1953). He received a B.S. degree in geology from the California Institute of Technology in 1957 and then spent a year studying geology at the University of Oslo in Norway, as a Fulbright Scholar. He received a Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University in 1964, based on his geological field studies in Norway.
Before joining NASA as a member of the first group of scientist-astronauts in June 1965, he worked at the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Center at Flagstaff, Arizona, developing geological field techniques that would be used by the Apollo crews. Following his selection, Schmitt spent his first year at Air Force UPT learning to become a jet pilot. Upon his return to the astronaut corps in Houston, he played a key role in training Apollo crews to be geologic observers when they were in lunar orbit and competent geologic field workers when they were on the lunar surface. After each of the landing missions, he participated in the examination and evaluation of the returned lunar samples and helped the crews with the scientific aspects of their mission reports.
Schmitt spent considerable time becoming proficient in the CSM and LM systems. In March 1970 he became the first of the scientist-astronauts to be assigned to space flight, joining Richard F. Gordon Jr. (Commander) and Vance Brand (Command Module Pilot) on the Apollo 15 backup crew. The flight rotation put these three in line to fly as prime crew on the third following mission, Apollo 18. When Apollo 18 and Apollo 19 were canceled in September 1970, the community of lunar geologists supporting Apollo felt so strongly about the need to land a professional geologist on the Moon, that they pressured NASA to reassign Schmitt to a remaining flight. As a result, Schmitt was assigned in August 1971 to fly on the last mission, Apollo 17, replacing Joe Engle as Lunar Module Pilot. Schmitt landed on the Moon with commander Gene Cernan in December 1972.
Schmitt claims to have taken the photograph of the Earth known as The Blue Marble, one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence.
Perhaps the hardest thing to get used to on the Moon is that the sky is completely black. There's no blue at all.
Harrison Schmitt
While on the Moon's surface, Schmitt — the only geologist in the astronaut corps — collected the rock sample designated Troctolite 76535, which has been called "without doubt the most interesting sample returned from the Moon". Among other distinctions, it is the central piece of evidence suggesting that the Moon once possessed an active magnetic field.
As he returned to the Lunar Module before Cernan, Schmitt is the next-to-last person to have walked on the Moon's surface. Since the death of Cernan in 2017, Schmitt is the most recent person to have walked on the Moon who is still alive. After the completion of the Apollo 17 mission, Schmitt played an active role in documenting the Apollo geologic results and also took on the task of organizing NASA's Energy Program Office.
On April 29, 2018, the Schmitt Space Communicator SC-1x named in his honor was carried aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard crew capsule in a project partly funded by NASA. It launched the first commercial two-way data and wi-fi hotspot service in space and sent the first commercial Twitter message from space. The three-pound device was developed by Solstar, which Schmitt joined as an advisor, and launched 66 miles above the Earth's surface as a technology demonstration. The device was admitted to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
On August 30, 1975, Schmitt resigned from NASA to seek election as a Republican to the United States Senate representing New Mexico in the 1976 election. Schmitt campaigned for fourteen months, and his campaign focused on the future. In the Republican primary, held on June 1, 1976, Schmitt defeated Eugene Peirce. In the election, Schmitt opposed two-term Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya. He defeated Montoya 57% to 42%.
He served one term and, notably, was the chairman of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce. He sought a second term in 1982, facing state Attorney General Jeff Bingaman. Bingaman attacked Schmitt for not paying enough attention to local matters; his campaign slogan asked, "What on Earth has he done for you lately?" This, combined with the deep recession, proved too much for Schmitt to overcome; he was defeated, 54% to 46%.
Following his Senate term, Schmitt has been a consultant in business, geology, space, and public policy. Schmitt is an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has long been a proponent of lunar resource utilization. In 1997 he proposed the Interlune InterMars Initiative, listing among its goals the advancement of private-sector acquisition and use of lunar resources, particularly lunar helium-3 as a fuel for notional nuclear fusion reactors.
Schmitt was chair of the NASA Advisory Council, whose mandate is to provide technical advice to the NASA Administrator, from November 2005 until his abrupt resignation on October 16, 2008. In November 2008, he quit the Planetary Society over policy advocacy differences, citing the organization's statements on "focusing on Mars as the driving goal of human spaceflight" (Schmitt said that going back to the Moon would speed progress toward a crewed Mars mission), on "accelerating research into global climate change through more comprehensive Earth observations" (Schmitt voiced objections to the notion of a present "scientific consensus" on climate change as any policy guide), and on international cooperation (which he felt would retard rather than accelerate progress), among other points of divergence.
Schmitt also serves as a visiting senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition.
In January 2011, he was appointed as secretary of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department in the cabinet of Governor Susana Martinez, but was forced to give up the appointment the following month after refusing to submit to a required background investigation. El Paso Times called him the "most celebrated" candidate for New Mexico energy secretary.
Schmitt wrote a book entitled Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space in 2006. Schmitt is also involved in several civic projects, including the improvement of the Senator Harrison H. Schmitt Big Sky Hang Glider Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Schmitt has rejected the scientific consensus on climate change, which states that climate change is real, progressing, dangerous, and primarily human-caused. He has claimed that climate change is predominantly caused by natural factors, as opposed to human activity. Schmitt has argued that the risks posed by climate change are overstated and has instead supported the notion that climate change is a "tool" used to advocate for the expansion of the government.
Schmitt resigned from the Planetary Society due to disagreements over their "Roadmap to Space Exploration", which recommended prioritizing earlier human missions to Mars over U.S. lunar expeditions. He believed lunar exploration was crucial for Mars missions, stating, "The fastest way to get to Mars is by way of the Moon." Additionally, Schmitt criticized the society's stance on global warming, writing in his resignation letter that the "'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making," asserting it should not be part of the Society's activities. Schmitt spoke at the March 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, an anthropogenic climate change denier event hosted by the conservative Heartland Institute, where he said that climate change was a "stalking horse for National Socialism." He appeared in December that year on the Fox Business Network, saying that "[t]he CO2 scare is a red herring".
In a 2009 interview with far-right conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones, Schmitt asserted a link between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the American environmental movement: "I think the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union. Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement."
In 2013, Schmitt co-authored an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal with William Happer, contending that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are not significantly correlated with global warming, attributing the "single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas" to advocates of government control of energy production. Noting a positive relationship between crop resistance to drought and increasing carbon dioxide levels, the authors argued, "Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity."
Schmitt was one of five inductees into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1977. He was one of 24 Apollo astronauts who were inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997.
Schmitt is one of the astronauts featured in the 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. He also contributed to the 2006 book NASA's Scientist-Astronauts by David Shayler and Colin Burgess. | [
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"text": "Harrison Hagan Schmitt (born July 3, 1935) is an American geologist, retired NASA astronaut, university professor, former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon.",
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"text": "In December 1972, as one of the crew on board Apollo 17, Schmitt became the first member of NASA's first scientist-astronaut group to fly in space. As Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo missions, he also became the twelfth and second-youngest person to set foot on the Moon and the second-to-last person to step off of the Moon (he boarded the Lunar Module shortly before commander Eugene Cernan). Schmitt also remains the only professional scientist to have flown beyond low Earth orbit and to have visited the Moon. He was influential within the community of geologists supporting the Apollo program and, before starting his own preparations for an Apollo mission, had been one of the scientists training those Apollo astronauts chosen to visit the lunar surface.",
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"text": "Schmitt resigned from NASA in August 1975 to run for election to the United States Senate as a member from New Mexico. As the Republican candidate in the 1976 election, he defeated Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya. In the 1982 election, Schmitt was defeated by Democrat Jeff Bingaman.",
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"text": "Born July 3, 1935, in Santa Rita, New Mexico, Schmitt grew up in nearby Silver City, and is a graduate of the Western High School (class of 1953). He received a B.S. degree in geology from the California Institute of Technology in 1957 and then spent a year studying geology at the University of Oslo in Norway, as a Fulbright Scholar. He received a Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University in 1964, based on his geological field studies in Norway.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Before joining NASA as a member of the first group of scientist-astronauts in June 1965, he worked at the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Center at Flagstaff, Arizona, developing geological field techniques that would be used by the Apollo crews. Following his selection, Schmitt spent his first year at Air Force UPT learning to become a jet pilot. Upon his return to the astronaut corps in Houston, he played a key role in training Apollo crews to be geologic observers when they were in lunar orbit and competent geologic field workers when they were on the lunar surface. After each of the landing missions, he participated in the examination and evaluation of the returned lunar samples and helped the crews with the scientific aspects of their mission reports.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Schmitt spent considerable time becoming proficient in the CSM and LM systems. In March 1970 he became the first of the scientist-astronauts to be assigned to space flight, joining Richard F. Gordon Jr. (Commander) and Vance Brand (Command Module Pilot) on the Apollo 15 backup crew. The flight rotation put these three in line to fly as prime crew on the third following mission, Apollo 18. When Apollo 18 and Apollo 19 were canceled in September 1970, the community of lunar geologists supporting Apollo felt so strongly about the need to land a professional geologist on the Moon, that they pressured NASA to reassign Schmitt to a remaining flight. As a result, Schmitt was assigned in August 1971 to fly on the last mission, Apollo 17, replacing Joe Engle as Lunar Module Pilot. Schmitt landed on the Moon with commander Gene Cernan in December 1972.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Schmitt claims to have taken the photograph of the Earth known as The Blue Marble, one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Perhaps the hardest thing to get used to on the Moon is that the sky is completely black. There's no blue at all.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Harrison Schmitt",
"title": "Biography"
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"text": "While on the Moon's surface, Schmitt — the only geologist in the astronaut corps — collected the rock sample designated Troctolite 76535, which has been called \"without doubt the most interesting sample returned from the Moon\". Among other distinctions, it is the central piece of evidence suggesting that the Moon once possessed an active magnetic field.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As he returned to the Lunar Module before Cernan, Schmitt is the next-to-last person to have walked on the Moon's surface. Since the death of Cernan in 2017, Schmitt is the most recent person to have walked on the Moon who is still alive. After the completion of the Apollo 17 mission, Schmitt played an active role in documenting the Apollo geologic results and also took on the task of organizing NASA's Energy Program Office.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "On April 29, 2018, the Schmitt Space Communicator SC-1x named in his honor was carried aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard crew capsule in a project partly funded by NASA. It launched the first commercial two-way data and wi-fi hotspot service in space and sent the first commercial Twitter message from space. The three-pound device was developed by Solstar, which Schmitt joined as an advisor, and launched 66 miles above the Earth's surface as a technology demonstration. The device was admitted to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.",
"title": "Biography"
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"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On August 30, 1975, Schmitt resigned from NASA to seek election as a Republican to the United States Senate representing New Mexico in the 1976 election. Schmitt campaigned for fourteen months, and his campaign focused on the future. In the Republican primary, held on June 1, 1976, Schmitt defeated Eugene Peirce. In the election, Schmitt opposed two-term Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya. He defeated Montoya 57% to 42%.",
"title": "Biography"
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{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "He served one term and, notably, was the chairman of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce. He sought a second term in 1982, facing state Attorney General Jeff Bingaman. Bingaman attacked Schmitt for not paying enough attention to local matters; his campaign slogan asked, \"What on Earth has he done for you lately?\" This, combined with the deep recession, proved too much for Schmitt to overcome; he was defeated, 54% to 46%.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Following his Senate term, Schmitt has been a consultant in business, geology, space, and public policy. Schmitt is an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has long been a proponent of lunar resource utilization. In 1997 he proposed the Interlune InterMars Initiative, listing among its goals the advancement of private-sector acquisition and use of lunar resources, particularly lunar helium-3 as a fuel for notional nuclear fusion reactors.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Schmitt was chair of the NASA Advisory Council, whose mandate is to provide technical advice to the NASA Administrator, from November 2005 until his abrupt resignation on October 16, 2008. In November 2008, he quit the Planetary Society over policy advocacy differences, citing the organization's statements on \"focusing on Mars as the driving goal of human spaceflight\" (Schmitt said that going back to the Moon would speed progress toward a crewed Mars mission), on \"accelerating research into global climate change through more comprehensive Earth observations\" (Schmitt voiced objections to the notion of a present \"scientific consensus\" on climate change as any policy guide), and on international cooperation (which he felt would retard rather than accelerate progress), among other points of divergence.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Schmitt also serves as a visiting senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In January 2011, he was appointed as secretary of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department in the cabinet of Governor Susana Martinez, but was forced to give up the appointment the following month after refusing to submit to a required background investigation. El Paso Times called him the \"most celebrated\" candidate for New Mexico energy secretary.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Schmitt wrote a book entitled Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement of Space in 2006. Schmitt is also involved in several civic projects, including the improvement of the Senator Harrison H. Schmitt Big Sky Hang Glider Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Schmitt has rejected the scientific consensus on climate change, which states that climate change is real, progressing, dangerous, and primarily human-caused. He has claimed that climate change is predominantly caused by natural factors, as opposed to human activity. Schmitt has argued that the risks posed by climate change are overstated and has instead supported the notion that climate change is a \"tool\" used to advocate for the expansion of the government.",
"title": "Views on climate change"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Schmitt resigned from the Planetary Society due to disagreements over their \"Roadmap to Space Exploration\", which recommended prioritizing earlier human missions to Mars over U.S. lunar expeditions. He believed lunar exploration was crucial for Mars missions, stating, \"The fastest way to get to Mars is by way of the Moon.\" Additionally, Schmitt criticized the society's stance on global warming, writing in his resignation letter that the \"'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making,\" asserting it should not be part of the Society's activities. Schmitt spoke at the March 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, an anthropogenic climate change denier event hosted by the conservative Heartland Institute, where he said that climate change was a \"stalking horse for National Socialism.\" He appeared in December that year on the Fox Business Network, saying that \"[t]he CO2 scare is a red herring\".",
"title": "Views on climate change"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In a 2009 interview with far-right conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones, Schmitt asserted a link between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the American environmental movement: \"I think the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union. Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement.\"",
"title": "Views on climate change"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2013, Schmitt co-authored an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal with William Happer, contending that increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are not significantly correlated with global warming, attributing the \"single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas\" to advocates of government control of energy production. Noting a positive relationship between crop resistance to drought and increasing carbon dioxide levels, the authors argued, \"Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.\"",
"title": "Views on climate change"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Schmitt was one of five inductees into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1977. He was one of 24 Apollo astronauts who were inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Schmitt is one of the astronauts featured in the 2007 documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. He also contributed to the 2006 book NASA's Scientist-Astronauts by David Shayler and Colin Burgess.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
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| Harrison Hagan Schmitt is an American geologist, retired NASA astronaut, university professor, former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and the most recent living person—and only person without a background in military aviation—to have walked on the Moon. In December 1972, as one of the crew on board Apollo 17, Schmitt became the first member of NASA's first scientist-astronaut group to fly in space. As Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo missions, he also became the twelfth and second-youngest person to set foot on the Moon and the second-to-last person to step off of the Moon. Schmitt also remains the only professional scientist to have flown beyond low Earth orbit and to have visited the Moon. He was influential within the community of geologists supporting the Apollo program and, before starting his own preparations for an Apollo mission, had been one of the scientists training those Apollo astronauts chosen to visit the lunar surface. Schmitt resigned from NASA in August 1975 to run for election to the United States Senate as a member from New Mexico. As the Republican candidate in the 1976 election, he defeated Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya. In the 1982 election, Schmitt was defeated by Democrat Jeff Bingaman. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-02T10:55:14Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Schmitt |
13,795 | Hilaire Rouelle | Hilaire Marin Rouelle (15 February 1718 – 7 April 1779) was an 18th-century French chemist. Commonly cited as the 1773 discoverer of urea, he was not the first to do so. Dutch scientist Herman Boerhaave had discovered this chemical as early as 1727. Rouelle is known as "le cadet" (the younger) to distinguish him from his older brother, Guillaume-François Rouelle, who was also a chemist. | [
{
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"text": "Hilaire Marin Rouelle (15 February 1718 – 7 April 1779) was an 18th-century French chemist. Commonly cited as the 1773 discoverer of urea, he was not the first to do so. Dutch scientist Herman Boerhaave had discovered this chemical as early as 1727. Rouelle is known as \"le cadet\" (the younger) to distinguish him from his older brother, Guillaume-François Rouelle, who was also a chemist.",
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| Hilaire Marin Rouelle was an 18th-century French chemist. Commonly cited as the 1773 discoverer of urea, he was not the first to do so. Dutch scientist Herman Boerhaave had discovered this chemical as early as 1727. Rouelle is known as "le cadet" to distinguish him from his older brother, Guillaume-François Rouelle, who was also a chemist. | 2001-05-10T09:22:41Z | 2023-12-15T12:53:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilaire_Rouelle |
13,798 | Halon | Halon may refer to: | [
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| Halon may refer to: Haloalkane, or halogenoalkane, a group of chemical compounds consisting of alkanes with linked halogens (in particular, bromine-containing haloalkanes)
Halomethane compounds:
Halon 10001 (iodomethane)
Halon 1001 (bromomethane)
Halon 1011 (bromochloromethane, CH2BrCl)
Halon 104 (carbon tetrachloride)
Halon 1103 (tribromofluoromethane)
Halon 112 (dichlorofluoromethane)
Halon 1201 (bromodifluoromethane)
Halon 1202 (dibromodifluoromethane)
Halon 1211 (bromochlorodifluoromethane, CF2ClBr)
Halon 122 (dichlorodifluoromethane)
Halon 1301 (bromotrifluoromethane, CBrF3)
Halon 14 (tetrafluoromethane)
Halon 242 (1,2-dichlorotetrafluoroethane)
Halon 2402 (dibromotetrafluoroethane, C2Br2F4)—used as a fire extinguisher
Halon 2600 (hexafluoroethane)
Halon (software), a mail transfer agent (MTA) program | 2001-09-23T06:09:16Z | 2023-12-15T19:37:52Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halon |
13,800 | Harrisonburg | Harrisonburg may refer to a place in the United States: | [
{
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"text": "Harrisonburg may refer to a place in the United States:",
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| Harrisonburg may refer to a place in the United States: Harrisonburg, Louisiana
Harrisonburg, Virginia | 2019-12-28T17:31:39Z | [
"Template:Geodis"
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrisonburg |
|
13,802 | Hammer | A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal (as with a forge), or to crush rock. Hammers are used for a wide range of driving, shaping, breaking and non-destructive striking applications. Traditional disciplines include carpentry, blacksmithing, warfare, and percussive musicianship (as with a gong).
Hammering is use of a hammer in its strike capacity, as opposed to prying with a secondary claw or grappling with a secondary hook. Carpentry and blacksmithing hammers are generally wielded from a stationary stance against a stationary target as gripped and propelled with one arm, in a lengthy downward planar arc—downward to add kinetic energy to the impact—pivoting mainly around the shoulder and elbow, with a small but brisk wrist rotation shortly before impact; for extreme impact, concurrent motions of the torso and knee can lower the shoulder joint during the swing to further increase the length of the swing arc (but this is tiring). War hammers are often wielded in non-vertical planes of motion, with a far greater share of energy input provided from the legs and hips, which can also include a lunging motion, especially against moving targets. Small mallets can be swung from the wrists in a smaller motion permitting a much higher cadence of repeated strikes. Use of hammers and heavy mallets for demolition must adapt the hammer stroke to the location and orientation of the target, which can necessitate a clubbing or golfing motion with a two-handed grip.
The modern hammer head is typically made of steel which has been heat treated for hardness, and the handle (also known as a haft or helve) is typically made of wood or plastic.
Ubiquitous in framing, the claw hammer has a "claw" to pull nails out of wood, and is commonly found in an inventory of household tools in North America. Other types of hammers vary in shape, size, and structure, depending on their purposes. Hammers used in many trades include sledgehammers, mallets, and ball-peen hammers. Although most hammers are hand tools, powered hammers, such as steam hammers and trip hammers, are used to deliver forces beyond the capacity of the human arm. There are over 40 different types of hammers that have many different types of uses.
For hand hammers, the grip of the shaft is an important consideration. Many forms of hammering by hand are heavy work, and perspiration can lead to slippage from the hand, turning a hammer into a dangerous or destructive uncontrolled projectile. Steel is highly elastic and transmits shock and vibration; steel is also a good conductor of heat, making it unsuitable for contact with bare skin in frigid conditions. Modern hammers with steel shafts are almost invariably clad with a synthetic polymer to improve grip, dampen vibration, and to provide thermal insulation. A suitably contoured handle is also an important aid in providing a secure grip during heavy use. Traditional wooden handles were reasonably good in all regards, but lack strength and durability compared to steel, and there are safety issues with wooden handles if the head becomes loose on the shaft.
The high elasticity of the steel head is important in energy transfer, especially when used in conjunction with an equally elastic anvil.
In terms of human physiology, many uses of the hammer involve coordinated ballistic movements under intense muscular forces which must be planned in advance at the neuromuscular level, as they occur too rapidly for conscious adjustment in flight. For this reason, accurate striking at speed requires more practice than a tapping movement to the same target area. It has been suggested that the cognitive demands for pre-planning, sequencing and accurate timing associated with the related ballistic movements of throwing, clubbing, and hammering precipitated aspects of brain evolution in early hominids.
The use of simple hammers dates to around 3.3 million years ago according to the 2012 find made by Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University, who while excavating a site near Kenya's Lake Turkana discovered a very large deposit of various shaped stones including those used to strike wood, bone, or other stones to break them apart and shape them. The first hammers were made without handles. Stones attached to sticks with strips of leather or animal sinew were being used as hammers with handles by about 30,000 BCE during the middle of the Paleolithic Stone Age. The addition of a handle gave the user better control and less accidents. The hammer became the primary tool used for building, food, and protection.
The hammer's archaeological record shows that it may be the oldest tool for which definite evidence exists.
A traditional hand-held hammer consists of a separate head and a handle, which can be fastened together by means of a special wedge made for the purpose, or by glue, or both. This two-piece design is often used to combine a dense metallic striking head with a non-metallic mechanical-shock-absorbing handle (to reduce user fatigue from repeated strikes). If wood is used for the handle, it is often hickory or ash, which are tough and long-lasting materials that can dissipate shock waves from the hammer head. Rigid fiberglass resin may be used for the handle; this material does not absorb water or decay but does not dissipate shock as well as wood.
A loose hammer head is considered hazardous due to the risk of the head becoming detached from the handle while being swung becoming a dangerous uncontrolled projectile. Wooden handles can often be replaced when worn or damaged; specialized kits are available covering a range of handle sizes and designs, plus special wedges and spacers for secure attachment.
Some hammers are one-piece designs made mostly of a single material. A one-piece metallic hammer may optionally have its handle coated or wrapped in a resilient material such as rubber for improved grip and to reduce user fatigue.
The hammer head may be surfaced with a variety of materials including brass, bronze, wood, plastic, rubber, or leather. Some hammers have interchangeable striking surfaces, which can be selected as needed or replaced when worn out.
A large hammer-like tool is a maul (sometimes called a "beetle"), a wood- or rubber-headed hammer is a mallet, and a hammer-like tool with a cutting blade is usually called a hatchet. The essential part of a hammer is the head, a compact solid mass that is able to deliver a blow to the intended target without itself deforming. The impacting surface of the tool is usually flat or slightly rounded; the opposite end of the impacting mass may have a ball shape, as in the ball-peen hammer. Some upholstery hammers have a magnetized face, to pick up tacks. In the hatchet, the flat hammer head may be secondary to the cutting edge of the tool.
The impact between steel hammer heads and the objects being hit can create sparks, which may ignite flammable or explosive gases. These are a hazard in some industries such as underground coal mining (due to the presence of methane gas), or in other hazardous environments such as petroleum refineries and chemical plants. In these environments, a variety of non-sparking metal tools are used, primarily made of aluminium or beryllium copper. In recent years, the handles have been made of durable plastic or rubber, though wood is still widely used because of its shock-absorbing qualities and repairability.
Mechanically powered hammers often look quite different from the hand tools, but nevertheless, most of them work on the same principle. They include:
A hammer is a simple force amplifier that works by converting mechanical work into kinetic energy and back.
In the swing that precedes each blow, the hammer head stores a certain amount of kinetic energy—equal to the length D of the swing times the force f produced by the muscles of the arm and by gravity. When the hammer strikes, the head is stopped by an opposite force coming from the target, equal and opposite to the force applied by the head to the target. If the target is a hard and heavy object, or if it is resting on some sort of anvil, the head can travel only a very short distance d before stopping. Since the stopping force F times that distance must be equal to the head's kinetic energy, it follows that F is much greater than the original driving force f—roughly, by a factor D/d. In this way, great strength is not needed to produce a force strong enough to bend steel, or crack the hardest stone.
The amount of energy delivered to the target by the hammer-blow is equivalent to one half the mass of the head times the square of the head's speed at the time of impact ( E = m v 2 2 ) {\displaystyle (E={mv^{2} \over 2})} . While the energy delivered to the target increases linearly with mass, it increases quadratically with the speed (see the effect of the handle, below). High tech titanium heads are lighter and allow for longer handles, thus increasing velocity and delivering the same energy with less arm fatigue than that of a heavier steel head hammer. A titanium head has about 3% recoil energy and can result in greater efficiency and less fatigue when compared to a steel head with up to 30% recoil. Dead blow hammers use special rubber or steel shot to absorb recoil energy, rather than bouncing the hammer head after impact.
The handle of the hammer helps in several ways. It keeps the user's hands away from the point of impact. It provides a broad area that is better-suited for gripping by the hand. Most importantly, it allows the user to maximize the speed of the head on each blow. The primary constraint on additional handle length is the lack of space to swing the hammer. This is why sledgehammers, largely used in open spaces, can have handles that are much longer than a standard carpenter's hammer. The second most important constraint is more subtle. Even without considering the effects of fatigue, the longer the handle, the harder it is to guide the head of the hammer to its target at full speed.
Most designs are a compromise between practicality and energy efficiency. With too long a handle, the hammer is inefficient because it delivers force to the wrong place, off-target. With too short a handle, the hammer is inefficient because it does not deliver enough force, requiring more blows to complete a given task. Modifications have also been made with respect to the effect of the hammer on the user. Handles made of shock-absorbing materials or varying angles attempt to make it easier for the user to continue to wield this age-old device, even as nail guns and other powered drivers encroach on its traditional field of use.
As hammers must be used in many circumstances, where the position of the person using them cannot be taken for granted, trade-offs are made for the sake of practicality. In areas where one has plenty of room, a long handle with a heavy head (like a sledgehammer) can deliver the maximum amount of energy to the target. It is not practical to use such a large hammer for all tasks, however, and thus the overall design has been modified repeatedly to achieve the optimum utility in a wide variety of situations.
Gravity exerts a force on the hammer head. If hammering downwards, gravity increases the acceleration during the hammer stroke and increases the energy delivered with each blow. If hammering upwards, gravity reduces the acceleration during the hammer stroke and therefore reduces the energy delivered with each blow. Some hammering methods, such as traditional mechanical pile drivers, rely entirely on gravity for acceleration on the down stroke.
A hammer may cause significant injury if it strikes the body. Both manual and powered hammers can cause peripheral neuropathy or a variety of other ailments when used improperly. Awkward handles can cause repetitive stress injury (RSI) to hand and arm joints, and uncontrolled shock waves from repeated impacts can injure nerves and the skeleton. Additionally, striking metal objects with a hammer may produce small metallic projectiles which can become lodged in the eye. It is therefore recommended to wear safety glasses.
A war hammer is a late medieval weapon of war intended for close combat action.
The hammer, being one of the most used tools by man, has been used very much in symbols such as flags and heraldry. In the Middle Ages, it was used often in blacksmith guild logos, as well as in many family symbols. The hammer and pick are used as a symbol of mining.
In mythology, the gods Thor (Norse) and Sucellus (Celtic and Gallo-Roman), and the hero Hercules (Greek), all had hammers that appear in their lore and carried different meanings. Thor, the god of thunder and lightning, wields a hammer named Mjölnir. Many artifacts of decorative hammers have been found, leading modern practitioners of this religion to often wear reproductions as a sign of their faith.
In American folklore, the hammer of John Henry represents the strength and endurance of a man.
A political party in Singapore, Workers' Party of Singapore, based their logo on a hammer to symbolize the party's civic nationalism and social democracy ideology.
A variant, well-known symbol with a hammer in it is the Hammer and Sickle, which was the symbol of the former Soviet Union and is strongly linked to communism and early socialism. The hammer in this symbol represents the industrial working class (and the sickle represents the agricultural working class). The hammer is used in some coats of arms in former socialist countries like East Germany. Similarly, the Hammer and Sword symbolizes Strasserism, a strand of National Socialism seeking to appeal to the working class. Another variant of the symbol was used for the North Korean party, Workers' Party of Korea, incorporated with an ink brush on the middle, which symbolizes both Juche and Songun ideologies.
In Pink Floyd – The Wall, two hammers crossed are used as a symbol for the fascist takeover of the concert during "In the Flesh". This also has the meaning of the hammer beating down any "nails" that stick out.
The gavel, a small wooden mallet, is used to symbolize a mandate to preside over a meeting or judicial proceeding, and a graphic image of one is used as a symbol of legislative or judicial decision-making authority.
Judah Maccabee was nicknamed "The Hammer", possibly in recognition of his ferocity in battle. The name "Maccabee" may derive from the Aramaic maqqaba. (see Judah Maccabee § Origin of Name "The Hammer".)
The hammer in the song "If I Had a Hammer" represents a relentless message of justice broadcast across the land. The song became a symbol of the civil rights movement. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted \"head\" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal (as with a forge), or to crush rock. Hammers are used for a wide range of driving, shaping, breaking and non-destructive striking applications. Traditional disciplines include carpentry, blacksmithing, warfare, and percussive musicianship (as with a gong).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hammering is use of a hammer in its strike capacity, as opposed to prying with a secondary claw or grappling with a secondary hook. Carpentry and blacksmithing hammers are generally wielded from a stationary stance against a stationary target as gripped and propelled with one arm, in a lengthy downward planar arc—downward to add kinetic energy to the impact—pivoting mainly around the shoulder and elbow, with a small but brisk wrist rotation shortly before impact; for extreme impact, concurrent motions of the torso and knee can lower the shoulder joint during the swing to further increase the length of the swing arc (but this is tiring). War hammers are often wielded in non-vertical planes of motion, with a far greater share of energy input provided from the legs and hips, which can also include a lunging motion, especially against moving targets. Small mallets can be swung from the wrists in a smaller motion permitting a much higher cadence of repeated strikes. Use of hammers and heavy mallets for demolition must adapt the hammer stroke to the location and orientation of the target, which can necessitate a clubbing or golfing motion with a two-handed grip.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The modern hammer head is typically made of steel which has been heat treated for hardness, and the handle (also known as a haft or helve) is typically made of wood or plastic.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ubiquitous in framing, the claw hammer has a \"claw\" to pull nails out of wood, and is commonly found in an inventory of household tools in North America. Other types of hammers vary in shape, size, and structure, depending on their purposes. Hammers used in many trades include sledgehammers, mallets, and ball-peen hammers. Although most hammers are hand tools, powered hammers, such as steam hammers and trip hammers, are used to deliver forces beyond the capacity of the human arm. There are over 40 different types of hammers that have many different types of uses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "For hand hammers, the grip of the shaft is an important consideration. Many forms of hammering by hand are heavy work, and perspiration can lead to slippage from the hand, turning a hammer into a dangerous or destructive uncontrolled projectile. Steel is highly elastic and transmits shock and vibration; steel is also a good conductor of heat, making it unsuitable for contact with bare skin in frigid conditions. Modern hammers with steel shafts are almost invariably clad with a synthetic polymer to improve grip, dampen vibration, and to provide thermal insulation. A suitably contoured handle is also an important aid in providing a secure grip during heavy use. Traditional wooden handles were reasonably good in all regards, but lack strength and durability compared to steel, and there are safety issues with wooden handles if the head becomes loose on the shaft.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The high elasticity of the steel head is important in energy transfer, especially when used in conjunction with an equally elastic anvil.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In terms of human physiology, many uses of the hammer involve coordinated ballistic movements under intense muscular forces which must be planned in advance at the neuromuscular level, as they occur too rapidly for conscious adjustment in flight. For this reason, accurate striking at speed requires more practice than a tapping movement to the same target area. It has been suggested that the cognitive demands for pre-planning, sequencing and accurate timing associated with the related ballistic movements of throwing, clubbing, and hammering precipitated aspects of brain evolution in early hominids.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The use of simple hammers dates to around 3.3 million years ago according to the 2012 find made by Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University, who while excavating a site near Kenya's Lake Turkana discovered a very large deposit of various shaped stones including those used to strike wood, bone, or other stones to break them apart and shape them. The first hammers were made without handles. Stones attached to sticks with strips of leather or animal sinew were being used as hammers with handles by about 30,000 BCE during the middle of the Paleolithic Stone Age. The addition of a handle gave the user better control and less accidents. The hammer became the primary tool used for building, food, and protection.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The hammer's archaeological record shows that it may be the oldest tool for which definite evidence exists.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A traditional hand-held hammer consists of a separate head and a handle, which can be fastened together by means of a special wedge made for the purpose, or by glue, or both. This two-piece design is often used to combine a dense metallic striking head with a non-metallic mechanical-shock-absorbing handle (to reduce user fatigue from repeated strikes). If wood is used for the handle, it is often hickory or ash, which are tough and long-lasting materials that can dissipate shock waves from the hammer head. Rigid fiberglass resin may be used for the handle; this material does not absorb water or decay but does not dissipate shock as well as wood.",
"title": "Construction and materials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "A loose hammer head is considered hazardous due to the risk of the head becoming detached from the handle while being swung becoming a dangerous uncontrolled projectile. Wooden handles can often be replaced when worn or damaged; specialized kits are available covering a range of handle sizes and designs, plus special wedges and spacers for secure attachment.",
"title": "Construction and materials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Some hammers are one-piece designs made mostly of a single material. A one-piece metallic hammer may optionally have its handle coated or wrapped in a resilient material such as rubber for improved grip and to reduce user fatigue.",
"title": "Construction and materials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The hammer head may be surfaced with a variety of materials including brass, bronze, wood, plastic, rubber, or leather. Some hammers have interchangeable striking surfaces, which can be selected as needed or replaced when worn out.",
"title": "Construction and materials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A large hammer-like tool is a maul (sometimes called a \"beetle\"), a wood- or rubber-headed hammer is a mallet, and a hammer-like tool with a cutting blade is usually called a hatchet. The essential part of a hammer is the head, a compact solid mass that is able to deliver a blow to the intended target without itself deforming. The impacting surface of the tool is usually flat or slightly rounded; the opposite end of the impacting mass may have a ball shape, as in the ball-peen hammer. Some upholstery hammers have a magnetized face, to pick up tacks. In the hatchet, the flat hammer head may be secondary to the cutting edge of the tool.",
"title": "Designs and variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The impact between steel hammer heads and the objects being hit can create sparks, which may ignite flammable or explosive gases. These are a hazard in some industries such as underground coal mining (due to the presence of methane gas), or in other hazardous environments such as petroleum refineries and chemical plants. In these environments, a variety of non-sparking metal tools are used, primarily made of aluminium or beryllium copper. In recent years, the handles have been made of durable plastic or rubber, though wood is still widely used because of its shock-absorbing qualities and repairability.",
"title": "Designs and variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Mechanically powered hammers often look quite different from the hand tools, but nevertheless, most of them work on the same principle. They include:",
"title": "Designs and variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A hammer is a simple force amplifier that works by converting mechanical work into kinetic energy and back.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the swing that precedes each blow, the hammer head stores a certain amount of kinetic energy—equal to the length D of the swing times the force f produced by the muscles of the arm and by gravity. When the hammer strikes, the head is stopped by an opposite force coming from the target, equal and opposite to the force applied by the head to the target. If the target is a hard and heavy object, or if it is resting on some sort of anvil, the head can travel only a very short distance d before stopping. Since the stopping force F times that distance must be equal to the head's kinetic energy, it follows that F is much greater than the original driving force f—roughly, by a factor D/d. In this way, great strength is not needed to produce a force strong enough to bend steel, or crack the hardest stone.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The amount of energy delivered to the target by the hammer-blow is equivalent to one half the mass of the head times the square of the head's speed at the time of impact ( E = m v 2 2 ) {\\displaystyle (E={mv^{2} \\over 2})} . While the energy delivered to the target increases linearly with mass, it increases quadratically with the speed (see the effect of the handle, below). High tech titanium heads are lighter and allow for longer handles, thus increasing velocity and delivering the same energy with less arm fatigue than that of a heavier steel head hammer. A titanium head has about 3% recoil energy and can result in greater efficiency and less fatigue when compared to a steel head with up to 30% recoil. Dead blow hammers use special rubber or steel shot to absorb recoil energy, rather than bouncing the hammer head after impact.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The handle of the hammer helps in several ways. It keeps the user's hands away from the point of impact. It provides a broad area that is better-suited for gripping by the hand. Most importantly, it allows the user to maximize the speed of the head on each blow. The primary constraint on additional handle length is the lack of space to swing the hammer. This is why sledgehammers, largely used in open spaces, can have handles that are much longer than a standard carpenter's hammer. The second most important constraint is more subtle. Even without considering the effects of fatigue, the longer the handle, the harder it is to guide the head of the hammer to its target at full speed.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Most designs are a compromise between practicality and energy efficiency. With too long a handle, the hammer is inefficient because it delivers force to the wrong place, off-target. With too short a handle, the hammer is inefficient because it does not deliver enough force, requiring more blows to complete a given task. Modifications have also been made with respect to the effect of the hammer on the user. Handles made of shock-absorbing materials or varying angles attempt to make it easier for the user to continue to wield this age-old device, even as nail guns and other powered drivers encroach on its traditional field of use.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "As hammers must be used in many circumstances, where the position of the person using them cannot be taken for granted, trade-offs are made for the sake of practicality. In areas where one has plenty of room, a long handle with a heavy head (like a sledgehammer) can deliver the maximum amount of energy to the target. It is not practical to use such a large hammer for all tasks, however, and thus the overall design has been modified repeatedly to achieve the optimum utility in a wide variety of situations.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Gravity exerts a force on the hammer head. If hammering downwards, gravity increases the acceleration during the hammer stroke and increases the energy delivered with each blow. If hammering upwards, gravity reduces the acceleration during the hammer stroke and therefore reduces the energy delivered with each blow. Some hammering methods, such as traditional mechanical pile drivers, rely entirely on gravity for acceleration on the down stroke.",
"title": "Physics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A hammer may cause significant injury if it strikes the body. Both manual and powered hammers can cause peripheral neuropathy or a variety of other ailments when used improperly. Awkward handles can cause repetitive stress injury (RSI) to hand and arm joints, and uncontrolled shock waves from repeated impacts can injure nerves and the skeleton. Additionally, striking metal objects with a hammer may produce small metallic projectiles which can become lodged in the eye. It is therefore recommended to wear safety glasses.",
"title": "Ergonomics and injury risks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A war hammer is a late medieval weapon of war intended for close combat action.",
"title": "War hammers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The hammer, being one of the most used tools by man, has been used very much in symbols such as flags and heraldry. In the Middle Ages, it was used often in blacksmith guild logos, as well as in many family symbols. The hammer and pick are used as a symbol of mining.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In mythology, the gods Thor (Norse) and Sucellus (Celtic and Gallo-Roman), and the hero Hercules (Greek), all had hammers that appear in their lore and carried different meanings. Thor, the god of thunder and lightning, wields a hammer named Mjölnir. Many artifacts of decorative hammers have been found, leading modern practitioners of this religion to often wear reproductions as a sign of their faith.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In American folklore, the hammer of John Henry represents the strength and endurance of a man.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A political party in Singapore, Workers' Party of Singapore, based their logo on a hammer to symbolize the party's civic nationalism and social democracy ideology.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A variant, well-known symbol with a hammer in it is the Hammer and Sickle, which was the symbol of the former Soviet Union and is strongly linked to communism and early socialism. The hammer in this symbol represents the industrial working class (and the sickle represents the agricultural working class). The hammer is used in some coats of arms in former socialist countries like East Germany. Similarly, the Hammer and Sword symbolizes Strasserism, a strand of National Socialism seeking to appeal to the working class. Another variant of the symbol was used for the North Korean party, Workers' Party of Korea, incorporated with an ink brush on the middle, which symbolizes both Juche and Songun ideologies.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In Pink Floyd – The Wall, two hammers crossed are used as a symbol for the fascist takeover of the concert during \"In the Flesh\". This also has the meaning of the hammer beating down any \"nails\" that stick out.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The gavel, a small wooden mallet, is used to symbolize a mandate to preside over a meeting or judicial proceeding, and a graphic image of one is used as a symbol of legislative or judicial decision-making authority.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Judah Maccabee was nicknamed \"The Hammer\", possibly in recognition of his ferocity in battle. The name \"Maccabee\" may derive from the Aramaic maqqaba. (see Judah Maccabee § Origin of Name \"The Hammer\".)",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The hammer in the song \"If I Had a Hammer\" represents a relentless message of justice broadcast across the land. The song became a symbol of the civil rights movement.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal, or to crush rock. Hammers are used for a wide range of driving, shaping, breaking and non-destructive striking applications. Traditional disciplines include carpentry, blacksmithing, warfare, and percussive musicianship. Hammering is use of a hammer in its strike capacity, as opposed to prying with a secondary claw or grappling with a secondary hook. Carpentry and blacksmithing hammers are generally wielded from a stationary stance against a stationary target as gripped and propelled with one arm, in a lengthy downward planar arc—downward to add kinetic energy to the impact—pivoting mainly around the shoulder and elbow, with a small but brisk wrist rotation shortly before impact; for extreme impact, concurrent motions of the torso and knee can lower the shoulder joint during the swing to further increase the length of the swing arc. War hammers are often wielded in non-vertical planes of motion, with a far greater share of energy input provided from the legs and hips, which can also include a lunging motion, especially against moving targets. Small mallets can be swung from the wrists in a smaller motion permitting a much higher cadence of repeated strikes. Use of hammers and heavy mallets for demolition must adapt the hammer stroke to the location and orientation of the target, which can necessitate a clubbing or golfing motion with a two-handed grip. The modern hammer head is typically made of steel which has been heat treated for hardness, and the handle is typically made of wood or plastic. Ubiquitous in framing, the claw hammer has a "claw" to pull nails out of wood, and is commonly found in an inventory of household tools in North America. Other types of hammers vary in shape, size, and structure, depending on their purposes. Hammers used in many trades include sledgehammers, mallets, and ball-peen hammers. Although most hammers are hand tools, powered hammers, such as steam hammers and trip hammers, are used to deliver forces beyond the capacity of the human arm. There are over 40 different types of hammers that have many different types of uses. For hand hammers, the grip of the shaft is an important consideration. Many forms of hammering by hand are heavy work, and perspiration can lead to slippage from the hand, turning a hammer into a dangerous or destructive uncontrolled projectile. Steel is highly elastic and transmits shock and vibration; steel is also a good conductor of heat, making it unsuitable for contact with bare skin in frigid conditions. Modern hammers with steel shafts are almost invariably clad with a synthetic polymer to improve grip, dampen vibration, and to provide thermal insulation. A suitably contoured handle is also an important aid in providing a secure grip during heavy use. Traditional wooden handles were reasonably good in all regards, but lack strength and durability compared to steel, and there are safety issues with wooden handles if the head becomes loose on the shaft. The high elasticity of the steel head is important in energy transfer, especially when used in conjunction with an equally elastic anvil. In terms of human physiology, many uses of the hammer involve coordinated ballistic movements under intense muscular forces which must be planned in advance at the neuromuscular level, as they occur too rapidly for conscious adjustment in flight. For this reason, accurate striking at speed requires more practice than a tapping movement to the same target area. It has been suggested that the cognitive demands for pre-planning, sequencing and accurate timing associated with the related ballistic movements of throwing, clubbing, and hammering precipitated aspects of brain evolution in early hominids. | 2001-09-23T16:26:06Z | 2023-12-02T18:19:19Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer |
13,804 | Hiragana | Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな, IPA: [çiɾaɡaꜜna, çiɾaɡana(ꜜ)]) is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji).
Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (か); or /N/ (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters.
Hiragana is used to write okurigana (kana suffixes following a kanji root, for example to inflect verbs and adjectives), various grammatical and function words including particles, as well as miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose. Words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters.
There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.
After the 1900 script reform, which deemed hundreds of characters hentaigana, the hiragana syllabary consists of 48 base characters, of which two (ゐ and ゑ) are only used in some proper names:
These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, "Fifty Sounds"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, read あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o), か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko) and so forth (but si→shi, ti→chi, tu→tsu, hu→fu, wi→i, we→e, wo→o). Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi, ye, and wu are completely unused. On the w row, ゐ and ゑ, pronounced [i] and [e] respectively, are uncommon in modern Japanese, while を, pronounced [o], is common as a particle but otherwise rare. Strictly speaking, the singular consonant ん (n) is considered as outside the gojūon.
These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h→b and ch/sh→j (also u→v(u)). For example, か (ka) becomes が (ga). Hiragana beginning with an h (or f) sound can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h (f) to a p. For example, は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa).
A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o. For example, き (ki) plus ゃ (small ya) becomes きゃ (kya). Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.
A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか, saka, "hill" with さっか, sakka, "author". However, it cannot be used to double an n – for this purpose, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな (minna, "all"). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! ([iteʔ], "Ouch!").
Two hiragana have pronunciations that depend on the context:
Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana; for example, おかあさん (o-ka-a-sa-n, "mother"). The chōonpu (long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word らーめん, rāmen, but this usage is considered non-standard in Japanese. However, the Okinawan language uses chōonpu with hiragana. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (はぁ, haa, ねぇ, nee). Plain (clear) and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ, respectively. These marks are rarely used nowadays.
The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the modified Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, with the yōon kana following. Those in bold do not use the initial sound for that row. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for mid-word pronunciations see below.
In the middle of words, the g sound (normally [ɡ]) may turn into a velar nasal [ŋ] or velar fricative [ɣ]. For example, かぎ (kagi, key) is often pronounced [kaŋi]. However, 15 jūgo is pronounced as if it was jū and go stacked end to end: [d͡ʑɯːɡo].
In many accents, the j and z sounds are pronounced as affricates ([d͡ʑ] and [d͡z], respectively) at the beginning of utterances and fricatives [ʑ, z] in the middle of words. For example, すうじ sūji [sɯːʑi] 'number', ざっし zasshi [d͡zaɕɕi] 'magazine'.
The singular n is pronounced [n] before t, ch, ts, n, r, z, j and d, [m] before m, b and p, [ŋ] before k and g, [ɴ] at the end of utterances, and some kind of high nasal vowel [ɰ̃] before vowels, palatal approximants (y), and fricative consonants (s, sh, h, f and w).
In kanji readings, the diphthongs ou and ei are today usually pronounced [oː] (long o) and [eː] (long e) respectively. For example, とうきょう (lit. toukyou) is pronounced [toːkʲoː] 'Tokyo', and せんせい sensei is [seɯ̃seː] 'teacher'. However, とう tou is pronounced [toɯ] 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the verb ending in the dictionary form. Similarly, している shite iru is pronounced [ɕiteiɾɯ] 'is doing'.
In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the kwa (くゎ [kʷa]) and gwa (ぐゎ [ɡʷa]) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage.
For a more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to Japanese phonology.
With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced [wa] instead of [ha]), へ (pronounced [e] instead of [he]) and [o] (written を instead of お), Japanese when written in kana is phonemically orthographic, i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage, differed substantially from pronunciation; the three above-mentioned exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system.
There are two hiragana pronounced ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ), but to distinguish them, particularly when typing Japanese, sometimes ぢ is written as di and づ is written as du. These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as じ and zu is written as ず. There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten and the same syllable with a dakuten, the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For example, chijimeru ('to boil down' or 'to shrink') is spelled ちぢめる and tsuzuku ('to continue') is つづく.
For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi (血 'blood') is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When 鼻 hana ('nose') and 血 chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji (鼻血 'nose bleed'), the sound of 血 changes from chi to ji. So hanaji is spelled はなぢ. Similarly, tsukau (使う/遣う; 'to use') is spelled つかう in hiragana, so kanazukai (仮名遣い; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography') is spelled かなづかい in hiragana. However, there are cases where ぢ and づ are not used, such as the word for 'lightning', inazuma (稲妻). The first component, 稲, meaning 'rice plant', is written いな (ina). The second component, 妻 (etymologically 夫), meaning 'spouse', is pronounced つま (tsuma) when standalone or often as づま (zuma) when following another syllable, such in 人妻 (hitozuma, 'married woman'). Even though these components of 稲妻 are etymologically linked to 'lightning', it is generally arduous for a contemporary speaker to consciously perceive inazuma as separable into two discrete words. Thus, the default spelling いなずま is used instead of いなづま. Other examples include kizuna (きずな) and sakazuki (さかずき). Although these rules were officially established by a Cabinet Notice in 1986 revising the modern kana usage, they have sometimes faced criticism due to their perceived arbitrariness.
Officially, ぢ and づ do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as ぢばん jiban 'ground' in the historical kana usage, but they were unified under じ in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively じばん. However, づら zura 'wig' (from かつら katsura) and づけ zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial づ today.
No standard Japanese words begin with the kana ん (n). This is the basis of the word game shiritori. ん n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.).
ん is sometimes directly followed by a vowel (a, i, u, e or o) or a palatal approximant (ya, yu or yo). These are clearly distinct from the na, ni etc. syllables, and there are minimal pairs such as きんえん kin'en 'smoking forbidden', きねん kinen 'commemoration', きんねん kinnen 'recent years'. In Hepburn romanization, they are distinguished with an apostrophe, but not all romanization methods make the distinction. For example, past prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's first name is actually じゅんいちろう Jun'ichirō pronounced [dʑɯɰ̃itɕiɾoː]
There are a few hiragana that are rarely used. Outside of Okinawan orthography, ゐ wi [i] and ゑ we [e] are only used in some proper names. 𛀁 e was an alternate version of え e before spelling reform, and was briefly reused for ye during initial spelling reforms, but is now completely obsolete. ゔ vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because loanwords and transliterated words are usually written in katakana, where the corresponding character would be written as ヴ. The digraphs ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢょ for ja/ju/jo are theoretically possible in rendaku, but are practically never used. For example, 日本中 'throughout Japan' could be written にほんぢゅう, but is practically always にほんじゅう.
The みゅ myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi raises the example of the Japanese family name Omamyūda (小豆生田) and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its katakana counterpart is used in many loanwords, however.
On the row beginning with わ /wa/, the hiragana ゐ /wi/ and ゑ /we/ are both quasi-obsolete, only used in some names. They are usually respectively pronounced [i] and [e]. In modified Hepburn romanization, they are generally written e and i.
It has not been demonstrated whether the mora /ji/ existed in old Japanese. Though ye did appear in some textbooks during the Meiji period along with another kana for yi in the form of cursive 以. Today it is considered a Hentaigana by scholars and is encoded in Unicode 10 (𛀆) This kana could have a colloquial use, to convert the combo yui (ゆい) into yii (𛀆い), due to other Japanese words having a similar change.
An early, now obsolete, hiragana-esque form of ye may have existed (𛀁 [je]) in pre-Classical Japanese (prior to the advent of kana), but is generally represented for purposes of reconstruction by the kanji 江, and its hiragana form is not present in any known orthography. In modern orthography, ye can also be written as いぇ (イェ in katakana).
It is true that in early periods of kana, hiragana and katakana letters for "ye" were used, but soon after the distinction between /ye/ and /e/ went away, and letters and glyphs were not established.
It has not been demonstrated whether the mora /wu/ existed in old Japanese. However, hiragana wu also appeared in different Meiji-era textbooks (). Although there are several possible source kanji, it is likely to have been derived from a cursive form of the man'yōgana 汙, although a related variant sometimes listed () is from a cursive form of 紆. However, it was never commonly used. This character is included in Unicode 14 as HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC WU ().
Hiragana developed from man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice that started in the 5th century. The oldest examples of Man'yōgana include the Inariyama Sword, an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun. This sword is thought to be made in the year 辛亥年 (most commonly taken to be C.E. 471). The forms of the hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy. The table to the right shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. The cursive script forms are not strictly confined to those in the illustration.
When it was first developed, hiragana was not accepted by everyone. The educated or elites preferred to use only the kanji system. Historically, in Japan, the regular script (kaisho) form of the characters was used by men and called otokode (男手), "men's writing", while the cursive script (sōsho) form of the kanji was used by women. Hence hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men, thus hiragana was first widely used among court women in the writing of personal communications and literature. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively. Even today, hiragana is felt to have a feminine quality.
Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and kanji were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with katakana writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis.
Originally, for all syllables there was more than one possible hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana. The deprecated hiragana are now known as hentaigana (変体仮名).
The pangram poem Iroha-uta ("ABC song/poem"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once (except n ん, which was just a variant of む before the Muromachi era).
The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. The table is arranged in a traditional manner, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction respectively.
Hiragana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.
The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040–U+309F:
The Unicode hiragana block contains precomposed characters for all hiragana in the modern set, including small vowels and yōon kana for compound syllables as well as the rare ゐ wi and ゑ we; the archaic 𛀁 ye is included in plane 1 at U+1B001 (see below). All combinations of hiragana with dakuten and handakuten used in modern Japanese are available as precomposed characters (including the rare ゔ vu), and can also be produced by using a base hiragana followed by the combining dakuten and handakuten characters (U+3099 and U+309A, respectively). This method is used to add the diacritics to kana that are not normally used with them, for example applying the dakuten to a pure vowel or the handakuten to a kana not in the h-group.
Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are small か (ka) and small け (ke), respectively. U+309F is a ligature of より (yori) occasionally used in vertical text. U+309B and U+309C are spacing (non-combining) equivalents to the combining dakuten and handakuten characters, respectively.
Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were first added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0, with significantly more added in 2017 as part of Unicode 10.
The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF, and is immediately followed by the Kana Extended-A block (U+1B100–U+1B12F). These blocks include mainly hentaigana (historic or variant hiragana):
The Unicode block for Kana Extended-B is U+1AFF0–U+1AFFF:
The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension is U+1B130–U+1B16F:
In the following character sequences a kana from the /k/ row is modified by a handakuten combining mark to indicate that a syllable starts with an initial nasal, known as bidakuon. As of Unicode 15.1, these character combinations are explicitly called out as Named Sequences:
「かたかな」の「かた」は単に「片方」という意味ではなく、本来あるべきものが欠落しているという評価形容語と解すべきことはよく知られているが（亀井孝1941）、(7)としてまとめた対立関係から考えると、「ひらがな」も同様に「かな」の「ひら」という評価位置に存在するものと考えられる。
本国語大辞典「ひらがな」の説明は「ひら」を「角のない、通俗平易の意」とし、また「ひら」を前部要素とする複合語の形態素説明で、多くの辞書は「ひら」に「たいら」という意味を認める。
しかし、辞書の意味説明が必ずしも原義説明を欲してはいないことを知りつつも、野暮を承知でいうならば、これは「ひら」の原義（中核的意味）説明としては適当ではない。「ひら」は、「枚」や擬態語「ひらひら」などと同根の情態言とでもいうべき形態素／ pira ／であり、その中核的意味は、物理的／精神的な「薄さ」を示し、「たいら」はそこからの派生義と思われる。となると、「ひらがな」に物理的「薄さ」（thinness）は当然求められないので、「ひら」とはより精神的な表現に傾き、「かたかな」同様、「かな」から見て、ワンランク下であることを示す、いささか差別的・蔑視的ニュアンスを含む表現であったということになる。
The "kata" in "katakana" does not mean just "one side", and it is well known (Takashi Kamei 1941) that it should be interpreted as a valuation epithet stating that something that should be there is missing, and considering the oppositional relationship summarized in figure (7), the word "hiragana" can be thought of in a valuation position as the "hira" kind of "kana".
The explanation of the term hiragana in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten dictionary states that hira means "unangular, easy or plain", and descriptions of hira as a prefixing element in compounds as given in many dictionaries explain this hira as meaning "flat" (taira).
However, knowing that dictionary explanations of meaning do not always drive for the original senses, if we are to be brash, we might point out that this is not a fitting explanation of the original sense (core meaning) of hira. Hira is morpheme /pira/, cognate with words like 枚 (hira, "slip of paper, cloth, or something else flat") or ひらひら (hirahira, "flutteringly"), and the core meaning indicates physical or emotional "thinness", and taira ("flat") appears to be a derived meaning therefrom. As such, we naturally cannot get physical "thinness" from hiragana, so the hira leans more towards an emotional expression, and much like for katakana, from the perspective of kana, it indicates a lower relative ranking [relative to the kanji], and the expression contains a slight nuance of discrimination or contempt. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hiragana (平仮名, ひらがな, IPA: [çiɾaɡaꜜna, çiɾaɡana(ꜜ)]) is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means \"flowing\" or \"simple\" kana (\"simple\" originally as contrasted with kanji).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (か); or /N/ (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hiragana is used to write okurigana (kana suffixes following a kanji root, for example to inflect verbs and adjectives), various grammatical and function words including particles, as well as miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose. Words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After the 1900 script reform, which deemed hundreds of characters hentaigana, the hiragana syllabary consists of 48 base characters, of which two (ゐ and ゑ) are only used in some proper names:",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, \"Fifty Sounds\"), as illustrated in the adjacent table, read あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o), か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko) and so forth (but si→shi, ti→chi, tu→tsu, hu→fu, wi→i, we→e, wo→o). Of the 50 theoretically possible combinations, yi, ye, and wu are completely unused. On the w row, ゐ and ゑ, pronounced [i] and [e] respectively, are uncommon in modern Japanese, while を, pronounced [o], is common as a particle but otherwise rare. Strictly speaking, the singular consonant ん (n) is considered as outside the gojūon.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "These basic characters can be modified in various ways. By adding a dakuten marker ( ゛), a voiceless consonant is turned into a voiced consonant: k→g, ts/s→z, t→d, h→b and ch/sh→j (also u→v(u)). For example, か (ka) becomes が (ga). Hiragana beginning with an h (or f) sound can also add a handakuten marker ( ゜) changing the h (f) to a p. For example, は (ha) becomes ぱ (pa).",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A small version of the hiragana for ya, yu, or yo (ゃ, ゅ or ょ respectively) may be added to hiragana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o. For example, き (ki) plus ゃ (small ya) becomes きゃ (kya). Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare さか, saka, \"hill\" with さっか, sakka, \"author\". However, it cannot be used to double an n – for this purpose, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable, as in みんな (minna, \"all\"). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop, as in いてっ! ([iteʔ], \"Ouch!\").",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Two hiragana have pronunciations that depend on the context:",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hiragana usually spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana; for example, おかあさん (o-ka-a-sa-n, \"mother\"). The chōonpu (long vowel mark) (ー) used in katakana is rarely used with hiragana, for example in the word らーめん, rāmen, but this usage is considered non-standard in Japanese. However, the Okinawan language uses chōonpu with hiragana. In informal writing, small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (はぁ, haa, ねぇ, nee). Plain (clear) and voiced iteration marks are written in hiragana as ゝ and ゞ, respectively. These marks are rarely used nowadays.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The following table shows the complete hiragana together with the modified Hepburn romanization and IPA transcription in the gojūon order. Hiragana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them, with the yōon kana following. Those in bold do not use the initial sound for that row. For all syllables besides ん, the pronunciation indicated is for word-initial syllables, for mid-word pronunciations see below.",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the middle of words, the g sound (normally [ɡ]) may turn into a velar nasal [ŋ] or velar fricative [ɣ]. For example, かぎ (kagi, key) is often pronounced [kaŋi]. However, 15 jūgo is pronounced as if it was jū and go stacked end to end: [d͡ʑɯːɡo].",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In many accents, the j and z sounds are pronounced as affricates ([d͡ʑ] and [d͡z], respectively) at the beginning of utterances and fricatives [ʑ, z] in the middle of words. For example, すうじ sūji [sɯːʑi] 'number', ざっし zasshi [d͡zaɕɕi] 'magazine'.",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The singular n is pronounced [n] before t, ch, ts, n, r, z, j and d, [m] before m, b and p, [ŋ] before k and g, [ɴ] at the end of utterances, and some kind of high nasal vowel [ɰ̃] before vowels, palatal approximants (y), and fricative consonants (s, sh, h, f and w).",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In kanji readings, the diphthongs ou and ei are today usually pronounced [oː] (long o) and [eː] (long e) respectively. For example, とうきょう (lit. toukyou) is pronounced [toːkʲoː] 'Tokyo', and せんせい sensei is [seɯ̃seː] 'teacher'. However, とう tou is pronounced [toɯ] 'to inquire', because the o and u are considered distinct, u being the verb ending in the dictionary form. Similarly, している shite iru is pronounced [ɕiteiɾɯ] 'is doing'.",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In archaic forms of Japanese, there existed the kwa (くゎ [kʷa]) and gwa (ぐゎ [ɡʷa]) digraphs. In modern Japanese, these phonemes have been phased out of usage.",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "For a more thorough discussion on the sounds of Japanese, please refer to Japanese phonology.",
"title": "Table of hiragana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "With a few exceptions, such as for the three particles は (pronounced [wa] instead of [ha]), へ (pronounced [e] instead of [he]) and [o] (written を instead of お), Japanese when written in kana is phonemically orthographic, i.e. there is a one-to-one correspondence between kana characters and sounds, leaving only words' pitch accent unrepresented. This has not always been the case: a previous system of spelling, now referred to as historical kana usage, differed substantially from pronunciation; the three above-mentioned exceptions in modern usage are the legacy of that system.",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There are two hiragana pronounced ji (じ and ぢ) and two hiragana pronounced zu (ず and づ), but to distinguish them, particularly when typing Japanese, sometimes ぢ is written as di and づ is written as du. These pairs are not interchangeable. Usually, ji is written as じ and zu is written as ず. There are some exceptions. If the first two syllables of a word consist of one syllable without a dakuten and the same syllable with a dakuten, the same hiragana is used to write the sounds. For example, chijimeru ('to boil down' or 'to shrink') is spelled ちぢめる and tsuzuku ('to continue') is つづく.",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "For compound words where the dakuten reflects rendaku voicing, the original hiragana is used. For example, chi (血 'blood') is spelled ち in plain hiragana. When 鼻 hana ('nose') and 血 chi ('blood') combine to make hanaji (鼻血 'nose bleed'), the sound of 血 changes from chi to ji. So hanaji is spelled はなぢ. Similarly, tsukau (使う/遣う; 'to use') is spelled つかう in hiragana, so kanazukai (仮名遣い; 'kana use', or 'kana orthography') is spelled かなづかい in hiragana. However, there are cases where ぢ and づ are not used, such as the word for 'lightning', inazuma (稲妻). The first component, 稲, meaning 'rice plant', is written いな (ina). The second component, 妻 (etymologically 夫), meaning 'spouse', is pronounced つま (tsuma) when standalone or often as づま (zuma) when following another syllable, such in 人妻 (hitozuma, 'married woman'). Even though these components of 稲妻 are etymologically linked to 'lightning', it is generally arduous for a contemporary speaker to consciously perceive inazuma as separable into two discrete words. Thus, the default spelling いなずま is used instead of いなづま. Other examples include kizuna (きずな) and sakazuki (さかずき). Although these rules were officially established by a Cabinet Notice in 1986 revising the modern kana usage, they have sometimes faced criticism due to their perceived arbitrariness.",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Officially, ぢ and づ do not occur word-initially pursuant to modern spelling rules. There were words such as ぢばん jiban 'ground' in the historical kana usage, but they were unified under じ in the modern kana usage in 1946, so today it is spelled exclusively じばん. However, づら zura 'wig' (from かつら katsura) and づけ zuke (a sushi term for lean tuna soaked in soy sauce) are examples of word-initial づ today.",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "No standard Japanese words begin with the kana ん (n). This is the basis of the word game shiritori. ん n is normally treated as its own syllable and is separate from the other n-based kana (na, ni etc.).",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "ん is sometimes directly followed by a vowel (a, i, u, e or o) or a palatal approximant (ya, yu or yo). These are clearly distinct from the na, ni etc. syllables, and there are minimal pairs such as きんえん kin'en 'smoking forbidden', きねん kinen 'commemoration', きんねん kinnen 'recent years'. In Hepburn romanization, they are distinguished with an apostrophe, but not all romanization methods make the distinction. For example, past prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's first name is actually じゅんいちろう Jun'ichirō pronounced [dʑɯɰ̃itɕiɾoː]",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "There are a few hiragana that are rarely used. Outside of Okinawan orthography, ゐ wi [i] and ゑ we [e] are only used in some proper names. 𛀁 e was an alternate version of え e before spelling reform, and was briefly reused for ye during initial spelling reforms, but is now completely obsolete. ゔ vu is a modern addition used to represent the /v/ sound in foreign languages such as English, but since Japanese from a phonological standpoint does not have a /v/ sound, it is pronounced as /b/ and mostly serves as a more accurate indicator of a word's pronunciation in its original language. However, it is rarely seen because loanwords and transliterated words are usually written in katakana, where the corresponding character would be written as ヴ. The digraphs ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢょ for ja/ju/jo are theoretically possible in rendaku, but are practically never used. For example, 日本中 'throughout Japan' could be written にほんぢゅう, but is practically always にほんじゅう.",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The みゅ myu kana is extremely rare in originally Japanese words; linguist Haruhiko Kindaichi raises the example of the Japanese family name Omamyūda (小豆生田) and claims it is the only occurrence amongst pure Japanese words. Its katakana counterpart is used in many loanwords, however.",
"title": "Spelling rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On the row beginning with わ /wa/, the hiragana ゐ /wi/ and ゑ /we/ are both quasi-obsolete, only used in some names. They are usually respectively pronounced [i] and [e]. In modified Hepburn romanization, they are generally written e and i.",
"title": "Obsolete kana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "It has not been demonstrated whether the mora /ji/ existed in old Japanese. Though ye did appear in some textbooks during the Meiji period along with another kana for yi in the form of cursive 以. Today it is considered a Hentaigana by scholars and is encoded in Unicode 10 (𛀆) This kana could have a colloquial use, to convert the combo yui (ゆい) into yii (𛀆い), due to other Japanese words having a similar change.",
"title": "Obsolete kana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "An early, now obsolete, hiragana-esque form of ye may have existed (𛀁 [je]) in pre-Classical Japanese (prior to the advent of kana), but is generally represented for purposes of reconstruction by the kanji 江, and its hiragana form is not present in any known orthography. In modern orthography, ye can also be written as いぇ (イェ in katakana).",
"title": "Obsolete kana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "It is true that in early periods of kana, hiragana and katakana letters for \"ye\" were used, but soon after the distinction between /ye/ and /e/ went away, and letters and glyphs were not established.",
"title": "Obsolete kana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "It has not been demonstrated whether the mora /wu/ existed in old Japanese. However, hiragana wu also appeared in different Meiji-era textbooks (). Although there are several possible source kanji, it is likely to have been derived from a cursive form of the man'yōgana 汙, although a related variant sometimes listed () is from a cursive form of 紆. However, it was never commonly used. This character is included in Unicode 14 as HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC WU ().",
"title": "Obsolete kana"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Hiragana developed from man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice that started in the 5th century. The oldest examples of Man'yōgana include the Inariyama Sword, an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun. This sword is thought to be made in the year 辛亥年 (most commonly taken to be C.E. 471). The forms of the hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy. The table to the right shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. The cursive script forms are not strictly confined to those in the illustration.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "When it was first developed, hiragana was not accepted by everyone. The educated or elites preferred to use only the kanji system. Historically, in Japan, the regular script (kaisho) form of the characters was used by men and called otokode (男手), \"men's writing\", while the cursive script (sōsho) form of the kanji was used by women. Hence hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were generally not allowed access to the same levels of education as men, thus hiragana was first widely used among court women in the writing of personal communications and literature. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手) \"women's writing\". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively. Even today, hiragana is felt to have a feminine quality.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and kanji were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with katakana writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Originally, for all syllables there was more than one possible hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each syllable had only one hiragana. The deprecated hiragana are now known as hentaigana (変体仮名).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The pangram poem Iroha-uta (\"ABC song/poem\"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once (except n ん, which was just a variant of む before the Muromachi era).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The following table shows the method for writing each hiragana character. The table is arranged in a traditional manner, beginning top right and reading columns down. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction respectively.",
"title": "Stroke order and direction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Hiragana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Unicode block for Hiragana is U+3040–U+309F:",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Unicode hiragana block contains precomposed characters for all hiragana in the modern set, including small vowels and yōon kana for compound syllables as well as the rare ゐ wi and ゑ we; the archaic 𛀁 ye is included in plane 1 at U+1B001 (see below). All combinations of hiragana with dakuten and handakuten used in modern Japanese are available as precomposed characters (including the rare ゔ vu), and can also be produced by using a base hiragana followed by the combining dakuten and handakuten characters (U+3099 and U+309A, respectively). This method is used to add the diacritics to kana that are not normally used with them, for example applying the dakuten to a pure vowel or the handakuten to a kana not in the h-group.",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are small か (ka) and small け (ke), respectively. U+309F is a ligature of より (yori) occasionally used in vertical text. U+309B and U+309C are spacing (non-combining) equivalents to the combining dakuten and handakuten characters, respectively.",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were first added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0, with significantly more added in 2017 as part of Unicode 10.",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF, and is immediately followed by the Kana Extended-A block (U+1B100–U+1B12F). These blocks include mainly hentaigana (historic or variant hiragana):",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Unicode block for Kana Extended-B is U+1AFF0–U+1AFFF:",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension is U+1B130–U+1B16F:",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In the following character sequences a kana from the /k/ row is modified by a handakuten combining mark to indicate that a syllable starts with an initial nasal, known as bidakuon. As of Unicode 15.1, these character combinations are explicitly called out as Named Sequences:",
"title": "Unicode"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "「かたかな」の「かた」は単に「片方」という意味ではなく、本来あるべきものが欠落しているという評価形容語と解すべきことはよく知られているが（亀井孝1941）、(7)としてまとめた対立関係から考えると、「ひらがな」も同様に「かな」の「ひら」という評価位置に存在するものと考えられる。",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "本国語大辞典「ひらがな」の説明は「ひら」を「角のない、通俗平易の意」とし、また「ひら」を前部要素とする複合語の形態素説明で、多くの辞書は「ひら」に「たいら」という意味を認める。",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "しかし、辞書の意味説明が必ずしも原義説明を欲してはいないことを知りつつも、野暮を承知でいうならば、これは「ひら」の原義（中核的意味）説明としては適当ではない。「ひら」は、「枚」や擬態語「ひらひら」などと同根の情態言とでもいうべき形態素／ pira ／であり、その中核的意味は、物理的／精神的な「薄さ」を示し、「たいら」はそこからの派生義と思われる。となると、「ひらがな」に物理的「薄さ」（thinness）は当然求められないので、「ひら」とはより精神的な表現に傾き、「かたかな」同様、「かな」から見て、ワンランク下であることを示す、いささか差別的・蔑視的ニュアンスを含む表現であったということになる。",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The \"kata\" in \"katakana\" does not mean just \"one side\", and it is well known (Takashi Kamei 1941) that it should be interpreted as a valuation epithet stating that something that should be there is missing, and considering the oppositional relationship summarized in figure (7), the word \"hiragana\" can be thought of in a valuation position as the \"hira\" kind of \"kana\".",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The explanation of the term hiragana in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten dictionary states that hira means \"unangular, easy or plain\", and descriptions of hira as a prefixing element in compounds as given in many dictionaries explain this hira as meaning \"flat\" (taira).",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "However, knowing that dictionary explanations of meaning do not always drive for the original senses, if we are to be brash, we might point out that this is not a fitting explanation of the original sense (core meaning) of hira. Hira is morpheme /pira/, cognate with words like 枚 (hira, \"slip of paper, cloth, or something else flat\") or ひらひら (hirahira, \"flutteringly\"), and the core meaning indicates physical or emotional \"thinness\", and taira (\"flat\") appears to be a derived meaning therefrom. As such, we naturally cannot get physical \"thinness\" from hiragana, so the hira leans more towards an emotional expression, and much like for katakana, from the perspective of kana, it indicates a lower relative ranking [relative to the kanji], and the expression contains a slight nuance of discrimination or contempt.",
"title": "References"
}
]
| is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana as well as kanji. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word hiragana literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character in each system. This may be either a vowel such as /a/; a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (か); or /N/ (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants, the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. Hiragana is used to write okurigana, various grammatical and function words including particles, as well as miscellaneous other native words for which there are no kanji or whose kanji form is obscure or too formal for the writing purpose. Words that do have common kanji renditions may also sometimes be written instead in hiragana, according to an individual author's preference, for example to impart an informal feel. Hiragana is also used to write furigana, a reading aid that shows the pronunciation of kanji characters. There are two main systems of ordering hiragana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. | 2001-10-12T01:24:18Z | 2023-12-29T11:59:19Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana |
13,805 | Hohenstaufen | The Hohenstaufen dynasty (/ˈhoʊənʃtaʊfən/, US also /-staʊ-/, German: [ˌhoːənˈʃtaʊfn̩]), also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynasty's most prominent rulers – Frederick I (1155), Henry VI (1191) and Frederick II (1220) – ascended the imperial throne and also reigned over Italy and Burgundy. The non-contemporary name of 'Hohenstaufen' is derived from the family's Hohenstaufen Castle on Hohenstaufen mountain at the northern fringes of the Swabian Jura, near the town of Göppingen. Under Hohenstaufen rule, the Holy Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent from 1155 to 1268.
The name Hohenstaufen was first used in the 14th century to distinguish the 'high' (hohen) conical hill named Staufen in the Swabian Jura (in the district of Göppingen) from the village of the same name in the valley below. The new name was applied to the hill castle of Staufen by historians only in the 19th century to distinguish it from other castles of the same name. The name of the dynasty followed suit, but in recent decades, the trend in German historiography has been to prefer the name 'Staufer', which is closer to contemporary usage.
The name 'Staufen' itself derives from Stauf (OHG stouf, akin to Early Modern English stoup), meaning 'chalice'. This term was commonly applied to conical hills in Swabia during the Middle Ages. It is a contemporary term for both the hill and the castle, although its spelling in the Latin documents of the time varies considerably: Sthouf, Stophe, Stophen, Stoyphe, Estufin, etc. The castle was built or at least acquired by Duke Frederick I of Swabia in the latter half of the 11th century.
Members of the family occasionally used the toponymic surname de Stauf or variants thereof. Only in the 13th century would the name come to be applied to the family as a whole. Around 1215, a chronicler referred to the "emperors of Stauf". In 1247, the Emperor Frederick II himself referred to his family as the domus Stoffensis (Staufer house), but this was an isolated instance. Otto of Freising (d. 1158) associated the Staufer with the town of Waiblingen, and around 1230, Burchard of Ursberg referred to the Staufer as of the "royal lineage of the Waiblingens" (regia stirps Waiblingensium). The exact connection between the family and Waiblingen is not clear, but as a name for the family, it became very popular. The pro-imperial Ghibelline faction of the Italian civic rivalries of the 13th and 14th centuries derived its name from Waiblingen.
In Italian historiography, the Staufer are known as the Svevi (Swabians).
The origin remains unclear, however, Staufer counts are mentioned in a document of emperor Otto III in 987 as descendants of counts of the region of Riesgau near Nördlingen in the Duchy of Swabia, who were related to the Bavarian Sieghardinger family. A local count Frederick (d. about 1075) is mentioned as progenitor in a pedigree drawn up by Abbot Wibald of Stavelot at the behest of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1153. He held the office of a Swabian count palatine; his son Frederick of Büren (c. 1020–1053) married Hildegard of Egisheim-Dagsburg (d. 1094/95), a niece of Pope Leo IX. Their son Frederick I was appointed Duke of Swabia at Hohenstaufen Castle by the Salian king Henry IV of Germany in 1079.
At the same time, Duke Frederick I was engaged to the king's approximately seventeen-year-old daughter, Agnes. Nothing is known about Frederick's life before this event, but he proved to be an imperial ally throughout Henry's struggles against other Swabian lords, namely Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Frederick's predecessor, and the Zähringen and Welf lords. Frederick's brother Otto was elevated to the Strasbourg bishopric in 1082.
Upon Frederick's death, he was succeeded by his son, Duke Frederick II, in 1105. Frederick II remained a close ally of the Salians, he and his younger brother Conrad were named the king's representatives in Germany when the king was in Italy. Around 1120, Frederick II married Judith of Bavaria from the rival House of Welf.
When the last male member of the Salian dynasty, Emperor Henry V, died without heirs in 1125, a controversy arose about the succession. Duke Frederick II and Conrad, the two current male Staufers, by their mother Agnes, were grandsons of late Emperor Henry IV and nephews of Henry V. Frederick attempted to succeed to the throne of the Holy Roman Emperor (formally known as the King of the Romans) through a customary election, but lost to the Saxon duke Lothair of Supplinburg. A civil war between Frederick's dynasty and Lothair's ended with Frederick's submission in 1134. After Lothair's death in 1137, Frederick's brother Conrad was elected King as Conrad III.
Because the Welf duke Henry the Proud, son-in-law and heir of Lothair and the most powerful prince in Germany, who had been passed over in the election, refused to acknowledge the new king, Conrad III deprived him of all his territories, giving the Duchy of Saxony to Albert the Bear and that of Bavaria to Leopold IV, Margrave of Austria. In 1147, Conrad heard Bernard of Clairvaux preach the Second Crusade at Speyer, and he agreed to join King Louis VII of France in a great expedition to the Holy Land which failed.
Conrad's brother Duke Frederick II died in 1147, and was succeeded in Swabia by his son, Duke Frederick III. When King Conrad III died without adult heir in 1152, Frederick also succeeded him, taking both German royal and Imperial titles.
Frederick I (Reign 2 January 1155 – 10 June 1190), known as Frederick Barbarossa because of his red beard, struggled throughout his reign to restore the power and prestige of the German monarchy against the dukes, whose power had grown both before and after the Investiture Controversy under his Salian predecessors. As royal access to the resources of the church in Germany was much reduced, Frederick was forced to go to Italy to find the finances needed to restore the king's power in Germany. He was soon crowned emperor in Italy, but decades of warfare on the peninsula yielded scant results. The Papacy and the prosperous city-states of the Lombard League in northern Italy were traditional enemies, but the fear of Imperial domination caused them to join ranks to fight Frederick. Under the skilled leadership of Pope Alexander III, the alliance suffered many defeats but ultimately was able to deny the emperor a complete victory in Italy. Frederick returned to Germany. He had vanquished one notable opponent, his Welf cousin, Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria in 1180, but his hopes of restoring the power and prestige of the monarchy seemed unlikely to be met by the end of his life.
During Frederick's long stays in Italy, the German princes became stronger and began a successful colonization of Slavic lands. Offers of reduced taxes and manorial duties enticed many Germans to settle in the east in the course of the Ostsiedlung. In 1163 Frederick waged a successful campaign against the Kingdom of Poland in order to re-install the Silesian dukes of the Piast dynasty. With the German colonization, the Empire increased in size and came to include the Duchy of Pomerania. A quickening economic life in Germany increased the number of towns and Imperial cities, and gave them greater importance. It was also during this period that castles and courts replaced monasteries as centers of culture. Growing out of this courtly culture, Middle High German literature reached its peak in lyrical love poetry, the Minnesang, and in narrative epic poems such as Tristan, Parzival, and the Nibelungenlied.
Frederick died in 1190 while on the Third Crusade and was succeeded by his son, Henry VI. Elected king even before his father's death, Henry went to Rome to be crowned emperor. He married Princess Constance of Sicily, and deaths in his wife's family gave him claim of succession and possession of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1189 and 1194 respectively, a source of vast wealth. Henry failed to make royal and Imperial succession hereditary, but in 1196 he succeeded in gaining a pledge that his infant son Frederick would receive the German crown. Faced with difficulties in Italy and confident that he would realize his wishes in Germany at a later date, Henry returned to the south, where it appeared he might unify the peninsula under the Hohenstaufen name. After a series of military victories, however, he fell ill and died of natural causes in Sicily in 1197. His underage son Frederick could only succeed him in Sicily and Malta, while in the Empire the struggle between the House of Staufen and the House of Welf erupted once again.
Because the election of a three-year-old boy to be German king appeared likely to make orderly rule difficult, the boy's uncle, Duke Philip of Swabia, brother of late Henry VI, was designated to serve in his place. Other factions however favoured a Welf candidate. In 1198, two rival kings were chosen: the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia and the son of the deprived Duke Henry the Lion, the Welf Otto IV. A long civil war began; Philip was about to win when he was murdered by the Bavarian count palatine Otto VIII of Wittelsbach in 1208. Pope Innocent III initially had supported the Welfs, but when Otto, now sole elected monarch, moved to appropriate Sicily, Innocent changed sides and accepted young Frederick II and his ally, King Philip II of France, who defeated Otto at the 1214 Battle of Bouvines. Frederick had returned to Germany in 1212 from Sicily, where he had grown up, and was elected king in 1215. When Otto died in 1218, Frederick became the undisputed ruler, and in 1220 was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
Philip changed the coat of arms from a black lion on a gold shield to three leopards, probably derived from the arms of his Welf rival Otto IV.
The conflict between the Staufer dynasty and the Welf had irrevocably weakened the Imperial authority and the Norman kingdom of Sicily became the base for Staufer rule.
Emperor Frederick II spent little time in Germany as his main concerns lay in Southern Italy. He founded the University of Naples in 1224 to train future state officials and reigned over Germany primarily through the allocation of royal prerogatives, leaving the sovereign authority and imperial estates to the ecclesiastical and secular princes. He made significant concessions to the German nobles, such as those put forth in an imperial statute of 1232, which made princes virtually independent rulers within their territories. These measures favoured the further fragmentation of the Empire.
By the 1226 Golden Bull of Rimini, Frederick had assigned the military order of the Teutonic Knights to complete the conquest and conversion of the Prussian lands. A reconciliation with the Welfs took place in 1235, whereby Otto the Child, grandson of the late Saxon duke Henry the Lion, was named Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. The power struggle with the popes continued and resulted in Frederick's excommunication in 1227. In 1239, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick again, and in 1245 he was condemned as a heretic by a church council. Although Frederick was one of the most energetic, imaginative, and capable rulers of the time, he was not concerned with drawing the disparate forces in Germany together. His legacy was thus that local rulers had more authority after his reign than before it. The clergy also had become more powerful.
By the time of Frederick's death in 1250, little centralized power remained in Germany. The Great Interregnum, a period in which there were several elected rival kings, none of whom was able to achieve any position of authority, followed the death of Frederick's son King Conrad IV of Germany in 1254. The German princes vied for individual advantage and managed to strip many powers away from the diminished monarchy. Rather than establish sovereign states however, many nobles tended to look after their families. Their many male heirs created more and smaller estates, and from a largely free class of officials previously formed, many of these assumed or acquired hereditary rights to administrative and legal offices. These trends compounded political fragmentation within Germany. The period was ended in 1273 with the election of Rudolph of Habsburg, a godson of Frederick.
Conrad IV was succeeded as duke of Swabia by his only son, two-year-old Conradin. By this time, the office of duke of Swabia had been fully subsumed into the office of the king, and without royal authority had become meaningless. In 1261, attempts to elect young Conradin king were unsuccessful. He also had to defend Sicily against an invasion, sponsored by Pope Urban IV (Jacques Pantaléon) and Pope Clement IV (Guy Folques), by Charles of Anjou, a brother of the French king. Charles had been promised by the popes the Kingdom of Sicily, where he would replace the relatives of Frederick II. Charles had defeated Conradin's uncle Manfred, King of Sicily, in the Battle of Benevento on 26 February 1266. The king himself, refusing to flee, rushed into the midst of his enemies and was killed. Conradin's campaign to retake control ended with his defeat in 1268 at the Battle of Tagliacozzo, after which he was handed over to Charles, who had him publicly executed at Naples. With Conradin, the direct line of the Dukes of Swabia finally ceased to exist, though most of the later emperors were descended from the Staufer dynasty indirectly.
The last member of the dynasty was Manfred's son, Henry [Enrico], who died in captivity at Castel dell'Ovo on 31 October 1318.
During the political decentralization of the late Staufer period, the population had grown from an estimated 8 million in 1200 to about 14 million in 1300, and the number of towns increased tenfold. The most heavily urbanized areas of Germany were in the south and the west. Towns often developed a degree of independence, but many were subordinate to local rulers if not immediate to the emperor. Colonization of the east also continued in the thirteenth century, most notably through the efforts of the Teutonic Knights. German merchants also began trading extensively on the Baltic.
The Kyffhäuser Monument was erected to commemorate Frederick I, and was inaugurated in 1896.
On October 29, 1968, the 700th anniversary of the death of Konradin, a society known as "Society for Staufer History" (de) was founded in Göppingen.
The Castel del Monte, Apulia which was built during the 1240s by the Emperor Frederick II was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1996.
The German artist, Hans Kloss, painted his Staufer-Rundbild depicting in great detail the history of the House of Hohenstaufen, in Lorch Monastery.
From 2000 to 2018, the Committee of Staufer Friends (de) has built thirty-eight Staufer steles (de) in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.
The first ruling Hohenstaufen, Conrad III, like the last one, Conrad IV, was never crowned emperor. After a 20-year period (Great interregnum 1254–1273), the first Habsburg was elected king.
Note: The following kings are already listed above as German Kings
Note: Some of the following kings are already listed above as German Kings
Note: Some of the following dukes are already listed above as German Kings | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Hohenstaufen dynasty (/ˈhoʊənʃtaʊfən/, US also /-staʊ-/, German: [ˌhoːənˈʃtaʊfn̩]), also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynasty's most prominent rulers – Frederick I (1155), Henry VI (1191) and Frederick II (1220) – ascended the imperial throne and also reigned over Italy and Burgundy. The non-contemporary name of 'Hohenstaufen' is derived from the family's Hohenstaufen Castle on Hohenstaufen mountain at the northern fringes of the Swabian Jura, near the town of Göppingen. Under Hohenstaufen rule, the Holy Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent from 1155 to 1268.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The name Hohenstaufen was first used in the 14th century to distinguish the 'high' (hohen) conical hill named Staufen in the Swabian Jura (in the district of Göppingen) from the village of the same name in the valley below. The new name was applied to the hill castle of Staufen by historians only in the 19th century to distinguish it from other castles of the same name. The name of the dynasty followed suit, but in recent decades, the trend in German historiography has been to prefer the name 'Staufer', which is closer to contemporary usage.",
"title": "Name"
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{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The name 'Staufen' itself derives from Stauf (OHG stouf, akin to Early Modern English stoup), meaning 'chalice'. This term was commonly applied to conical hills in Swabia during the Middle Ages. It is a contemporary term for both the hill and the castle, although its spelling in the Latin documents of the time varies considerably: Sthouf, Stophe, Stophen, Stoyphe, Estufin, etc. The castle was built or at least acquired by Duke Frederick I of Swabia in the latter half of the 11th century.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Members of the family occasionally used the toponymic surname de Stauf or variants thereof. Only in the 13th century would the name come to be applied to the family as a whole. Around 1215, a chronicler referred to the \"emperors of Stauf\". In 1247, the Emperor Frederick II himself referred to his family as the domus Stoffensis (Staufer house), but this was an isolated instance. Otto of Freising (d. 1158) associated the Staufer with the town of Waiblingen, and around 1230, Burchard of Ursberg referred to the Staufer as of the \"royal lineage of the Waiblingens\" (regia stirps Waiblingensium). The exact connection between the family and Waiblingen is not clear, but as a name for the family, it became very popular. The pro-imperial Ghibelline faction of the Italian civic rivalries of the 13th and 14th centuries derived its name from Waiblingen.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In Italian historiography, the Staufer are known as the Svevi (Swabians).",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The origin remains unclear, however, Staufer counts are mentioned in a document of emperor Otto III in 987 as descendants of counts of the region of Riesgau near Nördlingen in the Duchy of Swabia, who were related to the Bavarian Sieghardinger family. A local count Frederick (d. about 1075) is mentioned as progenitor in a pedigree drawn up by Abbot Wibald of Stavelot at the behest of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1153. He held the office of a Swabian count palatine; his son Frederick of Büren (c. 1020–1053) married Hildegard of Egisheim-Dagsburg (d. 1094/95), a niece of Pope Leo IX. Their son Frederick I was appointed Duke of Swabia at Hohenstaufen Castle by the Salian king Henry IV of Germany in 1079.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At the same time, Duke Frederick I was engaged to the king's approximately seventeen-year-old daughter, Agnes. Nothing is known about Frederick's life before this event, but he proved to be an imperial ally throughout Henry's struggles against other Swabian lords, namely Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Frederick's predecessor, and the Zähringen and Welf lords. Frederick's brother Otto was elevated to the Strasbourg bishopric in 1082.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Upon Frederick's death, he was succeeded by his son, Duke Frederick II, in 1105. Frederick II remained a close ally of the Salians, he and his younger brother Conrad were named the king's representatives in Germany when the king was in Italy. Around 1120, Frederick II married Judith of Bavaria from the rival House of Welf.",
"title": "Origins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "When the last male member of the Salian dynasty, Emperor Henry V, died without heirs in 1125, a controversy arose about the succession. Duke Frederick II and Conrad, the two current male Staufers, by their mother Agnes, were grandsons of late Emperor Henry IV and nephews of Henry V. Frederick attempted to succeed to the throne of the Holy Roman Emperor (formally known as the King of the Romans) through a customary election, but lost to the Saxon duke Lothair of Supplinburg. A civil war between Frederick's dynasty and Lothair's ended with Frederick's submission in 1134. After Lothair's death in 1137, Frederick's brother Conrad was elected King as Conrad III.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Because the Welf duke Henry the Proud, son-in-law and heir of Lothair and the most powerful prince in Germany, who had been passed over in the election, refused to acknowledge the new king, Conrad III deprived him of all his territories, giving the Duchy of Saxony to Albert the Bear and that of Bavaria to Leopold IV, Margrave of Austria. In 1147, Conrad heard Bernard of Clairvaux preach the Second Crusade at Speyer, and he agreed to join King Louis VII of France in a great expedition to the Holy Land which failed.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Conrad's brother Duke Frederick II died in 1147, and was succeeded in Swabia by his son, Duke Frederick III. When King Conrad III died without adult heir in 1152, Frederick also succeeded him, taking both German royal and Imperial titles.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Frederick I (Reign 2 January 1155 – 10 June 1190), known as Frederick Barbarossa because of his red beard, struggled throughout his reign to restore the power and prestige of the German monarchy against the dukes, whose power had grown both before and after the Investiture Controversy under his Salian predecessors. As royal access to the resources of the church in Germany was much reduced, Frederick was forced to go to Italy to find the finances needed to restore the king's power in Germany. He was soon crowned emperor in Italy, but decades of warfare on the peninsula yielded scant results. The Papacy and the prosperous city-states of the Lombard League in northern Italy were traditional enemies, but the fear of Imperial domination caused them to join ranks to fight Frederick. Under the skilled leadership of Pope Alexander III, the alliance suffered many defeats but ultimately was able to deny the emperor a complete victory in Italy. Frederick returned to Germany. He had vanquished one notable opponent, his Welf cousin, Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria in 1180, but his hopes of restoring the power and prestige of the monarchy seemed unlikely to be met by the end of his life.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During Frederick's long stays in Italy, the German princes became stronger and began a successful colonization of Slavic lands. Offers of reduced taxes and manorial duties enticed many Germans to settle in the east in the course of the Ostsiedlung. In 1163 Frederick waged a successful campaign against the Kingdom of Poland in order to re-install the Silesian dukes of the Piast dynasty. With the German colonization, the Empire increased in size and came to include the Duchy of Pomerania. A quickening economic life in Germany increased the number of towns and Imperial cities, and gave them greater importance. It was also during this period that castles and courts replaced monasteries as centers of culture. Growing out of this courtly culture, Middle High German literature reached its peak in lyrical love poetry, the Minnesang, and in narrative epic poems such as Tristan, Parzival, and the Nibelungenlied.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Frederick died in 1190 while on the Third Crusade and was succeeded by his son, Henry VI. Elected king even before his father's death, Henry went to Rome to be crowned emperor. He married Princess Constance of Sicily, and deaths in his wife's family gave him claim of succession and possession of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1189 and 1194 respectively, a source of vast wealth. Henry failed to make royal and Imperial succession hereditary, but in 1196 he succeeded in gaining a pledge that his infant son Frederick would receive the German crown. Faced with difficulties in Italy and confident that he would realize his wishes in Germany at a later date, Henry returned to the south, where it appeared he might unify the peninsula under the Hohenstaufen name. After a series of military victories, however, he fell ill and died of natural causes in Sicily in 1197. His underage son Frederick could only succeed him in Sicily and Malta, while in the Empire the struggle between the House of Staufen and the House of Welf erupted once again.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Because the election of a three-year-old boy to be German king appeared likely to make orderly rule difficult, the boy's uncle, Duke Philip of Swabia, brother of late Henry VI, was designated to serve in his place. Other factions however favoured a Welf candidate. In 1198, two rival kings were chosen: the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia and the son of the deprived Duke Henry the Lion, the Welf Otto IV. A long civil war began; Philip was about to win when he was murdered by the Bavarian count palatine Otto VIII of Wittelsbach in 1208. Pope Innocent III initially had supported the Welfs, but when Otto, now sole elected monarch, moved to appropriate Sicily, Innocent changed sides and accepted young Frederick II and his ally, King Philip II of France, who defeated Otto at the 1214 Battle of Bouvines. Frederick had returned to Germany in 1212 from Sicily, where he had grown up, and was elected king in 1215. When Otto died in 1218, Frederick became the undisputed ruler, and in 1220 was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Philip changed the coat of arms from a black lion on a gold shield to three leopards, probably derived from the arms of his Welf rival Otto IV.",
"title": "Ruling in Germany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The conflict between the Staufer dynasty and the Welf had irrevocably weakened the Imperial authority and the Norman kingdom of Sicily became the base for Staufer rule.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Emperor Frederick II spent little time in Germany as his main concerns lay in Southern Italy. He founded the University of Naples in 1224 to train future state officials and reigned over Germany primarily through the allocation of royal prerogatives, leaving the sovereign authority and imperial estates to the ecclesiastical and secular princes. He made significant concessions to the German nobles, such as those put forth in an imperial statute of 1232, which made princes virtually independent rulers within their territories. These measures favoured the further fragmentation of the Empire.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "By the 1226 Golden Bull of Rimini, Frederick had assigned the military order of the Teutonic Knights to complete the conquest and conversion of the Prussian lands. A reconciliation with the Welfs took place in 1235, whereby Otto the Child, grandson of the late Saxon duke Henry the Lion, was named Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. The power struggle with the popes continued and resulted in Frederick's excommunication in 1227. In 1239, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick again, and in 1245 he was condemned as a heretic by a church council. Although Frederick was one of the most energetic, imaginative, and capable rulers of the time, he was not concerned with drawing the disparate forces in Germany together. His legacy was thus that local rulers had more authority after his reign than before it. The clergy also had become more powerful.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "By the time of Frederick's death in 1250, little centralized power remained in Germany. The Great Interregnum, a period in which there were several elected rival kings, none of whom was able to achieve any position of authority, followed the death of Frederick's son King Conrad IV of Germany in 1254. The German princes vied for individual advantage and managed to strip many powers away from the diminished monarchy. Rather than establish sovereign states however, many nobles tended to look after their families. Their many male heirs created more and smaller estates, and from a largely free class of officials previously formed, many of these assumed or acquired hereditary rights to administrative and legal offices. These trends compounded political fragmentation within Germany. The period was ended in 1273 with the election of Rudolph of Habsburg, a godson of Frederick.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Conrad IV was succeeded as duke of Swabia by his only son, two-year-old Conradin. By this time, the office of duke of Swabia had been fully subsumed into the office of the king, and without royal authority had become meaningless. In 1261, attempts to elect young Conradin king were unsuccessful. He also had to defend Sicily against an invasion, sponsored by Pope Urban IV (Jacques Pantaléon) and Pope Clement IV (Guy Folques), by Charles of Anjou, a brother of the French king. Charles had been promised by the popes the Kingdom of Sicily, where he would replace the relatives of Frederick II. Charles had defeated Conradin's uncle Manfred, King of Sicily, in the Battle of Benevento on 26 February 1266. The king himself, refusing to flee, rushed into the midst of his enemies and was killed. Conradin's campaign to retake control ended with his defeat in 1268 at the Battle of Tagliacozzo, after which he was handed over to Charles, who had him publicly executed at Naples. With Conradin, the direct line of the Dukes of Swabia finally ceased to exist, though most of the later emperors were descended from the Staufer dynasty indirectly.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The last member of the dynasty was Manfred's son, Henry [Enrico], who died in captivity at Castel dell'Ovo on 31 October 1318.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "During the political decentralization of the late Staufer period, the population had grown from an estimated 8 million in 1200 to about 14 million in 1300, and the number of towns increased tenfold. The most heavily urbanized areas of Germany were in the south and the west. Towns often developed a degree of independence, but many were subordinate to local rulers if not immediate to the emperor. Colonization of the east also continued in the thirteenth century, most notably through the efforts of the Teutonic Knights. German merchants also began trading extensively on the Baltic.",
"title": "Ruling in Italy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Kyffhäuser Monument was erected to commemorate Frederick I, and was inaugurated in 1896.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "On October 29, 1968, the 700th anniversary of the death of Konradin, a society known as \"Society for Staufer History\" (de) was founded in Göppingen.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Castel del Monte, Apulia which was built during the 1240s by the Emperor Frederick II was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1996.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The German artist, Hans Kloss, painted his Staufer-Rundbild depicting in great detail the history of the House of Hohenstaufen, in Lorch Monastery.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "From 2000 to 2018, the Committee of Staufer Friends (de) has built thirty-eight Staufer steles (de) in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The first ruling Hohenstaufen, Conrad III, like the last one, Conrad IV, was never crowned emperor. After a 20-year period (Great interregnum 1254–1273), the first Habsburg was elected king.",
"title": "Members of the Hohenstaufen family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Note: The following kings are already listed above as German Kings",
"title": "Members of the Hohenstaufen family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Note: Some of the following kings are already listed above as German Kings",
"title": "Members of the Hohenstaufen family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Note: Some of the following dukes are already listed above as German Kings",
"title": "Members of the Hohenstaufen family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "",
"title": "Family tree of the House of Hohenstaufen"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "",
"title": "Family tree of the House of Hohenstaufen"
}
]
| The Hohenstaufen dynasty, also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynasty's most prominent rulers – Frederick I (1155), Henry VI (1191) and Frederick II (1220) – ascended the imperial throne and also reigned over Italy and Burgundy. The non-contemporary name of 'Hohenstaufen' is derived from the family's Hohenstaufen Castle on Hohenstaufen mountain at the northern fringes of the Swabian Jura, near the town of Göppingen. Under Hohenstaufen rule, the Holy Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent from 1155 to 1268. | 2001-09-24T03:48:31Z | 2023-12-24T23:04:22Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenstaufen |
13,806 | History of Malaysia | Malaysia is a modern concept, created in the second half of the 20th century. However, contemporary Malaysia regards the entire history of Malaya and Borneo, spanning thousands of years back to prehistoric times, as its own history.
The first evidence for archaic human occupation can be dated to at least 1.83 million years ago, while the earliest remnants of an anatomically modern human are c. 40,000 years old. The ancestors of the present-day population of Malaysia entered the area in multiple waves in prehistorical and historical times.
Hinduism and Buddhism from India and China dominated early regional history, reaching their peak from the 7th to the 13th centuries during the reign of the Sumatra-based Srivijaya civilisation. Islam made its initial presence in the Malay Peninsula as early as the 10th century, but it was during the 15th century that the religion firmly took root at least among the court elites, which saw the rise of several sultanates; the most prominent were the Sultanate of Malacca and the Sultanate of Brunei.
The Portuguese were the first European colonial power to establish themselves on the Malay Peninsula and Southeast Asia, capturing Malacca in 1511. This event led to the establishment of several sultanates such as Johor and Perak. Dutch hegemony over the Malay sultanates increased during the course of the 17th to 18th century, capturing Malacca in 1641 with the aid of Johor. In the 19th century, the English ultimately gained hegemony across the territory that is now Malaysia. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (which became Indonesia), and the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and Siam (which became Thailand). The fourth phase of foreign influence was a wave of immigration of Chinese and Indian workers to meet the needs created by the colonial economy in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo.
The Japanese invasion during World War II ended British rule in Malaya. After the Empire of Japan was defeated by the Allies, the Malayan Union was established in 1946 and was reorganized as the Federation of Malaya in 1948. In the Peninsula, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) took up arms against the British and the tension led to the declaration of emergency rule from 1948 to 1960. A forceful military response to the communist insurgency, followed by the Baling Talks in 1955, led to Malayan Independence on August 31, 1957, through diplomatic negotiation with the British. On 16 September 1963, the Federation of Malaysia was formed; in August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate independent country. A racial riot in 1969, brought about the imposition of emergency rule, the suspension of parliament and the proclamation of the Rukun Negara, a national philosophy promoting unity among citizens. The New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in 1971 sought to eradicate poverty and restructure society to eliminate the identification of race with economic function. Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization in the country beginning in the 1980s; the previous economic policy was succeeded by the National Development Policy (NDP) from 1991 to 2000. The late 1990s Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. Early in 2020, Malaysia underwent a political crisis. This period, along with the COVID-19 pandemic caused a political, health, social and economic crisis. The 2022 general election resulted in the first-ever hung parliament in the country's history and Anwar Ibrahim became Malaysia's prime minister on November 24, 2022.
Stone hand axes from early hominoids, probably Homo erectus, have been unearthed in Lenggong. They date back 1.83 million years, one of the oldest pieces of evidence of hominid habitation in Southeast Asia.
The earliest evidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia is the 40,000-year-old skull excavated from the Niah Caves in today's Sarawak. This is also one of the oldest modern human skulls in Southeast Asia. The first foragers visited the West Mouth of Niah Caves (located 110 kilometres (68 mi) southwest of Miri) 40,000 years ago when Borneo was connected to the mainland of Southeast Asia. Mesolithic and Neolithic burial sites have also been found in the area. The area around the Niah Caves has been designated the Niah National Park.
A study of Asian genetics suggests the original humans in East Asia came from Southeast Asia. The oldest complete skeleton found in Malaysia is an 11,000-year-old Perak Man unearthed in 1991. The indigenous groups on the peninsula can be divided into three ethnicities: the Negritos, the Senoi, and the proto-Malays. The first inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula were most probably Negritos. These Mesolithic hunters were probably the ancestors of the Semang, an ethnic Negrito group. The Senoi appear to be a composite group, with approximately half of the maternal mitochondrial DNA lineages tracing back to the ancestors of the Semang and about half to later ancestral migrations from Indochina. Scholars suggest they are descendants of early Austroasiatic-speaking agriculturalists, who brought both their language and their technology to the southern part of the peninsula approximately 4,000 years ago. They united and coalesced with the indigenous population. The Proto Malays have a more diverse origin and had settled in Malaysia by 1000 BC as a result of Austronesian expansion. Although they show some connections with other inhabitants in Maritime Southeast Asia, some also have an ancestry in Indochina around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. Areas comprising what is now Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road. The trading network existed for 3,000 years, between 2000 BC to 1000 AD.
Anthropologists support the notion that the Proto-Malays originated from what is today Yunnan, China. This was followed by an early-Holocene dispersal through the Malay Peninsula into the Malay Archipelago. Around 300 BC, they were pushed inland by the Deutero-Malays, an Iron Age or Bronze Age people descended partly from the Chams of Cambodia and Vietnam. The first group in the peninsula to use metal tools, the Deutero-Malays were the direct ancestors of today's Malaysian Malays and brought with them advanced farming techniques. The Malays remained politically fragmented throughout the Malay archipelago, although a common culture and social structure were shared.
In the first millennium AD, Malay became the dominant ethnicity on the peninsula. The small early states that were established were greatly influenced by Indian culture, as was most of Southeast Asia. Indian influence in the region dates back to at least the 3rd century BC. South Indian culture was spread to Southeast Asia by the South Indian Pallava dynasty in the 4th and 5th centuries.
In ancient Indian literature, the term Suvarnadvipa (Golden Peninsula) is used in the Ramayana; some argue that this is a reference to the Malay Peninsula. The ancient Indian text Vayu Purana also mentions a place named Malayadvipa; this term may refer to Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. The Malay Peninsula was shown on Ptolemy's map as the Golden Chersonese.
Trade relations with China and India were established in the 1st century BC. Shards of Chinese pottery have been found in Borneo dating from the 1st century following the southward expansion of the Han Dynasty. In the early centuries of the first millennium, the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, which had a major effect on the language and culture of those living in Malaysia. The Sanskrit writing system was used as early as the 4th century.
There were numerous Malay kingdoms in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, as many as 30, mainly based on the eastern side of the Malay peninsula. Among the earliest kingdoms known to have been based in the Malay Peninsula is the ancient kingdom of Langkasuka, located in the northern Malay Peninsula and based somewhere on the west coast. It was closely tied to Funan in Cambodia, which also ruled parts of northern Malaysia until the 6th century. In the 5th century, the Kingdom of Pahang was mentioned in the Book of Song. Besides this, Chi Tu and Pan Pan were old polities believed to be located in the northeast of the peninsula.
Gangga Negara is believed to be a semi-legendary Hindu kingdom mentioned in the Malay Annals that covered present-day Beruas, Dinding and Manjung in the state of Perak, Malaysia with Raja Gangga Shah Johan as one of its kings. According to the legendary Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, Gangga Negara was founded by Merong Mahawangsa's son Raja Ganji Sarjuna of Kedah, allegedly a descendant of Alexander the Great or by the Khmer royalties no later than the 2nd century.
Ptolemy, a Greek geographer, had written about the Golden Chersonese, which indicated that trade with India and China had existed since the 1st century AD. During this time, coastal city-states that existed had a network which encompassed the southern part of the Indochinese peninsula and the western part of the Malay archipelago. These coastal cities had ongoing trade as well as tributary relations with China, at the same time being in constant contact with Indian traders. They seem to have shared a common indigenous culture.
Gradually, the rulers of the western part of the archipelago adopted Indian cultural and political models. Three inscriptions found in Palembang (South Sumatra) and on Bangka Island, written in the form of Malay and in alphabets derived from the Pallava script, are proof that the archipelago had adopted Indian models while maintaining their indigenous language and social system. These inscriptions reveal the existence of a Dapunta Hyang (lord) of Srivijaya who led an expedition against his enemies and who curses those who does not obey his law.
Being on the maritime trade route between China and South India, the Malay peninsula was involved in this trade. The Bujang Valley, being strategically located at the northwest entrance of the Strait of Malacca as well as facing the Bay of Bengal, was continuously frequented by Chinese and south Indian traders. Such was proven by the discovery of trade ceramics, sculptures, inscriptions and monuments dated from the 5th to 14th century.
Between the 7th and the 13th century, much of the Malay peninsula was under the Buddhist Srivijaya empire. The site Prasasti Hujung Langit, which sat at the centre of Srivijaya's empire, is thought to be at a river mouth in eastern Sumatra, based near what is now Palembang, Indonesia. In the 7th century, a new port called Shilifoshi is mentioned, believed to be a Chinese rendering of Srivijaya. For over six centuries the Maharajahs of Srivijaya ruled a maritime empire that became the main power in the archipelago. The empire was based around trade, with local kings (dhatus or community leaders) that swore allegiance to a lord for mutual profit. In 1025, the Chola dynasty captured Palembang, the king and all members of his family, including courtiers had all their wealth taken away; by the end of the 12th century Srivijaya had been reduced to a kingdom, with the last ruler in 1288, Queen Sekerummong, who had been conquered and overthrown. Majapahit, a subordinate to Srivijaya, soon dominated the regional political scene.
The relation between Srivijaya and the Chola Empire of south India was friendly during the reign of Raja Raja Chola I but during the reign of Rajendra Chola I the Chola Empire invaded Srivijaya cities (see Chola invasion of Srivijaya). In 1025 and 1026, Gangga Negara was attacked by Rajendra Chola I of the Chola Empire, the Tamil emperor who is now thought to have laid Kota Gelanggi to waste. Kedah (known as Kadaram in Tamil) was invaded by the Cholas in 1025. A second invasion was led by Virarajendra Chola of the Chola dynasty who conquered Kedah in the late 11th century. The senior Chola's successor, Vira Rajendra Chola, had to put down a Kedah rebellion to overthrow other invaders. The coming of the Chola reduced the majesty of Srivijaya, which had exerted influence over Kedah, Pattani and as far as Ligor. During the reign of Kulothunga Chola I, Chola overlordship was established over the Srivijaya province Kedah in the late 11th century. The expedition of the Chola Emperors had such a great impression on the Malay people of the medieval period that their name was mentioned in the corrupted form as Raja Chulan in the medieval Malay chronicle Sejarah Melaya. Even today, the Chola rule is remembered in Malaysia as many Malaysian princes have names ending with Cholan or Chulan, one such was the Raja of Perak called Raja Chulan.
Pattinapalai, a Tamil poem of the 2nd century AD, describes goods from Kedaram heaped in the broad streets of the Chola capital. The Buddhist kingdom of Ligor took control of Kedah shortly after. Its king Chandrabhanu used it as a base to attack Sri Lanka in the 11th century and ruled the northern parts, an event noted in a stone inscription in Nagapattinum in Tamil Nadu and the Sri Lankan chronicles, Mahavamsa.
At times, the Khmer Kingdom, the Siamese Kingdom, and even Cholas Kingdom tried to exert control over the smaller Malay states. The power of Srivijaya declined from the 12th century as the relationship between the capital and its vassals broke down. Wars with the Javanese caused it to request assistance from China, and wars with Indian states are also suspected. In the 11th century, the centre of power shifted to Malayu, a port possibly located further up the Sumatran coast near the Jambi River. The power of the Buddhist Maharajas was further undermined by the spread of Islam. Areas which were converted to Islam early, such as Aceh, broke away from Srivijaya's control. By the late 13th century, the Siamese kings of Sukhothai had brought most of Malaya under their rule. In the 14th century, the Hindu Majapahit Empire came into possession of the peninsula.
An excavation by Tom Harrisson in 1949 unearthed a series of Chinese ceramics at Santubong (near Kuching) that date to the Tang and Song dynasties. It is possible that Santubong was an important seaport in Sarawak during the period, but its importance declined during the Yuan dynasty, and the port was deserted during the Ming dynasty.
According to the Malay Annals, a new ruler named Sang Sapurba was promoted as the new paramount of the Srivijayan mandala. It was said that after he acceded to Seguntang Hill with his two younger brothers, Sang Sapurba entered into a sacred covenant with Demang Lebar Daun, the native ruler of Palembang. The newly installed sovereign afterwards descended from the hill of Seguntang into the great plain of the Musi River, where he married Wan Sendari, the daughter of the local chief, Demang Lebar Daun. Sang Sapurba was said to have reigned in Minangkabau lands.
In 1324, a Srivijaya prince, Sang Nila Utama founded the Kingdom of Singapura (Temasek). According to tradition, he was related to Sang Sapurba. He maintained control over Temasek for 48 years. He was recognized as ruler over Temasek by an envoy of the Chinese Emperor sometime around 1366. He was succeeded by his son Paduka Sri Pekerma Wira Diraja (1372–1386) and grandson, Paduka Seri Rana Wira Kerma (1386–1399). In 1401, the last ruler, Paduka Sri Maharaja Parameswara, was expelled from Temasek by forces from Majapahit or Ayutthaya. He later headed north and founded the Sultanate of Malacca in 1402. The Sultanate of Malacca succeeded the Srivijaya Empire as a Malay political entity in the archipelago.
Islam came to the Malay Archipelago through the Arab and Indian traders in the 13th century, ending the age of Hinduism and Buddhism. It arrived in the region gradually and became the religion of the elite before it spread to the commoners. The syncretic form of Islam in Malaysia was influenced by previous religions and was originally not orthodox.
The port of Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula was founded in 1400 by Parameswara, a Srivijayan prince fleeing Temasek (now Singapore). Parameswara sailed to Temasek to escape persecution. There he came under the protection of Temagi, a Malay chief from Patani who was appointed by the king of Siam as regent of Temasek. Within a few days, Parameswara killed Temagi and appointed himself regent. Some five years later he had to leave Temasek, due to threats from Siam. During this period, a Javanese fleet from Majapahit attacked Temasek.
Parameswara headed north to find a new settlement, reaching a fishing village at the mouth of the Bertam River (former name of the Melaka River) where he founded what would become the Malacca Sultanate. Over time this developed into modern-day Malacca Town. According to the Malay Annals, here Parameswara saw a mouse deer outwitting a dog resting under a Malacca tree. Taking this as a good omen, he decided to establish a kingdom called Malacca. He built and improved facilities for trade. The Malacca Sultanate is commonly considered the first independent state in the peninsula.
In 1404, the first official Chinese trade envoy led by Admiral Yin Qing arrived in Malacca. Later, Parameswara was escorted by Zheng He and other envoys on his successful visits. Malacca's relationships with Ming granted protection to Malacca against attacks from Siam and Majapahit and Malacca officially submitted as a protectorate of Ming China. This encouraged the development of Malacca into a major trade settlement on the trade route between China and India, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. To prevent the Malaccan empire from falling to the Siamese and Majapahit, he forged a relationship with Ming China for protection. Following the establishment of this relationship, the prosperity of the Malacca entrepôt was then recorded by the first Chinese visitor, Ma Huan, who travelled together with Admiral Zheng He. In Malacca during the early 15th century, Ming China actively sought to develop a commercial hub and a base of operation for their treasure voyages into the Indian Ocean. Malacca had been a relatively insignificant region, not even qualifying as a polity prior to the voyages according to both Ma Huan and Fei Xin, and was a vassal region of Siam. In 1405, the Ming court dispatched Admiral Zheng He with a stone tablet enfeoffing the Western Mountain of Malacca as well as an imperial order elevating the status of the port to a country. The Chinese also established a government depot (官廠) as a fortified cantonment for their soldiers. Ma Huan reported that Siam did not dare to invade Malacca thereafter. The rulers of Malacca, such as Parameswara in 1411, would pay tribute to the Chinese emperor in person.
The emperor of Ming China was sending out fleets of ships to expand trade. Admiral Zheng He called at Malacca and brought Parameswara with him on his return to China, a recognition of his position as ruler of Malacca. In exchange for regular tribute, the Chinese emperor offered Melaka protection from the constant threat of a Siamese attack. Because of its strategic location, Malacca was an important stopping point for Zheng He's fleet. Due to Chinese involvement, Malacca had grown as a key alternative to other important and established ports. The Chinese and Indians who settled in the Malay Peninsula before and during this period are the ancestors of today's Baba-Nyonya and Chitty communities. According to one theory, Parameswara became a Muslim when he married a Princess of Pasai and he took the fashionable Persian title "Shah", calling himself Iskandar Shah. In 1414, Parameswara's son was then officially recognised as the second ruler of Melaka by the Chinese Emperor and styled Raja Sri Rama Vikrama, Raja of Parameswara of Temasek and Malacca and he was known to his Muslim subjects as Sultan Sri Iskandar Zulkarnain Shah (Megat Iskandar Shah). He ruled Malacca from 1414 to 1424. Through the influence of Indian Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Hui people from China, Islam became increasingly common during the 15th century.
After an initial period paying tribute to the Ayutthaya, the kingdom rapidly assumed the place previously held by Srivijaya, establishing independent relations with China, and exploiting its position dominating the Straits to control the China-India maritime trade, which became increasingly important when the Mongol conquests closed the overland route between China and the west.
Within a few years of its establishment, Malacca officially adopted Islam. Parameswara became a Muslim, and because Malacca was under a Muslim prince, the conversion of Malays to Islam accelerated in the 15th century. The political power of the Malacca Sultanate helped Islam's rapid spread through the archipelago. By the start of the 16th century, with the Malacca Sultanate in the Malay peninsula and parts of Sumatra, the Demak Sultanate in Java, and other kingdoms around the Malay archipelago increasingly converting to Islam, it had become the dominant religion among Malays, and reached as far as the modern-day Philippines, leaving Bali as an isolated outpost of Hinduism today. The government in Malacca was based on the feudal system.
Malacca's reign lasted little more than a century, but during this time became the established centre of Malay culture. Most future Malay states originated from this period. Malacca became a cultural centre, creating the matrix of the modern Malay culture: a blend of indigenous Malay and imported Indian, Chinese and Islamic elements. Malacca's fashions in literature, art, music, dance and dress, and the ornate titles of its royal court, came to be seen as the standard for all ethnic Malays. The court of Malacca also gave great prestige to the Malay language, which had originally evolved in Sumatra and been brought to Malacca at the time of its foundation. In time Malay came to be the official language of all the Malaysian states, although local languages survived in many places. After the fall of Malacca, the Sultanate of Brunei became the major centre of Islam.
From the 15th century onwards, the Portuguese started seeking a maritime route towards Asia. In 1511, Afonso de Albuquerque led an expedition to Malaya which seized Malacca with the intent of using it as a base for activities in Southeast Asia. This was the first colonial claim on what is now Malaysia. The son of the last Sultan of Malacca, Alauddin Riayat Shah II fled to the southern tip of the peninsula, where he founded a state that which became the Sultanate of Johor in 1528. Another son established the Perak Sultanate to the north. Portuguese influence was strong, as they aggressively tried to convert the population of Malacca to Catholicism. In 1571, the Spanish captured Manila and established a colony in the Philippines, reducing the Sultanate of Brunei's power.
After the fall of Malacca to Portugal, the Johor Sultanate on the southern Malay peninsula and the Sultanate of Aceh on northern Sumatra moved to fill the power vacuum left behind. The three powers struggled to dominate the Malay peninsula and the surrounding islands. Meanwhile, the importance of the Strait of Malacca as an east–west shipping route was growing, while the islands of Southeast Asia were themselves prized sources of natural resources (metals, spices, etc.) whose inhabitants were being further drawn into the global economy.
In 1607, the Sultanate of Aceh rose as the most powerful and wealthiest state in the Malay archipelago. Under Sultan Iskandar Muda's reign, the sultanate's control was extended over a number of Malay states. During the Battle of Duyon River, Iskandar Muda's disastrous campaign against Malacca in 1629, the combined Portuguese and Johor forces managed to destroy all the ships of his formidable fleet and 19,000 troops according to a Portuguese account.
In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) was established. Backed by the Dutch, Johor established a loose hegemony over the Malay states, except Perak, which was able to play-off Johor against the Siamese to the north and retain its independence. The Dutch did not interfere in local matters in Malacca, but at the same time diverted most trade to its colonies on Java.
At its height, the sultanate controlled modern-day Johor, several territories by the Klang and Linggi rivers, Singapore, Bintan, Riau, Lingga, Karimun, Bengkalis, Kampar and Siak in Sumatra. The Portuguese and Johor were frequently in conflict in the 16th century, most notably in the 1587 siege of Johor. During the Triangular war, Aceh launched multiple raids against both Johor and Portuguese forces to tighten its grip over the straits. The rise and expansion of Aceh encouraged the Portuguese and Johor to sign a short-lived truce. During the rule of Iskandar Muda, Aceh attacked Johor in 1613 and again in 1615.
In the early 17th century, the Dutch reached Southeast Asia. At that time the Dutch were at war with the Portuguese and allied themselves to Johor. Two treaties were signed between Admiral Cornelis Matelief de Jonge and Raja Bongsu of Johor in 1606. The combined Johor-Dutch forces ultimately failed to capture Malacca in 1606. Finally in 1641, the Dutch and Johor headed by Bendahara Skudai, defeated the Portuguese in the Battle of Malacca. The Dutch took control of Malacca and agreed not to seek territories or wage war with Johor. By the time the fortress at Malacca surrendered, the town's population had already been greatly decimated by famine and disease.
With the fall of Portuguese Malacca in 1641 and the decline of Aceh due to the growing power of the Dutch, Johor started to re-establish itself as a power along the Straits of Malacca during the reign of Sultan Abdul Jalil Shah III (1623–1677). Jambi emerged as a regional economic and political power in Sumatra. Initially there was an attempt of an alliance between Johor and Jambi by way of a promised marriage. However, the alliance broke down and the Johor-Jambi war (1666–1679) ensued. After the sacking of Batu Sawar by Jambi in 1673, the capital of Johor was frequently moved to avoid the threat of attack. The sultan escaped to Pahang and died four years later. His successor, Sultan Ibrahim Shah (1677–1685), then engaged the help of the Bugis in the fight to defeat Jambi. Johor would eventually prevail in 1679, but also ended in a weakened position as the Bugis refused to return to Makassar where they came from. On top of this, the Minangkabaus of Sumatra also started to assert their influence.
In the 1690s the Bugis, who played an important role in defeating Jambi two decades earlier, had a major political influence in Johor. Both the Bugis and the Minangkabau realised how the death of Sultan Mahmud II in 1699 caused a power vacuum and allowed them to exert their power in Johor. The Minangkabau introduced a Minangkabau prince, Raja Kecil from Siak who claimed he was the posthumous son of Mahmud II. With the help of the Orang Laut, Raja Kecil then captured Riau in 1718, the then capital of the Johor Sultanate and installed himself as the new Johor Sultan, Jalil Rahmat Shah, without the knowledge of the Bugis. Raja Sulaiman of Johor dethroned Raja Kechil with help from the Bugis Daeng Parani and reclaimed the throne as Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah (1722–1760), but he was a weak ruler and became a puppet of the Bugis. During the reign of Sultan Mahmud Shah III, the mid-to-late 18th century saw the Bugis attempting to expand their influence in the region. This brought them into conflicts with the Dutch, which resulted in a final major battle in 1784 between the two, which ended Bugis and Johor dominance in the region.
Based on the Perak Royal Genealogy ("Salasilah Raja-Raja Perak"), the Perak Sultanate was formed in the early 16th century on the banks of the Perak River by the eldest son of Malaccan Sultan Mahmud Shah. He ascended to the throne as Muzaffar Shah I (1528–1549), first sultan of Perak, after surviving the capture of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511 and living quietly for a period in Siak. He became sultan through the efforts of Tun Saban, a local leader and trader between Perak and Klang. There had been no sultans in Perak when Tun Saban first arrived in the area from Kampar in Sumatra. Most of the area's residents were traders from Malacca, Selangor and Sumatra. Perak's administration became more organised after the Sultanate was established. With the opening up of Perak in the 16th century, the state became a source of tin ore. It appears that anyone was free to trade in the commodity, although the tin trade did not attract significant attention until the 1610s.
Throughout the early 17th century, the Sultanate of Aceh subjected most parts of the Malay Peninsula to continual harassment. Although Perak did fall under the authority of Aceh, it remained entirely independent of Siamese control for over 200 years from 1612, in contrast with its neighbour, Kedah, and other northern Malay sultanates.
When the last Perak sultan of direct Malaccan lineage, Sallehuddin Riayat Shah died without an heir in 1635, a state of uncertainty prevailed in Perak. This was exacerbated by a deadly cholera epidemic. Perak chieftains were left with no alternative but to turn to Iskandar Thani of Aceh, who sent his relative, Raja Sulong, to become the new Perak Sultan, Muzaffar Shah II (1636–1653).
Aceh's influence on Perak began to wane when the Dutch East India Company (VOC) arrived, in the mid-17th century. When Perak refused to enter into a contract with the VOC as its northern neighbours had done, a blockade of the Perak River halted the tin trade, causing suffering among Aceh's merchants. In 1650, Aceh's Sultana Taj ul-Alam ordered Perak to sign an agreement with the VOC, on condition that the tin trade would be conducted exclusively with Aceh's merchants. By the following year, the VOC had secured a monopoly over the tin trade, setting up a store in Perak. Following the long competition between Aceh and the VOC over Perak's tin trade, on 15 December 1653, the two parties jointly signed a treaty with Perak granting the Dutch exclusive rights to tin extracted from mines located in the state.
In 1699, when Johor lost its last sultan of Malaccan lineage, Sultan Mahmud Shah II, Perak now had the sole claim of being the final heir of the old Sultanate of Malacca. However, Perak could not match the prestige and power of either the Malaccan or Johor Sultanates. Perak endured 40 years of civil war in the early 18th century, where rival princes were bolstered by local chiefs, the Bugis and Minang, all fighting for a share of tin revenues. The Bugis and several Perak chiefs were successful in ousting the Perak ruler, Sultan Muzaffar Riayat Shah III in 1743. In 1747, he only held power in north Perak and signed a treaty with the Dutch Commissioner Ary Verbrugge, under which Perak's ruler recognised Dutch monopoly over the tin trade and agreed to sell all the tin ore to Dutch traders.
The Old Pahang Sultanate centred in modern-day Pekan was established in the 15th century. At the height of its influence, the sultanate controlled the entire Pahang basin. The sultanate had its origins as a vassal to the Malaccan Sultanate. Its first sultan was a Malaccan prince, Muhammad Shah (1455–1475), himself the grandson of Dewa Sura, the last pre-Malaccan ruler of Pahang. Over the years, Pahang grew independent from Malaccan control and at one point even established itself as a rival state to Malacca until the latter's demise in 1511. In 1528, when the last Malaccan sultan died, the sultan at the time, Mahmud Shah I (c. 1519–1530) joined forces with the Sultan of Johor, Alauddin Riayat Shah II, and began to expel the Portuguese from the Malay Peninsula. Two attempts were made in 1547 at Muar and in 1551 at Portuguese Malacca. However, in the face of superior Portuguese arms and vessels, the Pahang and Johor forces were forced to retreat on both occasions.
During the reign of Sultan Abdul Kadir (1560–1590), Pahang enjoyed a brief period of cordial relations with the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century. However, in 1607, following a visit by Admiral Matelief de Jonge of the Dutch Empire, Pahang cooperated with them in an attempt to get rid of the Portuguese. There was an attempt to establish a Johor-Pahang alliance to assist the Dutch. However, a quarrel erupted between Sultan Abdul Ghafur of Pahang (1592–1614) and Alauddin Riayat Shah III of Johor (1597–1615). This resulted in Johor declaring war on Pahang in 1612; with the aid of Sultan Abdul Jalilul Akbar of Brunei, Pahang eventually defeated Johor in 1613.
In 1615, the Acehnese Iskandar Muda invaded Pahang, forcing Alauddin Riayat Shah to retreat into the interior of Pahang. He nevertheless continued to exercise some ruling powers. His reign in exile is considered to have officially ended after the installation of a distant Johorean relative, Raja Bujang (Abdul Jalil Shah III) to the Pahang throne in 1615 with the support of the Portuguese. However, he was eventually deposed in the Acehnese invasion of 1617, but restored to the Pahang throne and also installed as the new Sultan of Johor following the death of his uncle, Sultan Abdullah Ma'ayat Shah in 1623. This event led to the union of the crown of Pahang and Johor, and the formal establishment of Pahang-ruled Johor.
During the 17th century Johor-Jambi war, Sultan Abdul Jalil Shah III (r. 1623–1677) of Johor engaged the help of Bugis mercenaries from Sulawesi to fight against Jambi. After Johor won in 1679, the Bugis decided to stay and asserted their power in the region. Many Bugis began to migrate and settle along the coast of Selangor such as the estuaries of the Selangor and Klang rivers. Some Minangkabaus may have also settled in Selangor by the 17th century, perhaps earlier. The Bugis and the Minangkabaus from Sumatra struggled for control of Johor. Raja Kecil, backed by the Minangkabaus, invaded Selangor but were driven off by the Bugis in 1742. To establish a power base, the Bugis led by Raja Salehuddin (1705–1788) founded the present hereditary Selangor Sultanate with its capital at Kuala Selangor in 1766. Selangor is unique as its the only state on the Malay Peninsula that was founded by the Bugis.
Before its conversion to Islam, the oldest records of Brunei in Arabic sources defined it as "Sribuza" which was a Bornean Vassal-State to Srivijaya. The Arabic author Ya'qubi writing in the 9th century recorded that the kingdom of Musa (probably referring to Brunei) was in alliance with the kingdom of Mayd (either Ma-i or Madja-as in the Philippines), against the Tang dynasty.
One of the earliest Chinese records of an independent kingdom in Borneo was the 977 letter to the Song dynasty emperor from the ruler of Boni (Brunei). The Bruneians regained their independence from Srivijaya due to the onset of a Javanese-Sumatran war. In 1225, the Chinese official Zhao Rukuo reported that Boni had 100 warships to protect its trade, and that there was great wealth in the kingdom. In the 14th century, a Chinese annal (Yuan Dade Nanhai zhi) reported that Boni invaded or administered Sabah, some parts of Sarawak and ruled the kingdoms of Butuan, Sulu and Mayd, as well as Malilu and Wenduling in present-day Manila and Mindanao, at northern and southern Philippines, respectively. Later, the Sulu kingdom invaded and occupied ports in Boni-ruled Sabah. They were later evicted with the help of the Majapahit Empire, which Brunei became a vassal to in the late 14th century. Nevertheless the Sulus stole 2 Sacred Pearls from the Brunei king.
By the 15th century, the empire became a Muslim state, when the king of Brunei converted to Islam, brought Muslim Indians and Arab merchants from other parts of Maritime Southeast Asia, who came to trade and spread Islam. During the rule of Bolkiah (1485–1524) the empire controlled the coastal areas of northwest Borneo and reached the Philippines at Seludong (present-day Manila), the Sulu Archipelago and some parts of Mindanao which Brunei had incorporated via royal intermarriage with the rulers of Sulu, Manila and Maguindanao.
In the 16th century, the Brunei empire's influence also extended as far as Kapuas River delta in West Kalimantan. Other sultanates in the area had close relations with the Brunei Monarchy, being in some cases effectively under the hegemony of the Brunei ruling family for periods of time, such as the Malay sultans of Pontianak, Samarinda and Banjarmasin. The Malay Sultanate of Sambas (present-day West Kalimantan), the Sultanate of Sulu and the Muslim Rajahs of precolonial Manila had developed dynastic relations with the royal house of Brunei. The Sultanate of Sarawak (covering present day Kuching, known to the Portuguese cartographers as Cerava, and one of the five great seaports on the island of Borneo), though under the influence of Brunei, was self-governed under Sultan Tengah before being fully integrated into the Bruneian Empire upon sultan Tengah's death in 1641.
The Bruneian empire began to decline during the arrival of western powers. Spain sent several expeditions from Mexico to invade and colonise Brunei's territories in the Philippines. Eventually the Spanish, their Visayan allies and their Latin-American recruits assaulted Brunei itself during the Castilian War. Though there were rapes, sacks and pillaging, the invasion was only temporary as the Spanish retreated. Brunei was unable to regain the territory it lost in the Philippines, yet it still maintained sway in Borneo.
By the early 19th century, Sarawak had become a loosely governed territory under the control of the Brunei Sultanate. Brunei only had authority along the coastal regions of Sarawak where it was held by semi-independent Malay leaders. Meanwhile, the interior of Sarawak suffered from tribal wars fought by Iban, Kayan, and Kenyah peoples, who aggressively fought to expand their territories.
Following the discovery of antimony ore in the Kuching region, Pangeran Indera Mahkota (a representative of the Sultan of Brunei) began to develop the territory between 1824 and 1830. When antimony production increased, the Brunei Sultanate demanded higher taxes from Sarawak, which led to civil unrest and chaos. In 1839, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II (1827–1852), ordered his uncle the Pengiran Muda Hashim to restore order. It was around this time that James Brooke arrived in Sarawak, and Pengiran Muda Hashim requested his assistance in the matter, but Brooke refused. However, he agreed to a further request during his next visit to Sarawak in 1840. On 24 September 1841, Pengiran Muda Hashim agreed to depose Pangeran Indera Mahkota and bestow the title of governor on James Brooke. This appointment was later confirmed by the Sultan of Brunei in 1842.
The weakness of the small coastal Malay states led to the immigration of the Bugis, escaping from Dutch colonisation of Sulawesi, who established numerous settlements on the peninsula which they used to interfere with Dutch trade. They seized control of Johor following the assassination of the last Sultan of the old Melaka royal line in 1699. Bugis expanded their power in the states of Johor, Kedah, Perak, and Selangor. The Minangkabau from central Sumatra migrated into Malaya, and eventually established their own state in Negeri Sembilan. The fall of Johor left a power vacuum on the Malay Peninsula which was partly filled by the Siamese kings of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, who made the five northern Malay states—Kedah, Kelantan, Patani, Perlis, and Terengganu—their vassals.
The economic importance of Malaya to Europe grew rapidly during the 18th century. The fast-growing tea trade between China and United Kingdom increased the demand for high-quality Malayan tin, which was used to line tea-chests. Malayan pepper also had a high reputation in Europe, while Kelantan and Pahang had gold mines. The growth of tin and gold mining and associated service industries led to the first influx of foreign settlers into the Malay world – initially Arabs and Indians, later Chinese.
After the Fall of Ayutthaya in 1767, the Northern Malay Sultanates were freed from Siamese domination temporarily. In 1786, British trader Francis Light managed to obtain a lease of Penang Island from Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin Halim Shah II of Kedah on behalf of East India Company. Siam re-exerted control over Northern Malay Sultanates and sacked Pattani; Kedah came under Siamese suzerainty. King Rama II of Siam ordered Noi Na Nagara of Ligor to invade Kedah Sultanate in 1821. Under the Burney Treaty of 1826, the exiled Kedah Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin was not restored to his throne. He and his armed supporters then fought in a series of war known as Perang Musuh Bisik for his restoration over twelve years (1830–1842). When the Siamese army invaded and occupied Kedah between 1821 and 1842, local Arab families supported the Sultan's efforts to lead resistance. In 1842, Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin finally agreed to accept Siamese terms and was restored to his throne of Kedah. The following year, Syed Hussein Jamalullail was installed by the Siamese as the first Raja of Perlis, after the Sultan of Kedah gave his endorsement for the formation of Perlis, Siam separated Perlis into a separate principality directly vassal to Bangkok.
Around 1760, Long Yunus, an aristocratic warlord of Patani origin succeeded in unifying the territory of present-day Kelantan and was succeeded in 1795 by his son-in-law, Tengku Muhammad by Sultan Mansur of Terengganu. The enthronement of Tengku Muhammad by a noble from Terengganu was opposed by Long Yunus' sons, thus triggering a war against Terengganu by Long Muhammad, the eldest son of Long Yunus. The pro-Terengganu faction was defeated in 1800 and Long Muhammad ruled Kelantan with the new title of sultan as Sultan Muhammad I. Terengganu experienced stability under the reign of Sultan Omar Riayat Shah, who was remembered as a devout ruler who promoted trade and stable government. Under Thai rule, Terengganu prospered, and was largely left alone by the authorities in Bangkok. However, in the Burney Treaty of 1826, the treaty acknowledged Siamese claims over several northern Malay states Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, Terengganu—the future Unfederated Malay States—and Patani. The treaty further guaranteed British possession of Penang and their rights to trade in Kelantan and Terengganu without Siamese interference. However, the five Malay-ethnic states were not represented in the treaty negotiation. In 1909 the parties of the agreement signed a new treaty that superseded the Burney Treaty and transferred four of the five Malay states from Siamese to British control, except for Patani. As Patani was not included in the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 and remained under Siamese rule, this led Patani to be excluded from the Federation of Malaya in 1957.
Before the mid-19th-century British interests in the region were predominantly economic, with little interest in territorial control. Already the strongest European power in India, the British were looking towards southeast Asia for new territories. The growth of the China trade in British ships increased the East India Company's desire for bases in the region. Various islands were used for this purpose, but the first permanent acquisition was Penang, leased from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786. This was followed soon after by the leasing of a block of territory on the mainland opposite Penang (known as Province Wellesley). In 1795, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British with the consent of the French-occupied Netherlands occupied Dutch Melaka to forestall possible French encroachment.
When Malacca was handed back to the Dutch in 1818, the British governor, Stamford Raffles, looked for an alternative base, and in 1819 he acquired Singapore from the Sultan of Johor. The exchange of the British colony of Bencoolen for Malacca with the Dutch left the British as the sole colonial power on the peninsula. The territories of the British were set up as free ports, attempting to break the monopoly held by the Dutch and French at the time, and making them large bases of trade. They allowed Britain to control all trade through the straits of Malacca. British influence was increased by Malayan fears of Siamese expansionism, to which Britain made a useful counterweight. During the 19th century the Malay Sultans aligned themselves with the British Empire, due to the benefits of associations with the British and their fear of Siamese or Burmese incursions.
In 1824, British control in Malaya (before the name Malaysia) was formalised by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which divided the Malay archipelago between Britain and the Netherlands. The Dutch evacuated Melaka and renounced all interest in Malaya, while the British recognised Dutch rule over the rest of the East Indies. By 1846 the British controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements, administered first under the East India Company until 1867, when they were transferred to the Colonial Office in London.
Initially, the British followed a policy of non-intervention in relations between the Malay states. The commercial importance of tin mining in the Malay states to merchants in the Straits Settlements led to infighting between the aristocracy on the peninsula. The destabilisation of these states damaged the commerce in the area. The wealth of Perak's tin mines made political stability there a priority for British investors, and Perak was thus the first Malay state to agree to the supervision of a British resident. The Royal Navy was employed to bring about a peaceful resolution to civil disturbances caused by Chinese and Malay gangs employed in a political fight between Ngah Ibrahim and Raja Muda Abdullah. The Pangkor Treaty of 1874 paved the way for the expansion of British influence in Malaya. The British concluded treaties with some Malay states, installing residents who advised the Sultans and soon became the de facto rulers of their states. These advisors held power in everything except to do with Malay religion and customs.
Johor was the sole remaining state to maintain its independence, by modernising and giving British and Chinese investors legal protection. By the turn of the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British advisors. In 1909 the Siamese kingdom was compelled to cede Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu, which already had British advisors, over to the British. Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor and Queen Victoria were personal acquaintances who recognised each other as equals. It was not until 1914 that Sultan Abu Bakar's successor, Sultan Ibrahim, accepted a British adviser. The four previously Thai states and Johor were known as the Unfederated Malay States. The states under the most direct British control developed rapidly, becoming the largest suppliers in the world of first tin, then rubber.
By 1910, the pattern of British rule in the Malay lands was established. The Straits Settlements were a Crown colony, ruled by a governor under the supervision of the Colonial Office in London. Their population was about roughly 50% Chinese-Malaysian, but all residents, regardless of race, were British subjects. The first four states to accept British residents, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, and Pahang, were termed the Federated Malay States: while technically independent, they were placed under a Resident-General in 1895. The Unfederated Malay States (Johore, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, and Terengganu) had a slightly larger degree of independence. Johor, as Britain's closest ally in Malay affairs, had the privilege of a written constitution, which gave the Sultan the right to appoint his own Cabinet, but he was generally careful to consult the British first.
During the late 19th century the British also gained control of the north coast of Borneo. Development on the Peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. The eastern part of this region (now Sabah) was under the nominal control of the Sultan of Sulu, who later became a vassal of the Spanish East Indies. The rest was the territory of the Sultanate of Brunei. In 1840, British adventurer James Brooke helped suppress a revolt, and in return received the title of Raja and the right to govern the Sarawak River District in 1841. In 1843, his title was recognised as hereditary, and the "White Rajahs" began ruling Sarawak as a de facto independent state in 1846. The Brookes expanded Sarawak at the expense of Brunei.
In 1881, the British North Borneo Company was granted control of the territory of British North Borneo, appointing a governor and legislature. Its status was similar to that of a British Protectorate, and like Sarawak it expanded at the expense of Brunei. Until the Philippine independence in 1946, seven British-controlled islands in the north-eastern part of Borneo named Turtle Islands and Cagayan de Tawi-Tawi were ceded to the Philippine government by Crown Colony of North Borneo. The Philippines then under its irredentism motive since the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal laying claim to eastern Sabah in a basis the territory was part of the present-defunct Sultanate of Sulu's territory. In 1888, what was left of Brunei was made a British protectorate, and in 1891 another Anglo-Dutch treaty formalised the border between British and Dutch Borneo.
In the pre-colonial period and in the first few decades after the imposition of formal colonial rule in British Malaya, 'Malay' was not a racial or even a fixed identity in the modern sense of these terms. The construct of race was imposed by the British on their colonial subjects.
Unlike some colonial powers, the British always saw their empire as an economic concern, and its colonies were expected to turn a profit for shareholders in London. The colonial capitalist ideas of development were largely based on unlimited greed for profit. Initially, British colonisers were attracted by the Malay archipelago's tin and gold mines. But British planters soon began to experiment with tropical plantation crops—tapioca, gambier, pepper, and coffee. And, in 1877, the rubber plant was introduced from Brazil. Rubber soon became Malaya's staple export, stimulated by booming demand from European industry. Later, rubber was joined by palm oil as an export earner. All these industries required a large labour force, so the British sent people from the longer-established British colony in India, consisting mainly of Tamil-speakers from South India, to work on plantations as indentured labourers. The mines, mills and docks also attracted a flood of immigrant workers from southern China. Soon towns like Singapore, Penang, and Ipoh were majority Chinese, as was Kuala Lumpur, founded as a tin-mining centre in 1857. By 1891, when Malaya's first census was taken, Perak and Selangor, the main tin-mining states, had Chinese majorities.
Workers were often treated violently by contractors, and sickness was frequent. Many Chinese labourers' debts increased through addictions to opium and gambling, which earned the British colonial government significant revenue, while Indian labourers' debts were increased through addiction to drink. Workers' debts acquired in this way meant that they were tied to their labour contracts for much longer.
Some Chinese immigrant workers were connected with networks of mutual aid societies (run by "Hui-Guan" 會館, or non-profit organisations). In the 1890s Yap Ah Loy, who held the title of Kapitan China of Kuala Lumpur, was the richest man in Malaya, owning a chain of mines, plantations and shops. Malaya's banking and insurance industries were run by the Chinese from the start, and Chinese businesses, usually in partnership with London firms, soon had complete control of the Malayan economy. Chinese bankers also lent money to the Malay Sultans, which gave the Chinese political as well as economic leverage. At first the Chinese immigrants were mostly men. At first they married Malay women, producing a community of Sino-Malayans or baba people, but soon they began importing Chinese brides, establishing permanent communities and building schools and temples.
An Indian commercial and professional class emerged during the early 20th century, but the majority of Indians remained poor and uneducated in rural ghettos in the rubber-growing areas.
Traditional Malay society was greatly harmed by the loss of political sovereignty to the British colonisers. The Sultans, who were seen as collaborators with both the British and the Chinese, lost some of their traditional prestige, but the mass of rural Malays continued to revere the Sultans. A small class of Malay nationalist intellectuals began to emerge during the early 20th century, and there was also a revival of Islam in response to the perceived threat of other imported religions, particularly Christianity. In fact few Malays converted to Christianity, although many Chinese did. The northern regions, which were less influenced by western ideas, became strongholds of Islamic conservatism.
The British gave elite Malays positions in the police and local military units, as well as a majority of those administrative positions open to non-Europeans. While the Chinese mostly built and paid for their own schools and colleges, importing teachers from China, the British aimed to control the education of young Malay elites and establish colonial ideas of race and class hierarchies. The colonial government opened Malay College in 1905 and created the Malay Administrative Service in 1910. (The college was dubbed "Bab ud-Darajat" – the Gateway to High Rank.) A Malay Teachers College followed in 1922, and a Malay Women's Training College in 1935. All this reflected the official policy of the colonial administration that Malaya belonged to the Malays, and that the other races were but temporary residents. This view was increasingly out of line with reality, and resulted in the formation of resistance movements against British Colonial rule.
The Malay teacher's college had lectures and writings that nurtured Malay nationalist sentiments; it is known as the birthplace of Malay nationalism. In 1938, Ibrahim Yaacob, an alumnus of Sultan Idris College, established the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (Young Malays Union or KMM) in Kuala Lumpur. It was the first nationalist political organisation in British Malaya. A specific ideal the KMM held was Panji Melayu Raya, which called for the unification of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.
In the years before World War II, the colonial government were concerned with finding the balance between a centralised state and maintaining the power of the Sultans in Malaya. In 1935 the position of Resident-General of the Federated States was abolished, and its powers decentralised to the individual states. The colonial government regarded the Chinese as clever but dangerous—and indeed during the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang) and the Chinese Communist Party built rival clandestine organisations in Malaya, leading to regular disturbances in the Chinese towns.
Although a belligerent as part of the British Empire, Malaya saw little action during World War I, except for the sinking of the Russian cruiser Zhemchug by the German cruiser SMS Emden on 28 October 1914 during the Battle of Penang.
The outbreak of war in the Pacific in December 1941 found the British in Malaya completely unprepared. During the 1930s, anticipating the rising threat of Japanese naval power, they had built a great naval base at Singapore, but never anticipated an invasion of Malaya from the north. There was virtually no British air capacity in the Far East. The Japanese were thus able to attack from their bases in French Indo-China with impunity, and despite resistance from British, Australian, and Indian forces, they overran Malaya in two months. Singapore, with no landward defences, no air cover, and no water supply, was forced to surrender in February 1942. British North Borneo and Brunei were also occupied.
The Japanese colonial government regarded the Malays from a pan-Asian point of view, and fostered a limited form of Malay nationalism. The Malay nationalist Kesatuan Melayu Muda, advocates of Melayu Raya, collaborated with the Japanese, based on the understanding that Japan would unite the Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Borneo and grant them independence. The occupiers regarded the Chinese, however, as enemy aliens, and treated them with great harshness: during the so-called sook ching (purification through suffering), up to 80,000 Chinese in Malaya and Singapore were killed. The Chinese, led by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), became the backbone of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). With British assistance, the MPAJA became the most effective resistance force in the occupied Asian countries.
Although the Japanese argued that they supported Malay nationalism, they offended Malay nationalism by allowing their ally Thailand to re-annex the four northern states, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, and Terengganu that had been transferred to British Malaya in 1909. The loss of Malaya's export markets soon produced mass unemployment which affected all races and made the Japanese increasingly unpopular.
During occupation, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. The Malayans were thus on the whole glad to see the British back in 1945, but things could not remain as they were before the war, and a stronger desire for independence grew. Britain was bankrupt and the new Labour government was keen to withdraw its forces from the East. But most Malays were more concerned with defending themselves against the MCP than with demanding independence from the British.
In 1944, the British drew up plans for a Malayan Union, which would turn the Federated and Unfederated Malay States, plus Penang and Malacca (but not Singapore), into a single Crown colony, with a view towards independence. The Bornean territories and Singapore were left out as it was thought this would make union more difficult to achieve. There was however strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese and other minorities. The British had decided on legalised equality between all races as they perceived the Chinese and Indians as more loyal to the British during the war than the Malays. The Sultans, who had initially supported it, backed down and placed themselves at the head of the resistance.
In 1946, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was founded by Malay nationalists led by Dato Onn bin Jaafar, the Chief Minister of Johor. UMNO favoured independence for Malaya, but only if the new state was run exclusively by the Malays. Faced with Malay opposition, the British dropped the plan for equal citizenship. The Malayan Union was thus established in 1946, and was dissolved in 1948 and replaced by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.
Meanwhile, the Communists were moving towards open insurrection. The MPAJA had been disbanded in December 1945, and the MCP organised as a legal political party, but the MPAJA's arms were carefully stored for future use. The MCP policy was for immediate independence with full equality for all races. The Party's strength was in the Chinese-dominated trade unions, particularly in Singapore, and in the Chinese schools. In March 1947, reflecting the international Communist movement's "turn to left" as the Cold War set in, the MCP leader Lai Tek was purged and replaced by the veteran MPAJA guerrilla leader Chin Peng, who turned the party increasingly to direct action. These rebels, under the leadership of the MCP, launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. In July, following a string of assassinations of plantation managers, the colonial government struck back, declaring a State of emergency, banning the MCP and arresting hundreds of its militants. The Party retreated to the jungle and formed the Malayan Peoples' Liberation Army, with about 13,000 men under arms, mostly ethnic Chinese.
The war was precipitated by the new constitution desired by Britain, which condemned about 90 percent of ethnic Chinese to non-citizenship, and by the eviction of poor peasants to make way for plantations. But although the war was long portrayed in most analyses by British authorities as a struggle against communism in a Cold War context, the MNLA received very little support from either the Soviet or Chinese communists. Rather, the main concern of British governments was to protect their commercial interests in the colony.
The Malayan Emergency lasted from 1948 to 1960 and involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. The British strategy, which proved ultimately successful, was to isolate the MCP from its support base by a combination of economic and political concessions to the Chinese and the resettlement of Chinese squatters into "New Villages", in reality, concentration camps, in "white areas" free of MCP influence. From 1949 the MCP campaign lost momentum and the number of recruits fell sharply. Although the MCP succeeded in assassinating the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, in October 1951, this turn to terrorist tactics alienated many moderate Chinese from the Party. The arrival of Lt.-Gen Sir Gerald Templer as British commander in 1952 was the beginning of the end of the Emergency. Templer helped create the modern techniques of counter-insurgency warfare in Malaya and applied them against the MCP guerillas. The war was accompanied by abuses on both sides. The most notorious atrocity was committed in the village of Batang Kali, north of the capital Kuala Lumpur, in December 1948, when the British army massacred 24 Chinese before burning the village to the ground. Heavy bombers went to war, dropping thousands of bombs on insurgent positions. Britain conducted 4,500 air strikes in the first five years of the conflict. Although the insurgency was defeated Commonwealth troops remained with the backdrop of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Against this backdrop, independence for the Federation within the Commonwealth was granted on 31 August 1957, with Tunku Abdul Rahman as the first prime minister.
Chinese reaction against the MCP was shown by the formation of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) in 1949 as a vehicle for moderate Chinese political opinion. Its leader Tan Cheng Lock favoured a policy of collaboration with UMNO to win Malayan independence on a policy of equal citizenship, but with sufficient concessions to Malay sensitivities to ease nationalist fears. Tan formed a close collaboration with Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman, the Chief Minister of Kedah and from 1951 successor to Datuk Onn as leader of UMNO. Both leaders were determined to forge an agreement their communities could live with as a basis for a stable independent state. The UMNO-MCA Alliance, which was later joined by the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC), won convincing victories in local and state elections in both Malay and Chinese areas between 1952 and 1955. After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, there was a split in the MCP leadership over the wisdom of continuing the armed struggle. Many MCP militants lost heart and went home, and by the time Templer left Malaya in 1954, the Emergency was over, although Chin Peng led a diehard group that lurked in the inaccessible country along the Thai border for many years. During 1955 and 1956 UMNO, the MCA and the British hammered out a constitutional settlement for a principle of equal citizenship for all races. In exchange, the MCA agreed that Malaya's head of state would be drawn from the ranks of the Malay Sultans, that Malay would be the official language, and that Malay education and economic development would be promoted and subsidised. In effect, this meant that Malaya would be run by the Malays, but that the Chinese and Indians would have proportionate representation in the Cabinet and the parliament, would run those states where they were the majority, and would have their economic position protected. The difficult issue of who would control the Education system was deferred until after independence. This came on 31 August 1957, when Tunku Abdul Rahman became the first Prime Minister of independent Malaya.
After the Japanese surrender the Brooke family and the British North Borneo Company gave up their control of Sarawak and North Borneo respectively, and these became British Crown Colonies. They were much less economically developed than Malaya, and their local political leaderships were too weak to demand independence. Singapore, with its large Chinese majority, achieved autonomy in 1955, and in 1959 the young leader Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister. The Sultan of Brunei remained as a British client in his oil-rich enclave. Between 1959 and 1962 the British government orchestrated complex negotiations between these local leaders and the Malayan government.
On 24 April 1961, Lee Kuan Yew proposed the idea of forming Malaysia during a meeting to Tunku Abdul Rahman. Deputy Malayan Prime Minister Abdul Razak supported the idea of the new federation and worked to convince Tunku to back it. On 27 May 1961, Abdul Rahman proposed the idea of forming "Malaysia", which would consist of Brunei, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore, all except Malaya still under British rule. It was stated that this would allow the central government to better control and combat communist activities, especially in Singapore. It was also feared that if Singapore became independent, it would become a base for Chinese chauvinists to threaten Malayan sovereignty. The proposed inclusion of British territories besides Singapore was intended to keep the ethnic composition of the new nation similar to that of Malaya, with the Malay and indigenous populations of the other territories canceling out the Chinese majority in Singapore.
Although Lee Kuan Yew supported the proposal, his opponents from the Singaporean Socialist Front (Barisan Sosialis) resisted. In North Borneo, where there were no political parties, community representatives also stated their opposition. Although the Sultan of Brunei supported the merger, the Parti Rakyat Brunei opposed it as well. At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in 1961, Abdul Rahman explained his proposal further to its opponents. In October, he obtained agreement from the British government to the plan, provided that feedback be obtained from the communities involved in the merger.
The Cobbold Commission approved a merger with North Borneo and Sarawak; however, it was found that a substantial number of Bruneians opposed merger. North Borneo drew up a list of points, referred to as the 20-point agreement, proposing terms for its inclusion in the new federation. Sarawak prepared a similar memorandum, known as the 18-point agreement. Some of the points in these agreements were incorporated into the eventual constitution, some were instead accepted orally. These memoranda are often cited by those who believe that Sarawak's and North Borneo's rights have been eroded over time. A referendum was conducted in Singapore to gauge opinion, and 70% supported merger with substantial autonomy given to the state government. The Sultanate of Brunei withdrew from the planned merger due to opposition from certain segments of its population as well as arguments over the payment of oil royalties and the status of the sultan in the planned merger. Additionally, the Bruneian Parti Rakyat Brunei staged an armed revolt, which, though it was put down, was viewed as potentially destabilising to the new nation.
After reviewing the Cobbold Commission's findings, the British government appointed the Landsdowne Commission to draft a constitution for Malaysia. The eventual constitution was essentially the same as the 1957 constitution, albeit with some rewording; for instance, giving recognition to the special position of the natives of the Borneo States. North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore were also granted some autonomy unavailable to the states of Malaya. After negotiations in July 1963, it was agreed that Malaysia would come into being on 31 August 1963, consisting of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. The date was to coincide with the independence day of Malaya and the British giving self-rule to Sarawak and North Borneo. However, Indonesia and the Philippines strenuously objected to this development, with Indonesia claiming Malaysia represented a form of "neocolonialism" and the Philippines claiming North Borneo as its territory. The opposition from the Indonesian government led by Sukarno and attempts by the Sarawak United People's Party delayed the formation of Malaysia. Due to these factors, an eight-member UN team was formed to re-ascertain whether North Borneo and Sarawak truly wanted to join Malaysia. Malaysia formally came into being on 16 September 1963, consisting of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. In 1963 the total population of Malaysia was about 10 million.
At the time of independence, Malaya had great economic advantages. It was among the world's leading producers of three valuable commodities, rubber, tin, and palm oil, and was also a significant iron ore producer. These export industries gave the Malayan government a healthy surplus to invest in industrial development and infrastructure projects. Like other developing nations in the 1950s and 1960s, Malaya (and later Malaysia) placed great stress on state planning, although UMNO was never a socialist party. The First and Second Malayan Plans (1956–1960 and 1961–1965 respectively) stimulated economic growth through state investment in industry and repairing infrastructure. The government was keen to reduce Malaya's dependence on commodity exports and was aware that demand for natural rubber was bound to fall as the production and use of synthetic rubber expanded.
Both Indonesia and the Philippines withdrew their ambassadors from Malaya on 15 September 1963, the day before Malaysia's formation. In Jakarta the British and Malayan embassies were stoned, and the British consulate in Medan was ransacked with Malaya's consul taking refuge in the US consulate. Malaysia withdrew its ambassadors in response, and asked Thailand to represent Malaysia in both countries.
Indonesian President Sukarno, backed by the powerful Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), chose to regard Malaysia as a "neocolonialist" plot against his country, and backed a Communist insurgency in Sarawak, mainly involving elements of the local Chinese community. Indonesian irregular forces were infiltrated into Sarawak, where they were contained by Malaysian and Commonwealth of Nations forces. This period of Konfrontasi, an economic, political, and military confrontation lasted until the downfall of Sukarno in 1966. The Philippines objected to the formation of the federation, claiming North Borneo was part of Sulu, and thus the Philippines. In 1966 the new president, Ferdinand Marcos, dropped the claim, although it has since been revived and is still a point of contention marring Philippine–Malaysian relations.
The Depression of the 1930s, followed by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, had the effect of ending Chinese emigration to Malaya. At the time of independence in 1957, Malays comprised 55% of the population, Chinese 35% and Indians 10%. This balance was altered by the inclusion of the majority-Chinese Singapore, upsetting many Malays. The federation increased the Chinese proportion to close to 40%. Both UMNO and the MCA were nervous about the possible appeal of Lee's People's Action Party (then seen as a radical socialist party) to voters in Malaya and tried to organise a party in Singapore to challenge Lee's position there. Lee in turn threatened to run PAP candidates in Malaya at the 1964 federal elections, despite an earlier agreement that he would not do so (see PAP–UMNO Relations). Racial tensions intensified as PAP created an opposition alliance aiming for equality between races. This provoked Tunku Abdul Rahman to demand that Singapore withdraw from Malaysia. Despite last-ditch attempts by Singaporean leaders to keep Singapore as a part of the Federation, on 9 August 1965 the Malaysian Parliament voted 126–0 in favour of the expulsion of Singapore.
The most vexed issues of independent Malaysia were education and the disparity of economic power among the ethnic communities. The Malays felt unhappy with the wealth of the Chinese community, even after the expulsion of Singapore. Malay political movements emerged based around this. However, since there was no effective opposition party, these issues were contested mainly within the coalition government, which won all but one seat in the first post-independence Malayan Parliament. The two issues were related since the Chinese advantage in education played a large part in maintaining their control of the economy, which the UMNO leaders were determined to end. The MCA leaders were torn between the need to defend their own community's interests and the need to maintain good relations with UMNO. This produced a crisis in the MCA in 1959, in which a more assertive leadership under Lim Chong Eu defied UMNO over the education issue, only to be forced to back down when Tunku Abdul Rahman threatened to break up the coalition.
The Education Act of 1961 put UMNO's victory on the education issue into legislative form. Henceforward Malay and English would be the only teaching languages in secondary schools, and state primary schools would teach in Malay only. Although the Chinese and Indian communities could maintain their own Chinese and Tamil-language primary schools, all their students were required to learn Malay, and to study an agreed "Malayan curriculum". Most importantly, the entrance exam to the University of Malaya (which moved from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur in 1963) would be conducted in Malay, even though most teachings at the university was in English until the 1970s. This had the effect of excluding many Chinese students. At the same time, Malay schools were heavily subsidised, and Malays were given preferential treatment. This obvious defeat for the MCA greatly weakened its support in the Chinese community.
As in education, the UMNO government's unspoken agenda in the field of economic development aimed to shift economic power away from the Chinese and towards the Malays. The two Malayan Plans and the First Malaysian Plan (1966–1970) directed resources heavily into developments that would benefit the rural Malay community. Several agencies were set up to enable Malay smallholders to upgrade their production and to increase their incomes. The Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) helped many Malays to buy or upgrade farms. The state also provided a range of incentives and low-interest loans to help Malays start businesses, and government tendering systematically favoured Malay companies, leading many Chinese-owned businesses to "Malayanise" their management.
The collaboration of the MCA and the MIC in these policies weakened their hold on the Chinese and Indian electorates. At the same time, the effects of the government's affirmative action policies of the 1950s and 1960s had been to create a discontented class of educated but underemployed Malays. This led to the formation of a new party, the Malaysian People's Movement (Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia) in 1968. Gerakan was a deliberately non-communal party, bringing in Malay trade unionists and intellectuals as well as Chinese and Indian leaders. At the same time, an Islamist party, the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and a Democratic socialist party, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), gained increasing support, at the expense of UMNO and the MCA respectively.
Following the end of the Malayan Emergency, the predominantly ethnic Chinese Malayan National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party, had retreated to the Malaysian-Thailand border where it had regrouped and retrained for future offensives against the Malaysian government. The insurgency officially began when the MCP ambushed security forces in Kroh–Betong, in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia, on 17 June 1968. Instead of declaring a "state of emergency" as the British had done previously, the Malaysian government responded to the insurgency by introducing several policy initiatives including the Security and Development Program (KESBAN), Rukun Tetangga (Neighbourhood Watch), and the RELA Corps (People's Volunteer Group).
At the May 1969 federal elections, the UMNO-MCA-MIC Alliance polled only 48% of the vote, although it retained a majority in the legislature. The MCA lost most of the Chinese-majority seats to Gerakan or DAP candidates. A Malay backlash resulted, leading rapidly to riots and inter-communal violence in which about 6,000 Chinese homes and businesses were burned and at least 184 people were killed, although Western diplomatic sources at the time suggested a toll of close to 600, with most of the victims are Chinese. The government declared a state of emergency, and a National Operations Council, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, took power from the government of Tunku Abdul Rahman, who, in September 1970, was forced to retire in favour of Abdul Razak.
Using the Emergency-era Internal Security Act (ISA), the new government suspended Parliament and political parties, imposed press censorship and placed severe restrictions on political activity. The ISA gave the government power to intern any person indefinitely without trial. These powers were widely used to silence the government's critics, and have never been repealed. The Constitution was changed to make illegal any criticism, even in Parliament, of the Malaysian monarchy, the special position of Malays in the country, or the status of Malay as the national language.
In 1971, the Parliament reconvened, and a new government coalition, the Barisan Nasional, was formed in 1973 to replace the Alliance party. Abdul Razak held office until he passed away in 1976. He was succeeded by Datuk Hussein Onn and then by Tun Mahathir Mohamad, who had been Education Minister since 1981, and who held power for 22 years.
During these years policies were put in place which led to the rapid transformation of Malaysia's economy and society, such as the controversial New Economic Policy, which was intended to increase proportionally the share of the economic "pie" of the bumiputras as compared to other ethnic groups—was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak. Malaysia has since maintained a delicate ethno-political balance, with a system of government that has attempted to combine overall economic development with political and economic policies that promote equitable participation of all races.
In 1970 three-quarters of Malaysians living below the poverty line were Malays, the majority of Malays were still rural workers, and Malays were still largely excluded from the modern economy. The government's response was the New Economic Policy of 1971, which was to be implemented through a series of four five-year plans from 1971 to 1990. The plan had two objectives: the elimination of poverty, particularly rural poverty, and the elimination of the identification between race and prosperity. This latter policy was understood to mean a decisive shift in economic power from the Chinese to the Malays, who until then made up only 5% of the professional class.
To provide jobs for all these new Malay graduates, the government created several agencies for intervention in the economy. The most important of these were PERNAS (National Corporation Ltd.), PETRONAS (National Petroleum Ltd.), and HICOM (Heavy Industry Corporation of Malaysia), which not only directly employed many Malays but also invested in growing areas of the economy to create new technical and administrative jobs which were preferentially allocated to Malays. As a result, the share of Malay equity in the economy rose from 1.5% in 1969 to 20.3% in 1990.
Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as prime minister on 16 July 1981. One of his first acts was to release 21 detainees held under the Internal Security Act. He appointed his close ally, Musa Hitam, as deputy prime minister.
The expiry of the Malaysian New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1990 allowed Mahathir to outline his economic vision for Malaysia. In 1991, he announced Vision 2020, under which Malaysia would aim to become a fully developed country within 30 years. The target would require average economic growth of approximately seven per cent of the gross domestic product per annum. Vision 2020 was accompanied by the NEP's replacement, the National Development Policy (NDP), under which some government programs designed to benefit the Bumiputera exclusively were opened up to other ethnicities. The NDP achieved success in one of its main aims, poverty reduction. By 1995, less than nine per cent of Malaysians lived in poverty, and income inequality had narrowed. Mahathir's government cut corporate taxes and liberalised financial regulations to attract foreign investment. The economy grew by over nine per cent per annum until 1997, prompting other developing countries to emulate Mahathir's policies.
Mahathir initiated a series of major infrastructure projects in the 1990s. One of the largest was the Multimedia Super Corridor, an area south of Kuala Lumpur, in the mould of Silicon Valley, designed to cater for the information technology industry. However, the project failed to generate the investment anticipated. Other Mahathir's projects included the development of Putrajaya as the home of Malaysia's public service and bringing a Formula One Grand Prix to Sepang. One of the most controversial developments was the Bakun Dam in Sarawak. The ambitious hydroelectric project was intended to carry electricity across the South China Sea to satisfy electricity demand in peninsular Malaysia. Work on the dam was eventually suspended due to the Asian financial crisis.
In 1997, the Asian financial crisis threatened to devastate Malaysia. The value of the ringgit plummeted due to currency speculation, foreign investment fled, and the main stock exchange index fell by over 75%. At the urging of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government cut government spending. It raised interest rates, which only served to exacerbate the economic situation. In 1998, in a controversial approach, Mahathir increased government spending and fixed the ringgit to the US dollar. Malaysia recovered from the crisis faster than its Southeast Asian neighbours.
In the domestic sphere, it was a political triumph. Anwar Ibrahim and his supporters initiated the Reformasi movement. It consisted of several mass demonstrations and rallies against the long-standing Barisan Nasional coalition government. He was jailed in April 1999 after a trial for sodomy that was criticised by human rights groups and several foreign governments.
Having spent over 22 years in office, Mahathir was the world's longest-serving elected leader when he retired in October 2003.
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi promised to combat corruption when he became the fifth Prime Minister, thus empowering anti-corruption agencies and providing more avenues for the public to expose corrupt practices. He advocated an interpretation of Islam known as Islam Hadhari, which advocates the intercompatibility between Islam and economic and technological development. His administration also placed a strong emphasis on reviving Malaysia's agriculture industry and ensuring the country's food security. At the 2004 general election, the Barisan Nasional led by Abdullah Badawi had a massive victory.
In November 2007, Malaysia saw two anti-government rallies. The 2007 Bersih Rally was held in Kuala Lumpur on 10 November 2007, to campaign for electoral reform. It was precipitated by allegations of corruption and discrepancies in the Malaysian election system that heavily favoured the ruling political party, Barisan Nasional. Another rally was held in the same month, on 25 November 2007, in Kuala Lumpur led by Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) over alleged discriminatory policies favouring ethnic Malays. On 15 October 2008, HINDRAF was banned when the government labelled the organisation as a threat to national security.
Abdullah Badawi was re-elected as the prime minister in the 2008 general election. Abdullah came under growing criticism, primarily because of his failure to combat corruption and his subpar performance in the election. Hence, in October 2008, he announced his intention to resign. Abdullah was succeeded in office by his deputy, Najib Razak (son of Abdul Razak), in April 2009.
1Malaysia campaign was introduced by Najib Razak in the summer of 2009.
On 15 September 2011, Najib announced that the Internal Security Act 1960 will be repealed and replaced by two new laws. The ISA was replaced and repealed by the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 which has been passed by Parliament and given royal assent on 18 June 2012. The Act came into force on 31 July 2012.
In early February 2013, there was an incursion in Lahad Datu, a military conflict that began when hundreds of militants, some of whom were armed, arrived by boats in Lahad Datu District, Sabah, Malaysia from Simunul Island, Tawi-Tawi, in the southern Philippines. The group was sent by Jamalul Kiram III, one of the claimants to the throne of the Sultanate of Sulu. In response to the incursion, Malaysian security forces launched a major operation to repel the militants, resulting in a decisive Malaysian victory which ended the conflict in late March 2013. Following the elimination of militants, the Eastern Sabah Security Command (ESSCOM) was established.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Just four months later, 298 people were killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while flying over territory controlled by Russian-backed militants in Eastern Ukraine.
On 1 April 2015, Najib passed a controversial 6 per cent tax on goods and services. Later that year, his administration was engulfed in scandal when Najib and other officials were implicated in a multibillion-dollar embezzlement and money-laundering scheme involving 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state-owned investment fund masterminded by Low Taek Jho, triggering widespread calls and protests from most Malaysians including the opposition parties for Najib's resignation. These protests culminated in the Malaysian Citizens' Declaration.
The Bersih movement also held four rallies from 2011 to 2016 during the Najib administration intending to reform Malaysia's electoral system. The movement expanded its demands to include issues such as clean governance and human rights. In response to accusations of corruption, Najib tightened his hold on power by removing Muhyiddin Yassin, the deputy prime minister at the time, suspending two newspapers, and forcing through the parliaments the controversial National Security Council Bill, which gives the prime minister unprecedented powers. Living costs have skyrocketed as a result of Najib's numerous subsidy cuts, while the Malaysian ringgit declined. After Barisan Nasional lost the 2018 general elections, these came to an end.
Relations between Malaysia and North Korea deteriorated in 2017, in the aftermath of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia, which made global headlines and sparked a major diplomatic row.
Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as the seventh Prime Minister after winning the election on 10 May 2018. A number of issues contributed to Najib Razak's defeat, including the ongoing 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, the 6% Goods and Services Tax, and the rising cost of living.
Mahathir promised to "restore the rule of law", and make elaborate and transparent investigations into the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.
Anwar Ibrahim was given a full royal pardon and was released from prison on 16 May 2018. He was designated to take over the reins from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as planned and agreed by the coalition before GE14.
The unpopular tax was reduced to 0% on 1 June 2018. The government of Malaysia under Mahathir tabled the first reading Bill to repeal GST in Parliament on 31 July 2018 (Dewan Rakyat). GST was successfully replaced with Sales Tax and Service Tax starting 1 September 2018.
Mahathir's administration promised to review all Belt and Road Initiative projects in Malaysia that were initiated by the previous government. He characterised these as "unequal treaties", and said some were linked to misappropriated funds from the 1MDB scandal. The government suspended work on the East Coast Rail Link and continued it after terms had been renegotiated. Mahathir cancelled approximately $2.8 billion worth of deals with China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau altogether, saying Malaysia would not be able to repay its obligations to China.
Mahathir was supportive of the 2018–19 Korean peace process and announced that Malaysia would reopen its embassy in North Korea and resume relations.
On 28 September 2018, Mahathir addressed the United Nations General Assembly that his government would promise to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). However, after weeks of receiving racially and religiously charged demonstrations against the convention, particularly from Bumiputras, the Pakatan Harapan government chose not to accede to the ICERD on November 23, 2018.
Mahathir announced the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 in October 2019, which set out to increase the incomes of all ethnic groups, to increase focus on the technology sector and for Malaysia to become a high-income country by 2030.
Malaysia's freedom of the press improved slightly under Mahathir's tenure, and the country's rank rose in the Press Freedom Index.
Political infightings within the Pakatan Harapan coalition, as well as the uncertainty of the date of the transition of power to his designated successor, Anwar Ibrahim, soon culminated in a political crisis known as Sheraton Move in February 2020.
On 1 March 2020, a week after the country was thrown into a political crisis, Muhyiddin Yassin was appointed as the eighth Prime Minister by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, following the abrupt resignation of Mahathir Mohamad. The fallen government was replaced by the new Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition government, led by BERSATU leader Muhyiddin.
During his administration, COVID-19 spread throughout the nation. In response, Muhyiddin implemented the Malaysian movement control order (MCO) on 18 March 2020.
On 28 July 2020, the High Court convicted former Prime Minister Najib Razak of abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust, becoming the first Prime Minister of Malaysia to be convicted of corruption.
In mid-January 2021, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong declared a national state of emergency until at least 1 August in response to the COVID-19 crisis and political infighting. Parliament and elections were suspended while the Malaysian government was empowered to introduce laws without approval.
Muhyiddin commenced the country's vaccination programme against COVID-19 in late February 2021.
On 19 March 2021, North Korea announced the severance of diplomatic ties with Malaysia, after the Kuala Lumpur High Court rejected North Korean businessman Mun Chol Myong's appeal from extradition to the United States.
Muhyiddin officially resigned as prime minister on August 16, 2021, after losing the majority in parliament support due to the country's political crisis, as well as calls for his resignation due to economic stagnation and the government's failure to prevent COVID-19 infections and deaths. He was afterwards appointed back as caretaker Prime Minister by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong until a replacement can be selected.
Ismail Sabri Yaakob was sworn in as the ninth Prime Minister on August 21, 2021. During his inaugural speech as prime minister on 22 August 2021, Ismail Sabri introduced the Keluarga Malaysia idea. During his tenure, he lifted the Movement Control Order (MCO) following the expansion of the vaccination programme and oversaw the Twelfth Malaysia Plan.
In late 2022, a constitutional amendment was passed, that prohibits members of parliament from switching political parties. Several UMNO lawmakers called for a snap election before the end of 2022 to resolve ongoing infighting in the party and obtain a stronger mandate. This led to an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in a hung parliament, the first federal election to have such a result in the nation's history.
Anwar Ibrahim, the chairman of Pakatan Harapan (PH), was appointed and sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister on 24 November 2022 by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong as Anwar has obtained support for a grand coalition government.
Anwar Ibrahim launched the Malaysia Madani concept as a national policy on January 19, 2023, in Putrajaya. It acts as the replacement for the Keluarga Malaysia concept from the previous administration of Ismail Sabri Yaakob, the ninth Prime Minister. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Malaysia is a modern concept, created in the second half of the 20th century. However, contemporary Malaysia regards the entire history of Malaya and Borneo, spanning thousands of years back to prehistoric times, as its own history.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first evidence for archaic human occupation can be dated to at least 1.83 million years ago, while the earliest remnants of an anatomically modern human are c. 40,000 years old. The ancestors of the present-day population of Malaysia entered the area in multiple waves in prehistorical and historical times.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hinduism and Buddhism from India and China dominated early regional history, reaching their peak from the 7th to the 13th centuries during the reign of the Sumatra-based Srivijaya civilisation. Islam made its initial presence in the Malay Peninsula as early as the 10th century, but it was during the 15th century that the religion firmly took root at least among the court elites, which saw the rise of several sultanates; the most prominent were the Sultanate of Malacca and the Sultanate of Brunei.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Portuguese were the first European colonial power to establish themselves on the Malay Peninsula and Southeast Asia, capturing Malacca in 1511. This event led to the establishment of several sultanates such as Johor and Perak. Dutch hegemony over the Malay sultanates increased during the course of the 17th to 18th century, capturing Malacca in 1641 with the aid of Johor. In the 19th century, the English ultimately gained hegemony across the territory that is now Malaysia. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (which became Indonesia), and the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and Siam (which became Thailand). The fourth phase of foreign influence was a wave of immigration of Chinese and Indian workers to meet the needs created by the colonial economy in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Japanese invasion during World War II ended British rule in Malaya. After the Empire of Japan was defeated by the Allies, the Malayan Union was established in 1946 and was reorganized as the Federation of Malaya in 1948. In the Peninsula, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) took up arms against the British and the tension led to the declaration of emergency rule from 1948 to 1960. A forceful military response to the communist insurgency, followed by the Baling Talks in 1955, led to Malayan Independence on August 31, 1957, through diplomatic negotiation with the British. On 16 September 1963, the Federation of Malaysia was formed; in August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate independent country. A racial riot in 1969, brought about the imposition of emergency rule, the suspension of parliament and the proclamation of the Rukun Negara, a national philosophy promoting unity among citizens. The New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in 1971 sought to eradicate poverty and restructure society to eliminate the identification of race with economic function. Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization in the country beginning in the 1980s; the previous economic policy was succeeded by the National Development Policy (NDP) from 1991 to 2000. The late 1990s Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. Early in 2020, Malaysia underwent a political crisis. This period, along with the COVID-19 pandemic caused a political, health, social and economic crisis. The 2022 general election resulted in the first-ever hung parliament in the country's history and Anwar Ibrahim became Malaysia's prime minister on November 24, 2022.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Stone hand axes from early hominoids, probably Homo erectus, have been unearthed in Lenggong. They date back 1.83 million years, one of the oldest pieces of evidence of hominid habitation in Southeast Asia.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The earliest evidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia is the 40,000-year-old skull excavated from the Niah Caves in today's Sarawak. This is also one of the oldest modern human skulls in Southeast Asia. The first foragers visited the West Mouth of Niah Caves (located 110 kilometres (68 mi) southwest of Miri) 40,000 years ago when Borneo was connected to the mainland of Southeast Asia. Mesolithic and Neolithic burial sites have also been found in the area. The area around the Niah Caves has been designated the Niah National Park.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A study of Asian genetics suggests the original humans in East Asia came from Southeast Asia. The oldest complete skeleton found in Malaysia is an 11,000-year-old Perak Man unearthed in 1991. The indigenous groups on the peninsula can be divided into three ethnicities: the Negritos, the Senoi, and the proto-Malays. The first inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula were most probably Negritos. These Mesolithic hunters were probably the ancestors of the Semang, an ethnic Negrito group. The Senoi appear to be a composite group, with approximately half of the maternal mitochondrial DNA lineages tracing back to the ancestors of the Semang and about half to later ancestral migrations from Indochina. Scholars suggest they are descendants of early Austroasiatic-speaking agriculturalists, who brought both their language and their technology to the southern part of the peninsula approximately 4,000 years ago. They united and coalesced with the indigenous population. The Proto Malays have a more diverse origin and had settled in Malaysia by 1000 BC as a result of Austronesian expansion. Although they show some connections with other inhabitants in Maritime Southeast Asia, some also have an ancestry in Indochina around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. Areas comprising what is now Malaysia participated in the Maritime Jade Road. The trading network existed for 3,000 years, between 2000 BC to 1000 AD.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Anthropologists support the notion that the Proto-Malays originated from what is today Yunnan, China. This was followed by an early-Holocene dispersal through the Malay Peninsula into the Malay Archipelago. Around 300 BC, they were pushed inland by the Deutero-Malays, an Iron Age or Bronze Age people descended partly from the Chams of Cambodia and Vietnam. The first group in the peninsula to use metal tools, the Deutero-Malays were the direct ancestors of today's Malaysian Malays and brought with them advanced farming techniques. The Malays remained politically fragmented throughout the Malay archipelago, although a common culture and social structure were shared.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the first millennium AD, Malay became the dominant ethnicity on the peninsula. The small early states that were established were greatly influenced by Indian culture, as was most of Southeast Asia. Indian influence in the region dates back to at least the 3rd century BC. South Indian culture was spread to Southeast Asia by the South Indian Pallava dynasty in the 4th and 5th centuries.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In ancient Indian literature, the term Suvarnadvipa (Golden Peninsula) is used in the Ramayana; some argue that this is a reference to the Malay Peninsula. The ancient Indian text Vayu Purana also mentions a place named Malayadvipa; this term may refer to Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. The Malay Peninsula was shown on Ptolemy's map as the Golden Chersonese.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Trade relations with China and India were established in the 1st century BC. Shards of Chinese pottery have been found in Borneo dating from the 1st century following the southward expansion of the Han Dynasty. In the early centuries of the first millennium, the people of the Malay Peninsula adopted the Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, which had a major effect on the language and culture of those living in Malaysia. The Sanskrit writing system was used as early as the 4th century.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "There were numerous Malay kingdoms in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, as many as 30, mainly based on the eastern side of the Malay peninsula. Among the earliest kingdoms known to have been based in the Malay Peninsula is the ancient kingdom of Langkasuka, located in the northern Malay Peninsula and based somewhere on the west coast. It was closely tied to Funan in Cambodia, which also ruled parts of northern Malaysia until the 6th century. In the 5th century, the Kingdom of Pahang was mentioned in the Book of Song. Besides this, Chi Tu and Pan Pan were old polities believed to be located in the northeast of the peninsula.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Gangga Negara is believed to be a semi-legendary Hindu kingdom mentioned in the Malay Annals that covered present-day Beruas, Dinding and Manjung in the state of Perak, Malaysia with Raja Gangga Shah Johan as one of its kings. According to the legendary Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, Gangga Negara was founded by Merong Mahawangsa's son Raja Ganji Sarjuna of Kedah, allegedly a descendant of Alexander the Great or by the Khmer royalties no later than the 2nd century.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Ptolemy, a Greek geographer, had written about the Golden Chersonese, which indicated that trade with India and China had existed since the 1st century AD. During this time, coastal city-states that existed had a network which encompassed the southern part of the Indochinese peninsula and the western part of the Malay archipelago. These coastal cities had ongoing trade as well as tributary relations with China, at the same time being in constant contact with Indian traders. They seem to have shared a common indigenous culture.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Gradually, the rulers of the western part of the archipelago adopted Indian cultural and political models. Three inscriptions found in Palembang (South Sumatra) and on Bangka Island, written in the form of Malay and in alphabets derived from the Pallava script, are proof that the archipelago had adopted Indian models while maintaining their indigenous language and social system. These inscriptions reveal the existence of a Dapunta Hyang (lord) of Srivijaya who led an expedition against his enemies and who curses those who does not obey his law.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Being on the maritime trade route between China and South India, the Malay peninsula was involved in this trade. The Bujang Valley, being strategically located at the northwest entrance of the Strait of Malacca as well as facing the Bay of Bengal, was continuously frequented by Chinese and south Indian traders. Such was proven by the discovery of trade ceramics, sculptures, inscriptions and monuments dated from the 5th to 14th century.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Between the 7th and the 13th century, much of the Malay peninsula was under the Buddhist Srivijaya empire. The site Prasasti Hujung Langit, which sat at the centre of Srivijaya's empire, is thought to be at a river mouth in eastern Sumatra, based near what is now Palembang, Indonesia. In the 7th century, a new port called Shilifoshi is mentioned, believed to be a Chinese rendering of Srivijaya. For over six centuries the Maharajahs of Srivijaya ruled a maritime empire that became the main power in the archipelago. The empire was based around trade, with local kings (dhatus or community leaders) that swore allegiance to a lord for mutual profit. In 1025, the Chola dynasty captured Palembang, the king and all members of his family, including courtiers had all their wealth taken away; by the end of the 12th century Srivijaya had been reduced to a kingdom, with the last ruler in 1288, Queen Sekerummong, who had been conquered and overthrown. Majapahit, a subordinate to Srivijaya, soon dominated the regional political scene.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The relation between Srivijaya and the Chola Empire of south India was friendly during the reign of Raja Raja Chola I but during the reign of Rajendra Chola I the Chola Empire invaded Srivijaya cities (see Chola invasion of Srivijaya). In 1025 and 1026, Gangga Negara was attacked by Rajendra Chola I of the Chola Empire, the Tamil emperor who is now thought to have laid Kota Gelanggi to waste. Kedah (known as Kadaram in Tamil) was invaded by the Cholas in 1025. A second invasion was led by Virarajendra Chola of the Chola dynasty who conquered Kedah in the late 11th century. The senior Chola's successor, Vira Rajendra Chola, had to put down a Kedah rebellion to overthrow other invaders. The coming of the Chola reduced the majesty of Srivijaya, which had exerted influence over Kedah, Pattani and as far as Ligor. During the reign of Kulothunga Chola I, Chola overlordship was established over the Srivijaya province Kedah in the late 11th century. The expedition of the Chola Emperors had such a great impression on the Malay people of the medieval period that their name was mentioned in the corrupted form as Raja Chulan in the medieval Malay chronicle Sejarah Melaya. Even today, the Chola rule is remembered in Malaysia as many Malaysian princes have names ending with Cholan or Chulan, one such was the Raja of Perak called Raja Chulan.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Pattinapalai, a Tamil poem of the 2nd century AD, describes goods from Kedaram heaped in the broad streets of the Chola capital. The Buddhist kingdom of Ligor took control of Kedah shortly after. Its king Chandrabhanu used it as a base to attack Sri Lanka in the 11th century and ruled the northern parts, an event noted in a stone inscription in Nagapattinum in Tamil Nadu and the Sri Lankan chronicles, Mahavamsa.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "At times, the Khmer Kingdom, the Siamese Kingdom, and even Cholas Kingdom tried to exert control over the smaller Malay states. The power of Srivijaya declined from the 12th century as the relationship between the capital and its vassals broke down. Wars with the Javanese caused it to request assistance from China, and wars with Indian states are also suspected. In the 11th century, the centre of power shifted to Malayu, a port possibly located further up the Sumatran coast near the Jambi River. The power of the Buddhist Maharajas was further undermined by the spread of Islam. Areas which were converted to Islam early, such as Aceh, broke away from Srivijaya's control. By the late 13th century, the Siamese kings of Sukhothai had brought most of Malaya under their rule. In the 14th century, the Hindu Majapahit Empire came into possession of the peninsula.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "An excavation by Tom Harrisson in 1949 unearthed a series of Chinese ceramics at Santubong (near Kuching) that date to the Tang and Song dynasties. It is possible that Santubong was an important seaport in Sarawak during the period, but its importance declined during the Yuan dynasty, and the port was deserted during the Ming dynasty.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "According to the Malay Annals, a new ruler named Sang Sapurba was promoted as the new paramount of the Srivijayan mandala. It was said that after he acceded to Seguntang Hill with his two younger brothers, Sang Sapurba entered into a sacred covenant with Demang Lebar Daun, the native ruler of Palembang. The newly installed sovereign afterwards descended from the hill of Seguntang into the great plain of the Musi River, where he married Wan Sendari, the daughter of the local chief, Demang Lebar Daun. Sang Sapurba was said to have reigned in Minangkabau lands.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1324, a Srivijaya prince, Sang Nila Utama founded the Kingdom of Singapura (Temasek). According to tradition, he was related to Sang Sapurba. He maintained control over Temasek for 48 years. He was recognized as ruler over Temasek by an envoy of the Chinese Emperor sometime around 1366. He was succeeded by his son Paduka Sri Pekerma Wira Diraja (1372–1386) and grandson, Paduka Seri Rana Wira Kerma (1386–1399). In 1401, the last ruler, Paduka Sri Maharaja Parameswara, was expelled from Temasek by forces from Majapahit or Ayutthaya. He later headed north and founded the Sultanate of Malacca in 1402. The Sultanate of Malacca succeeded the Srivijaya Empire as a Malay political entity in the archipelago.",
"title": "Early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Islam came to the Malay Archipelago through the Arab and Indian traders in the 13th century, ending the age of Hinduism and Buddhism. It arrived in the region gradually and became the religion of the elite before it spread to the commoners. The syncretic form of Islam in Malaysia was influenced by previous religions and was originally not orthodox.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The port of Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula was founded in 1400 by Parameswara, a Srivijayan prince fleeing Temasek (now Singapore). Parameswara sailed to Temasek to escape persecution. There he came under the protection of Temagi, a Malay chief from Patani who was appointed by the king of Siam as regent of Temasek. Within a few days, Parameswara killed Temagi and appointed himself regent. Some five years later he had to leave Temasek, due to threats from Siam. During this period, a Javanese fleet from Majapahit attacked Temasek.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Parameswara headed north to find a new settlement, reaching a fishing village at the mouth of the Bertam River (former name of the Melaka River) where he founded what would become the Malacca Sultanate. Over time this developed into modern-day Malacca Town. According to the Malay Annals, here Parameswara saw a mouse deer outwitting a dog resting under a Malacca tree. Taking this as a good omen, he decided to establish a kingdom called Malacca. He built and improved facilities for trade. The Malacca Sultanate is commonly considered the first independent state in the peninsula.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1404, the first official Chinese trade envoy led by Admiral Yin Qing arrived in Malacca. Later, Parameswara was escorted by Zheng He and other envoys on his successful visits. Malacca's relationships with Ming granted protection to Malacca against attacks from Siam and Majapahit and Malacca officially submitted as a protectorate of Ming China. This encouraged the development of Malacca into a major trade settlement on the trade route between China and India, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. To prevent the Malaccan empire from falling to the Siamese and Majapahit, he forged a relationship with Ming China for protection. Following the establishment of this relationship, the prosperity of the Malacca entrepôt was then recorded by the first Chinese visitor, Ma Huan, who travelled together with Admiral Zheng He. In Malacca during the early 15th century, Ming China actively sought to develop a commercial hub and a base of operation for their treasure voyages into the Indian Ocean. Malacca had been a relatively insignificant region, not even qualifying as a polity prior to the voyages according to both Ma Huan and Fei Xin, and was a vassal region of Siam. In 1405, the Ming court dispatched Admiral Zheng He with a stone tablet enfeoffing the Western Mountain of Malacca as well as an imperial order elevating the status of the port to a country. The Chinese also established a government depot (官廠) as a fortified cantonment for their soldiers. Ma Huan reported that Siam did not dare to invade Malacca thereafter. The rulers of Malacca, such as Parameswara in 1411, would pay tribute to the Chinese emperor in person.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The emperor of Ming China was sending out fleets of ships to expand trade. Admiral Zheng He called at Malacca and brought Parameswara with him on his return to China, a recognition of his position as ruler of Malacca. In exchange for regular tribute, the Chinese emperor offered Melaka protection from the constant threat of a Siamese attack. Because of its strategic location, Malacca was an important stopping point for Zheng He's fleet. Due to Chinese involvement, Malacca had grown as a key alternative to other important and established ports. The Chinese and Indians who settled in the Malay Peninsula before and during this period are the ancestors of today's Baba-Nyonya and Chitty communities. According to one theory, Parameswara became a Muslim when he married a Princess of Pasai and he took the fashionable Persian title \"Shah\", calling himself Iskandar Shah. In 1414, Parameswara's son was then officially recognised as the second ruler of Melaka by the Chinese Emperor and styled Raja Sri Rama Vikrama, Raja of Parameswara of Temasek and Malacca and he was known to his Muslim subjects as Sultan Sri Iskandar Zulkarnain Shah (Megat Iskandar Shah). He ruled Malacca from 1414 to 1424. Through the influence of Indian Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Hui people from China, Islam became increasingly common during the 15th century.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "After an initial period paying tribute to the Ayutthaya, the kingdom rapidly assumed the place previously held by Srivijaya, establishing independent relations with China, and exploiting its position dominating the Straits to control the China-India maritime trade, which became increasingly important when the Mongol conquests closed the overland route between China and the west.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Within a few years of its establishment, Malacca officially adopted Islam. Parameswara became a Muslim, and because Malacca was under a Muslim prince, the conversion of Malays to Islam accelerated in the 15th century. The political power of the Malacca Sultanate helped Islam's rapid spread through the archipelago. By the start of the 16th century, with the Malacca Sultanate in the Malay peninsula and parts of Sumatra, the Demak Sultanate in Java, and other kingdoms around the Malay archipelago increasingly converting to Islam, it had become the dominant religion among Malays, and reached as far as the modern-day Philippines, leaving Bali as an isolated outpost of Hinduism today. The government in Malacca was based on the feudal system.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Malacca's reign lasted little more than a century, but during this time became the established centre of Malay culture. Most future Malay states originated from this period. Malacca became a cultural centre, creating the matrix of the modern Malay culture: a blend of indigenous Malay and imported Indian, Chinese and Islamic elements. Malacca's fashions in literature, art, music, dance and dress, and the ornate titles of its royal court, came to be seen as the standard for all ethnic Malays. The court of Malacca also gave great prestige to the Malay language, which had originally evolved in Sumatra and been brought to Malacca at the time of its foundation. In time Malay came to be the official language of all the Malaysian states, although local languages survived in many places. After the fall of Malacca, the Sultanate of Brunei became the major centre of Islam.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "From the 15th century onwards, the Portuguese started seeking a maritime route towards Asia. In 1511, Afonso de Albuquerque led an expedition to Malaya which seized Malacca with the intent of using it as a base for activities in Southeast Asia. This was the first colonial claim on what is now Malaysia. The son of the last Sultan of Malacca, Alauddin Riayat Shah II fled to the southern tip of the peninsula, where he founded a state that which became the Sultanate of Johor in 1528. Another son established the Perak Sultanate to the north. Portuguese influence was strong, as they aggressively tried to convert the population of Malacca to Catholicism. In 1571, the Spanish captured Manila and established a colony in the Philippines, reducing the Sultanate of Brunei's power.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "After the fall of Malacca to Portugal, the Johor Sultanate on the southern Malay peninsula and the Sultanate of Aceh on northern Sumatra moved to fill the power vacuum left behind. The three powers struggled to dominate the Malay peninsula and the surrounding islands. Meanwhile, the importance of the Strait of Malacca as an east–west shipping route was growing, while the islands of Southeast Asia were themselves prized sources of natural resources (metals, spices, etc.) whose inhabitants were being further drawn into the global economy.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1607, the Sultanate of Aceh rose as the most powerful and wealthiest state in the Malay archipelago. Under Sultan Iskandar Muda's reign, the sultanate's control was extended over a number of Malay states. During the Battle of Duyon River, Iskandar Muda's disastrous campaign against Malacca in 1629, the combined Portuguese and Johor forces managed to destroy all the ships of his formidable fleet and 19,000 troops according to a Portuguese account.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) was established. Backed by the Dutch, Johor established a loose hegemony over the Malay states, except Perak, which was able to play-off Johor against the Siamese to the north and retain its independence. The Dutch did not interfere in local matters in Malacca, but at the same time diverted most trade to its colonies on Java.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "At its height, the sultanate controlled modern-day Johor, several territories by the Klang and Linggi rivers, Singapore, Bintan, Riau, Lingga, Karimun, Bengkalis, Kampar and Siak in Sumatra. The Portuguese and Johor were frequently in conflict in the 16th century, most notably in the 1587 siege of Johor. During the Triangular war, Aceh launched multiple raids against both Johor and Portuguese forces to tighten its grip over the straits. The rise and expansion of Aceh encouraged the Portuguese and Johor to sign a short-lived truce. During the rule of Iskandar Muda, Aceh attacked Johor in 1613 and again in 1615.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In the early 17th century, the Dutch reached Southeast Asia. At that time the Dutch were at war with the Portuguese and allied themselves to Johor. Two treaties were signed between Admiral Cornelis Matelief de Jonge and Raja Bongsu of Johor in 1606. The combined Johor-Dutch forces ultimately failed to capture Malacca in 1606. Finally in 1641, the Dutch and Johor headed by Bendahara Skudai, defeated the Portuguese in the Battle of Malacca. The Dutch took control of Malacca and agreed not to seek territories or wage war with Johor. By the time the fortress at Malacca surrendered, the town's population had already been greatly decimated by famine and disease.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "With the fall of Portuguese Malacca in 1641 and the decline of Aceh due to the growing power of the Dutch, Johor started to re-establish itself as a power along the Straits of Malacca during the reign of Sultan Abdul Jalil Shah III (1623–1677). Jambi emerged as a regional economic and political power in Sumatra. Initially there was an attempt of an alliance between Johor and Jambi by way of a promised marriage. However, the alliance broke down and the Johor-Jambi war (1666–1679) ensued. After the sacking of Batu Sawar by Jambi in 1673, the capital of Johor was frequently moved to avoid the threat of attack. The sultan escaped to Pahang and died four years later. His successor, Sultan Ibrahim Shah (1677–1685), then engaged the help of the Bugis in the fight to defeat Jambi. Johor would eventually prevail in 1679, but also ended in a weakened position as the Bugis refused to return to Makassar where they came from. On top of this, the Minangkabaus of Sumatra also started to assert their influence.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In the 1690s the Bugis, who played an important role in defeating Jambi two decades earlier, had a major political influence in Johor. Both the Bugis and the Minangkabau realised how the death of Sultan Mahmud II in 1699 caused a power vacuum and allowed them to exert their power in Johor. The Minangkabau introduced a Minangkabau prince, Raja Kecil from Siak who claimed he was the posthumous son of Mahmud II. With the help of the Orang Laut, Raja Kecil then captured Riau in 1718, the then capital of the Johor Sultanate and installed himself as the new Johor Sultan, Jalil Rahmat Shah, without the knowledge of the Bugis. Raja Sulaiman of Johor dethroned Raja Kechil with help from the Bugis Daeng Parani and reclaimed the throne as Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah (1722–1760), but he was a weak ruler and became a puppet of the Bugis. During the reign of Sultan Mahmud Shah III, the mid-to-late 18th century saw the Bugis attempting to expand their influence in the region. This brought them into conflicts with the Dutch, which resulted in a final major battle in 1784 between the two, which ended Bugis and Johor dominance in the region.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Based on the Perak Royal Genealogy (\"Salasilah Raja-Raja Perak\"), the Perak Sultanate was formed in the early 16th century on the banks of the Perak River by the eldest son of Malaccan Sultan Mahmud Shah. He ascended to the throne as Muzaffar Shah I (1528–1549), first sultan of Perak, after surviving the capture of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511 and living quietly for a period in Siak. He became sultan through the efforts of Tun Saban, a local leader and trader between Perak and Klang. There had been no sultans in Perak when Tun Saban first arrived in the area from Kampar in Sumatra. Most of the area's residents were traders from Malacca, Selangor and Sumatra. Perak's administration became more organised after the Sultanate was established. With the opening up of Perak in the 16th century, the state became a source of tin ore. It appears that anyone was free to trade in the commodity, although the tin trade did not attract significant attention until the 1610s.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Throughout the early 17th century, the Sultanate of Aceh subjected most parts of the Malay Peninsula to continual harassment. Although Perak did fall under the authority of Aceh, it remained entirely independent of Siamese control for over 200 years from 1612, in contrast with its neighbour, Kedah, and other northern Malay sultanates.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "When the last Perak sultan of direct Malaccan lineage, Sallehuddin Riayat Shah died without an heir in 1635, a state of uncertainty prevailed in Perak. This was exacerbated by a deadly cholera epidemic. Perak chieftains were left with no alternative but to turn to Iskandar Thani of Aceh, who sent his relative, Raja Sulong, to become the new Perak Sultan, Muzaffar Shah II (1636–1653).",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Aceh's influence on Perak began to wane when the Dutch East India Company (VOC) arrived, in the mid-17th century. When Perak refused to enter into a contract with the VOC as its northern neighbours had done, a blockade of the Perak River halted the tin trade, causing suffering among Aceh's merchants. In 1650, Aceh's Sultana Taj ul-Alam ordered Perak to sign an agreement with the VOC, on condition that the tin trade would be conducted exclusively with Aceh's merchants. By the following year, the VOC had secured a monopoly over the tin trade, setting up a store in Perak. Following the long competition between Aceh and the VOC over Perak's tin trade, on 15 December 1653, the two parties jointly signed a treaty with Perak granting the Dutch exclusive rights to tin extracted from mines located in the state.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1699, when Johor lost its last sultan of Malaccan lineage, Sultan Mahmud Shah II, Perak now had the sole claim of being the final heir of the old Sultanate of Malacca. However, Perak could not match the prestige and power of either the Malaccan or Johor Sultanates. Perak endured 40 years of civil war in the early 18th century, where rival princes were bolstered by local chiefs, the Bugis and Minang, all fighting for a share of tin revenues. The Bugis and several Perak chiefs were successful in ousting the Perak ruler, Sultan Muzaffar Riayat Shah III in 1743. In 1747, he only held power in north Perak and signed a treaty with the Dutch Commissioner Ary Verbrugge, under which Perak's ruler recognised Dutch monopoly over the tin trade and agreed to sell all the tin ore to Dutch traders.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Old Pahang Sultanate centred in modern-day Pekan was established in the 15th century. At the height of its influence, the sultanate controlled the entire Pahang basin. The sultanate had its origins as a vassal to the Malaccan Sultanate. Its first sultan was a Malaccan prince, Muhammad Shah (1455–1475), himself the grandson of Dewa Sura, the last pre-Malaccan ruler of Pahang. Over the years, Pahang grew independent from Malaccan control and at one point even established itself as a rival state to Malacca until the latter's demise in 1511. In 1528, when the last Malaccan sultan died, the sultan at the time, Mahmud Shah I (c. 1519–1530) joined forces with the Sultan of Johor, Alauddin Riayat Shah II, and began to expel the Portuguese from the Malay Peninsula. Two attempts were made in 1547 at Muar and in 1551 at Portuguese Malacca. However, in the face of superior Portuguese arms and vessels, the Pahang and Johor forces were forced to retreat on both occasions.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "During the reign of Sultan Abdul Kadir (1560–1590), Pahang enjoyed a brief period of cordial relations with the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century. However, in 1607, following a visit by Admiral Matelief de Jonge of the Dutch Empire, Pahang cooperated with them in an attempt to get rid of the Portuguese. There was an attempt to establish a Johor-Pahang alliance to assist the Dutch. However, a quarrel erupted between Sultan Abdul Ghafur of Pahang (1592–1614) and Alauddin Riayat Shah III of Johor (1597–1615). This resulted in Johor declaring war on Pahang in 1612; with the aid of Sultan Abdul Jalilul Akbar of Brunei, Pahang eventually defeated Johor in 1613.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1615, the Acehnese Iskandar Muda invaded Pahang, forcing Alauddin Riayat Shah to retreat into the interior of Pahang. He nevertheless continued to exercise some ruling powers. His reign in exile is considered to have officially ended after the installation of a distant Johorean relative, Raja Bujang (Abdul Jalil Shah III) to the Pahang throne in 1615 with the support of the Portuguese. However, he was eventually deposed in the Acehnese invasion of 1617, but restored to the Pahang throne and also installed as the new Sultan of Johor following the death of his uncle, Sultan Abdullah Ma'ayat Shah in 1623. This event led to the union of the crown of Pahang and Johor, and the formal establishment of Pahang-ruled Johor.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "During the 17th century Johor-Jambi war, Sultan Abdul Jalil Shah III (r. 1623–1677) of Johor engaged the help of Bugis mercenaries from Sulawesi to fight against Jambi. After Johor won in 1679, the Bugis decided to stay and asserted their power in the region. Many Bugis began to migrate and settle along the coast of Selangor such as the estuaries of the Selangor and Klang rivers. Some Minangkabaus may have also settled in Selangor by the 17th century, perhaps earlier. The Bugis and the Minangkabaus from Sumatra struggled for control of Johor. Raja Kecil, backed by the Minangkabaus, invaded Selangor but were driven off by the Bugis in 1742. To establish a power base, the Bugis led by Raja Salehuddin (1705–1788) founded the present hereditary Selangor Sultanate with its capital at Kuala Selangor in 1766. Selangor is unique as its the only state on the Malay Peninsula that was founded by the Bugis.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Before its conversion to Islam, the oldest records of Brunei in Arabic sources defined it as \"Sribuza\" which was a Bornean Vassal-State to Srivijaya. The Arabic author Ya'qubi writing in the 9th century recorded that the kingdom of Musa (probably referring to Brunei) was in alliance with the kingdom of Mayd (either Ma-i or Madja-as in the Philippines), against the Tang dynasty.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "One of the earliest Chinese records of an independent kingdom in Borneo was the 977 letter to the Song dynasty emperor from the ruler of Boni (Brunei). The Bruneians regained their independence from Srivijaya due to the onset of a Javanese-Sumatran war. In 1225, the Chinese official Zhao Rukuo reported that Boni had 100 warships to protect its trade, and that there was great wealth in the kingdom. In the 14th century, a Chinese annal (Yuan Dade Nanhai zhi) reported that Boni invaded or administered Sabah, some parts of Sarawak and ruled the kingdoms of Butuan, Sulu and Mayd, as well as Malilu and Wenduling in present-day Manila and Mindanao, at northern and southern Philippines, respectively. Later, the Sulu kingdom invaded and occupied ports in Boni-ruled Sabah. They were later evicted with the help of the Majapahit Empire, which Brunei became a vassal to in the late 14th century. Nevertheless the Sulus stole 2 Sacred Pearls from the Brunei king.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "By the 15th century, the empire became a Muslim state, when the king of Brunei converted to Islam, brought Muslim Indians and Arab merchants from other parts of Maritime Southeast Asia, who came to trade and spread Islam. During the rule of Bolkiah (1485–1524) the empire controlled the coastal areas of northwest Borneo and reached the Philippines at Seludong (present-day Manila), the Sulu Archipelago and some parts of Mindanao which Brunei had incorporated via royal intermarriage with the rulers of Sulu, Manila and Maguindanao.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In the 16th century, the Brunei empire's influence also extended as far as Kapuas River delta in West Kalimantan. Other sultanates in the area had close relations with the Brunei Monarchy, being in some cases effectively under the hegemony of the Brunei ruling family for periods of time, such as the Malay sultans of Pontianak, Samarinda and Banjarmasin. The Malay Sultanate of Sambas (present-day West Kalimantan), the Sultanate of Sulu and the Muslim Rajahs of precolonial Manila had developed dynastic relations with the royal house of Brunei. The Sultanate of Sarawak (covering present day Kuching, known to the Portuguese cartographers as Cerava, and one of the five great seaports on the island of Borneo), though under the influence of Brunei, was self-governed under Sultan Tengah before being fully integrated into the Bruneian Empire upon sultan Tengah's death in 1641.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The Bruneian empire began to decline during the arrival of western powers. Spain sent several expeditions from Mexico to invade and colonise Brunei's territories in the Philippines. Eventually the Spanish, their Visayan allies and their Latin-American recruits assaulted Brunei itself during the Castilian War. Though there were rapes, sacks and pillaging, the invasion was only temporary as the Spanish retreated. Brunei was unable to regain the territory it lost in the Philippines, yet it still maintained sway in Borneo.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "By the early 19th century, Sarawak had become a loosely governed territory under the control of the Brunei Sultanate. Brunei only had authority along the coastal regions of Sarawak where it was held by semi-independent Malay leaders. Meanwhile, the interior of Sarawak suffered from tribal wars fought by Iban, Kayan, and Kenyah peoples, who aggressively fought to expand their territories.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Following the discovery of antimony ore in the Kuching region, Pangeran Indera Mahkota (a representative of the Sultan of Brunei) began to develop the territory between 1824 and 1830. When antimony production increased, the Brunei Sultanate demanded higher taxes from Sarawak, which led to civil unrest and chaos. In 1839, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II (1827–1852), ordered his uncle the Pengiran Muda Hashim to restore order. It was around this time that James Brooke arrived in Sarawak, and Pengiran Muda Hashim requested his assistance in the matter, but Brooke refused. However, he agreed to a further request during his next visit to Sarawak in 1840. On 24 September 1841, Pengiran Muda Hashim agreed to depose Pangeran Indera Mahkota and bestow the title of governor on James Brooke. This appointment was later confirmed by the Sultan of Brunei in 1842.",
"title": "Rise of Muslim states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The weakness of the small coastal Malay states led to the immigration of the Bugis, escaping from Dutch colonisation of Sulawesi, who established numerous settlements on the peninsula which they used to interfere with Dutch trade. They seized control of Johor following the assassination of the last Sultan of the old Melaka royal line in 1699. Bugis expanded their power in the states of Johor, Kedah, Perak, and Selangor. The Minangkabau from central Sumatra migrated into Malaya, and eventually established their own state in Negeri Sembilan. The fall of Johor left a power vacuum on the Malay Peninsula which was partly filled by the Siamese kings of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, who made the five northern Malay states—Kedah, Kelantan, Patani, Perlis, and Terengganu—their vassals.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The economic importance of Malaya to Europe grew rapidly during the 18th century. The fast-growing tea trade between China and United Kingdom increased the demand for high-quality Malayan tin, which was used to line tea-chests. Malayan pepper also had a high reputation in Europe, while Kelantan and Pahang had gold mines. The growth of tin and gold mining and associated service industries led to the first influx of foreign settlers into the Malay world – initially Arabs and Indians, later Chinese.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "After the Fall of Ayutthaya in 1767, the Northern Malay Sultanates were freed from Siamese domination temporarily. In 1786, British trader Francis Light managed to obtain a lease of Penang Island from Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin Halim Shah II of Kedah on behalf of East India Company. Siam re-exerted control over Northern Malay Sultanates and sacked Pattani; Kedah came under Siamese suzerainty. King Rama II of Siam ordered Noi Na Nagara of Ligor to invade Kedah Sultanate in 1821. Under the Burney Treaty of 1826, the exiled Kedah Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin was not restored to his throne. He and his armed supporters then fought in a series of war known as Perang Musuh Bisik for his restoration over twelve years (1830–1842). When the Siamese army invaded and occupied Kedah between 1821 and 1842, local Arab families supported the Sultan's efforts to lead resistance. In 1842, Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin finally agreed to accept Siamese terms and was restored to his throne of Kedah. The following year, Syed Hussein Jamalullail was installed by the Siamese as the first Raja of Perlis, after the Sultan of Kedah gave his endorsement for the formation of Perlis, Siam separated Perlis into a separate principality directly vassal to Bangkok.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Around 1760, Long Yunus, an aristocratic warlord of Patani origin succeeded in unifying the territory of present-day Kelantan and was succeeded in 1795 by his son-in-law, Tengku Muhammad by Sultan Mansur of Terengganu. The enthronement of Tengku Muhammad by a noble from Terengganu was opposed by Long Yunus' sons, thus triggering a war against Terengganu by Long Muhammad, the eldest son of Long Yunus. The pro-Terengganu faction was defeated in 1800 and Long Muhammad ruled Kelantan with the new title of sultan as Sultan Muhammad I. Terengganu experienced stability under the reign of Sultan Omar Riayat Shah, who was remembered as a devout ruler who promoted trade and stable government. Under Thai rule, Terengganu prospered, and was largely left alone by the authorities in Bangkok. However, in the Burney Treaty of 1826, the treaty acknowledged Siamese claims over several northern Malay states Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, Terengganu—the future Unfederated Malay States—and Patani. The treaty further guaranteed British possession of Penang and their rights to trade in Kelantan and Terengganu without Siamese interference. However, the five Malay-ethnic states were not represented in the treaty negotiation. In 1909 the parties of the agreement signed a new treaty that superseded the Burney Treaty and transferred four of the five Malay states from Siamese to British control, except for Patani. As Patani was not included in the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 and remained under Siamese rule, this led Patani to be excluded from the Federation of Malaya in 1957.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Before the mid-19th-century British interests in the region were predominantly economic, with little interest in territorial control. Already the strongest European power in India, the British were looking towards southeast Asia for new territories. The growth of the China trade in British ships increased the East India Company's desire for bases in the region. Various islands were used for this purpose, but the first permanent acquisition was Penang, leased from the Sultan of Kedah in 1786. This was followed soon after by the leasing of a block of territory on the mainland opposite Penang (known as Province Wellesley). In 1795, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British with the consent of the French-occupied Netherlands occupied Dutch Melaka to forestall possible French encroachment.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "When Malacca was handed back to the Dutch in 1818, the British governor, Stamford Raffles, looked for an alternative base, and in 1819 he acquired Singapore from the Sultan of Johor. The exchange of the British colony of Bencoolen for Malacca with the Dutch left the British as the sole colonial power on the peninsula. The territories of the British were set up as free ports, attempting to break the monopoly held by the Dutch and French at the time, and making them large bases of trade. They allowed Britain to control all trade through the straits of Malacca. British influence was increased by Malayan fears of Siamese expansionism, to which Britain made a useful counterweight. During the 19th century the Malay Sultans aligned themselves with the British Empire, due to the benefits of associations with the British and their fear of Siamese or Burmese incursions.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In 1824, British control in Malaya (before the name Malaysia) was formalised by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which divided the Malay archipelago between Britain and the Netherlands. The Dutch evacuated Melaka and renounced all interest in Malaya, while the British recognised Dutch rule over the rest of the East Indies. By 1846 the British controlled Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and the island of Labuan, which they established as the crown colony of the Straits Settlements, administered first under the East India Company until 1867, when they were transferred to the Colonial Office in London.",
"title": "Struggles for hegemony"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Initially, the British followed a policy of non-intervention in relations between the Malay states. The commercial importance of tin mining in the Malay states to merchants in the Straits Settlements led to infighting between the aristocracy on the peninsula. The destabilisation of these states damaged the commerce in the area. The wealth of Perak's tin mines made political stability there a priority for British investors, and Perak was thus the first Malay state to agree to the supervision of a British resident. The Royal Navy was employed to bring about a peaceful resolution to civil disturbances caused by Chinese and Malay gangs employed in a political fight between Ngah Ibrahim and Raja Muda Abdullah. The Pangkor Treaty of 1874 paved the way for the expansion of British influence in Malaya. The British concluded treaties with some Malay states, installing residents who advised the Sultans and soon became the de facto rulers of their states. These advisors held power in everything except to do with Malay religion and customs.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Johor was the sole remaining state to maintain its independence, by modernising and giving British and Chinese investors legal protection. By the turn of the 20th century, the states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States, had British advisors. In 1909 the Siamese kingdom was compelled to cede Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis and Terengganu, which already had British advisors, over to the British. Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor and Queen Victoria were personal acquaintances who recognised each other as equals. It was not until 1914 that Sultan Abu Bakar's successor, Sultan Ibrahim, accepted a British adviser. The four previously Thai states and Johor were known as the Unfederated Malay States. The states under the most direct British control developed rapidly, becoming the largest suppliers in the world of first tin, then rubber.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "By 1910, the pattern of British rule in the Malay lands was established. The Straits Settlements were a Crown colony, ruled by a governor under the supervision of the Colonial Office in London. Their population was about roughly 50% Chinese-Malaysian, but all residents, regardless of race, were British subjects. The first four states to accept British residents, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, and Pahang, were termed the Federated Malay States: while technically independent, they were placed under a Resident-General in 1895. The Unfederated Malay States (Johore, Kedah, Kelantan, Perlis, and Terengganu) had a slightly larger degree of independence. Johor, as Britain's closest ally in Malay affairs, had the privilege of a written constitution, which gave the Sultan the right to appoint his own Cabinet, but he was generally careful to consult the British first.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "During the late 19th century the British also gained control of the north coast of Borneo. Development on the Peninsula and Borneo were generally separate until the 19th century. The eastern part of this region (now Sabah) was under the nominal control of the Sultan of Sulu, who later became a vassal of the Spanish East Indies. The rest was the territory of the Sultanate of Brunei. In 1840, British adventurer James Brooke helped suppress a revolt, and in return received the title of Raja and the right to govern the Sarawak River District in 1841. In 1843, his title was recognised as hereditary, and the \"White Rajahs\" began ruling Sarawak as a de facto independent state in 1846. The Brookes expanded Sarawak at the expense of Brunei.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 1881, the British North Borneo Company was granted control of the territory of British North Borneo, appointing a governor and legislature. Its status was similar to that of a British Protectorate, and like Sarawak it expanded at the expense of Brunei. Until the Philippine independence in 1946, seven British-controlled islands in the north-eastern part of Borneo named Turtle Islands and Cagayan de Tawi-Tawi were ceded to the Philippine government by Crown Colony of North Borneo. The Philippines then under its irredentism motive since the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal laying claim to eastern Sabah in a basis the territory was part of the present-defunct Sultanate of Sulu's territory. In 1888, what was left of Brunei was made a British protectorate, and in 1891 another Anglo-Dutch treaty formalised the border between British and Dutch Borneo.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In the pre-colonial period and in the first few decades after the imposition of formal colonial rule in British Malaya, 'Malay' was not a racial or even a fixed identity in the modern sense of these terms. The construct of race was imposed by the British on their colonial subjects.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Unlike some colonial powers, the British always saw their empire as an economic concern, and its colonies were expected to turn a profit for shareholders in London. The colonial capitalist ideas of development were largely based on unlimited greed for profit. Initially, British colonisers were attracted by the Malay archipelago's tin and gold mines. But British planters soon began to experiment with tropical plantation crops—tapioca, gambier, pepper, and coffee. And, in 1877, the rubber plant was introduced from Brazil. Rubber soon became Malaya's staple export, stimulated by booming demand from European industry. Later, rubber was joined by palm oil as an export earner. All these industries required a large labour force, so the British sent people from the longer-established British colony in India, consisting mainly of Tamil-speakers from South India, to work on plantations as indentured labourers. The mines, mills and docks also attracted a flood of immigrant workers from southern China. Soon towns like Singapore, Penang, and Ipoh were majority Chinese, as was Kuala Lumpur, founded as a tin-mining centre in 1857. By 1891, when Malaya's first census was taken, Perak and Selangor, the main tin-mining states, had Chinese majorities.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Workers were often treated violently by contractors, and sickness was frequent. Many Chinese labourers' debts increased through addictions to opium and gambling, which earned the British colonial government significant revenue, while Indian labourers' debts were increased through addiction to drink. Workers' debts acquired in this way meant that they were tied to their labour contracts for much longer.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Some Chinese immigrant workers were connected with networks of mutual aid societies (run by \"Hui-Guan\" 會館, or non-profit organisations). In the 1890s Yap Ah Loy, who held the title of Kapitan China of Kuala Lumpur, was the richest man in Malaya, owning a chain of mines, plantations and shops. Malaya's banking and insurance industries were run by the Chinese from the start, and Chinese businesses, usually in partnership with London firms, soon had complete control of the Malayan economy. Chinese bankers also lent money to the Malay Sultans, which gave the Chinese political as well as economic leverage. At first the Chinese immigrants were mostly men. At first they married Malay women, producing a community of Sino-Malayans or baba people, but soon they began importing Chinese brides, establishing permanent communities and building schools and temples.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "An Indian commercial and professional class emerged during the early 20th century, but the majority of Indians remained poor and uneducated in rural ghettos in the rubber-growing areas.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Traditional Malay society was greatly harmed by the loss of political sovereignty to the British colonisers. The Sultans, who were seen as collaborators with both the British and the Chinese, lost some of their traditional prestige, but the mass of rural Malays continued to revere the Sultans. A small class of Malay nationalist intellectuals began to emerge during the early 20th century, and there was also a revival of Islam in response to the perceived threat of other imported religions, particularly Christianity. In fact few Malays converted to Christianity, although many Chinese did. The northern regions, which were less influenced by western ideas, became strongholds of Islamic conservatism.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The British gave elite Malays positions in the police and local military units, as well as a majority of those administrative positions open to non-Europeans. While the Chinese mostly built and paid for their own schools and colleges, importing teachers from China, the British aimed to control the education of young Malay elites and establish colonial ideas of race and class hierarchies. The colonial government opened Malay College in 1905 and created the Malay Administrative Service in 1910. (The college was dubbed \"Bab ud-Darajat\" – the Gateway to High Rank.) A Malay Teachers College followed in 1922, and a Malay Women's Training College in 1935. All this reflected the official policy of the colonial administration that Malaya belonged to the Malays, and that the other races were but temporary residents. This view was increasingly out of line with reality, and resulted in the formation of resistance movements against British Colonial rule.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The Malay teacher's college had lectures and writings that nurtured Malay nationalist sentiments; it is known as the birthplace of Malay nationalism. In 1938, Ibrahim Yaacob, an alumnus of Sultan Idris College, established the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (Young Malays Union or KMM) in Kuala Lumpur. It was the first nationalist political organisation in British Malaya. A specific ideal the KMM held was Panji Melayu Raya, which called for the unification of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In the years before World War II, the colonial government were concerned with finding the balance between a centralised state and maintaining the power of the Sultans in Malaya. In 1935 the position of Resident-General of the Federated States was abolished, and its powers decentralised to the individual states. The colonial government regarded the Chinese as clever but dangerous—and indeed during the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang) and the Chinese Communist Party built rival clandestine organisations in Malaya, leading to regular disturbances in the Chinese towns.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Although a belligerent as part of the British Empire, Malaya saw little action during World War I, except for the sinking of the Russian cruiser Zhemchug by the German cruiser SMS Emden on 28 October 1914 during the Battle of Penang.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The outbreak of war in the Pacific in December 1941 found the British in Malaya completely unprepared. During the 1930s, anticipating the rising threat of Japanese naval power, they had built a great naval base at Singapore, but never anticipated an invasion of Malaya from the north. There was virtually no British air capacity in the Far East. The Japanese were thus able to attack from their bases in French Indo-China with impunity, and despite resistance from British, Australian, and Indian forces, they overran Malaya in two months. Singapore, with no landward defences, no air cover, and no water supply, was forced to surrender in February 1942. British North Borneo and Brunei were also occupied.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Japanese colonial government regarded the Malays from a pan-Asian point of view, and fostered a limited form of Malay nationalism. The Malay nationalist Kesatuan Melayu Muda, advocates of Melayu Raya, collaborated with the Japanese, based on the understanding that Japan would unite the Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Borneo and grant them independence. The occupiers regarded the Chinese, however, as enemy aliens, and treated them with great harshness: during the so-called sook ching (purification through suffering), up to 80,000 Chinese in Malaya and Singapore were killed. The Chinese, led by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), became the backbone of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). With British assistance, the MPAJA became the most effective resistance force in the occupied Asian countries.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Although the Japanese argued that they supported Malay nationalism, they offended Malay nationalism by allowing their ally Thailand to re-annex the four northern states, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, and Terengganu that had been transferred to British Malaya in 1909. The loss of Malaya's export markets soon produced mass unemployment which affected all races and made the Japanese increasingly unpopular.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "During occupation, ethnic tensions were raised and nationalism grew. The Malayans were thus on the whole glad to see the British back in 1945, but things could not remain as they were before the war, and a stronger desire for independence grew. Britain was bankrupt and the new Labour government was keen to withdraw its forces from the East. But most Malays were more concerned with defending themselves against the MCP than with demanding independence from the British.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In 1944, the British drew up plans for a Malayan Union, which would turn the Federated and Unfederated Malay States, plus Penang and Malacca (but not Singapore), into a single Crown colony, with a view towards independence. The Bornean territories and Singapore were left out as it was thought this would make union more difficult to achieve. There was however strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the weakening of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to the ethnic Chinese and other minorities. The British had decided on legalised equality between all races as they perceived the Chinese and Indians as more loyal to the British during the war than the Malays. The Sultans, who had initially supported it, backed down and placed themselves at the head of the resistance.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In 1946, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was founded by Malay nationalists led by Dato Onn bin Jaafar, the Chief Minister of Johor. UMNO favoured independence for Malaya, but only if the new state was run exclusively by the Malays. Faced with Malay opposition, the British dropped the plan for equal citizenship. The Malayan Union was thus established in 1946, and was dissolved in 1948 and replaced by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the rulers of the Malay states under British protection.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Meanwhile, the Communists were moving towards open insurrection. The MPAJA had been disbanded in December 1945, and the MCP organised as a legal political party, but the MPAJA's arms were carefully stored for future use. The MCP policy was for immediate independence with full equality for all races. The Party's strength was in the Chinese-dominated trade unions, particularly in Singapore, and in the Chinese schools. In March 1947, reflecting the international Communist movement's \"turn to left\" as the Cold War set in, the MCP leader Lai Tek was purged and replaced by the veteran MPAJA guerrilla leader Chin Peng, who turned the party increasingly to direct action. These rebels, under the leadership of the MCP, launched guerrilla operations designed to force the British out of Malaya. In July, following a string of assassinations of plantation managers, the colonial government struck back, declaring a State of emergency, banning the MCP and arresting hundreds of its militants. The Party retreated to the jungle and formed the Malayan Peoples' Liberation Army, with about 13,000 men under arms, mostly ethnic Chinese.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The war was precipitated by the new constitution desired by Britain, which condemned about 90 percent of ethnic Chinese to non-citizenship, and by the eviction of poor peasants to make way for plantations. But although the war was long portrayed in most analyses by British authorities as a struggle against communism in a Cold War context, the MNLA received very little support from either the Soviet or Chinese communists. Rather, the main concern of British governments was to protect their commercial interests in the colony.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The Malayan Emergency lasted from 1948 to 1960 and involved a long anti-insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. The British strategy, which proved ultimately successful, was to isolate the MCP from its support base by a combination of economic and political concessions to the Chinese and the resettlement of Chinese squatters into \"New Villages\", in reality, concentration camps, in \"white areas\" free of MCP influence. From 1949 the MCP campaign lost momentum and the number of recruits fell sharply. Although the MCP succeeded in assassinating the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, in October 1951, this turn to terrorist tactics alienated many moderate Chinese from the Party. The arrival of Lt.-Gen Sir Gerald Templer as British commander in 1952 was the beginning of the end of the Emergency. Templer helped create the modern techniques of counter-insurgency warfare in Malaya and applied them against the MCP guerillas. The war was accompanied by abuses on both sides. The most notorious atrocity was committed in the village of Batang Kali, north of the capital Kuala Lumpur, in December 1948, when the British army massacred 24 Chinese before burning the village to the ground. Heavy bombers went to war, dropping thousands of bombs on insurgent positions. Britain conducted 4,500 air strikes in the first five years of the conflict. Although the insurgency was defeated Commonwealth troops remained with the backdrop of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Against this backdrop, independence for the Federation within the Commonwealth was granted on 31 August 1957, with Tunku Abdul Rahman as the first prime minister.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Chinese reaction against the MCP was shown by the formation of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) in 1949 as a vehicle for moderate Chinese political opinion. Its leader Tan Cheng Lock favoured a policy of collaboration with UMNO to win Malayan independence on a policy of equal citizenship, but with sufficient concessions to Malay sensitivities to ease nationalist fears. Tan formed a close collaboration with Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman, the Chief Minister of Kedah and from 1951 successor to Datuk Onn as leader of UMNO. Both leaders were determined to forge an agreement their communities could live with as a basis for a stable independent state. The UMNO-MCA Alliance, which was later joined by the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC), won convincing victories in local and state elections in both Malay and Chinese areas between 1952 and 1955. After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, there was a split in the MCP leadership over the wisdom of continuing the armed struggle. Many MCP militants lost heart and went home, and by the time Templer left Malaya in 1954, the Emergency was over, although Chin Peng led a diehard group that lurked in the inaccessible country along the Thai border for many years. During 1955 and 1956 UMNO, the MCA and the British hammered out a constitutional settlement for a principle of equal citizenship for all races. In exchange, the MCA agreed that Malaya's head of state would be drawn from the ranks of the Malay Sultans, that Malay would be the official language, and that Malay education and economic development would be promoted and subsidised. In effect, this meant that Malaya would be run by the Malays, but that the Chinese and Indians would have proportionate representation in the Cabinet and the parliament, would run those states where they were the majority, and would have their economic position protected. The difficult issue of who would control the Education system was deferred until after independence. This came on 31 August 1957, when Tunku Abdul Rahman became the first Prime Minister of independent Malaya.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "After the Japanese surrender the Brooke family and the British North Borneo Company gave up their control of Sarawak and North Borneo respectively, and these became British Crown Colonies. They were much less economically developed than Malaya, and their local political leaderships were too weak to demand independence. Singapore, with its large Chinese majority, achieved autonomy in 1955, and in 1959 the young leader Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister. The Sultan of Brunei remained as a British client in his oil-rich enclave. Between 1959 and 1962 the British government orchestrated complex negotiations between these local leaders and the Malayan government.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "On 24 April 1961, Lee Kuan Yew proposed the idea of forming Malaysia during a meeting to Tunku Abdul Rahman. Deputy Malayan Prime Minister Abdul Razak supported the idea of the new federation and worked to convince Tunku to back it. On 27 May 1961, Abdul Rahman proposed the idea of forming \"Malaysia\", which would consist of Brunei, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore, all except Malaya still under British rule. It was stated that this would allow the central government to better control and combat communist activities, especially in Singapore. It was also feared that if Singapore became independent, it would become a base for Chinese chauvinists to threaten Malayan sovereignty. The proposed inclusion of British territories besides Singapore was intended to keep the ethnic composition of the new nation similar to that of Malaya, with the Malay and indigenous populations of the other territories canceling out the Chinese majority in Singapore.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Although Lee Kuan Yew supported the proposal, his opponents from the Singaporean Socialist Front (Barisan Sosialis) resisted. In North Borneo, where there were no political parties, community representatives also stated their opposition. Although the Sultan of Brunei supported the merger, the Parti Rakyat Brunei opposed it as well. At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in 1961, Abdul Rahman explained his proposal further to its opponents. In October, he obtained agreement from the British government to the plan, provided that feedback be obtained from the communities involved in the merger.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The Cobbold Commission approved a merger with North Borneo and Sarawak; however, it was found that a substantial number of Bruneians opposed merger. North Borneo drew up a list of points, referred to as the 20-point agreement, proposing terms for its inclusion in the new federation. Sarawak prepared a similar memorandum, known as the 18-point agreement. Some of the points in these agreements were incorporated into the eventual constitution, some were instead accepted orally. These memoranda are often cited by those who believe that Sarawak's and North Borneo's rights have been eroded over time. A referendum was conducted in Singapore to gauge opinion, and 70% supported merger with substantial autonomy given to the state government. The Sultanate of Brunei withdrew from the planned merger due to opposition from certain segments of its population as well as arguments over the payment of oil royalties and the status of the sultan in the planned merger. Additionally, the Bruneian Parti Rakyat Brunei staged an armed revolt, which, though it was put down, was viewed as potentially destabilising to the new nation.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "After reviewing the Cobbold Commission's findings, the British government appointed the Landsdowne Commission to draft a constitution for Malaysia. The eventual constitution was essentially the same as the 1957 constitution, albeit with some rewording; for instance, giving recognition to the special position of the natives of the Borneo States. North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore were also granted some autonomy unavailable to the states of Malaya. After negotiations in July 1963, it was agreed that Malaysia would come into being on 31 August 1963, consisting of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. The date was to coincide with the independence day of Malaya and the British giving self-rule to Sarawak and North Borneo. However, Indonesia and the Philippines strenuously objected to this development, with Indonesia claiming Malaysia represented a form of \"neocolonialism\" and the Philippines claiming North Borneo as its territory. The opposition from the Indonesian government led by Sukarno and attempts by the Sarawak United People's Party delayed the formation of Malaysia. Due to these factors, an eight-member UN team was formed to re-ascertain whether North Borneo and Sarawak truly wanted to join Malaysia. Malaysia formally came into being on 16 September 1963, consisting of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. In 1963 the total population of Malaysia was about 10 million.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "At the time of independence, Malaya had great economic advantages. It was among the world's leading producers of three valuable commodities, rubber, tin, and palm oil, and was also a significant iron ore producer. These export industries gave the Malayan government a healthy surplus to invest in industrial development and infrastructure projects. Like other developing nations in the 1950s and 1960s, Malaya (and later Malaysia) placed great stress on state planning, although UMNO was never a socialist party. The First and Second Malayan Plans (1956–1960 and 1961–1965 respectively) stimulated economic growth through state investment in industry and repairing infrastructure. The government was keen to reduce Malaya's dependence on commodity exports and was aware that demand for natural rubber was bound to fall as the production and use of synthetic rubber expanded.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Both Indonesia and the Philippines withdrew their ambassadors from Malaya on 15 September 1963, the day before Malaysia's formation. In Jakarta the British and Malayan embassies were stoned, and the British consulate in Medan was ransacked with Malaya's consul taking refuge in the US consulate. Malaysia withdrew its ambassadors in response, and asked Thailand to represent Malaysia in both countries.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Indonesian President Sukarno, backed by the powerful Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), chose to regard Malaysia as a \"neocolonialist\" plot against his country, and backed a Communist insurgency in Sarawak, mainly involving elements of the local Chinese community. Indonesian irregular forces were infiltrated into Sarawak, where they were contained by Malaysian and Commonwealth of Nations forces. This period of Konfrontasi, an economic, political, and military confrontation lasted until the downfall of Sukarno in 1966. The Philippines objected to the formation of the federation, claiming North Borneo was part of Sulu, and thus the Philippines. In 1966 the new president, Ferdinand Marcos, dropped the claim, although it has since been revived and is still a point of contention marring Philippine–Malaysian relations.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The Depression of the 1930s, followed by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, had the effect of ending Chinese emigration to Malaya. At the time of independence in 1957, Malays comprised 55% of the population, Chinese 35% and Indians 10%. This balance was altered by the inclusion of the majority-Chinese Singapore, upsetting many Malays. The federation increased the Chinese proportion to close to 40%. Both UMNO and the MCA were nervous about the possible appeal of Lee's People's Action Party (then seen as a radical socialist party) to voters in Malaya and tried to organise a party in Singapore to challenge Lee's position there. Lee in turn threatened to run PAP candidates in Malaya at the 1964 federal elections, despite an earlier agreement that he would not do so (see PAP–UMNO Relations). Racial tensions intensified as PAP created an opposition alliance aiming for equality between races. This provoked Tunku Abdul Rahman to demand that Singapore withdraw from Malaysia. Despite last-ditch attempts by Singaporean leaders to keep Singapore as a part of the Federation, on 9 August 1965 the Malaysian Parliament voted 126–0 in favour of the expulsion of Singapore.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The most vexed issues of independent Malaysia were education and the disparity of economic power among the ethnic communities. The Malays felt unhappy with the wealth of the Chinese community, even after the expulsion of Singapore. Malay political movements emerged based around this. However, since there was no effective opposition party, these issues were contested mainly within the coalition government, which won all but one seat in the first post-independence Malayan Parliament. The two issues were related since the Chinese advantage in education played a large part in maintaining their control of the economy, which the UMNO leaders were determined to end. The MCA leaders were torn between the need to defend their own community's interests and the need to maintain good relations with UMNO. This produced a crisis in the MCA in 1959, in which a more assertive leadership under Lim Chong Eu defied UMNO over the education issue, only to be forced to back down when Tunku Abdul Rahman threatened to break up the coalition.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The Education Act of 1961 put UMNO's victory on the education issue into legislative form. Henceforward Malay and English would be the only teaching languages in secondary schools, and state primary schools would teach in Malay only. Although the Chinese and Indian communities could maintain their own Chinese and Tamil-language primary schools, all their students were required to learn Malay, and to study an agreed \"Malayan curriculum\". Most importantly, the entrance exam to the University of Malaya (which moved from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur in 1963) would be conducted in Malay, even though most teachings at the university was in English until the 1970s. This had the effect of excluding many Chinese students. At the same time, Malay schools were heavily subsidised, and Malays were given preferential treatment. This obvious defeat for the MCA greatly weakened its support in the Chinese community.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "As in education, the UMNO government's unspoken agenda in the field of economic development aimed to shift economic power away from the Chinese and towards the Malays. The two Malayan Plans and the First Malaysian Plan (1966–1970) directed resources heavily into developments that would benefit the rural Malay community. Several agencies were set up to enable Malay smallholders to upgrade their production and to increase their incomes. The Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) helped many Malays to buy or upgrade farms. The state also provided a range of incentives and low-interest loans to help Malays start businesses, and government tendering systematically favoured Malay companies, leading many Chinese-owned businesses to \"Malayanise\" their management.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The collaboration of the MCA and the MIC in these policies weakened their hold on the Chinese and Indian electorates. At the same time, the effects of the government's affirmative action policies of the 1950s and 1960s had been to create a discontented class of educated but underemployed Malays. This led to the formation of a new party, the Malaysian People's Movement (Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia) in 1968. Gerakan was a deliberately non-communal party, bringing in Malay trade unionists and intellectuals as well as Chinese and Indian leaders. At the same time, an Islamist party, the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and a Democratic socialist party, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), gained increasing support, at the expense of UMNO and the MCA respectively.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Following the end of the Malayan Emergency, the predominantly ethnic Chinese Malayan National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party, had retreated to the Malaysian-Thailand border where it had regrouped and retrained for future offensives against the Malaysian government. The insurgency officially began when the MCP ambushed security forces in Kroh–Betong, in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia, on 17 June 1968. Instead of declaring a \"state of emergency\" as the British had done previously, the Malaysian government responded to the insurgency by introducing several policy initiatives including the Security and Development Program (KESBAN), Rukun Tetangga (Neighbourhood Watch), and the RELA Corps (People's Volunteer Group).",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "At the May 1969 federal elections, the UMNO-MCA-MIC Alliance polled only 48% of the vote, although it retained a majority in the legislature. The MCA lost most of the Chinese-majority seats to Gerakan or DAP candidates. A Malay backlash resulted, leading rapidly to riots and inter-communal violence in which about 6,000 Chinese homes and businesses were burned and at least 184 people were killed, although Western diplomatic sources at the time suggested a toll of close to 600, with most of the victims are Chinese. The government declared a state of emergency, and a National Operations Council, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, took power from the government of Tunku Abdul Rahman, who, in September 1970, was forced to retire in favour of Abdul Razak.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Using the Emergency-era Internal Security Act (ISA), the new government suspended Parliament and political parties, imposed press censorship and placed severe restrictions on political activity. The ISA gave the government power to intern any person indefinitely without trial. These powers were widely used to silence the government's critics, and have never been repealed. The Constitution was changed to make illegal any criticism, even in Parliament, of the Malaysian monarchy, the special position of Malays in the country, or the status of Malay as the national language.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In 1971, the Parliament reconvened, and a new government coalition, the Barisan Nasional, was formed in 1973 to replace the Alliance party. Abdul Razak held office until he passed away in 1976. He was succeeded by Datuk Hussein Onn and then by Tun Mahathir Mohamad, who had been Education Minister since 1981, and who held power for 22 years.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "During these years policies were put in place which led to the rapid transformation of Malaysia's economy and society, such as the controversial New Economic Policy, which was intended to increase proportionally the share of the economic \"pie\" of the bumiputras as compared to other ethnic groups—was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak. Malaysia has since maintained a delicate ethno-political balance, with a system of government that has attempted to combine overall economic development with political and economic policies that promote equitable participation of all races.",
"title": "Emergence of Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In 1970 three-quarters of Malaysians living below the poverty line were Malays, the majority of Malays were still rural workers, and Malays were still largely excluded from the modern economy. The government's response was the New Economic Policy of 1971, which was to be implemented through a series of four five-year plans from 1971 to 1990. The plan had two objectives: the elimination of poverty, particularly rural poverty, and the elimination of the identification between race and prosperity. This latter policy was understood to mean a decisive shift in economic power from the Chinese to the Malays, who until then made up only 5% of the professional class.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "To provide jobs for all these new Malay graduates, the government created several agencies for intervention in the economy. The most important of these were PERNAS (National Corporation Ltd.), PETRONAS (National Petroleum Ltd.), and HICOM (Heavy Industry Corporation of Malaysia), which not only directly employed many Malays but also invested in growing areas of the economy to create new technical and administrative jobs which were preferentially allocated to Malays. As a result, the share of Malay equity in the economy rose from 1.5% in 1969 to 20.3% in 1990.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as prime minister on 16 July 1981. One of his first acts was to release 21 detainees held under the Internal Security Act. He appointed his close ally, Musa Hitam, as deputy prime minister.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The expiry of the Malaysian New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1990 allowed Mahathir to outline his economic vision for Malaysia. In 1991, he announced Vision 2020, under which Malaysia would aim to become a fully developed country within 30 years. The target would require average economic growth of approximately seven per cent of the gross domestic product per annum. Vision 2020 was accompanied by the NEP's replacement, the National Development Policy (NDP), under which some government programs designed to benefit the Bumiputera exclusively were opened up to other ethnicities. The NDP achieved success in one of its main aims, poverty reduction. By 1995, less than nine per cent of Malaysians lived in poverty, and income inequality had narrowed. Mahathir's government cut corporate taxes and liberalised financial regulations to attract foreign investment. The economy grew by over nine per cent per annum until 1997, prompting other developing countries to emulate Mahathir's policies.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Mahathir initiated a series of major infrastructure projects in the 1990s. One of the largest was the Multimedia Super Corridor, an area south of Kuala Lumpur, in the mould of Silicon Valley, designed to cater for the information technology industry. However, the project failed to generate the investment anticipated. Other Mahathir's projects included the development of Putrajaya as the home of Malaysia's public service and bringing a Formula One Grand Prix to Sepang. One of the most controversial developments was the Bakun Dam in Sarawak. The ambitious hydroelectric project was intended to carry electricity across the South China Sea to satisfy electricity demand in peninsular Malaysia. Work on the dam was eventually suspended due to the Asian financial crisis.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In 1997, the Asian financial crisis threatened to devastate Malaysia. The value of the ringgit plummeted due to currency speculation, foreign investment fled, and the main stock exchange index fell by over 75%. At the urging of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government cut government spending. It raised interest rates, which only served to exacerbate the economic situation. In 1998, in a controversial approach, Mahathir increased government spending and fixed the ringgit to the US dollar. Malaysia recovered from the crisis faster than its Southeast Asian neighbours.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In the domestic sphere, it was a political triumph. Anwar Ibrahim and his supporters initiated the Reformasi movement. It consisted of several mass demonstrations and rallies against the long-standing Barisan Nasional coalition government. He was jailed in April 1999 after a trial for sodomy that was criticised by human rights groups and several foreign governments.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Having spent over 22 years in office, Mahathir was the world's longest-serving elected leader when he retired in October 2003.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Abdullah Ahmad Badawi promised to combat corruption when he became the fifth Prime Minister, thus empowering anti-corruption agencies and providing more avenues for the public to expose corrupt practices. He advocated an interpretation of Islam known as Islam Hadhari, which advocates the intercompatibility between Islam and economic and technological development. His administration also placed a strong emphasis on reviving Malaysia's agriculture industry and ensuring the country's food security. At the 2004 general election, the Barisan Nasional led by Abdullah Badawi had a massive victory.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "In November 2007, Malaysia saw two anti-government rallies. The 2007 Bersih Rally was held in Kuala Lumpur on 10 November 2007, to campaign for electoral reform. It was precipitated by allegations of corruption and discrepancies in the Malaysian election system that heavily favoured the ruling political party, Barisan Nasional. Another rally was held in the same month, on 25 November 2007, in Kuala Lumpur led by Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) over alleged discriminatory policies favouring ethnic Malays. On 15 October 2008, HINDRAF was banned when the government labelled the organisation as a threat to national security.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Abdullah Badawi was re-elected as the prime minister in the 2008 general election. Abdullah came under growing criticism, primarily because of his failure to combat corruption and his subpar performance in the election. Hence, in October 2008, he announced his intention to resign. Abdullah was succeeded in office by his deputy, Najib Razak (son of Abdul Razak), in April 2009.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "1Malaysia campaign was introduced by Najib Razak in the summer of 2009.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "On 15 September 2011, Najib announced that the Internal Security Act 1960 will be repealed and replaced by two new laws. The ISA was replaced and repealed by the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 which has been passed by Parliament and given royal assent on 18 June 2012. The Act came into force on 31 July 2012.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "In early February 2013, there was an incursion in Lahad Datu, a military conflict that began when hundreds of militants, some of whom were armed, arrived by boats in Lahad Datu District, Sabah, Malaysia from Simunul Island, Tawi-Tawi, in the southern Philippines. The group was sent by Jamalul Kiram III, one of the claimants to the throne of the Sultanate of Sulu. In response to the incursion, Malaysian security forces launched a major operation to repel the militants, resulting in a decisive Malaysian victory which ended the conflict in late March 2013. Following the elimination of militants, the Eastern Sabah Security Command (ESSCOM) was established.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Just four months later, 298 people were killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while flying over territory controlled by Russian-backed militants in Eastern Ukraine.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "On 1 April 2015, Najib passed a controversial 6 per cent tax on goods and services. Later that year, his administration was engulfed in scandal when Najib and other officials were implicated in a multibillion-dollar embezzlement and money-laundering scheme involving 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state-owned investment fund masterminded by Low Taek Jho, triggering widespread calls and protests from most Malaysians including the opposition parties for Najib's resignation. These protests culminated in the Malaysian Citizens' Declaration.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The Bersih movement also held four rallies from 2011 to 2016 during the Najib administration intending to reform Malaysia's electoral system. The movement expanded its demands to include issues such as clean governance and human rights. In response to accusations of corruption, Najib tightened his hold on power by removing Muhyiddin Yassin, the deputy prime minister at the time, suspending two newspapers, and forcing through the parliaments the controversial National Security Council Bill, which gives the prime minister unprecedented powers. Living costs have skyrocketed as a result of Najib's numerous subsidy cuts, while the Malaysian ringgit declined. After Barisan Nasional lost the 2018 general elections, these came to an end.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Relations between Malaysia and North Korea deteriorated in 2017, in the aftermath of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia, which made global headlines and sparked a major diplomatic row.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Mahathir Mohamad was sworn in as the seventh Prime Minister after winning the election on 10 May 2018. A number of issues contributed to Najib Razak's defeat, including the ongoing 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, the 6% Goods and Services Tax, and the rising cost of living.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Mahathir promised to \"restore the rule of law\", and make elaborate and transparent investigations into the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Anwar Ibrahim was given a full royal pardon and was released from prison on 16 May 2018. He was designated to take over the reins from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as planned and agreed by the coalition before GE14.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The unpopular tax was reduced to 0% on 1 June 2018. The government of Malaysia under Mahathir tabled the first reading Bill to repeal GST in Parliament on 31 July 2018 (Dewan Rakyat). GST was successfully replaced with Sales Tax and Service Tax starting 1 September 2018.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Mahathir's administration promised to review all Belt and Road Initiative projects in Malaysia that were initiated by the previous government. He characterised these as \"unequal treaties\", and said some were linked to misappropriated funds from the 1MDB scandal. The government suspended work on the East Coast Rail Link and continued it after terms had been renegotiated. Mahathir cancelled approximately $2.8 billion worth of deals with China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau altogether, saying Malaysia would not be able to repay its obligations to China.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Mahathir was supportive of the 2018–19 Korean peace process and announced that Malaysia would reopen its embassy in North Korea and resume relations.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "On 28 September 2018, Mahathir addressed the United Nations General Assembly that his government would promise to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). However, after weeks of receiving racially and religiously charged demonstrations against the convention, particularly from Bumiputras, the Pakatan Harapan government chose not to accede to the ICERD on November 23, 2018.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Mahathir announced the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 in October 2019, which set out to increase the incomes of all ethnic groups, to increase focus on the technology sector and for Malaysia to become a high-income country by 2030.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Malaysia's freedom of the press improved slightly under Mahathir's tenure, and the country's rank rose in the Press Freedom Index.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Political infightings within the Pakatan Harapan coalition, as well as the uncertainty of the date of the transition of power to his designated successor, Anwar Ibrahim, soon culminated in a political crisis known as Sheraton Move in February 2020.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "On 1 March 2020, a week after the country was thrown into a political crisis, Muhyiddin Yassin was appointed as the eighth Prime Minister by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, following the abrupt resignation of Mahathir Mohamad. The fallen government was replaced by the new Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition government, led by BERSATU leader Muhyiddin.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "During his administration, COVID-19 spread throughout the nation. In response, Muhyiddin implemented the Malaysian movement control order (MCO) on 18 March 2020.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "On 28 July 2020, the High Court convicted former Prime Minister Najib Razak of abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust, becoming the first Prime Minister of Malaysia to be convicted of corruption.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "In mid-January 2021, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong declared a national state of emergency until at least 1 August in response to the COVID-19 crisis and political infighting. Parliament and elections were suspended while the Malaysian government was empowered to introduce laws without approval.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Muhyiddin commenced the country's vaccination programme against COVID-19 in late February 2021.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "On 19 March 2021, North Korea announced the severance of diplomatic ties with Malaysia, after the Kuala Lumpur High Court rejected North Korean businessman Mun Chol Myong's appeal from extradition to the United States.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "Muhyiddin officially resigned as prime minister on August 16, 2021, after losing the majority in parliament support due to the country's political crisis, as well as calls for his resignation due to economic stagnation and the government's failure to prevent COVID-19 infections and deaths. He was afterwards appointed back as caretaker Prime Minister by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong until a replacement can be selected.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Ismail Sabri Yaakob was sworn in as the ninth Prime Minister on August 21, 2021. During his inaugural speech as prime minister on 22 August 2021, Ismail Sabri introduced the Keluarga Malaysia idea. During his tenure, he lifted the Movement Control Order (MCO) following the expansion of the vaccination programme and oversaw the Twelfth Malaysia Plan.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "In late 2022, a constitutional amendment was passed, that prohibits members of parliament from switching political parties. Several UMNO lawmakers called for a snap election before the end of 2022 to resolve ongoing infighting in the party and obtain a stronger mandate. This led to an earlier general election in November 2022, which resulted in a hung parliament, the first federal election to have such a result in the nation's history.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Anwar Ibrahim, the chairman of Pakatan Harapan (PH), was appointed and sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister on 24 November 2022 by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong as Anwar has obtained support for a grand coalition government.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "Anwar Ibrahim launched the Malaysia Madani concept as a national policy on January 19, 2023, in Putrajaya. It acts as the replacement for the Keluarga Malaysia concept from the previous administration of Ismail Sabri Yaakob, the ninth Prime Minister.",
"title": "Modern Malaysia"
}
]
| Malaysia is a modern concept, created in the second half of the 20th century. However, contemporary Malaysia regards the entire history of Malaya and Borneo, spanning thousands of years back to prehistoric times, as its own history. The first evidence for archaic human occupation can be dated to at least 1.83 million years ago, while the earliest remnants of an anatomically modern human are c. 40,000 years old. The ancestors of the present-day population of Malaysia entered the area in multiple waves in prehistorical and historical times. Hinduism and Buddhism from India and China dominated early regional history, reaching their peak from the 7th to the 13th centuries during the reign of the Sumatra-based Srivijaya civilisation. Islam made its initial presence in the Malay Peninsula as early as the 10th century, but it was during the 15th century that the religion firmly took root at least among the court elites, which saw the rise of several sultanates; the most prominent were the Sultanate of Malacca and the Sultanate of Brunei. The Portuguese were the first European colonial power to establish themselves on the Malay Peninsula and Southeast Asia, capturing Malacca in 1511. This event led to the establishment of several sultanates such as Johor and Perak. Dutch hegemony over the Malay sultanates increased during the course of the 17th to 18th century, capturing Malacca in 1641 with the aid of Johor. In the 19th century, the English ultimately gained hegemony across the territory that is now Malaysia. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, and the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and Siam. The fourth phase of foreign influence was a wave of immigration of Chinese and Indian workers to meet the needs created by the colonial economy in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo. The Japanese invasion during World War II ended British rule in Malaya. After the Empire of Japan was defeated by the Allies, the Malayan Union was established in 1946 and was reorganized as the Federation of Malaya in 1948. In the Peninsula, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) took up arms against the British and the tension led to the declaration of emergency rule from 1948 to 1960. A forceful military response to the communist insurgency, followed by the Baling Talks in 1955, led to Malayan Independence on August 31, 1957, through diplomatic negotiation with the British. On 16 September 1963, the Federation of Malaysia was formed; in August 1965, Singapore was expelled from the federation and became a separate independent country. A racial riot in 1969, brought about the imposition of emergency rule, the suspension of parliament and the proclamation of the Rukun Negara, a national philosophy promoting unity among citizens. The New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in 1971 sought to eradicate poverty and restructure society to eliminate the identification of race with economic function. Under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, there was a period of rapid economic growth and urbanization in the country beginning in the 1980s; the previous economic policy was succeeded by the National Development Policy (NDP) from 1991 to 2000. The late 1990s Asian financial crisis impacted the country, nearly causing their currency, stock, and property markets to crash; however, they later recovered. Early in 2020, Malaysia underwent a political crisis. This period, along with the COVID-19 pandemic caused a political, health, social and economic crisis. The 2022 general election resulted in the first-ever hung parliament in the country's history and Anwar Ibrahim became Malaysia's prime minister on November 24, 2022. | 2001-10-21T16:40:13Z | 2023-12-26T20:04:18Z | [
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13,808 | History of Israel | The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as Canaan, Palestine or the Holy Land, which is the geographical location of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. From a prehistory as part of the critical Levantine corridor, which witnessed waves of early humans out of Africa, to the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE, the region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before being vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities that were central to the origins of the Jewish and Samaritan peoples as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups.
In the following centuries, the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires conquered the region. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids vied for control over the region during the Hellenistic period. However, with the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, the local Jewish population maintained independence for a century before being incorporated into the Roman Republic. As a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, many Jews were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Following the advent of Christianity, which was adopted by the Greco-Roman world under the influence of the Roman Empire, the region's demographics shifted towards newfound Christians, who replaced Jews as the majority of the population by the 4th century. However, shortly after Islam was consolidated across the Arabian Peninsula under Muhammad, Byzantine Christian rule over the Land of Israel was superseded by the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. From the 11th century to the 13th century, the Land of Israel became the centre for intermittent religious wars between Christian and Muslim armies as part of the Crusades. In the 13th century, the Land of Israel became subject to the Mongol invasions and conquests, though these were locally routed by the Mamluk Sultanate, under whose rule it remained until the 16th century. The Mamluks were eventually defeated by the Ottoman Empire, and the region became an Ottoman province until the 20th century.
The late 19th century saw the widespread consolidation of a Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism, as part of which aliyah (Jewish return to the Land of Israel from the diaspora) increased. During World War I, the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the Allies led to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was granted control of the region by League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine. The British government publicly committed itself to the creation of a Jewish homeland. Arab nationalism opposed this design, asserting Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration. As a result, Arab–Jewish tensions grew in the succeeding decades of British administration.
In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence sparked the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and subsequently led to waves of Jewish emigration from other parts of the Middle East. Today, approximately 43 percent of the global Jewish population resides in Israel. In 1979, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed, based on the Camp David Accords. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was followed by the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed. Despite efforts to finalize the peace agreement, the conflict continues to play a major role in Israeli and international political, social, and economic life.
The oldest evidence of early humans in the territory of modern Israel, dating to 1.5 million years ago, was found in Ubeidiya near the Sea of Galilee. Flint tool artefacts have been discovered at Yiron, the oldest stone tools found anywhere outside Africa. Other groups include 1.4 million years old Acheulean industry, the Bizat Ruhama group and Gesher Bnot Yaakov.
In the Mount Carmel area at el-Tabun, and Es Skhul, Neanderthal and early modern human remains were found, showing the longest stratigraphic record in the region, spanning 600,000 years of human activity, from the Lower Paleolithic to the present day, representing roughly a million years of human evolution. Other notable Paleolithic sites include caves Qesem and Manot. The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.
The Canaanites are archaeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age (2100–1550 BCE). There were probably independent or semi-independent city-states. Cities were often surrounded by massive earthworks, resulting in the archeological tells common in the region today. In the late Middle Bronze Age, the Nile Delta in Egypt was settled by Canaanites who maintained close connections with Canaan. During that period, the Hyksos, dynasties of Canaanite/Asiatic origin, ruled much of Lower Egypt before being overthrown in the 16th century BCE.
During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), there were Canaanite vassal states paying tribute to the New Kingdom of Egypt, which governed from Gaza. In 1457 BCE, Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated a rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by Kadesh's king at the Battle of Megiddo.
In the Late Bronze Age there was a period of civilizational collapse in the Middle East, Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control ended. There is evidence that urban centers such as Hazor, Beit She'an, Megiddo, Ekron, Isdud and Ascalon were damaged or destroyed. Two groups appear at this time, and are associated with the transition to the Iron Age (they used iron weapons/tools which were better than earlier bronze): the Sea Peoples, particularly the Philistines, who migrated from the Aegean world and settled on the southern coast, and the Israelites, whose settlements dotted the highlands.
The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel (as ysrỉꜣr) occurs in the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, erected for Pharaoh Merneptah (son of Ramesses II) c. 1209 BCE, which states "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not."
Archeological evidence indicates that during the early Iron Age I, hundreds of small villages were established on the highlands of Canaan on both sides of the Jordan River, primarily in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. These villages had populations of up to 400, were largely self-sufficient and lived from herding, grain cultivation, and growing vines and olives with some economic interchange. The pottery was plain and undecorated. Writing was known and available for recording, even in small sites. William G. Dever sees this "Israel" in the central highlands as a cultural and probably political entity, more an ethnic group rather than an organized state.
Modern scholars believe that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples and their cultures through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on a national god Yahweh. According to McNutt, "It is probably safe to assume that sometime during Iron Age I a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'", differentiating itself from the Canaanites through such markers as the prohibition of intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.
Philistine cooking tools and the prevalence of pork in their diets, and locally made Mycenaean pottery—which later evolved into bichrome Philistine pottery—all support their foreign origin. Their cities were large and elaborate, which—together with the findings—point out to a complex, hierarchical society.
In the 10th century BCE, the Israelite kingdoms of Judah and Israel emerged. The Hebrew Bible states that these were preceded by a single kingdom ruled by Saul, David and Solomon, who is said to have built the First Temple. Archeologists have debated whether the united monarchy ever existed, with those in favor of such a polity existing further divided between maximalists who support the Biblical accounts, and minimalists who argue that any such polity was likely smaller than suggested.
Historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power; during the days of the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan. Samaria, the capital, was home to one of the largest Iron Age structures in the Levant. The Kingdom of Israel's capital moved between Shechem, Penuel and Tirzah before Omri settled it in Samaria, and the royal succession was often settled by a military coup d'état. The Kingdom of Judah was smaller but more stable; the Davidic dynasty ruled the kingdom for the four centuries of its existence, with the capital always in Jerusalem, controlling the Judaean Mountains, most of the Shephelah and the Beersheba valley in the northern Negev.
In 854 BCE, according to Assyrian records (the Kurkh Monoliths), an alliance between Ahab of Israel and Ben Hadad II of Aram-Damascus managed to repulse the incursions of the Assyrians, with a victory at the Battle of Qarqar. This is not reported in the Bible which describes conflict between Ahab and Ben Hadad. Another important discovery of the period is the Mesha Stele, a Moabite stele found in Dhiban when Emir Sattam Al-Fayez led Henry Tristram to it as they toured the lands of the vassals of the Bani Sakher. The stele is now in the Louvre. In the stele, Mesha, king of Moab, tells how Chemosh, the god of Moab, had been angry with his people and had allowed them to be subjugated to the Kingdom of Israel, but at length, Chemosh returned and assisted Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab. It refers to Omri, king of Israel, to the god Yahweh, and may contain another early reference to the House of David. Jehu, son of Omri, is referenced by the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.
Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria invaded Israel in around 732 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians following a long siege of the capital Samaria around 720 BCE. The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he captured Samaria and deported 27,290 inhabitants to Mesopotamia. It is likely that Shalmaneser captured the city since both the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible viewed the fall of Israel as the signature event of his reign. The Assyrian deportations became the basis for the Jewish idea of the Ten Lost Tribes. Foreign groups were settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the fallen kingdom. The Samaritans claim to be descended from Israelites of ancient Samaria who were not expelled by the Assyrians.
It is believed that refugees from the destruction of Israel moved to Judah, massively expanding Jerusalem and leading to construction of the Siloam Tunnel during the rule of King Hezekiah (ruled 715–686 BCE). The tunnel could provide water during a siege and its construction is described in the Bible. The Siloam inscription, a plaque written in Hebrew left by the construction team, was discovered in the tunnel in 1880s, and is today held by the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
During Hezekiah's rule, Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, attempted but failed to capture Judah. Assyrian records say that Sennacherib levelled 46 walled cities and besieged Jerusalem, leaving after receiving extensive tribute. Sennacherib erected the Lachish reliefs in Nineveh to commemorate a second victory at Lachish.
The writings of four different "prophets" are believed to date from this period: Hosea and Amos in Israel and Micah and Isaiah of Judah. These men were mostly social critics who warned of the Assyrian threat and acted as religious spokesmen. They exercised some form of free speech and may have played a significant social and political role in Israel and Judah. They urged rulers and the general populace to adhere to god-conscious ethical ideals, seeing the Assyrian invasions as a divine punishment of the collective resulting from ethical failures.
Under King Josiah (ruler from 641–619 BCE), the Book of Deuteronomy was either rediscovered or written. The Book of Joshua and the accounts of the kingship of David and Solomon in the book of Kings are believed to have the same author. The books are known as Deuteronomist and considered to be a key step in the emergence of monotheism in Judah. They emerged at a time that Assyria was weakened by the emergence of Babylon and may be a committing to text of pre-writing verbal traditions.
During the late 7th century BCE, Judah became a vassal state of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. In 601 BCE, Jehoiakim of Judah allied with Babylon's principal rival, Egypt, despite the strong remonstrances of the prophet Jeremiah. As a punishment, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem in 597 BCE, and the city surrendered. The defeat was recorded by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and deported king Jehoiachin, along with other prominent citizens, to Babylon; Zedekiah, his uncle, was installed as king. A few years later, Zedekiah launched another revolt against Babylon, and an army was sent to conquer Jerusalem.
In 587 or 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and razed the city. The Kingdom of Judah was abolished, and many of its citizens were exiled to Babylon. The former territory of Judah became a Babylonian province called Yehud with its center in Mizpah, north of the destroyed Jerusalem. Tablets that describe King Jehoicahin's rations were found in the ruins of Babylon. He was eventually released by the Babylonians. According to both the Bible and the Talmud, the Davidic dynasty continued as head of Babylonian Jewry, called the "Rosh Galut" (exilarch or head of exile). Arab and Jewish sources show that the Rosh Galut continued to exist for another 1,500 years in what is now Iraq, ending in the eleventh century.
In 538 BCE, Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and took over its empire. Cyrus issued a proclamation granting religious freedom to all peoples subjugated by the Babylonians (see the Cyrus Cylinder). According to the Bible, Jewish exiles in Babylon, including 50,000 Judeans led by Zerubabel, returned to Judah to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple was subsequently completed c. 515 BCE. A second group of 5,000, led by Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to Judah in 456 BCE. The first was empowered by the Persian king to enforce religious rules, the second had the status of governor and a royal mission to restore the walls of the city. The country remained a province of the Achaemenid empire called Yehud until 332 BCE.
The final text of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is thought to have been written during the Persian period (probably 450–350 BCE). The text was formed by editing and unifying earlier texts. The returning Israelites adopted an Aramaic script (also known as the Ashuri alphabet), which they brought back from Babylon; this is the current Hebrew script. The Hebrew calendar closely resembles the Babylonian calendar and probably dates from this period.
The Bible describes tension between the returnees, the elite of the First Temple period, and those who had remained in Judah. It is possible that the returnees, supported by the Persian monarchy, became large landholders at the expense of the people who had remained to work the land in Judah, whose opposition to the Second Temple would have reflected a fear that exclusion from the cult would deprive them of land rights. Judah had become in practice a theocracy, ruled by hereditary High Priests and a Persian-appointed governor, frequently Jewish, charged with keeping order and seeing that tribute was paid.
A Judean military garrison was placed by the Persians on Elephantine Island near Aswan in Egypt. In the early 20th century, 175 papyrus documents recording activity in this community were discovered, including the "Passover Papyrus", a letter instructing the garrison on how to correctly conduct the Passover feast.
In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedon conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Persian Empire. After his death in 322 BCE, his generals divided the empire and Judea became a frontier region between the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. Following a century of Ptolemaic rule, Judea was conquered by the Seleucid Empire in 200 BCE at the battle of Panium. Hellenistic rulers generally respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions. Judea was ruled by the hereditary office of the High Priest of Israel as a Hellenistic vassal. Nevertheless, the region underwent a process of Hellenization, which heightened tensions between Greeks, Hellenized Jews, and observant Jews. These tensions escalated into clashes involving a power struggle for the position of high priest and the character of the holy city of Jerusalem.
When Antiochus IV Epiphanes consecrated the temple, forbade Jewish practices, and forcibly imposed Hellenistic norms on the Jews, several centuries of religious tolerance under Hellenistic control came to an end. In 167 BCE, the Maccabean revolt erupted after Mattathias, a Jewish priest of the Hasmonean lineage, killed a Hellenized Jew and a Seleucid official who participated in sacrifice to the Greek gods in Modi'in. His son Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucids in several battles, and in 164 BCE, he captured Jerusalem and restored temple worship, an event commemorated by the Jewish festival of Hannukah.
After Judas' death, his brothers Jonathan Apphus and Simon Thassi were able to establish and consolidate a vassal Hasmonean state in Judea, capitalizing on the Seleucid Empire's decline as a result of internal instability and wars with the Parthians, and by forging ties with the rising Roman Republic. Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus was able to gain independence, doubling Judea's territories. He took control of Idumaea, where he converted the Edomites to Judaism, and invaded Scythopolis and Samaria, where he demolished the Samaritan Temple. Hyrcanus was also the first Hasmonean leader to mint coins. Under his sons, kings Aristobulus I and Alexander Jannaeus, Hasmonean Judea became a kingdom, and its territories continued to expand, now also covering the coastal plain, Galilee and parts of the Transjordan. Some scholars argue that the Hasmonean dynasty also institutionalized the final Jewish biblical canon.
Under Hasmonean rule, the Pharisees, Sadducees and the mystic Essenes emerged as the principal Jewish social movements. The Pharisee sage Simeon ben Shetach is credited with establishing the first schools based around meeting houses. This was a key step in the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism. After Jannaeus' widow, queen Salome Alexandra, died in 67 BCE, her sons Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II engaged in a civil war over succession. The conflicting parties requested Pompey's assistance on their behalf, which paved the way for a Roman takeover of the kingdom.
In 64 BCE the Roman general Pompey conquered Syria and intervened in the Hasmonean civil war in Jerusalem, restoring Hyrcanus II as High Priest and making Judea a Roman vassal kingdom. During the siege of Alexandria in 47 BCE, the lives of Julius Caesar and his protégé Cleopatra were saved by 3,000 Jewish troops sent by Hyrcanus II and commanded by Antipater, whose descendants Caesar made kings of Judea. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Herodian dynasty, Jewish-Roman client kings of Edomite origin, descended from Antipater, ruled Judea. Herod the Great considerably enlarged the temple (see Herod's Temple), making it one of the largest religious structures in the world. At this time, Jews formed as much as 10% of the population of the entire Roman Empire, with large communities in North Africa and Arabia.
Augustus made Judea a Roman province in 6 CE, deposing the last Jewish king, Herod Archelaus, and appointing a Roman governor. There was a small revolt against Roman taxation led by Judas of Galilee and over the next decades tensions grew between the Greco-Roman and Judean population centered on attempts to place effigies of emperor Caligula in synagogues and in the Jewish temple. In 64 CE, the Temple High Priest Joshua ben Gamla introduced a religious requirement for Jewish boys to learn to read from the age of six. Over the next few hundred years this requirement became steadily more ingrained in Jewish tradition. The latter part of the Second Temple period was marked by social unrest and religious turmoil, and messianic expectations filled the atmosphere.
In 66 CE, the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) broke out due to the repressive rule of Roman governors, growing hostility between the wealthy nobles and the impoverished masses, clashes between Jews and pagans in mixed cities, and tensions between the Roman and Jewish religions. The revolting Jews named their state "Israel". Despite early Jewish victories, the provisional government quickly collapsed, and Jews were split up into several warrying factions with conflicting agendas. Eventually, the Roman army under the command of future emperors Vespasian and his son Titus besieged and destroyed the major Jewish strongholds one by one, including the cities of Yodfat, Gamla and the fortress of Masada. After a brutal five-month siege in 70 CE, Jerusalem and the Second Temple were completely destroyed.
The revolt's failure had profound demographic, theological, political, and economic consequences. Many Jews died fighting and under siege during the revolt, and a sizable portion of the population was either expelled from the country or displaced. Without the Temple, Judaism had to change to ensure its survival. Judaism's Temple-based sects, most notably the Sadducees, vanished. The Pharisees, led by Yochanan ben Zakai, obtained Roman permission to establish a school at Yavne. Their teachings became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism, which eventually became the mainstream form of Judaism.
From 115 to 117, tensions and attacks on Jews around the Roman Empire led to a massive Jewish uprising against Rome, known as the Kitos War. Jews in Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia fought against Rome. This conflict was accompanied by large-scale massacres of both sides. Cyprus was so severely depopulated that new settlers were imported and Jews banned from living there.
In 132 CE, the Bar Kokhba revolt erupted. The uprising was led by a Jew named Simon Bar Kokhba, who ruled as nasi, and was viewed by some of the rabbis of the period as the long-awaited messiah. Based on the Bar Kokhba revolt coinage, the independent Jewish state was named "Israel". It has been suggested that a rabbinical assembly which convened during the revolt decided which books could be regarded as part of the Hebrew Bible; the Jewish apocrypha and Christian books were excluded. As a result, the original text of some Hebrew texts, including the Books of Maccabees, were lost (Greek translations survived). A rabbi of this period, Simeon bar Yochai, is regarded as the author of the Zohar, the foundational text for Kabbalistic thought. However, modern scholars believe it was written in Medieval Spain. Christians refused to participate in the revolt and from this point the Jews regarded Christianity as a separate religion.
The Bar Kokhba revolt was eventually crushed by emperor Hadrian himself, with serious losses. Today, it is viewed by modern scholars as having decisive historic importance. According to Cassius Dio, writing in the century following the revolt, "50 of the Jews most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out, thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate." While scholars debate whether these numbers are accurate, archaeological surveys and excavations appear to confirm the claim of Cassius Dio that the district of Judaea was largely depopulated. Most scholars agree that, in contrast to the aftermath of the First Jewish–Roman War, Judea was devastated after the Bar Kokhba revolt, with many Jews killed, exiled, or sold into slavery.
Around the time of the revolt, the province of Judaea (Iudaea) was renamed Syria Palaestina. The commonly-held view is that it was implemented as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt or to "disassociate the Jewish people from their historical homeland" and hold Hadrian accountable. However, no evidence exists for this narrative, and it has been disputed by scholars in recent years. No other revolt led to a province being renamed.
As a result of the disastrous effects of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled. Over the next centuries, more Jews left to communities in the Diaspora, especially the large, speedily growing Jewish communities in Babylonia and Arabia. Others remained in the Land of Israel, where the spiritual and demographic center shifted from the depopulated Judea to Galilee. Jewish presence also continued in the southern Hebron Hills, in Ein Gedi, and on the coastal plain. The Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, huge compendiums of Rabbinical discussions, were compiled during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem.
Following the revolt, Judea's countryside was penetrated by pagan populations, including migrants from the nearby provinces of Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia, whereas Aelia Capitolina, its immediate vicinity, and administrative centers were now inhabited by Roman veterans and settlers from the western parts of the empire.
The Romans permitted a hereditary Rabbinical Patriarch from the House of Hillel, called the "Nasi", to represent the Jews in dealings with the Romans. One prominent figure was Judah ha-Nasi, credited with compiling the final version of the Mishnah, a vast collection of Jewish oral traditions. He also emphasized the importance of education in Judaism, leading to requirements that illiterate Jews be treated as outcasts. This might have contributed to some illiterate Jews converting to Christianity. Jewish seminaries, such as those at Shefaram and Bet Shearim, continued to produce scholars. The best of these became members of the Sanhedrin, which was located first at Sepphoris and later at Tiberias. In the Galillee, many synagogues have been found dating from this period, and the burial site of the Sanhedrin leaders was discovered in Beit She'arim. In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire faced an economic crisis and imposed heavy taxation to fund wars of imperial succession. This situation prompted additional Jewish migration from Syria Palaestina to the Sasanian Empire, known for its more tolerant environment; there, a flourishing Jewish community with important Talmudic academies thrived in Babylonia, engaging in a notable rivalry with the Talmudic academies of Palaestina.
Early in the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine made Constantinople the capital of the East Roman Empire and made Christianity an accepted religion. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (326–328) and led the construction of the Church of the Nativity (birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (burial site of Jesus in Jerusalem) and other key churches that still exist. The name Jerusalem was restored to Aelia Capitolina and became a Christian city. Jews were still banned from living in Jerusalem, but were allowed to visit and worship at the site of the ruined temple. Over the course of the next century Christians worked to eradicate "paganism", leading to the destruction of classical Roman traditions and eradication of their temples. In 351–2, another Jewish revolt in the Galilee erupted against a corrupt Roman governor.
The Roman Empire split in 390 CE and the region became part of the Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire. Under Byzantine rule, much of the region and its non-Jewish population were won over by Christianity, which eventually became the dominant religion in the region. The presence of holy sites drew Christian pilgrims, some of whom chose to settle, contributing to the rise of a Christian majority. Christian authorities encouraged this pilgrimage movement and appropriated lands, constructing magnificent churches at locations linked to biblical narratives. Additionally, monks established monasteries near pagan settlements, encouraging the conversion of local pagans.
During the Byzantine period, the Jewish presence in the region declined, and it is believed that Jews lost their majority status in Palestine in the fourth century. While Judaism remained the sole non-Christian religion tolerated, restrictions on Jews gradually increased, prohibiting the construction of new places of worship, holding public office, or owning Christian slaves. In 425, after the death of the last Nasi, Gamliel VI, the Nasi office and the Sanhedrin were officially abolished, and the standing of yeshivot weakened. The leadership void was gradually filled by the Jewish center in Babylonia, which would assume a leading role in the Jewish world for generations after the Byzantine period.
During the 5th and 6th centuries CE, the region witnessed a series of Samaritan revolts against Byzantine rule. Their suppression resulted in the decline of Samaritan presence and influence, and further consolidated Christian domination. Though it is acknowledged that some Jews and Samaritans converted to Christianity during the Byzantine period, the reliable historical records are limited, and they pertain to individual conversions rather than entire communities.
In 611, Khosrow II, ruler of Sassanid Persia, invaded the Byzantine Empire. He was helped by Jewish fighters recruited by Benjamin of Tiberias and captured Jerusalem in 614. The "True Cross" was captured by the Persians. The Jewish Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen may also have provided support. Nehemiah ben Hushiel was made governor of Jerusalem. Christian historians of the period claimed the Jews massacred Christians in the city, but there is no archeological evidence of destruction, leading modern historians to question their accounts. In 628, Kavad II (son of Kosrow) returned Palestine and the True Cross to the Byzantines and signed a peace treaty with them. Following the Byzantine re-entry, Heraclius massacred the Jewish population of Galilee and Jerusalem, while renewing the ban on Jews entering the latter.
The Levant was conquered by an Arab army under the command of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb in 635, and became the province of Bilad al-Sham of the Rashidun Caliphate. Two military districts—Jund Filastin and Jund al-Urdunn—were established in Palestine. A new city called Ramlah was built as the Muslim capital of Jund Filastin, while Tiberias served as the capital of Jund al-Urdunn. The Byzantine ban on Jews living in Jerusalem came to an end.
In 661, Muawiyah was crowned Caliph in Jerusalem, becoming the first of the (Damascus-based) Umayyad dynasty. In 691, Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705) constructed the Dome of the Rock shrine on the Temple Mount, where the two Jewish temples had been located. A second building, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, was also erected on the Temple Mount in 705. Both buildings were rebuilt in the 10th century following a series of earthquakes.
In 750, Arab discrimination against non-Arab Muslims led to the Abbasid Revolution and the Umayyads were replaced by the Abbasid Caliphs who built a new city, Baghdad, to be their capital. This period is known as the Islamic Golden Age, the Arab Empire was the largest in the world and Baghdad the largest and richest city. Both Arabs and minorities prospered across the region and much scientific progress was made. There were however setbacks: During the 8th century, the Caliph Umar II introduced a law requiring Jews and Christians to wear identifying clothing. Jews were required to wear yellow stars round their neck and on their hats, Christians had to wear Blue. Clothing regulations arose during repressive periods of Arab rule and were more designed to humiliate then persecute non-Muslims. A poll tax was imposed on all non-Muslims by Islamic rulers and failure to pay could result in imprisonment or worse.
In 982, Caliph Al-Aziz Billah of the Cairo-based Fatimid dynasty conquered the region. The Fatimids were followers of Isma'ilism, a branch of Shia Islam and claimed descent from Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. Around the year 1010, the Church of Holy Sepulchre (believed to be Jesus burial site), was destroyed by Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, who relented ten years later and paid for it to be rebuilt. In 1020 al-Hakim claimed divine status and the newly formed Druze religion gave him the status of a messiah.
Although the Arab conquest was relatively peaceful and did not cause widespread destruction, it did alter the country's demographics significantly. Over the ensuing several centuries, the region experienced a drastic decline in its population, from an estimated 1 million during Roman and Byzantine times to some 300,000 by the early Ottoman period. This demographic collapse was accompanied by a slow process of Islamization, that resulted from the flight of non-Muslim populations, immigration of Muslims, and local conversion. The majority of the remaining populace belonged to the lowest classes. While the Arab conquerors themselves left the area after the conquest and moved on to other places, the settlement of Arab tribes in the area both before and after the conquest also contributed to the Islamization. As a result, the Muslim population steadily grew and the area became gradually dominated by Muslims on a political and social level.
During the early Islamic period, many Christians and Samaritans, belonging to the Byzantine upper class, migrated from the coastal cities to northern Syria and Cyprus, which were still under Byzantine control, while others fled to the central highlands and the Transjordan. As a result, the coastal towns, formerly important economic centers connected with the rest of the Byzantine world, were emptied of most of their residents. Some of these cities—namely Ashkelon, Acre, Arsuf, and Gaza—now fortified border towns, were resettled by Muslim populations, who developed them into significant Muslim centers. The region of Samaria also underwent a process of Islamization as a result of waves of conversion among the Samaritan population and the influx of Muslims into the area. The predominantly Jacobite Monophysitic Christian population had been hostile to Byzantium orthodoxy, and at times for that reason welcomed Muslim rule. There is no strong evidence for forced conversion, or for possibility that the jizya tax significantly affected such changes.
The demographic situation in Palestine was further altered by urban decline under the Abbasids, and it is thought that the 749 earthquake hastened this process by causing an increase in the number of Jews, Christians, and Samaritans who emigrated to diaspora communities while also leaving behind others who remained in the devastated cities and poor villages until they converted to Islam. Historical records and archeological evidence suggest that many Samaritans converted under Abbasid and Tulunid rule, after suffering through severe difficulties such droughts, earthquakes, religious persecution, heavy taxes and anarchy. The same region also saw the settlement of Arabs. Over the period, the Samaritan population drastically decreased, with the rural Samaritan population converting to Islam, and small urban communities remaining in Nablus and Caesarea, as well as in Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Sarepta. Nevertheless, the Muslim population remained a minority in a predominantly Christian area, and it is likely that this status persisted until the Crusader period.
In 1095, Pope Urban II called upon Christians to wage a holy war and recapture Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Responding to this call, Christians launched the First Crusade in the same year, a military campaign aimed at retaking the Holy Land, ultimately resulting in the successful siege and conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. In the same year, the Crusaders conquered Beit She'an and Tiberias, and in the following decade, they captured coastal cities with the support of Italian city-state fleets, establishing these coastal ports as crucial strongholds for Crusader rule in the region.
Following the First Crusade, several Crusader states were established in the Levant, with the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Regnum Hierosolymitanum) assuming a preeminent position and enjoying special status among them. The population consisted predominantly of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Samaritans, while the Crusaders remained a minority and relied on the local population who worked the soil. The region saw the construction of numerous robust castles and fortresses, yet efforts to establish permanent European villages proved unsuccessful.
Around 1180, Raynald of Châtillon, ruler of Transjordan, caused increasing conflict with the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin (Salah-al-Din), leading to the defeat of the Crusaders in the 1187 Battle of Hattin (above Tiberias). Saladin was able to peacefully take Jerusalem and conquered most of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin's court physician was Maimonides, a refugee from Almohad (Muslim) persecution in Córdoba, Spain, where all non-Muslim religions had been banned.
The Christian world's response to the loss of Jerusalem came in the Third Crusade of 1190. After lengthy battles and negotiations, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin concluded the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192 whereby Christians were granted free passage to make pilgrimages to the holy sites, while Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule. In 1229, Jerusalem peacefully reverted into Christian control as part of a treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil that ended the Sixth Crusade. In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarezmian Tatars who decimated the city's Christian population, drove out the Jews and razed the city. The Khwarezmians were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247.
Between 1258 and 1291, the area was the frontier between Mongol invaders (occasional Crusader allies) and the Mamluks of Egypt. The conflict impoverished the country and severely reduced the population. In Egypt a caste of warrior slaves, known as the Mamluks, gradually took control of the kingdom. The Mamluks were mostly of Turkish origin, and were bought as children and then trained in warfare. They were highly prized warriors, who gave rulers independence of the native aristocracy. In Egypt they took control of the kingdom following a failed invasion by the Crusaders (Seventh Crusade). The first Mamluk Sultan, Qutuz of Egypt, defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ain Jalut ("Goliath's spring" near Ein Harod), ending the Mongol advances. He was assassinated by one of his Generals, Baibars, who went on to eliminate most of the Crusader outposts. The Mamluks ruled Palestine until 1516, regarding it as part of Syria. In Hebron, Jews were banned from worshipping at the Cave of the Patriarchs (the second-holiest site in Judaism); they were only allowed to enter 7 steps inside the site and the ban remained in place until Israel assumed control of the West Bank in the Six Days War. The Egyptian Mamluk sultan Al-Ashraf Khalil conquered the last outpost of Crusader rule in 1291.
The Mamluks, continuing the policy of the Ayyubids, made the strategic decision to destroy the coastal area and to bring desolation to many of its cities, from Tyre in the north to Gaza in the south. Ports were destroyed and various materials were dumped to make them inoperable. The goal was to prevent attacks from the sea, given the fear of the return of the Crusaders. This had a long-term effect on those areas, which remained sparsely populated for centuries. The activity in that time concentrated more inland.
With the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain and 1497 persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal, many Jews moved eastward, with some deciding to settle in the Mamluk Palestine. As a consequence, the local Jewish community underwent significant rejuvenation. The influx of Sephardic Jews began under Mamluk rule in the 15th century, and continued throughout the 16th century and especially after the Ottoman conquest. As city-dwellers, the majority of Sephardic Jews preferred to settle in urban areas, mainly in Safed but also in Jerusalem, while the Musta'arbi community comprised the majority of the villagers' Jews.
Under the Mamluks, the area was a province of Bilad a-Sham (Syria). It was conquered by Turkish Sultan Selim I in 1516–17, becoming a part of the province of Ottoman Syria for the next four centuries, first as the Damascus Eyalet and later as the Syria Vilayet (following the Tanzimat reorganization of 1864).
With the more favorable conditions that followed the Ottoman conquest, the immigration of Jews fleeing Catholic Europe, which had already begun under Mamluk rule, continued, and soon an influx of exiled Sephardic Jews came to dominate the Jewish community in the area.
In 1558 Selim II (1566–1574), successor to Suleiman, whose wife Nurbanu Sultan was Jewish, gave control of Tiberias to Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, one of the richest women in Europe and an escapee from the Inquisition. She encouraged Jewish refugees to settle in the area and established a Hebrew printing press. Safed became a centre for study of the Kabbalah. Doña Nasi's nephew, Joseph Nasi, was made governor of Tiberias and he encouraged Jewish settlement from Italy.
In 1660, a Druze power struggle led to the destruction of Safed and Tiberias. In the late 18th century a local Arab sheikh Zahir al-Umar created a de facto independent Emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the Sheikh failed, but after Zahir's death the Ottomans restored their rule in the area.
In 1799 Napoleon briefly occupied the country and planned a proclamation inviting Jews to create a state. The proclamation was shelved following his defeat at Acre. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, an Ottoman ruler who left the Empire and tried to modernize Egypt, conquered Ottoman Syria and imposed conscription, leading to the Arab revolt.
In 1838 there was another Druze revolt. In 1839 Moses Montefiore met with Muhammed Pasha in Egypt and signed an agreement to establish 100–200 Jewish villages in the Damascus Eyalet of Ottoman Syria, but in 1840 the Egyptians withdrew before the deal was implemented, returning the area to Ottoman governorship. In 1844, Jews constituted the largest population group in Jerusalem. By 1896 Jews constituted an absolute majority in Jerusalem, but the overall population in Palestine was 88% Muslim and 9% Christian.
Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews moved to Palestine, known as the First Aliyah. In the Russian Empire, Jews faced growing persecution and legal restrictions. Half the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire, where they were restricted to living in the Pale of Settlement. Severe pogroms in the early 1880s and legal repression led to 2 million Jews emigrating from the Russian Empire. 1.5 million went to the United States. Popular destinations were also Germany, France, England, Holland, Argentina and Palestine.
Russian Jews established the Bilu and Hovevei Zion ("Lovers of Zion") movements with the aim of settling in Palestine. In 1878, Russian Jewish emigrants established the village of Petah Tikva ("The Beginning of Hope"), followed by Rishon LeZion ("First to Zion") in 1882. The existing Ashkenazi-Jewish communities were concentrated in the Four Holy Cities, extremely poor and relied on donations (halukka) from groups abroad, while the new settlements were small farming communities, but still relied on funding by the French Baron, Edmond James de Rothschild, who sought to establish profitable enterprises. Many early migrants could not find work and left, but despite the problems, more settlements arose and the community grew. After the Ottoman conquest of Yemen in 1881, a large number of Yemenite Jews also emigrated to Palestine, often driven by Messianism.
In 1896 Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he asserted that the solution to growing antisemitism in Europe (the so-called "Jewish Question") was to establish a Jewish state. In 1897, the World Zionist Organization was founded and the First Zionist Congress proclaimed its aim "to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law." The Congress chose Hatikvah ("The Hope") as its anthem.
Between 1904 and 1914, around 40,000 Jews settled in the area now known as Israel (the Second Aliyah). In 1908 the World Zionist Organization set up the Palestine Bureau (also known as the "Eretz Israel Office") in Jaffa and began to adopt a systematic Jewish settlement policy. In 1909 residents of Jaffa bought land outside the city walls and built the first entirely Hebrew-speaking town, Ahuzat Bayit (later renamed Tel Aviv).
In 1915-1916 Talaat Pasha of the Young Turks forced around a million Armenian Christians from their homes in Eastern Turkey, marching them south through Syria, in what is now known as the Armenian genocide. The number of dead is thought to be around 700,000. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. A community of survivors settled in Jerusalem, one of whom developed the now iconic Armenian pottery.
During World War I, most Jews supported the Germans because they were fighting the Russians who were regarded as the Jews' main enemy. In Britain, the government sought Jewish support for the war effort for a variety of reasons including an antisemitic perception of "Jewish power" in the Ottoman Empire's Young Turks movement which was based in Thessaloniki, the most Jewish city in Europe (40% of the 160,000 population were Jewish). The British also hoped to secure American Jewish support for US intervention on Britain's behalf.
There was already sympathy for the aims of Zionism in the British government, including the Prime Minister Lloyd George. Over 14,000 Jews were expelled by the Ottoman military commander from the Jaffa area in 1914–1915, due to suspicions they were subjects of Russia, an enemy, or Zionists wishing to detach Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and when the entire population, including Muslims, of both Jaffa and Tel Aviv was subject to an expulsion order in April 1917, the affected Jews could not return until the British conquest ended in 1918, which drove the Turks out of Southern Syria. A year prior, in 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, sent a public letter to the British Lord Rothschild, a leading member of his party and leader of the Jewish community. The letter subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration. It stated that the British Government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration provided the British government with a pretext for claiming and governing the country. New Middle Eastern boundaries were decided by an agreement between British and French bureaucrats.
A Jewish Legion composed largely of Zionist volunteers organized by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor participated in the British invasion. It also participated in the failed Gallipoli Campaign. The Nili Zionist spy network provided the British with details of Ottoman plans and troop concentrations.
After pushing out the Ottomans, Palestine came under martial law. The British, French and Arab Occupied Enemy Territory Administration governed the area shortly before the armistice with the Ottomans until the promulgation of the mandate in 1920.
The British Mandate (in effect, British rule) of Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration, was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and came into effect in 1923. The territory of Transjordan was also covered by the Mandate but under separate rules that excluded it from the Balfour Declaration. Britain signed a treaty with the United States (which did not join the League of Nations) in which the United States endorsed the terms of the Mandate, which was approved unanimously by both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
The Balfour declaration was published on the 2nd of November 1917 and the Bolsheviks seized control of Russia a week later. This led to civil war in the Russian Empire. Between 1918 and 1921, a series of pogroms led to the death of at least 100,000 Jews (mainly in what is now Ukraine), and the displacement as refugees of a further 600,000. This led to further migration to Palestine. Between 1919 and 1923, some 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine in what is known as the Third Aliyah. Many of the Jewish immigrants of this period were Socialist Zionists and supported the Bolsheviks. The migrants became known as pioneers (halutzim), experienced or trained in agriculture who established self-sustaining communes called kibbutzim. Malarial marshes in the Jezreel Valley and Hefer Plain were drained and converted to agricultural use. Land was bought by the Jewish National Fund, a Zionist charity that collected money abroad for that purpose.
After the French victory over the Arab Kingdom of Syria ended hopes of Arab independence, there were clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and in Jaffa the following year, leading to the establishment of the Haganah underground Jewish militia. A Jewish Agency was created which issued the entry permits granted by the British and distributed funds donated by Jews abroad. Between 1924 and 1929, over 80,000 Jews arrived in the Fourth Aliyah, fleeing antisemitism and heavy tax burdens imposed on trade in Poland and Hungary, inspired by Zionism and motivated by the closure of United States borders by the Immigration Act of 1924 which severely limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.
Pinhas Rutenberg, a former Commissar of St Petersburg in Russia's pre-Bolshevik Kerensky Government, built the first electricity generators in Palestine. In 1925 the Jewish Agency established the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion (technological university) in Haifa. British authorities introduced the Palestine pound (worth 1000 "mils") in 1927, replacing the Egyptian pound as the unit of currency in the Mandate.
From 1928, the democratically elected Va'ad Leumi (Jewish National Council or JNC) became the main administrative institution of the Palestine Jewish community (Yishuv) and included non-Zionist Jews. As the Yishuv grew, the JNC adopted more government-type functions, such as education, health care, and security. With British permission, the Va'ad Leumi raised its own taxes and ran independent services for the Jewish population.
In 1929 tensions grew over the Kotel (Wailing Wall), the holiest spot in the world for modern Judaism, which was then a narrow alleyway where the British banned Jews from using chairs or curtains: Many of the worshippers were elderly and needed seats; they also wanted to separate women from men. The Mufti of Jerusalem said it was Muslim property and deliberately had cattle driven through the alley. He alleged that the Jews were seeking control of the Temple Mount. This provided the spark for the August 1929 Palestine riots. The main victims were the (non-Zionist) ancient Jewish community at Hebron, who were massacred. The riots led to right-wing Zionists establishing their own militia in 1931, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (National Military Organization, known in Hebrew by its acronym "Etzel"), which was committed to a more aggressive policy towards the Arab population.
During the interwar period, the perception grew that there was an irreconciliable tension between the two Mandatory functions, of providing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the goal of preparing the country for self-determination. The British rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give the Arab population, who formed the majority of the population, control over Palestinian territory.
Between 1929 and 1938, 250,000 Jews arrived in Palestine (Fifth Aliyah). In 1933, the Jewish Agency and the Nazis negotiated the Ha'avara Agreement (transfer agreement), under which 50,000 German Jews would be transferred to Palestine. The Jews' possessions were confiscated and in return the Nazis allowed the Ha'avara organization to purchase 14 million pounds worth of German goods for export to Palestine and use it to compensate the immigrants. Although many Jews wanted to leave Nazi Germany, the Nazis prevented Jews from taking any money and restricted them to two suitcases so few could pay the British entry tax and many were afraid to leave. The agreement was controversial and the Labour Zionist leader who negotiated the agreement, Haim Arlosoroff, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1933. The assassination was used by the British to create tension between the Zionist left and the Zionist right. Arlosoroff had been the boyfriend of Magda Ritschel some years before she married Joseph Goebbels. There has been speculation that he was assassinated by the Nazis to hide the connection but there is no evidence for it.
Between 1933 and 1936, 174,000 arrived despite the large sums the British demanded for immigration permits: Jews had to prove they had 1,000 pounds for families with capital (equivalent to £72,286 in 2021), 500 pounds if they had a profession and 250 pounds if they were skilled labourers.
Jewish immigration and Nazi propaganda contributed to the large-scale 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, a largely nationalist uprising directed at ending British rule. The head of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, responded to the Arab Revolt with a policy of "Havlagah"—self-restraint and a refusal to be provoked by Arab attacks in order to prevent polarization. The Etzel group broke off from the Haganah in opposition to this policy.
The British responded to the revolt with the Peel Commission (1936–37), a public inquiry that recommended that an exclusively Jewish territory be created in the Galilee and western coast (including the population transfer of 225,000 Arabs); the rest becoming an exclusively Arab area. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation. The plan was rejected outright by the Palestinian Arab leadership and they renewed the revolt, which caused the British to appease the Arabs, and to abandon the plan as unworkable.
Testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said "There are in Europe 6,000,000 people ... for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter." In 1938, the US called an international conference to address the question of the vast numbers of Jews trying to escape Europe. Britain made its attendance contingent on Palestine being kept out of the discussion. No Jewish representatives were invited. The Nazis proposed their own solution: that the Jews of Europe be shipped to Madagascar (the Madagascar Plan). The agreement proved fruitless, and the Jews were stuck in Europe.
With millions of Jews trying to leave Europe and every country in the world closed to Jewish migration, the British decided to close Palestine. The White Paper of 1939, recommended that an independent Palestine, governed jointly by Arabs and Jews, be established within 10 years. The White Paper agreed to allow 75,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine over the period 1940–44, after which migration would require Arab approval. Both the Arab and Jewish leadership rejected the White Paper. In March 1940 the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of Palestine. Jews now resorted to illegal immigration: (Aliyah Bet or "Ha'apalah"), often organized by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet and the Irgun. With no outside help and no countries ready to admit them, very few Jews managed to escape Europe between 1939 and 1945. Those caught by the British were mostly imprisoned in Mauritius.
During the Second World War, the Jewish Agency worked to establish a Jewish army that would fight alongside the British forces. Churchill supported the plan but British Military and government opposition led to its rejection. The British demanded that the number of Jewish recruits match the number of Arab recruits.
In June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties. In May 1941, the Palmach was established to defend the Yishuv against the planned Axis invasion through North Africa. The British refusal to provide arms to the Jews, even when Rommel's forces were advancing through Egypt in June 1942 (intent on occupying Palestine) and the 1939 White Paper, led to the emergence of a Zionist leadership in Palestine that believed conflict with Britain was inevitable. Despite this, the Jewish Agency called on Palestine's Jewish youth to volunteer for the British Army (both men and women). 30,000 Palestinian Jews and 12,000 Palestinian Arabs enlisted in the British armed forces during the war. In June 1944 the British agreed to create a Jewish Brigade that would fight in Italy.
Approximately 1.5 million Jews around the world served in every branch of the allied armies, mainly in the Soviet and US armies. 200,000 Jews died serving in the Soviet army alone.
A small group (about 200 activists), dedicated to resisting the British administration in Palestine, broke away from the Etzel (which advocated support for Britain during the war) and formed the "Lehi" (Stern Gang), led by Avraham Stern. In 1942, the USSR released the Revisionist Zionist leader Menachem Begin from the Gulag and he went to Palestine, taking command of the Etzel organization with a policy of increased conflict against the British. At about the same time Yitzhak Shamir escaped from the camp in Eritrea where the British were holding Lehi activists without trial, taking command of the Lehi (Stern Gang).
Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the war. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were used as slaves. The 1941 pro-Axis coup in Iraq was accompanied by massacres of Jews. The Jewish Agency put together plans for a last stand in the event of Rommel invading Palestine (the Nazis planned to exterminate Palestine's Jews).
Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis, aided by local forces, led systematic efforts to kill every person of Jewish extraction in Europe (The Holocaust), causing the deaths of approximately 6 million Jews. A quarter of those killed were children. The Polish and German Jewish communities, which played an important role in defining the pre-1945 Jewish world, mostly ceased to exist. In the United States and Palestine, Jews of European origin became disconnected from their families and roots. As the Holocaust mainly affected Ashkenazi Jews, Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews, who had been a minority, became a much more significant factor in the Jewish world. Those Jews who survived in central Europe, were displaced persons (refugees); an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, established to examine the Palestine issue, surveyed their ambitions and found that over 95% wanted to migrate to Palestine.
In the Zionist movement the moderate Pro-British (and British citizen) Weizmann, whose son died flying in the RAF, was undermined by Britain's anti-Zionist policies. Leadership of the movement passed to the Jewish Agency in Palestine, now led by the anti-British Socialist-Zionist party (Mapai) led by David Ben-Gurion.
The British Empire was severely weakened by the war. In the Middle East, the war had made Britain conscious of its dependence on Arab oil. British firms controlled Iraqi oil and Britain ruled Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates. Shortly after VE Day, the Labour Party won the general election in Britain. Although Labour Party conferences had for years called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Labour government now decided to maintain the 1939 White Paper policies.
Illegal migration (Aliyah Bet) became the main form of Jewish entry into Palestine. Across Europe Bricha ("flight"), an organization of former partisans and ghetto fighters, smuggled Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe to Mediterranean ports, where small boats tried to breach the British blockade of Palestine. Meanwhile, Jews from Arab countries began moving into Palestine overland. Despite British efforts to curb immigration, during the 14 years of the Aliyah Bet, over 110,000 Jews entered Palestine. By the end of World War II, the Jewish population of Palestine had increased to 33% of the total population.
In an effort to win independence, Zionists now waged a guerrilla war against the British. The main underground Jewish militia, the Haganah, formed an alliance called the Jewish Resistance Movement with the Etzel and Stern Gang to fight the British. In June 1946, following instances of Jewish sabotage, such as in the Night of the Bridges, the British launched Operation Agatha, arresting 2,700 Jews, including the leadership of the Jewish Agency, whose headquarters were raided. Those arrested were held without trial.
On 4 July 1946 a massive pogrom in Poland led to a wave of Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe for Palestine. Three weeks later, Irgun bombed the British Military Headquarters of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people. In the days following the bombing, Tel Aviv was placed under curfew and over 120,000 Jews, nearly 20% of the Jewish population of Palestine, were questioned by the police. In the US, Congress criticized British handling of the situation and considered delaying loans that were vital to British post-war recovery. The alliance between Haganah and Etzel was dissolved after the King David bombings.
Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland. Their departure was largely organized by Zionist activists in Poland under the umbrella of the semi-clandestine organization Berihah ("Flight"). Berihah was also responsible for the organized emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, totalling 250,000 (including Poland) Holocaust survivors. The British imprisoned the Jews trying to enter Palestine in the Atlit detainee camp and Cyprus internment camps. Those held were mainly Holocaust survivors, including large numbers of children and orphans. In response to Cypriot fears that the Jews would never leave (since they lacked a state or documentation) and because the 75,000 quota established by the 1939 White Paper had never been filled, the British allowed the refugees to enter Palestine at a rate of 750 per month.
By 1947 the Labour Government in Britain was ready to refer the Palestine problem to the newly created United Nations.
On 2 April 1947, the United Kingdom requested that the question of Palestine be handled by the General Assembly. The General Assembly created a committee, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to report on "the question of Palestine". In July 1947 the UNSCOP visited Palestine and met with Jewish and Zionist delegations. The Arab Higher Committee boycotted the meetings. During the visit the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin ordered that passengers from an Aliyah Bet ship, SS Exodus 1947, to be sent back to Europe. The Holocaust surviving migrants on the ship were forcibly removed by British troops at Hamburg, Germany.
The principal non-Zionist Orthodox Jewish (or Haredi) party, Agudat Israel, recommended to UNSCOP that a Jewish state be set up after reaching a religious status quo agreement with Ben-Gurion regarding the future Jewish state. The agreement granted an exemption from military service to a quota of yeshiva (religious seminary) students and to all Orthodox women, made the Sabbath the national weekend, guaranteed kosher food in government institutions and allowed Orthodox Jews to maintain a separate education system.
The majority report of UNSCOP proposed "an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem", the last to be under "an International Trusteeship System". On 29 November 1947, in Resolution 181 (II), the General Assembly adopted the majority report of UNSCOP, but with slight modifications. The Plan also called for the British to allow "substantial" Jewish migration by 1 February 1948.
Neither Britain nor the UN Security Council took any action to implement the recommendation made by the resolution and Britain continued detaining Jews attempting to enter Palestine. Concerned that partition would severely damage Anglo-Arab relations, Britain denied UN representatives access to Palestine during the period between the adoption of Resolution 181 (II) and the termination of the British Mandate. The British withdrawal was finally completed in May 1948. However, Britain continued to hold (formerly illegal) Jewish immigrants of "fighting age" and their families on Cyprus until March 1949.
The General Assembly's vote caused joy in the Jewish community and anger in the Arab community. Violence broke out between the sides, escalating into civil war. From January 1948, operations became increasingly militarized, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria. Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, he organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. The Yishuv tried to supply the city using convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but largely failed. By March, almost all Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed.
Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres eastwards. This situation caused the US to withdraw their support for the Partition plan, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan for partition. The British, on the other hand, decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan. The Jordanian army was commanded by the British.
David Ben-Gurion reorganized the Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in the country had to receive military training. Thanks to funds raised by Golda Meir from sympathisers in the United States, and Stalin's decision to support the Zionist cause, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to purchase important arms in Eastern Europe.
Ben-Gurion gave Yigael Yadin the responsibility to plan for the announced intervention of the Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet, in which Haganah passed from the defensive to the offensive. The plan sought to establish Jewish territorial continuity by conquering mixed zones. Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Beisan, Jaffa and Acre fell, resulting in the flight of more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs. The situation was one of the catalysts for the intervention of neighbouring Arab states.
On 14 May 1948, on the day the last British forces left from Haifa, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.
Immediately following the declaration of the new state, both superpower leaders, US President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, recognized the new state.
The Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine. The Arab states marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine, starting the first Arab–Israeli War. After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state, the tide turned in the Israelis' favour and they pushed the Arab armies back beyond the borders of the proposed Arab state.
On 29 May 1948, the British initiated United Nations Security Council Resolution 50 declaring an arms embargo on the region. Czechoslovakia violated the resolution, supplying the Jewish state with critical military hardware to match the (mainly British) heavy equipment and planes already owned by the invading Arab states. On 11 June, a month-long UN truce was put into effect.
Following independence, the Haganah became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The Palmach, Etzel and Lehi were required to cease independent operations and join the IDF. During the ceasefire, Etzel attempted to bring in a private arms shipment aboard a ship called "Altalena". When they refused to hand the arms to the government, Ben-Gurion ordered that the ship be sunk. Several Etzel members were killed in the fighting.
Large numbers of Jewish immigrants, many of them World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors, now began arriving in the new state of Israel, and many joined the IDF.
After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state and its occupation by the Arab armies, from July the tide gradually turned in the Israelis' favour and they pushed the Arab armies out and conquered some of the territory that had been included in the proposed Arab state. At the end of November, tenuous local ceasefires were arranged between the Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese. On 1 December King Abdullah announced the union of Transjordan with Arab Palestine west of the Jordan; only Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation.
Israel signed armistices with Egypt (24 February), Lebanon (23 March), Jordan (3 April) and Syria (20 July). No actual peace agreements were signed. With permanent ceasefire coming into effect, Israel's new borders, later known as the Green Line, were established. These borders were not recognized by the Arab states as international boundaries. Israel was in control of the Galilee, Jezreel Valley, West Jerusalem, the coastal plain and the Negev. The Syrians remained in control of a strip of territory along the Sea of Galilee originally allocated to the Jewish state, the Lebanese occupied a tiny area at Rosh Hanikra, and the Egyptians retained the Gaza strip and still had some forces surrounded inside Israeli territory. Jordanian forces remained in the West Bank, where the British had stationed them before the war. Jordan annexed the areas it occupied while Egypt kept Gaza as an occupied zone.
Following the ceasefire declaration, Britain released over 2,000 Jewish detainees it was still holding in Cyprus and recognized the state of Israel. On 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations. Out of an Israeli population of 650,000, some 6,000 men and women were killed in the fighting, including 4,000 soldiers in the IDF (approximately 1% of the Jewish population). According to United Nations figures, 726,000 Palestinians had fled or were expelled by the Israelis between 1947 and 1949.
A 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, met first in Tel Aviv then moved to Jerusalem after the 1949 ceasefire. In January 1949, Israel held its first elections. The Socialist-Zionist parties Mapai and Mapam won the most seats (46 and 19 respectively). Mapai's leader, David Ben-Gurion, was appointed Prime Minister, he formed a coalition which did not include Mapam who were Stalinist and loyal to the USSR (another Stalinist party, non-Zionist Maki won 4 seats). This was a significant decision, as it signaled that Israel would not be in the Soviet bloc. The Knesset elected Chaim Weizmann as the first (largely ceremonial) President of Israel. Hebrew and Arabic were made the official languages of the new state. All governments have been coalitions—no party has ever won a majority in the Knesset. From 1948 until 1977 all governments were led by Mapai and the Alignment, predecessors of the Labour Party. In those years Labour Zionists, initially led by David Ben-Gurion, dominated Israeli politics and the economy was run on primarily socialist lines.
Within three years (1948 to 1951), immigration doubled the Jewish population of Israel and left an indelible imprint on Israeli society. Overall, 700,000 Jews settled in Israel during this period. Some 300,000 arrived from Asian and North African nations as part of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. Among them, the largest group (over 100,000) was from Iraq. The rest of the immigrants were from Europe, including more than 270,000 who came from Eastern Europe, mainly Romania and Poland (over 100,000 each). Nearly all the Jewish immigrants could be described as refugees, however only 136,000 who immigrated to Israel from Central Europe, had international certification because they belonged to the 250,000 Jews registered by the allies as displaced after World War II and living in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.
In 1950 the Knesset passed the Law of Return, which granted to all Jews and those of Jewish ancestry (Jewish grandparent), and their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and gain citizenship. That year, 50,000 Yemenite Jews (99%) were secretly flown to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. In 1951 Iraqi Jews were granted temporary permission to leave the country and 120,000 (over 90%) opted to move to Israel as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Jews also fled from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. By the late sixties, about 500,000 Jews had left Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Over the course of twenty years, some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries (99%) relocated to Israel (680,000), France and the Americas. The land and property left behind by the Jews (much of it in Arab city centres) is still a matter of some dispute. Today there are about 9,000 Jews living in Arab states, of whom 75% live in Morocco and 15% in Tunisia. Vast assets, approximately $150 billion worth of goods and property (before inflation) were left behind in these countries.
Between 1948 and 1958, the population of Israel rose from 800,000 to two million. During this period, food, clothes and furniture had to be rationed in what became known as the Austerity Period (Tkufat haTsena). Immigrants were mostly refugees with no money or possessions and many were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot. By 1952, over 200,000 immigrants were living in tents or prefabricated shacks built by the government. Israel received financial aid from private donations from outside the country (mainly the United States). The pressure on the new state's finances led Ben-Gurion to sign a controversial reparations agreement with West Germany. During the Knesset debate some 5,000 demonstrators gathered and riot police had to cordon the building. Israel received several billion marks and in return agreed to open diplomatic relations with Germany.
In 1949, education was made free and compulsory for all citizens until the age of 14. The state now funded the party-affiliated Zionist education system and a new body created by the Haredi Agudat Israel party. A separate body was created to provide education for the remaining Palestinian-Arab population. The major political parties now competed for immigrants to join their education systems. The government banned the existing educational bodies from the transit camps and tried to mandate a unitary secular socialist education under the control of "camp managers" who also had to provide work, food and housing for the immigrants. There were attempts to force orthodox Yemenite children to adopt a secular life style by teachers, including many instances of Yemenite children having their side-curls cut by teachers. The Yemenite Children Affair led to the first Israeli public inquiry (the Fromkin Inquiry), the collapse of the coalition, and an election in 1951.
In its early years Israel sought to maintain a non-aligned position between the super-powers. However, in 1952, an antisemitic public trial was staged in Moscow in which a group of Jewish doctors were accused of trying to poison Stalin (the Doctors' plot), followed by a similar trial in Czechoslovakia (Slánský trial). This, and the failure of Israel to be included in the Bandung Conference of 1955 (of non-aligned states), effectively ended Israel's pursuit of non-alignment.
On 19 May 1950, in contravention of international law, Egypt announced that the Suez Canal was closed to Israeli ships and commerce. In 1952 a military coup in Egypt brought Abdel Nasser to power. The United States pursued close relations with the new Arab states, particularly the Nasser-led Egyptian Free Officers Movement and Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Israel's solution to diplomatic isolation was to establish good relations with newly independent states in Africa and with France, which was engaged in the Algerian War.
In the January 1955 elections Mapai won 40 seats and the Labour Party 10, Moshe Sharett became prime minister of Israel at the head of a left-wing coalition. Between 1953 and 1956, there were intermittent clashes along all of Israel's borders as Arab terrorism and breaches of the ceasefire resulting in Israeli counter-raids. Palestinian fedayeen attacks, often organized and sponsored by the Egyptians, were made from (Egyptian) occupied Gaza. Fedayeen attacks led to a growing cycle of violence as Israel launched reprisal attacks against Gaza. In 1954 the Uzi submachine gun first entered use by the Israel Defense Forces. In 1955 the Egyptian government began recruiting former Nazi rocket scientists for a missile program.
Sharett's government was brought down by the Lavon Affair, a crude plan to disrupt US–Egyptian relations, involving Israeli agents planting bombs at American sites in Egypt. The plan failed when eleven agents were arrested. Defense Minister Lavon was blamed despite his denial of responsibility. The Lavon affair led to Sharett's resignation and Ben-Gurion returned to the post of prime minister.
In 1955 Egypt concluded a massive arms deal with Czechoslovakia, upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East. In 1956, the increasingly pro-Soviet President Nasser of Egypt, announced the nationalization of the (French and British owned) Suez Canal, which was Egypt's main source of foreign currency. Egypt also blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba preventing Israeli access to the Red Sea. Israel made a secret agreement with the French at Sèvres to co-ordinate military operations against Egypt. Britain and France had already begun secret preparations for military action. It has been alleged that the French also agreed to build a nuclear plant for the Israelis and that by 1968 this was able to produce nuclear weapons. Britain and France arranged for Israel to give them a pretext for seizing the Suez Canal. Israel was to attack Egypt, and Britain and France would then call on both sides to withdraw. When, as expected, the Egyptians refused, Anglo-French forces would invade to take control of the Canal.
Israeli forces, commanded by General Moshe Dayan, launched Operation Kadesh against Egypt on 29 October 1956. On 30 October Britain and France made their pre-arranged call for both sides to stop fighting and withdraw from the Canal area, and for them to be allowed to take up positions at key points on the Canal. Egypt refused and the allies commenced air strikes on 31 October aimed at neutralizing the Egyptian air force. By 5 November the Israelis had overrun the Sinai. The Anglo-French invasion began that day. There was uproar in the UN, with the United States and USSR for once in agreement in denouncing the actions of Israel, Britain and France. A demand for a ceasefire was reluctantly accepted on 7 November.
At Egypt's request, the UN sent an Emergency Force (UNEF), consisting of 6,000 peacekeeping troops from 10 nations to supervise the ceasefire. This was the first ever UN peacekeeping operation. From 15 November the UN troops marked out a zone across the Sinai to separate the Israeli and Egyptian forces. Upon receiving US guarantees of Israeli access to the Suez Canal, freedom of access out of the Gulf of Aqaba and Egyptian action to stop Palestinian raids from Gaza, the Israelis withdrew to the Negev. In practice the Suez Canal remained closed to Israeli shipping. The conflict marked the end of West-European dominance in the Middle East. Nasser emerged as the victor in the conflict, having won the political battle.
In 1956, two modern-orthodox (and religious-zionist) parties, Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi, joined to form the National Religious Party. The party was a component of every Israeli coalition until 1992, usually running the Ministry of Education. Mapai was once again victorious in the 1959 elections, increasing its number of seats to 47, Labour had 7. Ben-Gurion remained Prime Minister.
Rudolph Kastner, a minor political functionary, was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and sued his accuser. Kastner lost the trial and was assassinated two years later. In 1958 the Supreme Court exonerated him. In May 1960 Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief administrators of the Nazi Holocaust, was located in Argentina by the Mossad, later kidnapping him and bringing him to Israel. In 1961 he was put on trial, and after several months found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1962 and is the only person ever sentenced to death by an Israeli court. Testimonies by Holocaust survivors at the trial and the extensive publicity that surrounded it has led the trial to be considered a turning point in public awareness of the Holocaust.
In 1961 a Herut no-confidence motion over the resurfaced Lavon affair led to Ben-Gurion's resignation. Ben-Gurion declared that he would only accept office if Lavon was fired from the position of the head of Histadrut, Israel's labour union organization. His demands were accepted and Mapai won the 1961 election (42 seats keeping Ben-Gurion as PM) with a slight reduction in its share of the seats. Menachem Begin's Herut party and the Liberals came next with 17 seats each. In 1962 the Mossad began assassinating German rocket scientists working in Egypt in Operation Damocles after one of them reported the missile program was designed to carry chemical warheads. This action was condemned by Ben-Gurion and led to the Mossad director, Isser Harel, resignation. In 1963 Ben-Gurion quit again over the Lavon affair. His attempts to make his party Mapai support him over the issue failed. Levi Eshkol became leader of Mapai and the new prime minister.
In 1963 Yigael Yadin began excavating Masada. In 1964, Egypt, Jordan and Syria developed a unified military command. Israel completed work on a national water carrier, a huge engineering project designed to transfer Israel's allocation of the Jordan river's waters towards the south of the country in realization of Ben-Gurion's dream of mass Jewish settlement of the Negev desert. The Arabs responded by trying to divert the headwaters of the Jordan, leading to growing conflict between Israel and Syria.
Ben-Gurion quit Mapai to form the new party Rafi, he was joined by Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan. Begin's Herut party joined with the Liberals to form Gahal. Mapai and Labour united for the 1965 elections, winning 45 seats and maintaining Levi Eshkol as Prime Minister. Ben-Gurion's Rafi party received 10 seats, Gahal got 26 seats becoming the second largest party.
Until 1966, Israel's principal arms supplier was France, however in 1966, following the withdrawal from Algeria, Charles de Gaulle announced France would cease supplying Israel with arms (and refused to refund money paid for 50 warplanes). On 5 February 1966, the United States announced that it was taking over the former French and West German obligations, to maintain military "stabilization" in the Middle East. Included in the military hardware would be over 200 M48 tanks. In May of that year the US also agreed to provide A-4 Skyhawk tactical aircraft to Israel. In 1966 security restrictions placed on Arab-Israelis were eased and efforts made to integrate them into Israeli life.
In 1966, Black and white TV broadcasts began. On 15 May 1967, the first public performance of Naomi Shemer's classic song "Jerusalem of Gold" took place and over the next few weeks it dominated the Israeli airwaves. Two days later Syria, Egypt and Jordan amassed troops along the Israeli borders, and Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Nasser demanded that the UNEF leave Sinai, threatening escalation to a full war. Egyptian radio broadcasts talked of a coming genocide. On 26 May Nasser declared, "The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel". Israel considered the Straits of Tiran closure a Casus belli. Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq signed defence pacts and Iraqi troops began deploying to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Algeria also announced that it would send troops to Egypt. Between 1963 and 1967 Egyptian troops had tested chemical weapons on Yemenite civilians as part of an Egyptian intervention in support of rebels.
On the morning before Dayan was sworn in, 5 June 1967, the Israeli air force launched Operation Focus, a series of pre-emptive attacks in which it pre-emptively attacked the Egyptian air force, kicking off the Six-Day War, and then, later the same day, struck the air forces of Jordan and Syria. By 11 June the Arab forces were routed and all parties had accepted the cease-fire called for by UN Security Council Resolutions 235 and 236. Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the formerly Jordanian-controlled West Bank of the Jordan River. East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel.
The result of the 29 August 1967 Arab League summit was the Khartoum Resolution, which according to Abd al Azim Ramadan, left only one option -a war with Israel.
In 1968 Moshe Levinger led a group of Religious Zionists who created the first Jewish settlement, a town near Hebron called Kiryat Arba. There were no other religious settlements until after 1974. Ben-Gurion's Rafi party merged with the Labour-Mapai alliance. Ben-Gurion remained outside as an independent. In 1968, compulsory education was extended until the age of 16 for all citizens (it had been 14) and the government embarked on an extensive program of integration in education. In the major cities children from mainly Sephardi/Mizrahi neighbourhoods were bused to newly established middle schools in better areas. The system remained in place until after 2000.
In March 1968, Israeli forces attacked the Palestinian militia, Fatah, at its base in the Jordanian town of Karameh. The attack was in response to land mines placed on Israeli roads. The Israelis retreated after destroying the camp, however the Israelis sustained unexpectedly high casualties and the attack was not viewed as a success. Despite heavy casualties, the Palestinians claimed victory, while Fatah and the PLO (of which it formed part) became famous across the Arab world. In early 1969, fighting broke out between Egypt and Israel along the Suez Canal. In retaliation for repeated Egyptian shelling of Israeli positions along the Suez Canal, Israeli planes made deep strikes into Egypt in the 1969–1970 "War of Attrition".
In early 1969, Levi Eshkol died in office of a heart attack and Golda Meir became Prime Minister with the largest percentage of the vote ever won by an Israeli party, winning 56 of the 120 seats after the 1969 election. Meir was the first female prime minister of Israel and the first woman to have headed a Middle Eastern state in modern times. Gahal retained its 26 seats, and was the second largest party.
In September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan drove the Palestine Liberation Organization out of his country. On 18 September 1970, Syrian tanks invaded Jordan, intending to aid the PLO. At the request of the US, Israel moved troops to the border and threatened Syria, causing the Syrians to withdraw. The centre of PLO activity then shifted to Lebanon, where the 1969 Cairo agreement gave the Palestinians autonomy within the south of the country. The area controlled by the PLO became known by the international press and locals as "Fatahland" and contributed to the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War. The event also led to Hafez al-Assad taking power in Syria. Egyptian President Nasser died of a heart attack immediately after and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat.
Increased Soviet antisemitism and enthusiasm generated by the 1967 victory led to a wave of Soviet Jews applying to emigrate to Israel. . Most Jews were refused exit visas and persecuted by the authorities. Some were arrested, becoming known as Prisoners of Zion. During 1971, violent demonstrations by the Israeli Black Panthers, made the Israeli public aware of resentment among Mizrahi Jews at ongoing discrimination and social gaps. In 1972 the US Jewish Mafia leader, Meyer Lansky, who had taken refuge in Israel, was deported to the United States.
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, two members of the Israeli team were killed, and nine members taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. A botched German rescue attempt led to the death of the rest along with five of the eight hijackers. The three surviving Palestinians were released by the West German authorities eight weeks later without charge, in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615. The Israeli government responded with an air raid, a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon (led by future Prime Minister, Ehud Barak) and an assassination campaign against the organizers of the massacre.
In 1972 the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviet advisers from Egypt. This and frequent invasion exercises by Egypt and Syria led to Israeli complacency about the threat from these countries. In addition the desire not to be held responsible for initiating conflict and an election campaign highlighting security, led to an Israeli failure to mobilize, despite receiving warnings of an impending attack.
The Yom Kippur War (also known as the October War) began on 6 October 1973, with the Syrian and Egyptian armies launching a surprise attack against the unprepared Israeli Defense Forces. Both the Soviets and the Americans (at the orders of Henry Kissinger) rushed arms to their allies in Operation Nickel Grass. The Syrians were repulsed at the Valley of Tears on the Golan and, while the Egyptians captured a strip of territory in Sinai, but were outflanked by Israeli forces over the Suez Canal in the Battle of Ismailia, which trapped the Egyptian Third Army in Sinai. On 18 January 1974, US diplomatic efforts led to a Disengagement of Forces agreement with the Egyptian government and on 31 May with the Syrian government.
The war was the catalyst for the 1973 oil crisis, a Saudi-led oil embargo in conjunction with OPEC against countries trading with Israel. Severe shortages led to massive increases in the price of oil, and as a result, many countries broke off relations with Israel or downgraded relations, and Israel was banned from participation in the Asian Games and other Asian sporting events.
Prior to the December 1973 elections, Gahal and a number of right-wing parties united to form the Likud (led by Begin). In the December 1973 elections, Labour won 51 seats, leaving Golda Meir as Prime Minister. The Likud won 39 seats.
In May 1974, Palestinians attacked a school in Ma'alot, holding 102 children hostage. Twenty-two children were killed. In November 1974 the PLO was granted observer status at the UN and Yasser Arafat addressed the General Assembly. Later that year, the Agranat Commission, appointed to assess responsibility for Israel's lack of preparedness for the war, exonerated the government of responsibility, and held the Chief of Staff and head of military intelligence responsible. Despite the report, public anger at the Government led to Golda Meir's resignation.
Following Meir's resignation, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister. Religious Zionist followers of the teachings of Abraham Isaac Kook, formed the Gush Emunim movement, and began an organized drive to settle the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly, under the guidance of Austrian Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, adopted Resolution 3379, which asserted Zionism to be a form of racism. The General Assembly rescinded this resolution in December 1991 with Resolution 46/86. In March 1976, there was a massive strike by Israeli-Arabs in protest at a government plan to expropriate land in the Galilee.
In July 1976, Rabin ordered Operation Entebbe to rescue kidnapped Jewish passengers from an Air France flight hijacked by PFLP militants and German revolutionaries and flown to Uganda.
In January 1977, French authorities arrested Abu Daoud, the planner of the Munich massacre, releasing him a few days later. In March 1977 Anatoly Sharansky, a prominent Refusenik and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group, was sentenced to 13 years' hard labour.
Rabin resigned in April 1977 after it emerged that his wife maintained a dollar account in the United States (illegal at the time), which had been opened while Rabin was Israeli ambassador. The incident became known as the Dollar Account affair. Shimon Peres informally replaced him as prime minister, leading the Alignment in the subsequent elections.
In a surprise result, the Likud led by Menachem Begin won 43 seats in the 1977 elections. This was the first time in Israeli history that the government was not led by the left. In November 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem and spoke at the Knesset at the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Sadat recognized Israel's right to exist and established the basis for direct negotiations between Egypt and Israel. Following Sadat's visit, 350 Yom Kippur War veterans organized the Peace Now movement to encourage Israeli governments to make peace with the Arabs.
In March 1978, eleven armed Lebanese Palestinians reached Israel in boats and carried out the Coastal Road Massacre in opposition to the Egyptian–Israeli peace process. Three days later, Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon beginning Operation Litani. After passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, calling for Israeli withdrawal and the creation of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peace-keeping force, Israel withdrew its troops.
In September 1978, US President Jimmy Carter invited President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin to meet with him at Camp David, and on 11 September they agreed on a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt, and a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. It set out broad principles to guide negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. It also established guidelines for a West Bank–Gaza transitional regime of full autonomy for the Palestinians residing in these territories, and for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The treaty was signed 26 March 1979 by Begin and Sadat, with President Carter signing as witness. Under the treaty, Israel returned the Sinai peninsula to Egypt in April 1982. The Arab League reacted to the peace treaty by suspending Egypt from the organization and moving its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Islamic fundamentalist members of the Egyptian army who opposed peace with Israel. Following the agreement Israel and Egypt became the two largest recipients of US military and financial aid (Iraq and Afghanistan have now overtaken them).
In December 1978 the Israeli Merkava battle tank entered use with the IDF. In 1979, over 40,000 Iranian Jews migrated to Israel, escaping the Islamic Revolution there. On 30 June 1981, the Israeli air force destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Operation Opera that France was building for Iraq. Three weeks later, Begin won again, in the 1981 elections (48 seats Likud, 47 Labour). Ariel Sharon was made defence minister. The new government annexed the Golan Heights and banned the national airline from flying on Shabbat. By the 1980s a diverse set of high-tech industries had developed in Israel.
In the decades following the 1948 war, Israel's border with Lebanon was quiet compared to its borders with other neighbours. But the 1969 Cairo agreement gave the PLO a free hand to attack Israel from South Lebanon. The area was governed by the PLO independently of the Lebanese Government and became known as "Fatahland" (Fatah was the largest faction in the PLO). Palestinian irregulars constantly shelled the Israeli north, especially the town of Kiryat Shmona, which was a Likud stronghold inhabited primarily by Jews who had fled the Arab world. Lack of control over Palestinian areas was an important factor in causing civil war in Lebanon.
In June 1982, the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, the ambassador to Britain, was used as a pretext for an Israeli invasion aiming to drive the PLO out of the southern half of Lebanon. Sharon agreed with Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan to expand the invasion deep into Lebanon even though the cabinet had only authorized a 40 kilometre deep invasion. The invasion became known as the 1982 Lebanon War and the Israeli army occupied Beirut, the only time an Arab capital has been occupied by Israel. Some of the Shia and Christian population of South Lebanon welcomed the Israelis, as PLO forces had maltreated them, but Lebanese resentment of Israeli occupation grew over time and the Shia became gradually radicalized under Iranian guidance. Constant casualties among Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians led to growing opposition to the war in Israel.
In August 1982, the PLO withdrew its forces from Lebanon (moving to Tunisia). Bashir Gemayel was elected President of Lebanon, and reportedly agreed to recognize Israel and sign a peace treaty. However, Gemayal was assassinated before an agreement could be signed, and one day later Phalangist Christian forces led by Elie Hobeika entered two Palestinian refugee camps and massacred the occupants. The massacres led to the biggest demonstration ever in Israel against the war, with as many as 400,000 people (almost 10% of the population) gathering in Tel Aviv. In 1983, an Israeli public inquiry found that Israel's defence minister, Sharon, was indirectly but personally responsible for the massacres. It also recommended that he never again be allowed to hold the post (it did not forbid him from being Prime Minister). In 1983, the May 17 Agreement was signed between Israel and Lebanon, paving the way for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory through a few stages. Israel continued to operate against the PLO until its eventual departure in 1985, and kept a small force stationed in Southern Lebanon in support of the South Lebanon Army until May 2000.
In September 1983, Begin resigned and was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister. The 1984 election was inconclusive, and led to a power sharing agreement between Shimon Peres of the Alignment and Shamir of Likud. Peres was prime minister from 1984 to 1986 and Shamir from 1986 to 1988. In 1984, continual discrimination against Sephardi Ultra-Orthodox Jews by the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox establishment led political activist Aryeh Deri to leave the Agudat Israel party and join former chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in forming Shas, a new party aimed at the non-Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox vote.
In June 1985, Israel withdrew most of its troops from Lebanon, leaving a residual Israeli force and an Israeli-supported militia in southern Lebanon as a "security zone" and buffer against attacks on its northern territory. Since then, the IDF fought for many years against the Shia organization Hezbollah, which became a growing threat to Israel. By July 1985, Israel's inflation, buttressed by complex index linking of salaries, had reached 480% per annum and was the highest in the world. Peres introduced emergency control of prices and cut government expenditure successfully bringing inflation under control. The currency (known as the old Israeli shekel) was replaced and renamed the Israeli new shekel at a rate of 1,000 old shkalim = 1 new shekel.
Growing Israeli settlement and continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip led to the First Intifada in 1987, which lasted until the Oslo accords of 1993, despite Israeli attempts to suppress it. Human rights abuses by Israeli troops led a group of Israelis to form B'Tselem, an organization devoted to improving awareness and compliance with human rights requirements in Israel.
The Alignment and Likud remained neck and neck in the 1988 elections. Shamir successfully formed a national unity coalition with the Labour Alignment. In March 1990, Alignment leader Shimon Peres engineered a defeat of the government in a non-confidence vote and then tried to form a new government. The attempt, which became known as "the dirty trick", failed and Shamir became prime minister at the head of a right-wing coalition.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War between Iraq and a large allied force, led by the United States. Iraq attacked Israel with 39 Scud missiles. Israel did not retaliate at request of the US, fearing that if Israel responded against Iraq, other Arab nations might desert the allied coalition.
The coalition's victory in the Gulf War opened new possibilities for regional peace, and in October 1991 the US president, George H. W. Bush, and Soviet Union Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, jointly convened a historic meeting in Madrid of Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Palestinian leaders. Shamir opposed the idea but agreed in return for loan guarantees to help with absorption of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. His participation in the conference led to the collapse of his (right-wing) coalition.
In the 1992 elections, the Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, won a significant victory (44 seats) promising to pursue peace while promoting Rabin as a "tough general" and pledging not to deal with the PLO in any way. The left Zionist party Meretz won 12 seats, and the Arab and communist parties a further 5, meaning that parties supporting a peace treaty had a full (albeit small) majority in the Knesset.
On 25 July 1993, Israel carried out a week-long military operation in Lebanon to attack Hezbollah positions dubbed Operation Accountability. On 13 September 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords (a Declaration of Principles) on the South Lawn of the White House. The principles established objectives relating to a transfer of authority from Israel to an interim Palestinian Authority, as a prelude to a final treaty establishing a Palestinian state, in exchange for mutual recognition. The DOP established May 1999 as the date by which a permanent status agreement for the West Bank and Gaza Strip would take effect. In February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a follower of the Kach party, killed 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which became known as the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. Kach had been barred from participation in the 1992 elections (on the grounds that the movement was racist). It was subsequently made illegal. Israel and the PLO signed the Gaza–Jericho Agreement in May 1994, and the Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities in August, which began the process of transferring authority from Israel to the Palestinians. On 25 July 1994, Jordan and Israel signed the Washington Declaration, which formally ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948 and on 26 October the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace, witnessed by US President Bill Clinton.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on 28 September 1995 in Washington. The agreement was witnessed by President Bill Clinton on behalf of the United States and by Russia, Egypt, Norway and the European Union, and incorporates and supersedes the previous agreements, marking the conclusion of the first stage of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. The agreement allowed allowed the PLO leadership to relocate to the occupied territories and granted autonomy to the Palestinians with talks to follow regarding final status. In return the Palestinians promised to abstain from use of terror and changed the Palestinian National Covenant, which had called for the expulsion of all Jews who migrated after 1917 and the elimination of Israel.
The agreement was opposed by Hamas and other Palestinian factions, which launched suicide bomber attacks at Israel. Rabin had a barrier constructed around Gaza to prevent attacks. The growing separation between Israel and the "Palestinian Territories" led to a labour shortage in Israel, mainly in the construction industry. Israeli firms began importing labourers from the Philippines, Thailand, China and Romania; some of these labourers stayed on without visas. In addition, a growing number of Africans began illegally migrating to Israel. On 4 November 1995, a far-right-wing religious Zionist opponent of the Oslo Accords assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In February 1996 Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, called early elections. In April 1996, Israel launched Operation Grapes of Wrath in southern Lebanon as a result of Hezbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks on Israeli population centres along the border.
The May 1996 elections were the first featuring direct election of the prime minister and resulted in a narrow election victory for Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. A spate of suicide bombings reinforced the Likud position for security. Hamas claimed responsibility for most of the bombings. Despite his stated differences with the Oslo Accords, Prime Minister Netanyahu continued their implementation, but his prime ministership saw a marked slow-down in the Peace Process. Netanyahu also pledged to gradually reduce US aid to Israel.
In September 1996, a Palestinian riot broke out against the creation of an exit in the Western Wall tunnel. Over the subsequent few weeks, around 80 people were killed as a result. In January 1997 Netanyahu signed the Hebron Protocol with the Palestinian Authority, resulting in the redeployment of Israeli forces in Hebron and the turnover of civilian authority in much of the area to the Palestinian Authority.
In the election of July 1999, Ehud Barak of the Labour Party became Prime Minister. His party was the largest in the Knesset with 26 seats. In September 1999 the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the use of torture in interrogation of Palestinian prisoners was illegal. On 21 March 2000, Pope John Paul II arrived in Israel for an historic visit.
On 25 May 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew its remaining forces from the "security zone" in southern Lebanon. Several thousand members of the South Lebanon Army (and their families) left with the Israelis. The UN Secretary-General concluded that, as of 16 June 2000, Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. Lebanon claims that Israel continues to occupy Lebanese territory called "Sheba'a Farms" (however this area was governed by Syria until 1967 when Israel took control). The Sheba'a Farms provided Hezbollah with a pretext to maintain warfare with Israel. The Lebanese government, in contravention of the UN Security Council resolution, did not assert sovereignty in the area, which came under Hezbollah control. In the Fall of 2000, talks were held at Camp David to reach a final agreement on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Ehud Barak offered to meet most of the Palestinian teams requests for territory and political concessions, including Arab parts of east Jerusalem; however, Arafat abandoned the talks without making a counterproposal.
Following its withdrawal from South Lebanon, Israel became a member of the Western European and Others Group at the United Nations. Prior to this Israel was the only nation at the UN which was not a member of any group (the Arab states would not allow it to join the Asia group), which meant it could not be a member of the Security Council or appoint anyone to the International Court and other key UN roles. Since December 2013 it has been a permanent member of the group. Since December 2013 it has been a permanent member of the group.
On 28 September 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa compound, or Temple Mount, the following day the Palestinians launched the al-Aqsa Intifada. David Samuels and Khaled Abu Toameh have stated that the uprising was planned much earlier.
In 2001, with the Peace Process increasingly in disarray, Ehud Barak called a special election for Prime Minister. Barak hoped a victory would give him renewed authority in negotiations with the Palestinians. Instead opposition leader Ariel Sharon was elected PM. After this election, the system of directly electing the Premier was abandoned.
The failure of the peace process, increased Palestinian terror and occasional attacks by Hezbollah from Lebanon, led much of the Israeli public and political leadership to lose confidence in the Palestinian Authority as a peace partner. Most felt that many Palestinians viewed the peace treaty with Israel as a temporary measure only. Many Israelis were thus anxious to disengage from the Palestinians. In response to a wave of suicide bomb attacks, culminating in the Passover massacre (see List of Israeli civilian casualties in the Second Intifada), Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in March 2002, and Sharon began the construction of a barrier around the West Bank. Around the same time, the Israeli town of Sderot and other Israeli communities near Gaza became subject to constant shelling and mortar bomb attacks from Gaza.
Thousands of Jews from Latin America began arriving in Israel due to economic crises in their countries of origin. In January 2003 separate elections were held for the Knesset. Likud won the most seats (27). An anti-religion party, Shinui, led by media pundit Tommy Lapid, won 15 seats on a secularist platform, making it the third largest party (ahead of orthodox Shas). Internal fighting led to Shinui's demise at the next election. In 2004, the Black Hebrews were granted permanent residency in Israel. The group had begun migrating to Israel 25 years earlier from the United States, but had not been recognized as Jews by the state and hence not granted citizenship under Israel's Law of Return. They had settled in Israel without official status. From 2004 onwards, they received citizen's rights.
In 2005, all Jewish settlers were evacuated from Gaza (some forcibly) and their homes demolished. Disengagement from the Gaza Strip was completed on 12 September 2005. Military disengagement from the northern West Bank was completed ten days later.
In 2005 Sharon left the Likud and formed a new party called Kadima, which accepted that the peace process would lead to creation of a Palestinian state. He was joined by many leading figures from both Likud and Labour.
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, the first and only genuinely free Palestinian elections. Hamas' leaders rejected all agreements signed with Israel, refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, refused to abandon terror, and occasionally claimed the Holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy. The withdrawal and Hamas victory left the status of Gaza unclear, as Israel asserted it was no longer an occupying power but continued to control air and sea access to Gaza although it did not exercise sovereignty on the ground. Egypt insisted that it was still occupied and refused to open border crossings with Gaza, although it was free to do so.
In April 2006 Ariel Sharon was incapacitated by a severe hemorrhagic stroke and Ehud Olmert became Prime Minister.
Ehud Olmert was elected Prime Minister after his party, Kadima, won the most seats (29) in the 2006 Israeli legislative election. In 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was officially elected president of Iran; since then, Iranian policy towards Israel has grown more confrontational.
On 14 March 2006, Israel carried out Operation Bringing Home the Goods in the Palestinian Authority prison of Jericho in order to capture Ahmad Sa'adat and several Palestinian Arab prisoners located there who assassinated Israeli politician Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001. The operation was conducted as a result of the expressed intentions of the newly elected Hamas government to release these prisoners. On 25 June 2006, a Hamas force crossed the border from Gaza and attacked a tank, capturing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, sparking clashes in Gaza.
On 12 July, Hezbollah attacked Israel from Lebanon, shelled Israeli towns and attacked a border patrol, taking two dead or badly wounded Israeli soldiers. These incidents led Israel to initiate the Second Lebanon War, which lasted through August 2006. Israeli forces entered some villages in Southern Lebanon, while the air force attacked targets all across the country. Israel only made limited ground gains until the launch of Operation Changing Direction 11, which lasted for 3 days with disputed results. Shortly before a UN ceasefire came into effect, Israeli troops captured Wadi Saluki. The war concluded with Hezbollah evacuating its forces from Southern Lebanon, while the IDF remained until its positions could be handed over to the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL.
In June 2007 Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in the course of the Battle of Gaza, seizing government institutions and replacing Fatah and other government officials with its own. Following the takeover, Egypt and Israel imposed a partial blockade, on the grounds that Fatah had fled and was no longer providing security on the Palestinian side, and to prevent arms smuggling by terrorist groups. On 6 September 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria in Operation Orchard. On 28 February 2008, Israel launched Operation Hot Winter in Gaza in response to the constant firing of Qassam rockets by Hamas militants. On 16 July 2008, Hezbollah swapped the bodies of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, kidnapped in 2006, in exchange for the Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, four Hezbollah prisoners, and the bodies of 199 Palestinian Arab and Lebanese fighters.
Olmert came under investigation for corruption and this led him to announce on 30 July 2008, that he would be stepping down as Prime Minister following election of a new leader of the Kadima party in September 2008. Tzipi Livni won the election, but was unable to form a coalition and Olmert remained in office until the general election. Israel carried out Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009 in response to rocket attacks from Hamas militants, leading to a decrease of Palestinian rocket attacks.
In the 2009 legislative election Likud won 27 seats and Kadima 28; however, the right-wing camp won a majority of seats, and President Shimon Peres called on Netanyahu to form the government. Russian immigrant-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu came third with 15 seats, and Labour was reduced to fourth place with 13 seats. In 2009, Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva announced the discovery of huge natural gas reserves off the coast of Israel.
On 31 May 2010, an international incident broke out in the Mediterranean Sea when foreign activists trying to break the maritime blockade over Gaza, clashed with Israeli troops. During the struggle, nine Turkish activists were killed. In late September 2010 took place direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without success. As a defensive countermeasure to the rocket threat against Israel's civilian population, at the end of March 2011 Israel began to operate the advanced mobile air defence system "Iron Dome" in the southern region of Israel and along the border with the Gaza Strip.
On 14 July 2011, the 2011 Israeli housing protests, in which hundreds of thousands of protesters from a variety of socio-economic and religious backgrounds in Israel protested against the continuing rise in the cost of living (particularly housing) and the deterioration of public services in the country (such as health and education). It was the largest social protest in the history of Israel, and peaked on 3 September 2011, when about 400,000 people demonstrated across the country.
In October 2011, a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas, by which the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians and Arab-Israeli prisoners. In March 2012, Secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhir al-Qaisi, a senior PRC member and two additional Palestinian militants were assassinated during a targeted killing carried out by Israeli forces in Gaza.
In May 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached an agreement with the Head of Opposition Shaul Mofaz for Kadima to join the government, thus cancelling the early election supposed to be held in September. However, in July, the Kadima party left Netanyahu's government due to a dispute concerning military conscription for ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel.
In response to over a hundred rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza on 14 November 2012, with the targeted killing of Ahmed Jabari, chief of Hamas military wing, and airstrikes against twenty underground sites housing long-range missile launchers capable of striking Tel Aviv. In January 2013, construction of the barrier on the Israeli-Egyptian border was completed in its main section.
Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister again after the Likud Yisrael Beiteinu alliance won the most seats (31) in the 2013 legislative election and formed a coalition government with secular centrist Yesh Atid party (19), rightist The Jewish Home (12) and Livni's Hatnuah (6), excluding Haredi parties. Labour came in third with 15 seats. In July 2013, as a "good will gesture" to restart peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom had been in jail since before the 1993 Oslo Accords, including militants who had killed Israeli civilians. In April 2014, Israel suspended peace talks after Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government.
Following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas, Israel started Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip on 8 July 2014, which included a ground incursion aimed at destroying the cross-border tunnels. Differences over the budget and a "Jewish state" bill triggered early elections in December 2014. After the 2015 Israeli elections, Netanyahu renewed his mandate as Prime Minister when Likud obtained 30 seats and formed a right-wing coalition government with Kulanu (10), The Jewish Home (8), and Orthodox parties Shas (7) and United Torah Judaism (6), the bare minimum of seats required to form a coalition. The Zionist Union alliance came second with 24 seats. A wave of lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians took place in 2015 and 2016, particularly stabbings.
On 6 December 2017, President Donald Trump formally announced United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which was followed by the United States recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel on 25 March 2019. In March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza initiated "the Great March of Return," a series of weekly protests along the Gaza–Israel border.
The COVID-19 pandemic began in Israel with the first case detected in February 2020 and the first death being that of a Holocaust survivor in March 2020. Israel Shield was the government's program to combat against the virus. Nationwide lockdowns and mask mandates were present throughout the country for much of 2020 into 2021, with the vaccination campaign beginning in December 2020 along with green passes.
In late 2020, Israel normalised relations with four Arab League countries: the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September (known as the Abraham Accords), Sudan in October, and Morocco in December. In May 2021, after tensions escalated in Jerusalem, Israel launched Operation Guardian of the Walls, trading blows with Hamas for eleven days.
The 2019–2022 political crisis featured political instability in Israel leading to five elections to the Knesset over a 4 year time period. The April 2019 and September 2019 elections saw no party able to form a coalition leading to the March 2020 election. This election again looked to result in deadlock, but due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, Netanyahu, and Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz, were able to establish a unity government with a planned rotating prime ministership where Netanyahu would serve first and later be replaced by Gantz. The coalition failed by December due to a dispute over the budget and new elections were called for March 2021.
Following the March 2021 election, Naftali Bennett signed a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid and different parties opposed to Netanyahu on the right, center and left whereby Bennett would serve as Prime Minister until September 2023 and then Lapid would assume the role until November 2025. An Israeli Arab party, Ra'am, was included in the government coalition for the first time in decades. In June 2022, following several legislative defeats for the governing coalition, Bennett announced the introduction of a bill to dissolve the Knesset and call for new elections to be held in November. Yair Lapid became the new interim Prime Minister. After the 2022 elections, Netanyahu was able to return as Prime Minister under a coalition that included Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit and Noam, in what was described as the most right-wing government in the country's history. The government has overseen an uptick in violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, driven by military actions such as the July 2023 Jenin incursion as well as Palestinian political violence, producing a death toll in 2023 that is the highest in the conflict since 2005. In October 2023, the 2023 Israel–Hamas war started. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as Canaan, Palestine or the Holy Land, which is the geographical location of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. From a prehistory as part of the critical Levantine corridor, which witnessed waves of early humans out of Africa, to the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE, the region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before being vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities that were central to the origins of the Jewish and Samaritan peoples as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In the following centuries, the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires conquered the region. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids vied for control over the region during the Hellenistic period. However, with the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, the local Jewish population maintained independence for a century before being incorporated into the Roman Republic. As a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, many Jews were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Following the advent of Christianity, which was adopted by the Greco-Roman world under the influence of the Roman Empire, the region's demographics shifted towards newfound Christians, who replaced Jews as the majority of the population by the 4th century. However, shortly after Islam was consolidated across the Arabian Peninsula under Muhammad, Byzantine Christian rule over the Land of Israel was superseded by the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. From the 11th century to the 13th century, the Land of Israel became the centre for intermittent religious wars between Christian and Muslim armies as part of the Crusades. In the 13th century, the Land of Israel became subject to the Mongol invasions and conquests, though these were locally routed by the Mamluk Sultanate, under whose rule it remained until the 16th century. The Mamluks were eventually defeated by the Ottoman Empire, and the region became an Ottoman province until the 20th century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The late 19th century saw the widespread consolidation of a Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism, as part of which aliyah (Jewish return to the Land of Israel from the diaspora) increased. During World War I, the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the Allies led to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was granted control of the region by League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine. The British government publicly committed itself to the creation of a Jewish homeland. Arab nationalism opposed this design, asserting Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration. As a result, Arab–Jewish tensions grew in the succeeding decades of British administration.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence sparked the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and subsequently led to waves of Jewish emigration from other parts of the Middle East. Today, approximately 43 percent of the global Jewish population resides in Israel. In 1979, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed, based on the Camp David Accords. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was followed by the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed. Despite efforts to finalize the peace agreement, the conflict continues to play a major role in Israeli and international political, social, and economic life.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The oldest evidence of early humans in the territory of modern Israel, dating to 1.5 million years ago, was found in Ubeidiya near the Sea of Galilee. Flint tool artefacts have been discovered at Yiron, the oldest stone tools found anywhere outside Africa. Other groups include 1.4 million years old Acheulean industry, the Bizat Ruhama group and Gesher Bnot Yaakov.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the Mount Carmel area at el-Tabun, and Es Skhul, Neanderthal and early modern human remains were found, showing the longest stratigraphic record in the region, spanning 600,000 years of human activity, from the Lower Paleolithic to the present day, representing roughly a million years of human evolution. Other notable Paleolithic sites include caves Qesem and Manot. The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Canaanites are archaeologically attested in the Middle Bronze Age (2100–1550 BCE). There were probably independent or semi-independent city-states. Cities were often surrounded by massive earthworks, resulting in the archeological tells common in the region today. In the late Middle Bronze Age, the Nile Delta in Egypt was settled by Canaanites who maintained close connections with Canaan. During that period, the Hyksos, dynasties of Canaanite/Asiatic origin, ruled much of Lower Egypt before being overthrown in the 16th century BCE.",
"title": "Canaan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), there were Canaanite vassal states paying tribute to the New Kingdom of Egypt, which governed from Gaza. In 1457 BCE, Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated a rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by Kadesh's king at the Battle of Megiddo.",
"title": "Canaan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the Late Bronze Age there was a period of civilizational collapse in the Middle East, Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control ended. There is evidence that urban centers such as Hazor, Beit She'an, Megiddo, Ekron, Isdud and Ascalon were damaged or destroyed. Two groups appear at this time, and are associated with the transition to the Iron Age (they used iron weapons/tools which were better than earlier bronze): the Sea Peoples, particularly the Philistines, who migrated from the Aegean world and settled on the southern coast, and the Israelites, whose settlements dotted the highlands.",
"title": "Canaan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel (as ysrỉꜣr) occurs in the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, erected for Pharaoh Merneptah (son of Ramesses II) c. 1209 BCE, which states \"Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.\"",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Archeological evidence indicates that during the early Iron Age I, hundreds of small villages were established on the highlands of Canaan on both sides of the Jordan River, primarily in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. These villages had populations of up to 400, were largely self-sufficient and lived from herding, grain cultivation, and growing vines and olives with some economic interchange. The pottery was plain and undecorated. Writing was known and available for recording, even in small sites. William G. Dever sees this \"Israel\" in the central highlands as a cultural and probably political entity, more an ethnic group rather than an organized state.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Modern scholars believe that the Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples and their cultures through the development of a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on a national god Yahweh. According to McNutt, \"It is probably safe to assume that sometime during Iron Age I a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'\", differentiating itself from the Canaanites through such markers as the prohibition of intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Philistine cooking tools and the prevalence of pork in their diets, and locally made Mycenaean pottery—which later evolved into bichrome Philistine pottery—all support their foreign origin. Their cities were large and elaborate, which—together with the findings—point out to a complex, hierarchical society.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the 10th century BCE, the Israelite kingdoms of Judah and Israel emerged. The Hebrew Bible states that these were preceded by a single kingdom ruled by Saul, David and Solomon, who is said to have built the First Temple. Archeologists have debated whether the united monarchy ever existed, with those in favor of such a polity existing further divided between maximalists who support the Biblical accounts, and minimalists who argue that any such polity was likely smaller than suggested.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power; during the days of the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan. Samaria, the capital, was home to one of the largest Iron Age structures in the Levant. The Kingdom of Israel's capital moved between Shechem, Penuel and Tirzah before Omri settled it in Samaria, and the royal succession was often settled by a military coup d'état. The Kingdom of Judah was smaller but more stable; the Davidic dynasty ruled the kingdom for the four centuries of its existence, with the capital always in Jerusalem, controlling the Judaean Mountains, most of the Shephelah and the Beersheba valley in the northern Negev.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 854 BCE, according to Assyrian records (the Kurkh Monoliths), an alliance between Ahab of Israel and Ben Hadad II of Aram-Damascus managed to repulse the incursions of the Assyrians, with a victory at the Battle of Qarqar. This is not reported in the Bible which describes conflict between Ahab and Ben Hadad. Another important discovery of the period is the Mesha Stele, a Moabite stele found in Dhiban when Emir Sattam Al-Fayez led Henry Tristram to it as they toured the lands of the vassals of the Bani Sakher. The stele is now in the Louvre. In the stele, Mesha, king of Moab, tells how Chemosh, the god of Moab, had been angry with his people and had allowed them to be subjugated to the Kingdom of Israel, but at length, Chemosh returned and assisted Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab. It refers to Omri, king of Israel, to the god Yahweh, and may contain another early reference to the House of David. Jehu, son of Omri, is referenced by the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria invaded Israel in around 732 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians following a long siege of the capital Samaria around 720 BCE. The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he captured Samaria and deported 27,290 inhabitants to Mesopotamia. It is likely that Shalmaneser captured the city since both the Babylonian Chronicles and the Hebrew Bible viewed the fall of Israel as the signature event of his reign. The Assyrian deportations became the basis for the Jewish idea of the Ten Lost Tribes. Foreign groups were settled by the Assyrians in the territories of the fallen kingdom. The Samaritans claim to be descended from Israelites of ancient Samaria who were not expelled by the Assyrians.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "It is believed that refugees from the destruction of Israel moved to Judah, massively expanding Jerusalem and leading to construction of the Siloam Tunnel during the rule of King Hezekiah (ruled 715–686 BCE). The tunnel could provide water during a siege and its construction is described in the Bible. The Siloam inscription, a plaque written in Hebrew left by the construction team, was discovered in the tunnel in 1880s, and is today held by the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "During Hezekiah's rule, Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, attempted but failed to capture Judah. Assyrian records say that Sennacherib levelled 46 walled cities and besieged Jerusalem, leaving after receiving extensive tribute. Sennacherib erected the Lachish reliefs in Nineveh to commemorate a second victory at Lachish.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The writings of four different \"prophets\" are believed to date from this period: Hosea and Amos in Israel and Micah and Isaiah of Judah. These men were mostly social critics who warned of the Assyrian threat and acted as religious spokesmen. They exercised some form of free speech and may have played a significant social and political role in Israel and Judah. They urged rulers and the general populace to adhere to god-conscious ethical ideals, seeing the Assyrian invasions as a divine punishment of the collective resulting from ethical failures.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Under King Josiah (ruler from 641–619 BCE), the Book of Deuteronomy was either rediscovered or written. The Book of Joshua and the accounts of the kingship of David and Solomon in the book of Kings are believed to have the same author. The books are known as Deuteronomist and considered to be a key step in the emergence of monotheism in Judah. They emerged at a time that Assyria was weakened by the emergence of Babylon and may be a committing to text of pre-writing verbal traditions.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "During the late 7th century BCE, Judah became a vassal state of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. In 601 BCE, Jehoiakim of Judah allied with Babylon's principal rival, Egypt, despite the strong remonstrances of the prophet Jeremiah. As a punishment, the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem in 597 BCE, and the city surrendered. The defeat was recorded by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and deported king Jehoiachin, along with other prominent citizens, to Babylon; Zedekiah, his uncle, was installed as king. A few years later, Zedekiah launched another revolt against Babylon, and an army was sent to conquer Jerusalem.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 587 or 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and razed the city. The Kingdom of Judah was abolished, and many of its citizens were exiled to Babylon. The former territory of Judah became a Babylonian province called Yehud with its center in Mizpah, north of the destroyed Jerusalem. Tablets that describe King Jehoicahin's rations were found in the ruins of Babylon. He was eventually released by the Babylonians. According to both the Bible and the Talmud, the Davidic dynasty continued as head of Babylonian Jewry, called the \"Rosh Galut\" (exilarch or head of exile). Arab and Jewish sources show that the Rosh Galut continued to exist for another 1,500 years in what is now Iraq, ending in the eleventh century.",
"title": "Ancient Israel and Judah"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 538 BCE, Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and took over its empire. Cyrus issued a proclamation granting religious freedom to all peoples subjugated by the Babylonians (see the Cyrus Cylinder). According to the Bible, Jewish exiles in Babylon, including 50,000 Judeans led by Zerubabel, returned to Judah to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple was subsequently completed c. 515 BCE. A second group of 5,000, led by Ezra and Nehemiah, returned to Judah in 456 BCE. The first was empowered by the Persian king to enforce religious rules, the second had the status of governor and a royal mission to restore the walls of the city. The country remained a province of the Achaemenid empire called Yehud until 332 BCE.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The final text of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is thought to have been written during the Persian period (probably 450–350 BCE). The text was formed by editing and unifying earlier texts. The returning Israelites adopted an Aramaic script (also known as the Ashuri alphabet), which they brought back from Babylon; this is the current Hebrew script. The Hebrew calendar closely resembles the Babylonian calendar and probably dates from this period.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Bible describes tension between the returnees, the elite of the First Temple period, and those who had remained in Judah. It is possible that the returnees, supported by the Persian monarchy, became large landholders at the expense of the people who had remained to work the land in Judah, whose opposition to the Second Temple would have reflected a fear that exclusion from the cult would deprive them of land rights. Judah had become in practice a theocracy, ruled by hereditary High Priests and a Persian-appointed governor, frequently Jewish, charged with keeping order and seeing that tribute was paid.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "A Judean military garrison was placed by the Persians on Elephantine Island near Aswan in Egypt. In the early 20th century, 175 papyrus documents recording activity in this community were discovered, including the \"Passover Papyrus\", a letter instructing the garrison on how to correctly conduct the Passover feast.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great of Macedon conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Persian Empire. After his death in 322 BCE, his generals divided the empire and Judea became a frontier region between the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. Following a century of Ptolemaic rule, Judea was conquered by the Seleucid Empire in 200 BCE at the battle of Panium. Hellenistic rulers generally respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions. Judea was ruled by the hereditary office of the High Priest of Israel as a Hellenistic vassal. Nevertheless, the region underwent a process of Hellenization, which heightened tensions between Greeks, Hellenized Jews, and observant Jews. These tensions escalated into clashes involving a power struggle for the position of high priest and the character of the holy city of Jerusalem.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "When Antiochus IV Epiphanes consecrated the temple, forbade Jewish practices, and forcibly imposed Hellenistic norms on the Jews, several centuries of religious tolerance under Hellenistic control came to an end. In 167 BCE, the Maccabean revolt erupted after Mattathias, a Jewish priest of the Hasmonean lineage, killed a Hellenized Jew and a Seleucid official who participated in sacrifice to the Greek gods in Modi'in. His son Judas Maccabeus defeated the Seleucids in several battles, and in 164 BCE, he captured Jerusalem and restored temple worship, an event commemorated by the Jewish festival of Hannukah.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "After Judas' death, his brothers Jonathan Apphus and Simon Thassi were able to establish and consolidate a vassal Hasmonean state in Judea, capitalizing on the Seleucid Empire's decline as a result of internal instability and wars with the Parthians, and by forging ties with the rising Roman Republic. Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus was able to gain independence, doubling Judea's territories. He took control of Idumaea, where he converted the Edomites to Judaism, and invaded Scythopolis and Samaria, where he demolished the Samaritan Temple. Hyrcanus was also the first Hasmonean leader to mint coins. Under his sons, kings Aristobulus I and Alexander Jannaeus, Hasmonean Judea became a kingdom, and its territories continued to expand, now also covering the coastal plain, Galilee and parts of the Transjordan. Some scholars argue that the Hasmonean dynasty also institutionalized the final Jewish biblical canon.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Under Hasmonean rule, the Pharisees, Sadducees and the mystic Essenes emerged as the principal Jewish social movements. The Pharisee sage Simeon ben Shetach is credited with establishing the first schools based around meeting houses. This was a key step in the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism. After Jannaeus' widow, queen Salome Alexandra, died in 67 BCE, her sons Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II engaged in a civil war over succession. The conflicting parties requested Pompey's assistance on their behalf, which paved the way for a Roman takeover of the kingdom.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 64 BCE the Roman general Pompey conquered Syria and intervened in the Hasmonean civil war in Jerusalem, restoring Hyrcanus II as High Priest and making Judea a Roman vassal kingdom. During the siege of Alexandria in 47 BCE, the lives of Julius Caesar and his protégé Cleopatra were saved by 3,000 Jewish troops sent by Hyrcanus II and commanded by Antipater, whose descendants Caesar made kings of Judea. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Herodian dynasty, Jewish-Roman client kings of Edomite origin, descended from Antipater, ruled Judea. Herod the Great considerably enlarged the temple (see Herod's Temple), making it one of the largest religious structures in the world. At this time, Jews formed as much as 10% of the population of the entire Roman Empire, with large communities in North Africa and Arabia.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Augustus made Judea a Roman province in 6 CE, deposing the last Jewish king, Herod Archelaus, and appointing a Roman governor. There was a small revolt against Roman taxation led by Judas of Galilee and over the next decades tensions grew between the Greco-Roman and Judean population centered on attempts to place effigies of emperor Caligula in synagogues and in the Jewish temple. In 64 CE, the Temple High Priest Joshua ben Gamla introduced a religious requirement for Jewish boys to learn to read from the age of six. Over the next few hundred years this requirement became steadily more ingrained in Jewish tradition. The latter part of the Second Temple period was marked by social unrest and religious turmoil, and messianic expectations filled the atmosphere.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 66 CE, the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) broke out due to the repressive rule of Roman governors, growing hostility between the wealthy nobles and the impoverished masses, clashes between Jews and pagans in mixed cities, and tensions between the Roman and Jewish religions. The revolting Jews named their state \"Israel\". Despite early Jewish victories, the provisional government quickly collapsed, and Jews were split up into several warrying factions with conflicting agendas. Eventually, the Roman army under the command of future emperors Vespasian and his son Titus besieged and destroyed the major Jewish strongholds one by one, including the cities of Yodfat, Gamla and the fortress of Masada. After a brutal five-month siege in 70 CE, Jerusalem and the Second Temple were completely destroyed.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The revolt's failure had profound demographic, theological, political, and economic consequences. Many Jews died fighting and under siege during the revolt, and a sizable portion of the population was either expelled from the country or displaced. Without the Temple, Judaism had to change to ensure its survival. Judaism's Temple-based sects, most notably the Sadducees, vanished. The Pharisees, led by Yochanan ben Zakai, obtained Roman permission to establish a school at Yavne. Their teachings became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism, which eventually became the mainstream form of Judaism.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "From 115 to 117, tensions and attacks on Jews around the Roman Empire led to a massive Jewish uprising against Rome, known as the Kitos War. Jews in Libya, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia fought against Rome. This conflict was accompanied by large-scale massacres of both sides. Cyprus was so severely depopulated that new settlers were imported and Jews banned from living there.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 132 CE, the Bar Kokhba revolt erupted. The uprising was led by a Jew named Simon Bar Kokhba, who ruled as nasi, and was viewed by some of the rabbis of the period as the long-awaited messiah. Based on the Bar Kokhba revolt coinage, the independent Jewish state was named \"Israel\". It has been suggested that a rabbinical assembly which convened during the revolt decided which books could be regarded as part of the Hebrew Bible; the Jewish apocrypha and Christian books were excluded. As a result, the original text of some Hebrew texts, including the Books of Maccabees, were lost (Greek translations survived). A rabbi of this period, Simeon bar Yochai, is regarded as the author of the Zohar, the foundational text for Kabbalistic thought. However, modern scholars believe it was written in Medieval Spain. Christians refused to participate in the revolt and from this point the Jews regarded Christianity as a separate religion.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Bar Kokhba revolt was eventually crushed by emperor Hadrian himself, with serious losses. Today, it is viewed by modern scholars as having decisive historic importance. According to Cassius Dio, writing in the century following the revolt, \"50 of the Jews most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out, thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate.\" While scholars debate whether these numbers are accurate, archaeological surveys and excavations appear to confirm the claim of Cassius Dio that the district of Judaea was largely depopulated. Most scholars agree that, in contrast to the aftermath of the First Jewish–Roman War, Judea was devastated after the Bar Kokhba revolt, with many Jews killed, exiled, or sold into slavery.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Around the time of the revolt, the province of Judaea (Iudaea) was renamed Syria Palaestina. The commonly-held view is that it was implemented as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt or to \"disassociate the Jewish people from their historical homeland\" and hold Hadrian accountable. However, no evidence exists for this narrative, and it has been disputed by scholars in recent years. No other revolt led to a province being renamed.",
"title": "Second Temple period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "As a result of the disastrous effects of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled. Over the next centuries, more Jews left to communities in the Diaspora, especially the large, speedily growing Jewish communities in Babylonia and Arabia. Others remained in the Land of Israel, where the spiritual and demographic center shifted from the depopulated Judea to Galilee. Jewish presence also continued in the southern Hebron Hills, in Ein Gedi, and on the coastal plain. The Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud, huge compendiums of Rabbinical discussions, were compiled during the 2nd to 4th centuries CE in Tiberias and Jerusalem.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Following the revolt, Judea's countryside was penetrated by pagan populations, including migrants from the nearby provinces of Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia, whereas Aelia Capitolina, its immediate vicinity, and administrative centers were now inhabited by Roman veterans and settlers from the western parts of the empire.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Romans permitted a hereditary Rabbinical Patriarch from the House of Hillel, called the \"Nasi\", to represent the Jews in dealings with the Romans. One prominent figure was Judah ha-Nasi, credited with compiling the final version of the Mishnah, a vast collection of Jewish oral traditions. He also emphasized the importance of education in Judaism, leading to requirements that illiterate Jews be treated as outcasts. This might have contributed to some illiterate Jews converting to Christianity. Jewish seminaries, such as those at Shefaram and Bet Shearim, continued to produce scholars. The best of these became members of the Sanhedrin, which was located first at Sepphoris and later at Tiberias. In the Galillee, many synagogues have been found dating from this period, and the burial site of the Sanhedrin leaders was discovered in Beit She'arim. In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire faced an economic crisis and imposed heavy taxation to fund wars of imperial succession. This situation prompted additional Jewish migration from Syria Palaestina to the Sasanian Empire, known for its more tolerant environment; there, a flourishing Jewish community with important Talmudic academies thrived in Babylonia, engaging in a notable rivalry with the Talmudic academies of Palaestina.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Early in the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine made Constantinople the capital of the East Roman Empire and made Christianity an accepted religion. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (326–328) and led the construction of the Church of the Nativity (birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (burial site of Jesus in Jerusalem) and other key churches that still exist. The name Jerusalem was restored to Aelia Capitolina and became a Christian city. Jews were still banned from living in Jerusalem, but were allowed to visit and worship at the site of the ruined temple. Over the course of the next century Christians worked to eradicate \"paganism\", leading to the destruction of classical Roman traditions and eradication of their temples. In 351–2, another Jewish revolt in the Galilee erupted against a corrupt Roman governor.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Roman Empire split in 390 CE and the region became part of the Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire. Under Byzantine rule, much of the region and its non-Jewish population were won over by Christianity, which eventually became the dominant religion in the region. The presence of holy sites drew Christian pilgrims, some of whom chose to settle, contributing to the rise of a Christian majority. Christian authorities encouraged this pilgrimage movement and appropriated lands, constructing magnificent churches at locations linked to biblical narratives. Additionally, monks established monasteries near pagan settlements, encouraging the conversion of local pagans.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "During the Byzantine period, the Jewish presence in the region declined, and it is believed that Jews lost their majority status in Palestine in the fourth century. While Judaism remained the sole non-Christian religion tolerated, restrictions on Jews gradually increased, prohibiting the construction of new places of worship, holding public office, or owning Christian slaves. In 425, after the death of the last Nasi, Gamliel VI, the Nasi office and the Sanhedrin were officially abolished, and the standing of yeshivot weakened. The leadership void was gradually filled by the Jewish center in Babylonia, which would assume a leading role in the Jewish world for generations after the Byzantine period.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "During the 5th and 6th centuries CE, the region witnessed a series of Samaritan revolts against Byzantine rule. Their suppression resulted in the decline of Samaritan presence and influence, and further consolidated Christian domination. Though it is acknowledged that some Jews and Samaritans converted to Christianity during the Byzantine period, the reliable historical records are limited, and they pertain to individual conversions rather than entire communities.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 611, Khosrow II, ruler of Sassanid Persia, invaded the Byzantine Empire. He was helped by Jewish fighters recruited by Benjamin of Tiberias and captured Jerusalem in 614. The \"True Cross\" was captured by the Persians. The Jewish Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen may also have provided support. Nehemiah ben Hushiel was made governor of Jerusalem. Christian historians of the period claimed the Jews massacred Christians in the city, but there is no archeological evidence of destruction, leading modern historians to question their accounts. In 628, Kavad II (son of Kosrow) returned Palestine and the True Cross to the Byzantines and signed a peace treaty with them. Following the Byzantine re-entry, Heraclius massacred the Jewish population of Galilee and Jerusalem, while renewing the ban on Jews entering the latter.",
"title": "Late Roman and Byzantine periods"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Levant was conquered by an Arab army under the command of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb in 635, and became the province of Bilad al-Sham of the Rashidun Caliphate. Two military districts—Jund Filastin and Jund al-Urdunn—were established in Palestine. A new city called Ramlah was built as the Muslim capital of Jund Filastin, while Tiberias served as the capital of Jund al-Urdunn. The Byzantine ban on Jews living in Jerusalem came to an end.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 661, Muawiyah was crowned Caliph in Jerusalem, becoming the first of the (Damascus-based) Umayyad dynasty. In 691, Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705) constructed the Dome of the Rock shrine on the Temple Mount, where the two Jewish temples had been located. A second building, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, was also erected on the Temple Mount in 705. Both buildings were rebuilt in the 10th century following a series of earthquakes.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 750, Arab discrimination against non-Arab Muslims led to the Abbasid Revolution and the Umayyads were replaced by the Abbasid Caliphs who built a new city, Baghdad, to be their capital. This period is known as the Islamic Golden Age, the Arab Empire was the largest in the world and Baghdad the largest and richest city. Both Arabs and minorities prospered across the region and much scientific progress was made. There were however setbacks: During the 8th century, the Caliph Umar II introduced a law requiring Jews and Christians to wear identifying clothing. Jews were required to wear yellow stars round their neck and on their hats, Christians had to wear Blue. Clothing regulations arose during repressive periods of Arab rule and were more designed to humiliate then persecute non-Muslims. A poll tax was imposed on all non-Muslims by Islamic rulers and failure to pay could result in imprisonment or worse.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 982, Caliph Al-Aziz Billah of the Cairo-based Fatimid dynasty conquered the region. The Fatimids were followers of Isma'ilism, a branch of Shia Islam and claimed descent from Fatima, Mohammed's daughter. Around the year 1010, the Church of Holy Sepulchre (believed to be Jesus burial site), was destroyed by Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, who relented ten years later and paid for it to be rebuilt. In 1020 al-Hakim claimed divine status and the newly formed Druze religion gave him the status of a messiah.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Although the Arab conquest was relatively peaceful and did not cause widespread destruction, it did alter the country's demographics significantly. Over the ensuing several centuries, the region experienced a drastic decline in its population, from an estimated 1 million during Roman and Byzantine times to some 300,000 by the early Ottoman period. This demographic collapse was accompanied by a slow process of Islamization, that resulted from the flight of non-Muslim populations, immigration of Muslims, and local conversion. The majority of the remaining populace belonged to the lowest classes. While the Arab conquerors themselves left the area after the conquest and moved on to other places, the settlement of Arab tribes in the area both before and after the conquest also contributed to the Islamization. As a result, the Muslim population steadily grew and the area became gradually dominated by Muslims on a political and social level.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "During the early Islamic period, many Christians and Samaritans, belonging to the Byzantine upper class, migrated from the coastal cities to northern Syria and Cyprus, which were still under Byzantine control, while others fled to the central highlands and the Transjordan. As a result, the coastal towns, formerly important economic centers connected with the rest of the Byzantine world, were emptied of most of their residents. Some of these cities—namely Ashkelon, Acre, Arsuf, and Gaza—now fortified border towns, were resettled by Muslim populations, who developed them into significant Muslim centers. The region of Samaria also underwent a process of Islamization as a result of waves of conversion among the Samaritan population and the influx of Muslims into the area. The predominantly Jacobite Monophysitic Christian population had been hostile to Byzantium orthodoxy, and at times for that reason welcomed Muslim rule. There is no strong evidence for forced conversion, or for possibility that the jizya tax significantly affected such changes.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The demographic situation in Palestine was further altered by urban decline under the Abbasids, and it is thought that the 749 earthquake hastened this process by causing an increase in the number of Jews, Christians, and Samaritans who emigrated to diaspora communities while also leaving behind others who remained in the devastated cities and poor villages until they converted to Islam. Historical records and archeological evidence suggest that many Samaritans converted under Abbasid and Tulunid rule, after suffering through severe difficulties such droughts, earthquakes, religious persecution, heavy taxes and anarchy. The same region also saw the settlement of Arabs. Over the period, the Samaritan population drastically decreased, with the rural Samaritan population converting to Islam, and small urban communities remaining in Nablus and Caesarea, as well as in Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Sarepta. Nevertheless, the Muslim population remained a minority in a predominantly Christian area, and it is likely that this status persisted until the Crusader period.",
"title": "Early Muslim period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1095, Pope Urban II called upon Christians to wage a holy war and recapture Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Responding to this call, Christians launched the First Crusade in the same year, a military campaign aimed at retaking the Holy Land, ultimately resulting in the successful siege and conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. In the same year, the Crusaders conquered Beit She'an and Tiberias, and in the following decade, they captured coastal cities with the support of Italian city-state fleets, establishing these coastal ports as crucial strongholds for Crusader rule in the region.",
"title": "Crusades and Mongols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Following the First Crusade, several Crusader states were established in the Levant, with the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Regnum Hierosolymitanum) assuming a preeminent position and enjoying special status among them. The population consisted predominantly of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Samaritans, while the Crusaders remained a minority and relied on the local population who worked the soil. The region saw the construction of numerous robust castles and fortresses, yet efforts to establish permanent European villages proved unsuccessful.",
"title": "Crusades and Mongols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Around 1180, Raynald of Châtillon, ruler of Transjordan, caused increasing conflict with the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin (Salah-al-Din), leading to the defeat of the Crusaders in the 1187 Battle of Hattin (above Tiberias). Saladin was able to peacefully take Jerusalem and conquered most of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem. Saladin's court physician was Maimonides, a refugee from Almohad (Muslim) persecution in Córdoba, Spain, where all non-Muslim religions had been banned.",
"title": "Crusades and Mongols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Christian world's response to the loss of Jerusalem came in the Third Crusade of 1190. After lengthy battles and negotiations, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin concluded the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192 whereby Christians were granted free passage to make pilgrimages to the holy sites, while Jerusalem remained under Muslim rule. In 1229, Jerusalem peacefully reverted into Christian control as part of a treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil that ended the Sixth Crusade. In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the Khwarezmian Tatars who decimated the city's Christian population, drove out the Jews and razed the city. The Khwarezmians were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247.",
"title": "Crusades and Mongols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Between 1258 and 1291, the area was the frontier between Mongol invaders (occasional Crusader allies) and the Mamluks of Egypt. The conflict impoverished the country and severely reduced the population. In Egypt a caste of warrior slaves, known as the Mamluks, gradually took control of the kingdom. The Mamluks were mostly of Turkish origin, and were bought as children and then trained in warfare. They were highly prized warriors, who gave rulers independence of the native aristocracy. In Egypt they took control of the kingdom following a failed invasion by the Crusaders (Seventh Crusade). The first Mamluk Sultan, Qutuz of Egypt, defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Ain Jalut (\"Goliath's spring\" near Ein Harod), ending the Mongol advances. He was assassinated by one of his Generals, Baibars, who went on to eliminate most of the Crusader outposts. The Mamluks ruled Palestine until 1516, regarding it as part of Syria. In Hebron, Jews were banned from worshipping at the Cave of the Patriarchs (the second-holiest site in Judaism); they were only allowed to enter 7 steps inside the site and the ban remained in place until Israel assumed control of the West Bank in the Six Days War. The Egyptian Mamluk sultan Al-Ashraf Khalil conquered the last outpost of Crusader rule in 1291.",
"title": "Mamluk period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Mamluks, continuing the policy of the Ayyubids, made the strategic decision to destroy the coastal area and to bring desolation to many of its cities, from Tyre in the north to Gaza in the south. Ports were destroyed and various materials were dumped to make them inoperable. The goal was to prevent attacks from the sea, given the fear of the return of the Crusaders. This had a long-term effect on those areas, which remained sparsely populated for centuries. The activity in that time concentrated more inland.",
"title": "Mamluk period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "With the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain and 1497 persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal, many Jews moved eastward, with some deciding to settle in the Mamluk Palestine. As a consequence, the local Jewish community underwent significant rejuvenation. The influx of Sephardic Jews began under Mamluk rule in the 15th century, and continued throughout the 16th century and especially after the Ottoman conquest. As city-dwellers, the majority of Sephardic Jews preferred to settle in urban areas, mainly in Safed but also in Jerusalem, while the Musta'arbi community comprised the majority of the villagers' Jews.",
"title": "Mamluk period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Under the Mamluks, the area was a province of Bilad a-Sham (Syria). It was conquered by Turkish Sultan Selim I in 1516–17, becoming a part of the province of Ottoman Syria for the next four centuries, first as the Damascus Eyalet and later as the Syria Vilayet (following the Tanzimat reorganization of 1864).",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "With the more favorable conditions that followed the Ottoman conquest, the immigration of Jews fleeing Catholic Europe, which had already begun under Mamluk rule, continued, and soon an influx of exiled Sephardic Jews came to dominate the Jewish community in the area.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In 1558 Selim II (1566–1574), successor to Suleiman, whose wife Nurbanu Sultan was Jewish, gave control of Tiberias to Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, one of the richest women in Europe and an escapee from the Inquisition. She encouraged Jewish refugees to settle in the area and established a Hebrew printing press. Safed became a centre for study of the Kabbalah. Doña Nasi's nephew, Joseph Nasi, was made governor of Tiberias and he encouraged Jewish settlement from Italy.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1660, a Druze power struggle led to the destruction of Safed and Tiberias. In the late 18th century a local Arab sheikh Zahir al-Umar created a de facto independent Emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the Sheikh failed, but after Zahir's death the Ottomans restored their rule in the area.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 1799 Napoleon briefly occupied the country and planned a proclamation inviting Jews to create a state. The proclamation was shelved following his defeat at Acre. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, an Ottoman ruler who left the Empire and tried to modernize Egypt, conquered Ottoman Syria and imposed conscription, leading to the Arab revolt.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In 1838 there was another Druze revolt. In 1839 Moses Montefiore met with Muhammed Pasha in Egypt and signed an agreement to establish 100–200 Jewish villages in the Damascus Eyalet of Ottoman Syria, but in 1840 the Egyptians withdrew before the deal was implemented, returning the area to Ottoman governorship. In 1844, Jews constituted the largest population group in Jerusalem. By 1896 Jews constituted an absolute majority in Jerusalem, but the overall population in Palestine was 88% Muslim and 9% Christian.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Between 1882 and 1903, approximately 35,000 Jews moved to Palestine, known as the First Aliyah. In the Russian Empire, Jews faced growing persecution and legal restrictions. Half the world's Jews lived in the Russian Empire, where they were restricted to living in the Pale of Settlement. Severe pogroms in the early 1880s and legal repression led to 2 million Jews emigrating from the Russian Empire. 1.5 million went to the United States. Popular destinations were also Germany, France, England, Holland, Argentina and Palestine.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Russian Jews established the Bilu and Hovevei Zion (\"Lovers of Zion\") movements with the aim of settling in Palestine. In 1878, Russian Jewish emigrants established the village of Petah Tikva (\"The Beginning of Hope\"), followed by Rishon LeZion (\"First to Zion\") in 1882. The existing Ashkenazi-Jewish communities were concentrated in the Four Holy Cities, extremely poor and relied on donations (halukka) from groups abroad, while the new settlements were small farming communities, but still relied on funding by the French Baron, Edmond James de Rothschild, who sought to establish profitable enterprises. Many early migrants could not find work and left, but despite the problems, more settlements arose and the community grew. After the Ottoman conquest of Yemen in 1881, a large number of Yemenite Jews also emigrated to Palestine, often driven by Messianism.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 1896 Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he asserted that the solution to growing antisemitism in Europe (the so-called \"Jewish Question\") was to establish a Jewish state. In 1897, the World Zionist Organization was founded and the First Zionist Congress proclaimed its aim \"to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.\" The Congress chose Hatikvah (\"The Hope\") as its anthem.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Between 1904 and 1914, around 40,000 Jews settled in the area now known as Israel (the Second Aliyah). In 1908 the World Zionist Organization set up the Palestine Bureau (also known as the \"Eretz Israel Office\") in Jaffa and began to adopt a systematic Jewish settlement policy. In 1909 residents of Jaffa bought land outside the city walls and built the first entirely Hebrew-speaking town, Ahuzat Bayit (later renamed Tel Aviv).",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In 1915-1916 Talaat Pasha of the Young Turks forced around a million Armenian Christians from their homes in Eastern Turkey, marching them south through Syria, in what is now known as the Armenian genocide. The number of dead is thought to be around 700,000. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. A community of survivors settled in Jerusalem, one of whom developed the now iconic Armenian pottery.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "During World War I, most Jews supported the Germans because they were fighting the Russians who were regarded as the Jews' main enemy. In Britain, the government sought Jewish support for the war effort for a variety of reasons including an antisemitic perception of \"Jewish power\" in the Ottoman Empire's Young Turks movement which was based in Thessaloniki, the most Jewish city in Europe (40% of the 160,000 population were Jewish). The British also hoped to secure American Jewish support for US intervention on Britain's behalf.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "There was already sympathy for the aims of Zionism in the British government, including the Prime Minister Lloyd George. Over 14,000 Jews were expelled by the Ottoman military commander from the Jaffa area in 1914–1915, due to suspicions they were subjects of Russia, an enemy, or Zionists wishing to detach Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and when the entire population, including Muslims, of both Jaffa and Tel Aviv was subject to an expulsion order in April 1917, the affected Jews could not return until the British conquest ended in 1918, which drove the Turks out of Southern Syria. A year prior, in 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, sent a public letter to the British Lord Rothschild, a leading member of his party and leader of the Jewish community. The letter subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration. It stated that the British Government \"view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people\". The declaration provided the British government with a pretext for claiming and governing the country. New Middle Eastern boundaries were decided by an agreement between British and French bureaucrats.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "A Jewish Legion composed largely of Zionist volunteers organized by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor participated in the British invasion. It also participated in the failed Gallipoli Campaign. The Nili Zionist spy network provided the British with details of Ottoman plans and troop concentrations.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "After pushing out the Ottomans, Palestine came under martial law. The British, French and Arab Occupied Enemy Territory Administration governed the area shortly before the armistice with the Ottomans until the promulgation of the mandate in 1920.",
"title": "Ottoman period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The British Mandate (in effect, British rule) of Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration, was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and came into effect in 1923. The territory of Transjordan was also covered by the Mandate but under separate rules that excluded it from the Balfour Declaration. Britain signed a treaty with the United States (which did not join the League of Nations) in which the United States endorsed the terms of the Mandate, which was approved unanimously by both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Balfour declaration was published on the 2nd of November 1917 and the Bolsheviks seized control of Russia a week later. This led to civil war in the Russian Empire. Between 1918 and 1921, a series of pogroms led to the death of at least 100,000 Jews (mainly in what is now Ukraine), and the displacement as refugees of a further 600,000. This led to further migration to Palestine. Between 1919 and 1923, some 40,000 Jews arrived in Palestine in what is known as the Third Aliyah. Many of the Jewish immigrants of this period were Socialist Zionists and supported the Bolsheviks. The migrants became known as pioneers (halutzim), experienced or trained in agriculture who established self-sustaining communes called kibbutzim. Malarial marshes in the Jezreel Valley and Hefer Plain were drained and converted to agricultural use. Land was bought by the Jewish National Fund, a Zionist charity that collected money abroad for that purpose.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "After the French victory over the Arab Kingdom of Syria ended hopes of Arab independence, there were clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and in Jaffa the following year, leading to the establishment of the Haganah underground Jewish militia. A Jewish Agency was created which issued the entry permits granted by the British and distributed funds donated by Jews abroad. Between 1924 and 1929, over 80,000 Jews arrived in the Fourth Aliyah, fleeing antisemitism and heavy tax burdens imposed on trade in Poland and Hungary, inspired by Zionism and motivated by the closure of United States borders by the Immigration Act of 1924 which severely limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Pinhas Rutenberg, a former Commissar of St Petersburg in Russia's pre-Bolshevik Kerensky Government, built the first electricity generators in Palestine. In 1925 the Jewish Agency established the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion (technological university) in Haifa. British authorities introduced the Palestine pound (worth 1000 \"mils\") in 1927, replacing the Egyptian pound as the unit of currency in the Mandate.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "From 1928, the democratically elected Va'ad Leumi (Jewish National Council or JNC) became the main administrative institution of the Palestine Jewish community (Yishuv) and included non-Zionist Jews. As the Yishuv grew, the JNC adopted more government-type functions, such as education, health care, and security. With British permission, the Va'ad Leumi raised its own taxes and ran independent services for the Jewish population.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 1929 tensions grew over the Kotel (Wailing Wall), the holiest spot in the world for modern Judaism, which was then a narrow alleyway where the British banned Jews from using chairs or curtains: Many of the worshippers were elderly and needed seats; they also wanted to separate women from men. The Mufti of Jerusalem said it was Muslim property and deliberately had cattle driven through the alley. He alleged that the Jews were seeking control of the Temple Mount. This provided the spark for the August 1929 Palestine riots. The main victims were the (non-Zionist) ancient Jewish community at Hebron, who were massacred. The riots led to right-wing Zionists establishing their own militia in 1931, the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (National Military Organization, known in Hebrew by its acronym \"Etzel\"), which was committed to a more aggressive policy towards the Arab population.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "During the interwar period, the perception grew that there was an irreconciliable tension between the two Mandatory functions, of providing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the goal of preparing the country for self-determination. The British rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give the Arab population, who formed the majority of the population, control over Palestinian territory.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Between 1929 and 1938, 250,000 Jews arrived in Palestine (Fifth Aliyah). In 1933, the Jewish Agency and the Nazis negotiated the Ha'avara Agreement (transfer agreement), under which 50,000 German Jews would be transferred to Palestine. The Jews' possessions were confiscated and in return the Nazis allowed the Ha'avara organization to purchase 14 million pounds worth of German goods for export to Palestine and use it to compensate the immigrants. Although many Jews wanted to leave Nazi Germany, the Nazis prevented Jews from taking any money and restricted them to two suitcases so few could pay the British entry tax and many were afraid to leave. The agreement was controversial and the Labour Zionist leader who negotiated the agreement, Haim Arlosoroff, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1933. The assassination was used by the British to create tension between the Zionist left and the Zionist right. Arlosoroff had been the boyfriend of Magda Ritschel some years before she married Joseph Goebbels. There has been speculation that he was assassinated by the Nazis to hide the connection but there is no evidence for it.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Between 1933 and 1936, 174,000 arrived despite the large sums the British demanded for immigration permits: Jews had to prove they had 1,000 pounds for families with capital (equivalent to £72,286 in 2021), 500 pounds if they had a profession and 250 pounds if they were skilled labourers.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Jewish immigration and Nazi propaganda contributed to the large-scale 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, a largely nationalist uprising directed at ending British rule. The head of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion, responded to the Arab Revolt with a policy of \"Havlagah\"—self-restraint and a refusal to be provoked by Arab attacks in order to prevent polarization. The Etzel group broke off from the Haganah in opposition to this policy.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The British responded to the revolt with the Peel Commission (1936–37), a public inquiry that recommended that an exclusively Jewish territory be created in the Galilee and western coast (including the population transfer of 225,000 Arabs); the rest becoming an exclusively Arab area. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation. The plan was rejected outright by the Palestinian Arab leadership and they renewed the revolt, which caused the British to appease the Arabs, and to abandon the plan as unworkable.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Testifying before the Peel Commission, Weizmann said \"There are in Europe 6,000,000 people ... for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live and places where they cannot enter.\" In 1938, the US called an international conference to address the question of the vast numbers of Jews trying to escape Europe. Britain made its attendance contingent on Palestine being kept out of the discussion. No Jewish representatives were invited. The Nazis proposed their own solution: that the Jews of Europe be shipped to Madagascar (the Madagascar Plan). The agreement proved fruitless, and the Jews were stuck in Europe.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "With millions of Jews trying to leave Europe and every country in the world closed to Jewish migration, the British decided to close Palestine. The White Paper of 1939, recommended that an independent Palestine, governed jointly by Arabs and Jews, be established within 10 years. The White Paper agreed to allow 75,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine over the period 1940–44, after which migration would require Arab approval. Both the Arab and Jewish leadership rejected the White Paper. In March 1940 the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of Palestine. Jews now resorted to illegal immigration: (Aliyah Bet or \"Ha'apalah\"), often organized by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet and the Irgun. With no outside help and no countries ready to admit them, very few Jews managed to escape Europe between 1939 and 1945. Those caught by the British were mostly imprisoned in Mauritius.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "During the Second World War, the Jewish Agency worked to establish a Jewish army that would fight alongside the British forces. Churchill supported the plan but British Military and government opposition led to its rejection. The British demanded that the number of Jewish recruits match the number of Arab recruits.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties. In May 1941, the Palmach was established to defend the Yishuv against the planned Axis invasion through North Africa. The British refusal to provide arms to the Jews, even when Rommel's forces were advancing through Egypt in June 1942 (intent on occupying Palestine) and the 1939 White Paper, led to the emergence of a Zionist leadership in Palestine that believed conflict with Britain was inevitable. Despite this, the Jewish Agency called on Palestine's Jewish youth to volunteer for the British Army (both men and women). 30,000 Palestinian Jews and 12,000 Palestinian Arabs enlisted in the British armed forces during the war. In June 1944 the British agreed to create a Jewish Brigade that would fight in Italy.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Approximately 1.5 million Jews around the world served in every branch of the allied armies, mainly in the Soviet and US armies. 200,000 Jews died serving in the Soviet army alone.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "A small group (about 200 activists), dedicated to resisting the British administration in Palestine, broke away from the Etzel (which advocated support for Britain during the war) and formed the \"Lehi\" (Stern Gang), led by Avraham Stern. In 1942, the USSR released the Revisionist Zionist leader Menachem Begin from the Gulag and he went to Palestine, taking command of the Etzel organization with a policy of increased conflict against the British. At about the same time Yitzhak Shamir escaped from the camp in Eritrea where the British were holding Lehi activists without trial, taking command of the Lehi (Stern Gang).",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the war. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were used as slaves. The 1941 pro-Axis coup in Iraq was accompanied by massacres of Jews. The Jewish Agency put together plans for a last stand in the event of Rommel invading Palestine (the Nazis planned to exterminate Palestine's Jews).",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis, aided by local forces, led systematic efforts to kill every person of Jewish extraction in Europe (The Holocaust), causing the deaths of approximately 6 million Jews. A quarter of those killed were children. The Polish and German Jewish communities, which played an important role in defining the pre-1945 Jewish world, mostly ceased to exist. In the United States and Palestine, Jews of European origin became disconnected from their families and roots. As the Holocaust mainly affected Ashkenazi Jews, Sepharadi and Mizrahi Jews, who had been a minority, became a much more significant factor in the Jewish world. Those Jews who survived in central Europe, were displaced persons (refugees); an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, established to examine the Palestine issue, surveyed their ambitions and found that over 95% wanted to migrate to Palestine.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In the Zionist movement the moderate Pro-British (and British citizen) Weizmann, whose son died flying in the RAF, was undermined by Britain's anti-Zionist policies. Leadership of the movement passed to the Jewish Agency in Palestine, now led by the anti-British Socialist-Zionist party (Mapai) led by David Ben-Gurion.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The British Empire was severely weakened by the war. In the Middle East, the war had made Britain conscious of its dependence on Arab oil. British firms controlled Iraqi oil and Britain ruled Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates. Shortly after VE Day, the Labour Party won the general election in Britain. Although Labour Party conferences had for years called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Labour government now decided to maintain the 1939 White Paper policies.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Illegal migration (Aliyah Bet) became the main form of Jewish entry into Palestine. Across Europe Bricha (\"flight\"), an organization of former partisans and ghetto fighters, smuggled Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe to Mediterranean ports, where small boats tried to breach the British blockade of Palestine. Meanwhile, Jews from Arab countries began moving into Palestine overland. Despite British efforts to curb immigration, during the 14 years of the Aliyah Bet, over 110,000 Jews entered Palestine. By the end of World War II, the Jewish population of Palestine had increased to 33% of the total population.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In an effort to win independence, Zionists now waged a guerrilla war against the British. The main underground Jewish militia, the Haganah, formed an alliance called the Jewish Resistance Movement with the Etzel and Stern Gang to fight the British. In June 1946, following instances of Jewish sabotage, such as in the Night of the Bridges, the British launched Operation Agatha, arresting 2,700 Jews, including the leadership of the Jewish Agency, whose headquarters were raided. Those arrested were held without trial.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "On 4 July 1946 a massive pogrom in Poland led to a wave of Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe for Palestine. Three weeks later, Irgun bombed the British Military Headquarters of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people. In the days following the bombing, Tel Aviv was placed under curfew and over 120,000 Jews, nearly 20% of the Jewish population of Palestine, were questioned by the police. In the US, Congress criticized British handling of the situation and considered delaying loans that were vital to British post-war recovery. The alliance between Haganah and Etzel was dissolved after the King David bombings.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland. Their departure was largely organized by Zionist activists in Poland under the umbrella of the semi-clandestine organization Berihah (\"Flight\"). Berihah was also responsible for the organized emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, totalling 250,000 (including Poland) Holocaust survivors. The British imprisoned the Jews trying to enter Palestine in the Atlit detainee camp and Cyprus internment camps. Those held were mainly Holocaust survivors, including large numbers of children and orphans. In response to Cypriot fears that the Jews would never leave (since they lacked a state or documentation) and because the 75,000 quota established by the 1939 White Paper had never been filled, the British allowed the refugees to enter Palestine at a rate of 750 per month.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "By 1947 the Labour Government in Britain was ready to refer the Palestine problem to the newly created United Nations.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "On 2 April 1947, the United Kingdom requested that the question of Palestine be handled by the General Assembly. The General Assembly created a committee, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to report on \"the question of Palestine\". In July 1947 the UNSCOP visited Palestine and met with Jewish and Zionist delegations. The Arab Higher Committee boycotted the meetings. During the visit the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin ordered that passengers from an Aliyah Bet ship, SS Exodus 1947, to be sent back to Europe. The Holocaust surviving migrants on the ship were forcibly removed by British troops at Hamburg, Germany.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "The principal non-Zionist Orthodox Jewish (or Haredi) party, Agudat Israel, recommended to UNSCOP that a Jewish state be set up after reaching a religious status quo agreement with Ben-Gurion regarding the future Jewish state. The agreement granted an exemption from military service to a quota of yeshiva (religious seminary) students and to all Orthodox women, made the Sabbath the national weekend, guaranteed kosher food in government institutions and allowed Orthodox Jews to maintain a separate education system.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "The majority report of UNSCOP proposed \"an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem\", the last to be under \"an International Trusteeship System\". On 29 November 1947, in Resolution 181 (II), the General Assembly adopted the majority report of UNSCOP, but with slight modifications. The Plan also called for the British to allow \"substantial\" Jewish migration by 1 February 1948.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Neither Britain nor the UN Security Council took any action to implement the recommendation made by the resolution and Britain continued detaining Jews attempting to enter Palestine. Concerned that partition would severely damage Anglo-Arab relations, Britain denied UN representatives access to Palestine during the period between the adoption of Resolution 181 (II) and the termination of the British Mandate. The British withdrawal was finally completed in May 1948. However, Britain continued to hold (formerly illegal) Jewish immigrants of \"fighting age\" and their families on Cyprus until March 1949.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The General Assembly's vote caused joy in the Jewish community and anger in the Arab community. Violence broke out between the sides, escalating into civil war. From January 1948, operations became increasingly militarized, with the intervention of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments inside Palestine, each active in a variety of distinct sectors around the different coastal towns. They consolidated their presence in Galilee and Samaria. Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, he organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem. The Yishuv tried to supply the city using convoys of up to 100 armoured vehicles, but largely failed. By March, almost all Haganah's armoured vehicles had been destroyed, the blockade was in full operation, and hundreds of Haganah members who had tried to bring supplies into the city were killed.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Up to 100,000 Arabs, from the urban upper and middle classes in Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, or Jewish-dominated areas, evacuated abroad or to Arab centres eastwards. This situation caused the US to withdraw their support for the Partition plan, thus encouraging the Arab League to believe that the Palestinian Arabs, reinforced by the Arab Liberation Army, could put an end to the plan for partition. The British, on the other hand, decided on 7 February 1948 to support the annexation of the Arab part of Palestine by Transjordan. The Jordanian army was commanded by the British.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "David Ben-Gurion reorganized the Haganah and made conscription obligatory. Every Jewish man and woman in the country had to receive military training. Thanks to funds raised by Golda Meir from sympathisers in the United States, and Stalin's decision to support the Zionist cause, the Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to purchase important arms in Eastern Europe.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Ben-Gurion gave Yigael Yadin the responsibility to plan for the announced intervention of the Arab states. The result of his analysis was Plan Dalet, in which Haganah passed from the defensive to the offensive. The plan sought to establish Jewish territorial continuity by conquering mixed zones. Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Beisan, Jaffa and Acre fell, resulting in the flight of more than 250,000 Palestinian Arabs. The situation was one of the catalysts for the intervention of neighbouring Arab states.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "On 14 May 1948, on the day the last British forces left from Haifa, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.",
"title": "Mandatory Palestine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Immediately following the declaration of the new state, both superpower leaders, US President Harry S. Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, recognized the new state.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "The Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine. The Arab states marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine, starting the first Arab–Israeli War. After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state, the tide turned in the Israelis' favour and they pushed the Arab armies back beyond the borders of the proposed Arab state.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "On 29 May 1948, the British initiated United Nations Security Council Resolution 50 declaring an arms embargo on the region. Czechoslovakia violated the resolution, supplying the Jewish state with critical military hardware to match the (mainly British) heavy equipment and planes already owned by the invading Arab states. On 11 June, a month-long UN truce was put into effect.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Following independence, the Haganah became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The Palmach, Etzel and Lehi were required to cease independent operations and join the IDF. During the ceasefire, Etzel attempted to bring in a private arms shipment aboard a ship called \"Altalena\". When they refused to hand the arms to the government, Ben-Gurion ordered that the ship be sunk. Several Etzel members were killed in the fighting.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Large numbers of Jewish immigrants, many of them World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors, now began arriving in the new state of Israel, and many joined the IDF.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state and its occupation by the Arab armies, from July the tide gradually turned in the Israelis' favour and they pushed the Arab armies out and conquered some of the territory that had been included in the proposed Arab state. At the end of November, tenuous local ceasefires were arranged between the Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese. On 1 December King Abdullah announced the union of Transjordan with Arab Palestine west of the Jordan; only Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Israel signed armistices with Egypt (24 February), Lebanon (23 March), Jordan (3 April) and Syria (20 July). No actual peace agreements were signed. With permanent ceasefire coming into effect, Israel's new borders, later known as the Green Line, were established. These borders were not recognized by the Arab states as international boundaries. Israel was in control of the Galilee, Jezreel Valley, West Jerusalem, the coastal plain and the Negev. The Syrians remained in control of a strip of territory along the Sea of Galilee originally allocated to the Jewish state, the Lebanese occupied a tiny area at Rosh Hanikra, and the Egyptians retained the Gaza strip and still had some forces surrounded inside Israeli territory. Jordanian forces remained in the West Bank, where the British had stationed them before the war. Jordan annexed the areas it occupied while Egypt kept Gaza as an occupied zone.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Following the ceasefire declaration, Britain released over 2,000 Jewish detainees it was still holding in Cyprus and recognized the state of Israel. On 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations. Out of an Israeli population of 650,000, some 6,000 men and women were killed in the fighting, including 4,000 soldiers in the IDF (approximately 1% of the Jewish population). According to United Nations figures, 726,000 Palestinians had fled or were expelled by the Israelis between 1947 and 1949.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "A 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, met first in Tel Aviv then moved to Jerusalem after the 1949 ceasefire. In January 1949, Israel held its first elections. The Socialist-Zionist parties Mapai and Mapam won the most seats (46 and 19 respectively). Mapai's leader, David Ben-Gurion, was appointed Prime Minister, he formed a coalition which did not include Mapam who were Stalinist and loyal to the USSR (another Stalinist party, non-Zionist Maki won 4 seats). This was a significant decision, as it signaled that Israel would not be in the Soviet bloc. The Knesset elected Chaim Weizmann as the first (largely ceremonial) President of Israel. Hebrew and Arabic were made the official languages of the new state. All governments have been coalitions—no party has ever won a majority in the Knesset. From 1948 until 1977 all governments were led by Mapai and the Alignment, predecessors of the Labour Party. In those years Labour Zionists, initially led by David Ben-Gurion, dominated Israeli politics and the economy was run on primarily socialist lines.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Within three years (1948 to 1951), immigration doubled the Jewish population of Israel and left an indelible imprint on Israeli society. Overall, 700,000 Jews settled in Israel during this period. Some 300,000 arrived from Asian and North African nations as part of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. Among them, the largest group (over 100,000) was from Iraq. The rest of the immigrants were from Europe, including more than 270,000 who came from Eastern Europe, mainly Romania and Poland (over 100,000 each). Nearly all the Jewish immigrants could be described as refugees, however only 136,000 who immigrated to Israel from Central Europe, had international certification because they belonged to the 250,000 Jews registered by the allies as displaced after World War II and living in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "In 1950 the Knesset passed the Law of Return, which granted to all Jews and those of Jewish ancestry (Jewish grandparent), and their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and gain citizenship. That year, 50,000 Yemenite Jews (99%) were secretly flown to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. In 1951 Iraqi Jews were granted temporary permission to leave the country and 120,000 (over 90%) opted to move to Israel as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Jews also fled from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. By the late sixties, about 500,000 Jews had left Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Over the course of twenty years, some 850,000 Jews from Arab countries (99%) relocated to Israel (680,000), France and the Americas. The land and property left behind by the Jews (much of it in Arab city centres) is still a matter of some dispute. Today there are about 9,000 Jews living in Arab states, of whom 75% live in Morocco and 15% in Tunisia. Vast assets, approximately $150 billion worth of goods and property (before inflation) were left behind in these countries.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Between 1948 and 1958, the population of Israel rose from 800,000 to two million. During this period, food, clothes and furniture had to be rationed in what became known as the Austerity Period (Tkufat haTsena). Immigrants were mostly refugees with no money or possessions and many were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot. By 1952, over 200,000 immigrants were living in tents or prefabricated shacks built by the government. Israel received financial aid from private donations from outside the country (mainly the United States). The pressure on the new state's finances led Ben-Gurion to sign a controversial reparations agreement with West Germany. During the Knesset debate some 5,000 demonstrators gathered and riot police had to cordon the building. Israel received several billion marks and in return agreed to open diplomatic relations with Germany.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In 1949, education was made free and compulsory for all citizens until the age of 14. The state now funded the party-affiliated Zionist education system and a new body created by the Haredi Agudat Israel party. A separate body was created to provide education for the remaining Palestinian-Arab population. The major political parties now competed for immigrants to join their education systems. The government banned the existing educational bodies from the transit camps and tried to mandate a unitary secular socialist education under the control of \"camp managers\" who also had to provide work, food and housing for the immigrants. There were attempts to force orthodox Yemenite children to adopt a secular life style by teachers, including many instances of Yemenite children having their side-curls cut by teachers. The Yemenite Children Affair led to the first Israeli public inquiry (the Fromkin Inquiry), the collapse of the coalition, and an election in 1951.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In its early years Israel sought to maintain a non-aligned position between the super-powers. However, in 1952, an antisemitic public trial was staged in Moscow in which a group of Jewish doctors were accused of trying to poison Stalin (the Doctors' plot), followed by a similar trial in Czechoslovakia (Slánský trial). This, and the failure of Israel to be included in the Bandung Conference of 1955 (of non-aligned states), effectively ended Israel's pursuit of non-alignment.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "On 19 May 1950, in contravention of international law, Egypt announced that the Suez Canal was closed to Israeli ships and commerce. In 1952 a military coup in Egypt brought Abdel Nasser to power. The United States pursued close relations with the new Arab states, particularly the Nasser-led Egyptian Free Officers Movement and Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Israel's solution to diplomatic isolation was to establish good relations with newly independent states in Africa and with France, which was engaged in the Algerian War.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "In the January 1955 elections Mapai won 40 seats and the Labour Party 10, Moshe Sharett became prime minister of Israel at the head of a left-wing coalition. Between 1953 and 1956, there were intermittent clashes along all of Israel's borders as Arab terrorism and breaches of the ceasefire resulting in Israeli counter-raids. Palestinian fedayeen attacks, often organized and sponsored by the Egyptians, were made from (Egyptian) occupied Gaza. Fedayeen attacks led to a growing cycle of violence as Israel launched reprisal attacks against Gaza. In 1954 the Uzi submachine gun first entered use by the Israel Defense Forces. In 1955 the Egyptian government began recruiting former Nazi rocket scientists for a missile program.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Sharett's government was brought down by the Lavon Affair, a crude plan to disrupt US–Egyptian relations, involving Israeli agents planting bombs at American sites in Egypt. The plan failed when eleven agents were arrested. Defense Minister Lavon was blamed despite his denial of responsibility. The Lavon affair led to Sharett's resignation and Ben-Gurion returned to the post of prime minister.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "In 1955 Egypt concluded a massive arms deal with Czechoslovakia, upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East. In 1956, the increasingly pro-Soviet President Nasser of Egypt, announced the nationalization of the (French and British owned) Suez Canal, which was Egypt's main source of foreign currency. Egypt also blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba preventing Israeli access to the Red Sea. Israel made a secret agreement with the French at Sèvres to co-ordinate military operations against Egypt. Britain and France had already begun secret preparations for military action. It has been alleged that the French also agreed to build a nuclear plant for the Israelis and that by 1968 this was able to produce nuclear weapons. Britain and France arranged for Israel to give them a pretext for seizing the Suez Canal. Israel was to attack Egypt, and Britain and France would then call on both sides to withdraw. When, as expected, the Egyptians refused, Anglo-French forces would invade to take control of the Canal.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Israeli forces, commanded by General Moshe Dayan, launched Operation Kadesh against Egypt on 29 October 1956. On 30 October Britain and France made their pre-arranged call for both sides to stop fighting and withdraw from the Canal area, and for them to be allowed to take up positions at key points on the Canal. Egypt refused and the allies commenced air strikes on 31 October aimed at neutralizing the Egyptian air force. By 5 November the Israelis had overrun the Sinai. The Anglo-French invasion began that day. There was uproar in the UN, with the United States and USSR for once in agreement in denouncing the actions of Israel, Britain and France. A demand for a ceasefire was reluctantly accepted on 7 November.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "At Egypt's request, the UN sent an Emergency Force (UNEF), consisting of 6,000 peacekeeping troops from 10 nations to supervise the ceasefire. This was the first ever UN peacekeeping operation. From 15 November the UN troops marked out a zone across the Sinai to separate the Israeli and Egyptian forces. Upon receiving US guarantees of Israeli access to the Suez Canal, freedom of access out of the Gulf of Aqaba and Egyptian action to stop Palestinian raids from Gaza, the Israelis withdrew to the Negev. In practice the Suez Canal remained closed to Israeli shipping. The conflict marked the end of West-European dominance in the Middle East. Nasser emerged as the victor in the conflict, having won the political battle.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In 1956, two modern-orthodox (and religious-zionist) parties, Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi, joined to form the National Religious Party. The party was a component of every Israeli coalition until 1992, usually running the Ministry of Education. Mapai was once again victorious in the 1959 elections, increasing its number of seats to 47, Labour had 7. Ben-Gurion remained Prime Minister.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Rudolph Kastner, a minor political functionary, was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and sued his accuser. Kastner lost the trial and was assassinated two years later. In 1958 the Supreme Court exonerated him. In May 1960 Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief administrators of the Nazi Holocaust, was located in Argentina by the Mossad, later kidnapping him and bringing him to Israel. In 1961 he was put on trial, and after several months found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged in 1962 and is the only person ever sentenced to death by an Israeli court. Testimonies by Holocaust survivors at the trial and the extensive publicity that surrounded it has led the trial to be considered a turning point in public awareness of the Holocaust.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "In 1961 a Herut no-confidence motion over the resurfaced Lavon affair led to Ben-Gurion's resignation. Ben-Gurion declared that he would only accept office if Lavon was fired from the position of the head of Histadrut, Israel's labour union organization. His demands were accepted and Mapai won the 1961 election (42 seats keeping Ben-Gurion as PM) with a slight reduction in its share of the seats. Menachem Begin's Herut party and the Liberals came next with 17 seats each. In 1962 the Mossad began assassinating German rocket scientists working in Egypt in Operation Damocles after one of them reported the missile program was designed to carry chemical warheads. This action was condemned by Ben-Gurion and led to the Mossad director, Isser Harel, resignation. In 1963 Ben-Gurion quit again over the Lavon affair. His attempts to make his party Mapai support him over the issue failed. Levi Eshkol became leader of Mapai and the new prime minister.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "In 1963 Yigael Yadin began excavating Masada. In 1964, Egypt, Jordan and Syria developed a unified military command. Israel completed work on a national water carrier, a huge engineering project designed to transfer Israel's allocation of the Jordan river's waters towards the south of the country in realization of Ben-Gurion's dream of mass Jewish settlement of the Negev desert. The Arabs responded by trying to divert the headwaters of the Jordan, leading to growing conflict between Israel and Syria.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Ben-Gurion quit Mapai to form the new party Rafi, he was joined by Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan. Begin's Herut party joined with the Liberals to form Gahal. Mapai and Labour united for the 1965 elections, winning 45 seats and maintaining Levi Eshkol as Prime Minister. Ben-Gurion's Rafi party received 10 seats, Gahal got 26 seats becoming the second largest party.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Until 1966, Israel's principal arms supplier was France, however in 1966, following the withdrawal from Algeria, Charles de Gaulle announced France would cease supplying Israel with arms (and refused to refund money paid for 50 warplanes). On 5 February 1966, the United States announced that it was taking over the former French and West German obligations, to maintain military \"stabilization\" in the Middle East. Included in the military hardware would be over 200 M48 tanks. In May of that year the US also agreed to provide A-4 Skyhawk tactical aircraft to Israel. In 1966 security restrictions placed on Arab-Israelis were eased and efforts made to integrate them into Israeli life.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "In 1966, Black and white TV broadcasts began. On 15 May 1967, the first public performance of Naomi Shemer's classic song \"Jerusalem of Gold\" took place and over the next few weeks it dominated the Israeli airwaves. Two days later Syria, Egypt and Jordan amassed troops along the Israeli borders, and Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Nasser demanded that the UNEF leave Sinai, threatening escalation to a full war. Egyptian radio broadcasts talked of a coming genocide. On 26 May Nasser declared, \"The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel\". Israel considered the Straits of Tiran closure a Casus belli. Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq signed defence pacts and Iraqi troops began deploying to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Algeria also announced that it would send troops to Egypt. Between 1963 and 1967 Egyptian troops had tested chemical weapons on Yemenite civilians as part of an Egyptian intervention in support of rebels.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "On the morning before Dayan was sworn in, 5 June 1967, the Israeli air force launched Operation Focus, a series of pre-emptive attacks in which it pre-emptively attacked the Egyptian air force, kicking off the Six-Day War, and then, later the same day, struck the air forces of Jordan and Syria. By 11 June the Arab forces were routed and all parties had accepted the cease-fire called for by UN Security Council Resolutions 235 and 236. Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the formerly Jordanian-controlled West Bank of the Jordan River. East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "The result of the 29 August 1967 Arab League summit was the Khartoum Resolution, which according to Abd al Azim Ramadan, left only one option -a war with Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "In 1968 Moshe Levinger led a group of Religious Zionists who created the first Jewish settlement, a town near Hebron called Kiryat Arba. There were no other religious settlements until after 1974. Ben-Gurion's Rafi party merged with the Labour-Mapai alliance. Ben-Gurion remained outside as an independent. In 1968, compulsory education was extended until the age of 16 for all citizens (it had been 14) and the government embarked on an extensive program of integration in education. In the major cities children from mainly Sephardi/Mizrahi neighbourhoods were bused to newly established middle schools in better areas. The system remained in place until after 2000.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "In March 1968, Israeli forces attacked the Palestinian militia, Fatah, at its base in the Jordanian town of Karameh. The attack was in response to land mines placed on Israeli roads. The Israelis retreated after destroying the camp, however the Israelis sustained unexpectedly high casualties and the attack was not viewed as a success. Despite heavy casualties, the Palestinians claimed victory, while Fatah and the PLO (of which it formed part) became famous across the Arab world. In early 1969, fighting broke out between Egypt and Israel along the Suez Canal. In retaliation for repeated Egyptian shelling of Israeli positions along the Suez Canal, Israeli planes made deep strikes into Egypt in the 1969–1970 \"War of Attrition\".",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "In early 1969, Levi Eshkol died in office of a heart attack and Golda Meir became Prime Minister with the largest percentage of the vote ever won by an Israeli party, winning 56 of the 120 seats after the 1969 election. Meir was the first female prime minister of Israel and the first woman to have headed a Middle Eastern state in modern times. Gahal retained its 26 seats, and was the second largest party.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "In September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan drove the Palestine Liberation Organization out of his country. On 18 September 1970, Syrian tanks invaded Jordan, intending to aid the PLO. At the request of the US, Israel moved troops to the border and threatened Syria, causing the Syrians to withdraw. The centre of PLO activity then shifted to Lebanon, where the 1969 Cairo agreement gave the Palestinians autonomy within the south of the country. The area controlled by the PLO became known by the international press and locals as \"Fatahland\" and contributed to the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War. The event also led to Hafez al-Assad taking power in Syria. Egyptian President Nasser died of a heart attack immediately after and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Increased Soviet antisemitism and enthusiasm generated by the 1967 victory led to a wave of Soviet Jews applying to emigrate to Israel. . Most Jews were refused exit visas and persecuted by the authorities. Some were arrested, becoming known as Prisoners of Zion. During 1971, violent demonstrations by the Israeli Black Panthers, made the Israeli public aware of resentment among Mizrahi Jews at ongoing discrimination and social gaps. In 1972 the US Jewish Mafia leader, Meyer Lansky, who had taken refuge in Israel, was deported to the United States.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "At the 1972 Munich Olympics, two members of the Israeli team were killed, and nine members taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. A botched German rescue attempt led to the death of the rest along with five of the eight hijackers. The three surviving Palestinians were released by the West German authorities eight weeks later without charge, in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615. The Israeli government responded with an air raid, a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon (led by future Prime Minister, Ehud Barak) and an assassination campaign against the organizers of the massacre.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "In 1972 the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviet advisers from Egypt. This and frequent invasion exercises by Egypt and Syria led to Israeli complacency about the threat from these countries. In addition the desire not to be held responsible for initiating conflict and an election campaign highlighting security, led to an Israeli failure to mobilize, despite receiving warnings of an impending attack.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "The Yom Kippur War (also known as the October War) began on 6 October 1973, with the Syrian and Egyptian armies launching a surprise attack against the unprepared Israeli Defense Forces. Both the Soviets and the Americans (at the orders of Henry Kissinger) rushed arms to their allies in Operation Nickel Grass. The Syrians were repulsed at the Valley of Tears on the Golan and, while the Egyptians captured a strip of territory in Sinai, but were outflanked by Israeli forces over the Suez Canal in the Battle of Ismailia, which trapped the Egyptian Third Army in Sinai. On 18 January 1974, US diplomatic efforts led to a Disengagement of Forces agreement with the Egyptian government and on 31 May with the Syrian government.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "The war was the catalyst for the 1973 oil crisis, a Saudi-led oil embargo in conjunction with OPEC against countries trading with Israel. Severe shortages led to massive increases in the price of oil, and as a result, many countries broke off relations with Israel or downgraded relations, and Israel was banned from participation in the Asian Games and other Asian sporting events.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "Prior to the December 1973 elections, Gahal and a number of right-wing parties united to form the Likud (led by Begin). In the December 1973 elections, Labour won 51 seats, leaving Golda Meir as Prime Minister. The Likud won 39 seats.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "In May 1974, Palestinians attacked a school in Ma'alot, holding 102 children hostage. Twenty-two children were killed. In November 1974 the PLO was granted observer status at the UN and Yasser Arafat addressed the General Assembly. Later that year, the Agranat Commission, appointed to assess responsibility for Israel's lack of preparedness for the war, exonerated the government of responsibility, and held the Chief of Staff and head of military intelligence responsible. Despite the report, public anger at the Government led to Golda Meir's resignation.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "Following Meir's resignation, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister. Religious Zionist followers of the teachings of Abraham Isaac Kook, formed the Gush Emunim movement, and began an organized drive to settle the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly, under the guidance of Austrian Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, adopted Resolution 3379, which asserted Zionism to be a form of racism. The General Assembly rescinded this resolution in December 1991 with Resolution 46/86. In March 1976, there was a massive strike by Israeli-Arabs in protest at a government plan to expropriate land in the Galilee.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "In July 1976, Rabin ordered Operation Entebbe to rescue kidnapped Jewish passengers from an Air France flight hijacked by PFLP militants and German revolutionaries and flown to Uganda.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "In January 1977, French authorities arrested Abu Daoud, the planner of the Munich massacre, releasing him a few days later. In March 1977 Anatoly Sharansky, a prominent Refusenik and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group, was sentenced to 13 years' hard labour.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "Rabin resigned in April 1977 after it emerged that his wife maintained a dollar account in the United States (illegal at the time), which had been opened while Rabin was Israeli ambassador. The incident became known as the Dollar Account affair. Shimon Peres informally replaced him as prime minister, leading the Alignment in the subsequent elections.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "In a surprise result, the Likud led by Menachem Begin won 43 seats in the 1977 elections. This was the first time in Israeli history that the government was not led by the left. In November 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem and spoke at the Knesset at the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Sadat recognized Israel's right to exist and established the basis for direct negotiations between Egypt and Israel. Following Sadat's visit, 350 Yom Kippur War veterans organized the Peace Now movement to encourage Israeli governments to make peace with the Arabs.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "In March 1978, eleven armed Lebanese Palestinians reached Israel in boats and carried out the Coastal Road Massacre in opposition to the Egyptian–Israeli peace process. Three days later, Israeli forces crossed into Lebanon beginning Operation Litani. After passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, calling for Israeli withdrawal and the creation of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peace-keeping force, Israel withdrew its troops.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "In September 1978, US President Jimmy Carter invited President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin to meet with him at Camp David, and on 11 September they agreed on a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt, and a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. It set out broad principles to guide negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. It also established guidelines for a West Bank–Gaza transitional regime of full autonomy for the Palestinians residing in these territories, and for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The treaty was signed 26 March 1979 by Begin and Sadat, with President Carter signing as witness. Under the treaty, Israel returned the Sinai peninsula to Egypt in April 1982. The Arab League reacted to the peace treaty by suspending Egypt from the organization and moving its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Islamic fundamentalist members of the Egyptian army who opposed peace with Israel. Following the agreement Israel and Egypt became the two largest recipients of US military and financial aid (Iraq and Afghanistan have now overtaken them).",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "In December 1978 the Israeli Merkava battle tank entered use with the IDF. In 1979, over 40,000 Iranian Jews migrated to Israel, escaping the Islamic Revolution there. On 30 June 1981, the Israeli air force destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Operation Opera that France was building for Iraq. Three weeks later, Begin won again, in the 1981 elections (48 seats Likud, 47 Labour). Ariel Sharon was made defence minister. The new government annexed the Golan Heights and banned the national airline from flying on Shabbat. By the 1980s a diverse set of high-tech industries had developed in Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "In the decades following the 1948 war, Israel's border with Lebanon was quiet compared to its borders with other neighbours. But the 1969 Cairo agreement gave the PLO a free hand to attack Israel from South Lebanon. The area was governed by the PLO independently of the Lebanese Government and became known as \"Fatahland\" (Fatah was the largest faction in the PLO). Palestinian irregulars constantly shelled the Israeli north, especially the town of Kiryat Shmona, which was a Likud stronghold inhabited primarily by Jews who had fled the Arab world. Lack of control over Palestinian areas was an important factor in causing civil war in Lebanon.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "In June 1982, the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, the ambassador to Britain, was used as a pretext for an Israeli invasion aiming to drive the PLO out of the southern half of Lebanon. Sharon agreed with Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan to expand the invasion deep into Lebanon even though the cabinet had only authorized a 40 kilometre deep invasion. The invasion became known as the 1982 Lebanon War and the Israeli army occupied Beirut, the only time an Arab capital has been occupied by Israel. Some of the Shia and Christian population of South Lebanon welcomed the Israelis, as PLO forces had maltreated them, but Lebanese resentment of Israeli occupation grew over time and the Shia became gradually radicalized under Iranian guidance. Constant casualties among Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians led to growing opposition to the war in Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "In August 1982, the PLO withdrew its forces from Lebanon (moving to Tunisia). Bashir Gemayel was elected President of Lebanon, and reportedly agreed to recognize Israel and sign a peace treaty. However, Gemayal was assassinated before an agreement could be signed, and one day later Phalangist Christian forces led by Elie Hobeika entered two Palestinian refugee camps and massacred the occupants. The massacres led to the biggest demonstration ever in Israel against the war, with as many as 400,000 people (almost 10% of the population) gathering in Tel Aviv. In 1983, an Israeli public inquiry found that Israel's defence minister, Sharon, was indirectly but personally responsible for the massacres. It also recommended that he never again be allowed to hold the post (it did not forbid him from being Prime Minister). In 1983, the May 17 Agreement was signed between Israel and Lebanon, paving the way for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory through a few stages. Israel continued to operate against the PLO until its eventual departure in 1985, and kept a small force stationed in Southern Lebanon in support of the South Lebanon Army until May 2000.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "In September 1983, Begin resigned and was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister. The 1984 election was inconclusive, and led to a power sharing agreement between Shimon Peres of the Alignment and Shamir of Likud. Peres was prime minister from 1984 to 1986 and Shamir from 1986 to 1988. In 1984, continual discrimination against Sephardi Ultra-Orthodox Jews by the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox establishment led political activist Aryeh Deri to leave the Agudat Israel party and join former chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in forming Shas, a new party aimed at the non-Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox vote.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "In June 1985, Israel withdrew most of its troops from Lebanon, leaving a residual Israeli force and an Israeli-supported militia in southern Lebanon as a \"security zone\" and buffer against attacks on its northern territory. Since then, the IDF fought for many years against the Shia organization Hezbollah, which became a growing threat to Israel. By July 1985, Israel's inflation, buttressed by complex index linking of salaries, had reached 480% per annum and was the highest in the world. Peres introduced emergency control of prices and cut government expenditure successfully bringing inflation under control. The currency (known as the old Israeli shekel) was replaced and renamed the Israeli new shekel at a rate of 1,000 old shkalim = 1 new shekel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "Growing Israeli settlement and continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip led to the First Intifada in 1987, which lasted until the Oslo accords of 1993, despite Israeli attempts to suppress it. Human rights abuses by Israeli troops led a group of Israelis to form B'Tselem, an organization devoted to improving awareness and compliance with human rights requirements in Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "The Alignment and Likud remained neck and neck in the 1988 elections. Shamir successfully formed a national unity coalition with the Labour Alignment. In March 1990, Alignment leader Shimon Peres engineered a defeat of the government in a non-confidence vote and then tried to form a new government. The attempt, which became known as \"the dirty trick\", failed and Shamir became prime minister at the head of a right-wing coalition.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War between Iraq and a large allied force, led by the United States. Iraq attacked Israel with 39 Scud missiles. Israel did not retaliate at request of the US, fearing that if Israel responded against Iraq, other Arab nations might desert the allied coalition.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "The coalition's victory in the Gulf War opened new possibilities for regional peace, and in October 1991 the US president, George H. W. Bush, and Soviet Union Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, jointly convened a historic meeting in Madrid of Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Palestinian leaders. Shamir opposed the idea but agreed in return for loan guarantees to help with absorption of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. His participation in the conference led to the collapse of his (right-wing) coalition.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 168,
"text": "In the 1992 elections, the Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, won a significant victory (44 seats) promising to pursue peace while promoting Rabin as a \"tough general\" and pledging not to deal with the PLO in any way. The left Zionist party Meretz won 12 seats, and the Arab and communist parties a further 5, meaning that parties supporting a peace treaty had a full (albeit small) majority in the Knesset.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 169,
"text": "On 25 July 1993, Israel carried out a week-long military operation in Lebanon to attack Hezbollah positions dubbed Operation Accountability. On 13 September 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords (a Declaration of Principles) on the South Lawn of the White House. The principles established objectives relating to a transfer of authority from Israel to an interim Palestinian Authority, as a prelude to a final treaty establishing a Palestinian state, in exchange for mutual recognition. The DOP established May 1999 as the date by which a permanent status agreement for the West Bank and Gaza Strip would take effect. In February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a follower of the Kach party, killed 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which became known as the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. Kach had been barred from participation in the 1992 elections (on the grounds that the movement was racist). It was subsequently made illegal. Israel and the PLO signed the Gaza–Jericho Agreement in May 1994, and the Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities in August, which began the process of transferring authority from Israel to the Palestinians. On 25 July 1994, Jordan and Israel signed the Washington Declaration, which formally ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948 and on 26 October the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace, witnessed by US President Bill Clinton.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 170,
"text": "Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the Israeli–Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on 28 September 1995 in Washington. The agreement was witnessed by President Bill Clinton on behalf of the United States and by Russia, Egypt, Norway and the European Union, and incorporates and supersedes the previous agreements, marking the conclusion of the first stage of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. The agreement allowed allowed the PLO leadership to relocate to the occupied territories and granted autonomy to the Palestinians with talks to follow regarding final status. In return the Palestinians promised to abstain from use of terror and changed the Palestinian National Covenant, which had called for the expulsion of all Jews who migrated after 1917 and the elimination of Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 171,
"text": "The agreement was opposed by Hamas and other Palestinian factions, which launched suicide bomber attacks at Israel. Rabin had a barrier constructed around Gaza to prevent attacks. The growing separation between Israel and the \"Palestinian Territories\" led to a labour shortage in Israel, mainly in the construction industry. Israeli firms began importing labourers from the Philippines, Thailand, China and Romania; some of these labourers stayed on without visas. In addition, a growing number of Africans began illegally migrating to Israel. On 4 November 1995, a far-right-wing religious Zionist opponent of the Oslo Accords assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In February 1996 Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, called early elections. In April 1996, Israel launched Operation Grapes of Wrath in southern Lebanon as a result of Hezbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks on Israeli population centres along the border.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 172,
"text": "The May 1996 elections were the first featuring direct election of the prime minister and resulted in a narrow election victory for Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. A spate of suicide bombings reinforced the Likud position for security. Hamas claimed responsibility for most of the bombings. Despite his stated differences with the Oslo Accords, Prime Minister Netanyahu continued their implementation, but his prime ministership saw a marked slow-down in the Peace Process. Netanyahu also pledged to gradually reduce US aid to Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 173,
"text": "In September 1996, a Palestinian riot broke out against the creation of an exit in the Western Wall tunnel. Over the subsequent few weeks, around 80 people were killed as a result. In January 1997 Netanyahu signed the Hebron Protocol with the Palestinian Authority, resulting in the redeployment of Israeli forces in Hebron and the turnover of civilian authority in much of the area to the Palestinian Authority.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 174,
"text": "In the election of July 1999, Ehud Barak of the Labour Party became Prime Minister. His party was the largest in the Knesset with 26 seats. In September 1999 the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that the use of torture in interrogation of Palestinian prisoners was illegal. On 21 March 2000, Pope John Paul II arrived in Israel for an historic visit.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 175,
"text": "On 25 May 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew its remaining forces from the \"security zone\" in southern Lebanon. Several thousand members of the South Lebanon Army (and their families) left with the Israelis. The UN Secretary-General concluded that, as of 16 June 2000, Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. Lebanon claims that Israel continues to occupy Lebanese territory called \"Sheba'a Farms\" (however this area was governed by Syria until 1967 when Israel took control). The Sheba'a Farms provided Hezbollah with a pretext to maintain warfare with Israel. The Lebanese government, in contravention of the UN Security Council resolution, did not assert sovereignty in the area, which came under Hezbollah control. In the Fall of 2000, talks were held at Camp David to reach a final agreement on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Ehud Barak offered to meet most of the Palestinian teams requests for territory and political concessions, including Arab parts of east Jerusalem; however, Arafat abandoned the talks without making a counterproposal.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 176,
"text": "Following its withdrawal from South Lebanon, Israel became a member of the Western European and Others Group at the United Nations. Prior to this Israel was the only nation at the UN which was not a member of any group (the Arab states would not allow it to join the Asia group), which meant it could not be a member of the Security Council or appoint anyone to the International Court and other key UN roles. Since December 2013 it has been a permanent member of the group. Since December 2013 it has been a permanent member of the group.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 177,
"text": "On 28 September 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa compound, or Temple Mount, the following day the Palestinians launched the al-Aqsa Intifada. David Samuels and Khaled Abu Toameh have stated that the uprising was planned much earlier.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 178,
"text": "In 2001, with the Peace Process increasingly in disarray, Ehud Barak called a special election for Prime Minister. Barak hoped a victory would give him renewed authority in negotiations with the Palestinians. Instead opposition leader Ariel Sharon was elected PM. After this election, the system of directly electing the Premier was abandoned.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 179,
"text": "The failure of the peace process, increased Palestinian terror and occasional attacks by Hezbollah from Lebanon, led much of the Israeli public and political leadership to lose confidence in the Palestinian Authority as a peace partner. Most felt that many Palestinians viewed the peace treaty with Israel as a temporary measure only. Many Israelis were thus anxious to disengage from the Palestinians. In response to a wave of suicide bomb attacks, culminating in the Passover massacre (see List of Israeli civilian casualties in the Second Intifada), Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in March 2002, and Sharon began the construction of a barrier around the West Bank. Around the same time, the Israeli town of Sderot and other Israeli communities near Gaza became subject to constant shelling and mortar bomb attacks from Gaza.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 180,
"text": "Thousands of Jews from Latin America began arriving in Israel due to economic crises in their countries of origin. In January 2003 separate elections were held for the Knesset. Likud won the most seats (27). An anti-religion party, Shinui, led by media pundit Tommy Lapid, won 15 seats on a secularist platform, making it the third largest party (ahead of orthodox Shas). Internal fighting led to Shinui's demise at the next election. In 2004, the Black Hebrews were granted permanent residency in Israel. The group had begun migrating to Israel 25 years earlier from the United States, but had not been recognized as Jews by the state and hence not granted citizenship under Israel's Law of Return. They had settled in Israel without official status. From 2004 onwards, they received citizen's rights.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 181,
"text": "In 2005, all Jewish settlers were evacuated from Gaza (some forcibly) and their homes demolished. Disengagement from the Gaza Strip was completed on 12 September 2005. Military disengagement from the northern West Bank was completed ten days later.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 182,
"text": "In 2005 Sharon left the Likud and formed a new party called Kadima, which accepted that the peace process would lead to creation of a Palestinian state. He was joined by many leading figures from both Likud and Labour.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 183,
"text": "Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, the first and only genuinely free Palestinian elections. Hamas' leaders rejected all agreements signed with Israel, refused to recognize Israel's right to exist, refused to abandon terror, and occasionally claimed the Holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy. The withdrawal and Hamas victory left the status of Gaza unclear, as Israel asserted it was no longer an occupying power but continued to control air and sea access to Gaza although it did not exercise sovereignty on the ground. Egypt insisted that it was still occupied and refused to open border crossings with Gaza, although it was free to do so.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 184,
"text": "In April 2006 Ariel Sharon was incapacitated by a severe hemorrhagic stroke and Ehud Olmert became Prime Minister.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 185,
"text": "Ehud Olmert was elected Prime Minister after his party, Kadima, won the most seats (29) in the 2006 Israeli legislative election. In 2005 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was officially elected president of Iran; since then, Iranian policy towards Israel has grown more confrontational.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 186,
"text": "On 14 March 2006, Israel carried out Operation Bringing Home the Goods in the Palestinian Authority prison of Jericho in order to capture Ahmad Sa'adat and several Palestinian Arab prisoners located there who assassinated Israeli politician Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001. The operation was conducted as a result of the expressed intentions of the newly elected Hamas government to release these prisoners. On 25 June 2006, a Hamas force crossed the border from Gaza and attacked a tank, capturing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, sparking clashes in Gaza.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 187,
"text": "On 12 July, Hezbollah attacked Israel from Lebanon, shelled Israeli towns and attacked a border patrol, taking two dead or badly wounded Israeli soldiers. These incidents led Israel to initiate the Second Lebanon War, which lasted through August 2006. Israeli forces entered some villages in Southern Lebanon, while the air force attacked targets all across the country. Israel only made limited ground gains until the launch of Operation Changing Direction 11, which lasted for 3 days with disputed results. Shortly before a UN ceasefire came into effect, Israeli troops captured Wadi Saluki. The war concluded with Hezbollah evacuating its forces from Southern Lebanon, while the IDF remained until its positions could be handed over to the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 188,
"text": "In June 2007 Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in the course of the Battle of Gaza, seizing government institutions and replacing Fatah and other government officials with its own. Following the takeover, Egypt and Israel imposed a partial blockade, on the grounds that Fatah had fled and was no longer providing security on the Palestinian side, and to prevent arms smuggling by terrorist groups. On 6 September 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria in Operation Orchard. On 28 February 2008, Israel launched Operation Hot Winter in Gaza in response to the constant firing of Qassam rockets by Hamas militants. On 16 July 2008, Hezbollah swapped the bodies of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, kidnapped in 2006, in exchange for the Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, four Hezbollah prisoners, and the bodies of 199 Palestinian Arab and Lebanese fighters.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 189,
"text": "Olmert came under investigation for corruption and this led him to announce on 30 July 2008, that he would be stepping down as Prime Minister following election of a new leader of the Kadima party in September 2008. Tzipi Livni won the election, but was unable to form a coalition and Olmert remained in office until the general election. Israel carried out Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009 in response to rocket attacks from Hamas militants, leading to a decrease of Palestinian rocket attacks.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 190,
"text": "In the 2009 legislative election Likud won 27 seats and Kadima 28; however, the right-wing camp won a majority of seats, and President Shimon Peres called on Netanyahu to form the government. Russian immigrant-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu came third with 15 seats, and Labour was reduced to fourth place with 13 seats. In 2009, Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva announced the discovery of huge natural gas reserves off the coast of Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 191,
"text": "On 31 May 2010, an international incident broke out in the Mediterranean Sea when foreign activists trying to break the maritime blockade over Gaza, clashed with Israeli troops. During the struggle, nine Turkish activists were killed. In late September 2010 took place direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians without success. As a defensive countermeasure to the rocket threat against Israel's civilian population, at the end of March 2011 Israel began to operate the advanced mobile air defence system \"Iron Dome\" in the southern region of Israel and along the border with the Gaza Strip.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 192,
"text": "On 14 July 2011, the 2011 Israeli housing protests, in which hundreds of thousands of protesters from a variety of socio-economic and religious backgrounds in Israel protested against the continuing rise in the cost of living (particularly housing) and the deterioration of public services in the country (such as health and education). It was the largest social protest in the history of Israel, and peaked on 3 September 2011, when about 400,000 people demonstrated across the country.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 193,
"text": "In October 2011, a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas, by which the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians and Arab-Israeli prisoners. In March 2012, Secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhir al-Qaisi, a senior PRC member and two additional Palestinian militants were assassinated during a targeted killing carried out by Israeli forces in Gaza.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 194,
"text": "In May 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached an agreement with the Head of Opposition Shaul Mofaz for Kadima to join the government, thus cancelling the early election supposed to be held in September. However, in July, the Kadima party left Netanyahu's government due to a dispute concerning military conscription for ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 195,
"text": "In response to over a hundred rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza on 14 November 2012, with the targeted killing of Ahmed Jabari, chief of Hamas military wing, and airstrikes against twenty underground sites housing long-range missile launchers capable of striking Tel Aviv. In January 2013, construction of the barrier on the Israeli-Egyptian border was completed in its main section.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 196,
"text": "Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister again after the Likud Yisrael Beiteinu alliance won the most seats (31) in the 2013 legislative election and formed a coalition government with secular centrist Yesh Atid party (19), rightist The Jewish Home (12) and Livni's Hatnuah (6), excluding Haredi parties. Labour came in third with 15 seats. In July 2013, as a \"good will gesture\" to restart peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom had been in jail since before the 1993 Oslo Accords, including militants who had killed Israeli civilians. In April 2014, Israel suspended peace talks after Hamas and Fatah agreed to form a unity government.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 197,
"text": "Following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas, Israel started Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip on 8 July 2014, which included a ground incursion aimed at destroying the cross-border tunnels. Differences over the budget and a \"Jewish state\" bill triggered early elections in December 2014. After the 2015 Israeli elections, Netanyahu renewed his mandate as Prime Minister when Likud obtained 30 seats and formed a right-wing coalition government with Kulanu (10), The Jewish Home (8), and Orthodox parties Shas (7) and United Torah Judaism (6), the bare minimum of seats required to form a coalition. The Zionist Union alliance came second with 24 seats. A wave of lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians took place in 2015 and 2016, particularly stabbings.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 198,
"text": "On 6 December 2017, President Donald Trump formally announced United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which was followed by the United States recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel on 25 March 2019. In March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza initiated \"the Great March of Return,\" a series of weekly protests along the Gaza–Israel border.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 199,
"text": "The COVID-19 pandemic began in Israel with the first case detected in February 2020 and the first death being that of a Holocaust survivor in March 2020. Israel Shield was the government's program to combat against the virus. Nationwide lockdowns and mask mandates were present throughout the country for much of 2020 into 2021, with the vaccination campaign beginning in December 2020 along with green passes.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 200,
"text": "In late 2020, Israel normalised relations with four Arab League countries: the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September (known as the Abraham Accords), Sudan in October, and Morocco in December. In May 2021, after tensions escalated in Jerusalem, Israel launched Operation Guardian of the Walls, trading blows with Hamas for eleven days.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 201,
"text": "The 2019–2022 political crisis featured political instability in Israel leading to five elections to the Knesset over a 4 year time period. The April 2019 and September 2019 elections saw no party able to form a coalition leading to the March 2020 election. This election again looked to result in deadlock, but due to the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, Netanyahu, and Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz, were able to establish a unity government with a planned rotating prime ministership where Netanyahu would serve first and later be replaced by Gantz. The coalition failed by December due to a dispute over the budget and new elections were called for March 2021.",
"title": "State of Israel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 202,
"text": "Following the March 2021 election, Naftali Bennett signed a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid and different parties opposed to Netanyahu on the right, center and left whereby Bennett would serve as Prime Minister until September 2023 and then Lapid would assume the role until November 2025. An Israeli Arab party, Ra'am, was included in the government coalition for the first time in decades. In June 2022, following several legislative defeats for the governing coalition, Bennett announced the introduction of a bill to dissolve the Knesset and call for new elections to be held in November. Yair Lapid became the new interim Prime Minister. After the 2022 elections, Netanyahu was able to return as Prime Minister under a coalition that included Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit and Noam, in what was described as the most right-wing government in the country's history. The government has overseen an uptick in violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, driven by military actions such as the July 2023 Jenin incursion as well as Palestinian political violence, producing a death toll in 2023 that is the highest in the conflict since 2005. In October 2023, the 2023 Israel–Hamas war started.",
"title": "State of Israel"
}
]
| The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as Canaan, Palestine or the Holy Land, which is the geographical location of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. From a prehistory as part of the critical Levantine corridor, which witnessed waves of early humans out of Africa, to the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE, the region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before being vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities that were central to the origins of the Jewish and Samaritan peoples as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups. In the following centuries, the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires conquered the region. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids vied for control over the region during the Hellenistic period. However, with the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, the local Jewish population maintained independence for a century before being incorporated into the Roman Republic. As a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, many Jews were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Following the advent of Christianity, which was adopted by the Greco-Roman world under the influence of the Roman Empire, the region's demographics shifted towards newfound Christians, who replaced Jews as the majority of the population by the 4th century. However, shortly after Islam was consolidated across the Arabian Peninsula under Muhammad, Byzantine Christian rule over the Land of Israel was superseded by the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. From the 11th century to the 13th century, the Land of Israel became the centre for intermittent religious wars between Christian and Muslim armies as part of the Crusades. In the 13th century, the Land of Israel became subject to the Mongol invasions and conquests, though these were locally routed by the Mamluk Sultanate, under whose rule it remained until the 16th century. The Mamluks were eventually defeated by the Ottoman Empire, and the region became an Ottoman province until the 20th century. The late 19th century saw the widespread consolidation of a Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism, as part of which aliyah increased. During World War I, the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the Allies led to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. Britain was granted control of the region by League of Nations mandate, in what became known as Mandatory Palestine. The British government publicly committed itself to the creation of a Jewish homeland. Arab nationalism opposed this design, asserting Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration. As a result, Arab–Jewish tensions grew in the succeeding decades of British administration. In 1948, the Israeli Declaration of Independence sparked the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and subsequently led to waves of Jewish emigration from other parts of the Middle East. Today, approximately 43 percent of the global Jewish population resides in Israel. In 1979, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was signed, based on the Camp David Accords. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was followed by the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed. Despite efforts to finalize the peace agreement, the conflict continues to play a major role in Israeli and international political, social, and economic life. | 2001-10-26T14:33:58Z | 2023-12-24T18:27:11Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel |
13,810 | Harvey Mudd College | Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolled 902 undergraduate students as of 2021 and awards the Bachelor of Science degree. Admission to Harvey Mudd is highly competitive, and the college maintains a competitive academic culture.
The college was funded by the friends and family of Harvey Seeley Mudd, one of the initial investors in the Cyprus Mines Corporation. Although involved in planning of the new institution, Mudd died before it opened in 1955. The campus was designed by Edward Durell Stone in a modernist brutalist style.
Harvey Mudd College was founded in 1955. Classes began in 1957, with a founding class of 48 students, 7 faculty and one building–Mildred E. Mudd Hall, a dormitory. Classes and meals took place at then-Claremont Men’s College, now Claremont McKenna College, and labs in the Baxter Science Building until additional buildings could be built: Jacobs Science Building (1959), Thomas-Garett Hall (1961) and Platt Campus Center (1963). By 1966, the campus had grown to 283 students and 43 faculty.
Under the presidency of Maria Klawe, begun in 2006, Harvey Mudd became a leading advocate for women in STEM in higher education.
In April 2017, all classes were canceled for two days in response to tensions on campus over workload, race issues, and mistrust of faculty. Contributing events included the deaths of two Mudd students and a Scripps student that year and the leak of the Wabash Report on teaching, learning, and workload at Mudd.
On July 1, 2023, Harriet Nembhard began her term as the sixth President of Harvey Mudd College.
The original buildings of the campus, designed by Edward Durell Stone and completed in 1959, feature "knobbly concrete squares that students of Harvey Mudd affectionately call "warts" and use as hooks for skateboards." The school's unofficial mascot "Wally the Wart" is an anthropomorphic concrete wart.
In 2013, Travel and Leisure named the college as one of "America's ugliest college campuses" and noted that while Stone regarded his design as a "Modernist masterpiece," the result was "layering drab, slab-sided buildings with Beaux-Arts decoration."
The official names for the academic buildings of Harvey Mudd College are:
The official names for the dormitories of Harvey Mudd College are (listed in order of construction):
Until the addition of the Linde and Sontag dorms, Atwood and Case dorms were occasionally referred to as New Dorm and New Dorm II; Mildred E. Mudd Hall and Marks Hall are almost invariably referred to as East dorm and South dorm.
During the construction of Case Dorm some students decided as a prank to move all of the survey stakes exactly six inches in one direction.
"East" was the first dorm, but it wasn't until "West" was built west of it that it was actually referred to as "East". Then, "North" was built, directly north of "East". When the fourth dorm, Marks Hall, was built, there was one corner of the quad available (the northwest) and one directional name, "South", remaining. To this day, "South" dorm is the northernmost HMC dorm.
The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth dorms built are Atwood, Case, Linde, Sontag, and Drinkward, respectively. They were initially referred to as "the colonies" by some students, a reference to the fact that they were newer and at the farthest end of the campus; these dorms are now more commonly referred to as "the outer dorms,” with the four directional dorms referred to as “the inner dorms.” The college had initially purchased an apartment building adjacent to the newer dorms to house additional students, but it was demolished to make room for Sontag.
Since any HMC student, regardless of class year, can live in any of the dormitories, several of the dorms have accumulated long-standing traditions and so-called "personalities."
HMC offers four-year degrees in chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer science, biology, and engineering, interdisciplinary degrees in mathematical and computational biology, and joint majors in computer science and mathematics; computer science and physics; physics and mathematics; and biology and chemistry. Students may also elect an Individual Program of Study (IPS) or an off-campus major offered by any of the other Claremont Colleges, provided one also completes a minor in one of the technical fields that Harvey Mudd offers as a major.
All HMC students are required to take the college's Common Core Curriculum, typically throughout their freshman and sophomore years. This includes courses in computer science, engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, writing, a critical inquiry course, and a social impact course.
Its most popular majors, by 2022 graduates, were:
In 2018, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that, in response to student "complaints first to mental-health counselors and then to outside evaluators," the college was "considering how to ease pressure on students without sacrificing rigor."
For the class of 2026, the college received 4,440 applications and admitted 593 applicants (a 13.4% acceptance rate). Of the 237 freshmen who enrolled, the middle 50% of SAT scores reported were 760–790 in mathematics and 720–770 in reading and writing, while the ACT Composite range was 34–36.
Harvey Mudd, along with Wake Forest University, long held out as the last four-year colleges or universities in the U.S. to accept only SAT and not ACT test scores for admission. In August 2007, at the beginning of the application process for the class of 2012, HMC began accepting ACT results, a year after Wake Forest abandoned its former SAT-only policy.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Harvey Mudd waived the requirement for SAT or ACT scores for the graduating classes of 2021 or 2022. This policy was extended to the classes of 2023 and 2024.
The college is need-blind for domestic applicants.
Washington Monthly ranked Harvey Mudd fifth in 2020 among 218 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. based on its contribution to the public good, as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service. Money magazine ranked Harvey Mudd 136th out of 744 in its "Best Colleges For Your Money 2019" report.
In U.S. News & World Report's 2021 "America's Best Colleges" report, Harvey Mudd College is tied for the 25th best U.S. liberal arts college, is second among undergraduate engineering schools in the U.S. whose highest degree is a Master's, and is ranked as tied for sixth "Most Innovative School" among 50 liberal arts colleges evaluated. Forbes in 2019 rated it 23rd in its "America's Top Colleges" ranking of 650 military academies, national universities and liberal arts colleges.
In 2021, Harvey Mudd's total annual cost of attendance (tuition, fees, and room and board) was $82,236. About 70% of freshmen receive financial aid.
Athletes from Harvey Mudd compete alongside athletes from Claremont McKenna College and Scripps College as the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas (CMS). The teams participate in NCAA Division III in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC). The mascot for the men's teams is Stanley the Stag, and the women's teams are the Athenas. Their colors are cardinal and gold.
According to the Division III Fall Learfield Director's Cup Standings for the 2016-2017 year, CMS ranks 12th among all Division III programs, and first among SCIAC colleges.
The other sports combination of the Claremont Colleges, and CMS' primary rival, is the team made up of Pomona College and Pitzer College known as the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (PP). This is known to students as the Sixth Street Rivalry.
There are 21 men's and women's teams.
Men's sports
Women's sports
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech), another university with strength in the natural sciences and engineering, is located 26 miles (42 km) away from Harvey Mudd College. Mudders occasionally amuse themselves by pranking Caltech. For example, in 1986, students from Mudd stole a memorial cannon from Fleming House at Caltech (originally from the National Guard) by dressing as maintenance people and carting it off on a flatbed truck for "cleaning." Harvey Mudd eventually returned the cannon after Caltech threatened to take legal action. In 2006, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) replicated the prank and moved the same cannon to their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Notable Harvey Mudd College alumni include:
34°06′22″N 117°42′33″W / 34.10608°N 117.70919°W / 34.10608; -117.70919 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolled 902 undergraduate students as of 2021 and awards the Bachelor of Science degree. Admission to Harvey Mudd is highly competitive, and the college maintains a competitive academic culture.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The college was funded by the friends and family of Harvey Seeley Mudd, one of the initial investors in the Cyprus Mines Corporation. Although involved in planning of the new institution, Mudd died before it opened in 1955. The campus was designed by Edward Durell Stone in a modernist brutalist style.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Harvey Mudd College was founded in 1955. Classes began in 1957, with a founding class of 48 students, 7 faculty and one building–Mildred E. Mudd Hall, a dormitory. Classes and meals took place at then-Claremont Men’s College, now Claremont McKenna College, and labs in the Baxter Science Building until additional buildings could be built: Jacobs Science Building (1959), Thomas-Garett Hall (1961) and Platt Campus Center (1963). By 1966, the campus had grown to 283 students and 43 faculty.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Under the presidency of Maria Klawe, begun in 2006, Harvey Mudd became a leading advocate for women in STEM in higher education.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In April 2017, all classes were canceled for two days in response to tensions on campus over workload, race issues, and mistrust of faculty. Contributing events included the deaths of two Mudd students and a Scripps student that year and the leak of the Wabash Report on teaching, learning, and workload at Mudd.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On July 1, 2023, Harriet Nembhard began her term as the sixth President of Harvey Mudd College.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The original buildings of the campus, designed by Edward Durell Stone and completed in 1959, feature \"knobbly concrete squares that students of Harvey Mudd affectionately call \"warts\" and use as hooks for skateboards.\" The school's unofficial mascot \"Wally the Wart\" is an anthropomorphic concrete wart.",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 2013, Travel and Leisure named the college as one of \"America's ugliest college campuses\" and noted that while Stone regarded his design as a \"Modernist masterpiece,\" the result was \"layering drab, slab-sided buildings with Beaux-Arts decoration.\"",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The official names for the academic buildings of Harvey Mudd College are:",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The official names for the dormitories of Harvey Mudd College are (listed in order of construction):",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Until the addition of the Linde and Sontag dorms, Atwood and Case dorms were occasionally referred to as New Dorm and New Dorm II; Mildred E. Mudd Hall and Marks Hall are almost invariably referred to as East dorm and South dorm.",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "During the construction of Case Dorm some students decided as a prank to move all of the survey stakes exactly six inches in one direction.",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "\"East\" was the first dorm, but it wasn't until \"West\" was built west of it that it was actually referred to as \"East\". Then, \"North\" was built, directly north of \"East\". When the fourth dorm, Marks Hall, was built, there was one corner of the quad available (the northwest) and one directional name, \"South\", remaining. To this day, \"South\" dorm is the northernmost HMC dorm.",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth dorms built are Atwood, Case, Linde, Sontag, and Drinkward, respectively. They were initially referred to as \"the colonies\" by some students, a reference to the fact that they were newer and at the farthest end of the campus; these dorms are now more commonly referred to as \"the outer dorms,” with the four directional dorms referred to as “the inner dorms.” The college had initially purchased an apartment building adjacent to the newer dorms to house additional students, but it was demolished to make room for Sontag.",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Since any HMC student, regardless of class year, can live in any of the dormitories, several of the dorms have accumulated long-standing traditions and so-called \"personalities.\"",
"title": "Campus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "HMC offers four-year degrees in chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer science, biology, and engineering, interdisciplinary degrees in mathematical and computational biology, and joint majors in computer science and mathematics; computer science and physics; physics and mathematics; and biology and chemistry. Students may also elect an Individual Program of Study (IPS) or an off-campus major offered by any of the other Claremont Colleges, provided one also completes a minor in one of the technical fields that Harvey Mudd offers as a major.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "All HMC students are required to take the college's Common Core Curriculum, typically throughout their freshman and sophomore years. This includes courses in computer science, engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, writing, a critical inquiry course, and a social impact course.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Its most popular majors, by 2022 graduates, were:",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 2018, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that, in response to student \"complaints first to mental-health counselors and then to outside evaluators,\" the college was \"considering how to ease pressure on students without sacrificing rigor.\"",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For the class of 2026, the college received 4,440 applications and admitted 593 applicants (a 13.4% acceptance rate). Of the 237 freshmen who enrolled, the middle 50% of SAT scores reported were 760–790 in mathematics and 720–770 in reading and writing, while the ACT Composite range was 34–36.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Harvey Mudd, along with Wake Forest University, long held out as the last four-year colleges or universities in the U.S. to accept only SAT and not ACT test scores for admission. In August 2007, at the beginning of the application process for the class of 2012, HMC began accepting ACT results, a year after Wake Forest abandoned its former SAT-only policy.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Harvey Mudd waived the requirement for SAT or ACT scores for the graduating classes of 2021 or 2022. This policy was extended to the classes of 2023 and 2024.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The college is need-blind for domestic applicants.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Washington Monthly ranked Harvey Mudd fifth in 2020 among 218 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. based on its contribution to the public good, as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service. Money magazine ranked Harvey Mudd 136th out of 744 in its \"Best Colleges For Your Money 2019\" report.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In U.S. News & World Report's 2021 \"America's Best Colleges\" report, Harvey Mudd College is tied for the 25th best U.S. liberal arts college, is second among undergraduate engineering schools in the U.S. whose highest degree is a Master's, and is ranked as tied for sixth \"Most Innovative School\" among 50 liberal arts colleges evaluated. Forbes in 2019 rated it 23rd in its \"America's Top Colleges\" ranking of 650 military academies, national universities and liberal arts colleges.",
"title": "Academics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 2021, Harvey Mudd's total annual cost of attendance (tuition, fees, and room and board) was $82,236. About 70% of freshmen receive financial aid.",
"title": "Tuition and other costs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Athletes from Harvey Mudd compete alongside athletes from Claremont McKenna College and Scripps College as the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas (CMS). The teams participate in NCAA Division III in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC). The mascot for the men's teams is Stanley the Stag, and the women's teams are the Athenas. Their colors are cardinal and gold.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "According to the Division III Fall Learfield Director's Cup Standings for the 2016-2017 year, CMS ranks 12th among all Division III programs, and first among SCIAC colleges.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The other sports combination of the Claremont Colleges, and CMS' primary rival, is the team made up of Pomona College and Pitzer College known as the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (PP). This is known to students as the Sixth Street Rivalry.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "There are 21 men's and women's teams.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Men's sports",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Women's sports",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The California Institute of Technology (Caltech), another university with strength in the natural sciences and engineering, is located 26 miles (42 km) away from Harvey Mudd College. Mudders occasionally amuse themselves by pranking Caltech. For example, in 1986, students from Mudd stole a memorial cannon from Fleming House at Caltech (originally from the National Guard) by dressing as maintenance people and carting it off on a flatbed truck for \"cleaning.\" Harvey Mudd eventually returned the cannon after Caltech threatened to take legal action. In 2006, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) replicated the prank and moved the same cannon to their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.",
"title": "Student life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Notable Harvey Mudd College alumni include:",
"title": "Notable alumni"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "34°06′22″N 117°42′33″W / 34.10608°N 117.70919°W / 34.10608; -117.70919",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolled 902 undergraduate students as of 2021 and awards the Bachelor of Science degree. Admission to Harvey Mudd is highly competitive, and the college maintains a competitive academic culture. The college was funded by the friends and family of Harvey Seeley Mudd, one of the initial investors in the Cyprus Mines Corporation. Although involved in planning of the new institution, Mudd died before it opened in 1955. The campus was designed by Edward Durell Stone in a modernist brutalist style. | 2001-09-24T20:34:01Z | 2023-12-08T17:19:54Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Mudd_College |
13,811 | Heaven | Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.
Heaven is often described as a "highest place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.
Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svargaloka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as the otherworld.
At least in the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam, and some schools of Judaism, as well as Zoroastrianism, heaven is the realm of afterlife where good actions in the previous life are rewarded for eternity (hell being the place where bad behavior is punished).
The modern English word heaven is derived from the earlier (Middle English) heven (attested 1159); this in turn was developed from the previous Old English form heofon. By about 1000, heofon was being used in reference to the Christianized "place where God dwells", but originally, it had signified "sky, firmament" (e.g. in Beowulf, c. 725). The English term has cognates in the other Germanic languages: Old Saxon heƀan "sky, heaven" (hence also Middle Low German heven "sky"), Old Icelandic himinn, Gothic himins; and those with a variant final -l: Old Frisian himel, himul "sky, heaven", Old Saxon and Old High German himil, Old Saxon and Middle Low German hemmel, Old Dutch and Dutch hemel, and modern German Himmel. All of these have been derived from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *hemina-. or *hemō.
The further derivation of this form is uncertain. A connection to Proto-Indo-European *ḱem- "cover, shroud", via a reconstructed *k̑emen- or *k̑ōmen- "stone, heaven", has been proposed. Others endorse the derivation from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₂éḱmō "stone" and, possibly, "heavenly vault" at the origin of this word, which then would have as cognates ancient Greek ἄκμων (ákmōn "anvil, pestle; meteorite"), Persian آسمان (âsemân, âsmân "stone, sling-stone; sky, heaven") and Sanskrit अश्मन् (aśman "stone, rock, sling-stone; thunderbolt; the firmament"). In the latter case English hammer would be another cognate to the word.
The ancient Mesopotamians regarded the sky as a series of domes (usually three, but sometimes seven) covering the flat Earth. Each dome was made of a different kind of precious stone. The lowest dome of heaven was made of jasper and was the home of the stars. The middle dome of heaven was made of saggilmut stone and was the abode of the Igigi. The highest and outermost dome of heaven was made of luludānītu stone and was personified as An, the god of the sky. The celestial bodies were equated with specific deities as well. The planet Venus was believed to be Inanna, the goddess of love, sex, and war. The Sun was her brother Utu, the god of justice, and the Moon was their father Nanna.
In ancient Near Eastern cultures in general and in Mesopotamia in particular, humans had little to no access to the divine realm. Heaven and Earth were separated by their very nature; humans could see and be affected by elements of the lower heaven, such as stars and storms, but ordinary mortals could not go to Heaven because it was the abode of the gods alone. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh says to Enkidu, "Who can go up to heaven, my friend? Only the gods dwell with Shamash forever." Instead, after a person died, his or her soul went to Kur (later known as Irkalla), a dark shadowy underworld, located deep below the surface of the earth.
All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no impact on how he would be treated in the world to come. Nonetheless, funerary evidence indicates that some people believed that Inanna had the power to bestow special favors upon her devotees in the afterlife. Despite the separation between heaven and earth, humans sought access to the gods through oracles and omens. The gods were believed to live in Heaven, but also in their temples, which were seen as the channels of communication between Earth and Heaven, which allowed mortal access to the gods. The Ekur temple in Nippur was known as the "Dur-an-ki", the "mooring-rope" of heaven and earth. It was widely thought to have been built and established by Enlil himself.
Zoroaster, the Zoroastrian prophet who introduced the Gathas, spoke of the existence of Heaven and Hell.
Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its conception of heaven, hell, angels, monotheism, belief in free will, and the day of judgement, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy.
Almost nothing is known of Bronze Age (pre-1200 BC) Canaanite views of heaven, and the archaeological findings at Ugarit (destroyed c. 1200 BC) have not provided information. The first century Greek author Philo of Byblos may preserve elements of Iron Age Phoenician religion in his Sanchuniathon.
The ancient Hittites believed that some deities lived in Heaven, while others lived in remote places on Earth, such as mountains, where humans had little access. In the Middle Hittite myths, Heaven is the abode of the gods. In the Song of Kumarbi, Alalu was king in Heaven for nine years before giving birth to his son, Anu. Anu was himself overthrown by his son, Kumarbi.
As in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, in the Hebrew Bible, the universe is commonly divided into two realms: heaven (šāmayim) and earth (’ereṣ). Sometimes a third realm is added: either "sea", "water under the earth", or sometimes a vague "land of the dead" that is never described in depth. The structure of heaven itself is never fully described in the Hebrew Bible, but the fact that the Hebrew word šāmayim is plural has been interpreted by scholars as an indication that the ancient Israelites envisioned the heavens as having multiple layers, much like the ancient Mesopotamians. This reading is also supported by the use of the phrase "heaven of heavens" in verses such as Deuteronomy 10:14, King 8:27, and 2 Chronicles 2:6.
In line with the typical view of most Near Eastern cultures, the Hebrew Bible depicts Heaven as a place that is inaccessible to humans. Although some prophets are occasionally granted temporary visionary access to heaven, such as in 1 Kings 22:19–23, Job 1:6–12 and 2:1–6, and Isaiah, they hear only God's deliberations concerning the Earth and learn nothing of what Heaven is like. There is almost no mention in the Hebrew Bible of Heaven as a possible afterlife destination for human beings, who are instead described as "resting" in Sheol. The only two possible exceptions to this are Enoch, who is described in Genesis 5:24 as having been "taken" by God, and the prophet Elijah, who is described in 2 Kings 2:11 as having ascended to Heaven in a chariot of fire. According to Michael B. Hundley, the text in both of these instances is ambiguous regarding the significance of the actions being described and in neither of these cases does the text explain what happened to the subject afterwards.
The God of the Israelites is described as ruling both Heaven and Earth. Other passages, such as 1 Kings 8:27 state that even the vastness of Heaven cannot contain God's majesty. A number of passages throughout the Hebrew Bible indicate that Heaven and Earth will one day come to an end. This view is paralleled in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, which also regarded Heaven and Earth as vulnerable and subject to dissolution. However, the Hebrew Bible differs from other ancient Near Eastern cultures in that it portrays the God of Israel as independent of creation and unthreatened by its potential destruction. Because most of the Hebrew Bible concerns the God of Israel's relationship with his people, most of the events described in it take place on Earth, not in Heaven. The Deuteronomistic source, Deuteronomistic History, and Priestly source all portray the Temple in Jerusalem as the sole channel of communication between Earth and Heaven.
During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire. Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them. Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is thought to be derived from Persian cosmology, although the later claim has been recently questioned. By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers. The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there. The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC). Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.
Descriptions of Heaven in the New Testament are more fully developed than those in the Old Testament, but are still generally vague. As in the Old Testament, in the New Testament God is described as the ruler of Heaven and Earth, but his power over the Earth is challenged by Satan. The Gospels of Mark and Luke speak of the "Kingdom of God" (Greek: βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ; basileía tou theou), while the Gospel of Matthew more commonly uses the term "Kingdom of heaven" (Greek: βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν; basileía tōn ouranōn). Both phrases are thought to have the same meaning, but the author of the Gospel of Matthew changed the name "Kingdom of God" to "Kingdom of Heaven" in most instances because it was the more acceptable phrase in his own cultural and religious context in the late first century.
Modern scholars agree that the Kingdom of God was an essential part of the teachings of the historical Jesus. In spite of this, none of the gospels ever record Jesus as having explained exactly what the phrase "Kingdom of God" means. The most likely explanation for this apparent omission is that the Kingdom of God was a commonly understood concept that required no explanation. Jews in Judea during the early first century believed that God reigns eternally in Heaven, but many also believed that God would eventually establish his kingdom on earth as well. This belief is referenced in the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples and recorded in both Matthew and Luke 11:2: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
Because God's Kingdom was believed to be superior to any human kingdom, this meant that God would necessarily drive out the Romans, who ruled Judea, and establish his own direct rule over the Jewish people. In the teachings of the historical Jesus, people are expected to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of God by living moral lives. Jesus's commands for his followers to adopt lifestyles of moral perfectionism are found in many passages throughout the Synoptic Gospels, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7. Jesus also taught that, in the Kingdom of Heaven, there would be a reversal of roles in which "the last will be first and the first will be last." This teaching recurs throughout the recorded teachings of Jesus, including in the admonition to be like a child, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20, the Parable of the Great Banquet in Matthew 22, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.
Traditionally, Christianity has taught that Heaven is the location of the throne of God as well as the holy angels, although this is in varying degrees considered metaphorical. In traditional Christianity, it is considered a state or condition of existence (rather than a particular place somewhere in the cosmos) of the supreme fulfillment of theosis in the beatific vision of the Godhead. In most forms of Christianity, Heaven is also understood as the abode for the redeemed dead in the afterlife, usually a temporary stage before the resurrection of the dead and the saints' return to the New Earth.
The resurrected Jesus is said to have ascended to Heaven where he now sits at the Right Hand of God and will return to Earth in the Second Coming. Various people have been said to have entered Heaven while still alive, including Enoch, Elijah and Jesus himself, after his resurrection. According to Roman Catholic teaching, Mary, mother of Jesus, is also said to have been assumed into Heaven and is titled the Queen of Heaven.
In the second century AD, Irenaeus of Lyons recorded a belief that, in accordance with John 14, those who in the afterlife see the Saviour are in different mansions, some dwelling in the heavens, others in paradise and others in "the city".
While the word used in all these writings, in particular the New Testament Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos), applies primarily to the sky, it is also used metaphorically of the dwelling place of God and the blessed. Similarly, though the English word "heaven" still keeps its original physical meaning when used, for instance, in allusions to the stars as "lights shining through from heaven", and in phrases such as heavenly body to mean an astronomical object, the heaven or happiness that Christianity looks forward to is, according to Pope John Paul II, "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit."
While the concept of Heaven (malkuth hashamaim מלכות השמים, the Kingdom of Heaven) is much discussed in Christian thought, the Jewish concept of the afterlife, sometimes known as olam haba, the World-to-come, is not discussed so often. The Torah has little to say on the subject of survival after death, but by the time of the rabbis two ideas had made inroads among the Jews: one, which is probably derived from Greek thought, is that of the immortal soul which returns to its creator after death; the other, which is thought to be of Persian origin, is that of resurrection of the dead.
Jewish writings refer to a "new earth" as the abode of mankind following the resurrection of the dead. Originally, the two ideas of immortality and resurrection were different but in rabbinic thought they are combined: the soul departs from the body at death but is returned to it at the resurrection. This idea is linked to another rabbinic teaching, that men's good and bad actions are rewarded and punished not in this life but after death, whether immediately or at the subsequent resurrection. Around 1 CE, the Pharisees believed in an afterlife but the Sadducees did not.
The Mishnah has many sayings about the World to Come, for example, "Rabbi Yaakov said: This world is like a lobby before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall."
Judaism holds that the righteous of all nations have a share in the World-to-come.
According to Nicholas de Lange, Judaism offers no clear teaching about the destiny which lies in wait for the individual after death and its attitude to life after death has been expressed as follows: "For the future is inscrutable, and the accepted sources of knowledge, whether experience, or reason, or revelation, offer no clear guidance about what is to come. The only certainty is that each man must die – beyond that we can only guess."
Similar to Jewish traditions such as the Talmud, the Qur'an and Hadith frequently mention the existence of seven samāwāt (سماوات), the plural of samāʾ (سماء), meaning 'heaven, sky, celestial sphere', and cognate with Hebrew shamāyim (שמים). Some of the verses in the Qur'an mentioning the samaawat are 41:12, 65:12 and 71:15. Sidrat al-Muntaha, a large enigmatic Lote tree, marks the end of the seventh heaven and the utmost extremity for all of God's creatures and heavenly knowledge.
One interpretation of "heavens" is that all the stars and galaxies (including the Milky Way) are all part of the "first heaven", and "beyond that six still bigger worlds are there," which have yet to be discovered by scientists.
According to Shi'ite sources, Ali mentioned the names of the seven heavens as below:
Still an afterlife destination of the righteous is conceived in Islam as Jannah (Arabic: جنة "Garden [of Eden]" translated as "paradise"). Regarding Eden or paradise the Quran says, "The description of the Paradise promised to the righteous is that under it rivers flow; eternal is its fruit as well as its shade. That is the ˹ultimate˺ outcome for the righteous. But the outcome for the disbelievers is the Fire!" Islam rejects the concept of original sin, and Muslims believe that all human beings are born pure. Children automatically go to paradise when they die, regardless of the religion of their parents.
Paradise is described primarily in physical terms as a place where every wish is immediately fulfilled when asked. Islamic texts describe immortal life in Jannah as happy, without negative emotions. Those who dwell in Jannah are said to wear costly apparel, partake in exquisite banquets, and recline on couches inlaid with gold or precious stones. Inhabitants will rejoice in the company of their parents, spouses, and children. In Islam if one's good deeds outweigh one's sins then one may gain entrance to paradise. Conversely, if one's sins outweigh their good deeds they are sent to hell. The more good deeds one has performed the higher the level of Jannah one is directed to.
Quran verses which describe paradise include: 13:15, 18:31, 38:49–54, 35:33–35 and 52:17.
The Quran refers to Jannah with different names: Al-Firdaws, Jannātu-′Adn ("Garden of Eden" or "Everlasting Gardens"), Jannatu-n-Na'īm ("Garden of Delight"), Jannatu-l-Ma'wa ("Garden of Refuge"), Dāru-s-Salām ("Abode of Peace"), Dāru-l-Muqāma ("Abode of Permanent Stay"), al-Muqāmu-l-Amin ("The Secure Station") and Jannātu-l-Khuld ("Garden of Immortality"). In the Hadiths, these are the different regions in paradise.
According to the Ahmadiyya view, much of the imagery presented in the Quran regarding Heaven, but also Hell, is metaphorical. They propound the verse which describes, according to them, how the life to come after death is different from the life on Earth. The Quran says: "From bringing in your place others like you, and from developing you into a form which at present you know not." According to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya sect in Islam, the soul will give birth to another rarer entity and will resemble the life on earth in the sense that this entity will bear a similar relationship to the soul, as the soul bears relationship with the human existence on earth. On earth, if a person leads a righteous life and submits to the will of God, his or her tastes become attuned to enjoying spiritual pleasures as opposed to carnal desires. With this, an "embryonic soul" begins to take shape. Different tastes are said to be born in which a person given to carnal passions finds no enjoyment. For example, sacrifice of one's own's rights over that of other's becomes enjoyable, or that forgiveness becomes second nature. In such a state a person finds contentment and Peace at heart and at this stage, according to Ahmadiyya beliefs, it can be said that a soul within the soul has begun to take shape.
The Baháʼí Faith regards the conventional description of heaven (and hell) as a specific place as symbolic. The Baháʼí writings describe heaven as a "spiritual condition" where closeness to God is defined as heaven; conversely hell is seen as a state of remoteness from God. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane, but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.
For Baháʼís, entry into the next life has the potential to bring great joy. Bahá'u'lláh likened death to the process of birth. He explains: "The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother." The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Baháʼí view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Baháʼís view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities which will be needed in the next life. The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestation of God, which Baháʼís believe is currently Bahá'u'lláh. Bahá'u'lláh wrote, "Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return and be gathered to the glory of the Beloved."
The Baháʼí teachings state that there exists a hierarchy of souls in the afterlife, where the merits of each soul determines their place in the hierarchy, and that souls lower in the hierarchy cannot completely understand the station of those above. Each soul can continue to progress in the afterlife, but the soul's development is not entirely dependent on its own conscious efforts, the nature of which we are not aware, but also augmented by the grace of God, the prayers of others, and good deeds performed by others on Earth in the name of that person.
Mandaeans believe in an afterlife or heaven called Alma d-Nhura (World of Light). The World of Light is the primeval, transcendent world from which Tibil and the World of Darkness emerged. The Great Living God (Hayyi Rabbi) and his uthras (angels or guardians) dwell in the World of Light. The World of Light is also the source of Piriawis, the Great Yardena (or Jordan River) of Life.
The cosmological description of the universe in the Gnostic codex On the Origin of the World presents seven heavens created by the lesser god or Demiurge called Yaldabaoth, which are individually ruled over by one of his Archons. Above these realms is the eighth heaven, where the benevolent, higher divinities dwell. During the end of days, the seven heavens of the Archons will collapse on each other. The heaven of Yaldabaoth will split in two and cause the stars in his celestial sphere to fall.
In the native Chinese Confucian traditions, heaven (Tian) is an important concept, where the ancestors reside and from which emperors drew their mandate to rule in their dynastic propaganda, for example.
Heaven is a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophies, and religions, and is on one end of the spectrum a synonym of Shangdi ("Supreme Deity") and on the other naturalistic end, a synonym for nature and the sky. The Chinese term for "heaven", Tian (天), derives from the name of the supreme deity of the Zhou dynasty. After their conquest of the Shang dynasty in 1122 BC, the Zhou people considered their supreme deity Tian to be identical with the Shang supreme deity Shangdi. The Zhou people attributed Heaven with anthropomorphic attributes, evidenced in the etymology of the Chinese character for heaven or sky, which originally depicted a person with a large cranium. Heaven is said to see, hear and watch over all people. Heaven is affected by people's doings, and having personality, is happy and angry with them. Heaven blesses those who please it and sends calamities upon those who offend it. Heaven was also believed to transcend all other spirits and gods, with Confucius asserting, "He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray."
Other philosophers born around the time of Confucius such as Mozi took an even more theistic view of heaven, believing that heaven is the divine ruler, just as the Son of Heaven (the King of Zhou) is the earthly ruler. Mozi believed that spirits and minor gods exist, but their function is merely to carry out the will of heaven, watching for evil-doers and punishing them. Thus they function as angels of heaven and do not detract from its monotheistic government of the world. With such a high monotheism, it is not surprising that Mohism championed a concept called "universal love" (jian'ai, 兼愛), which taught that heaven loves all people equally and that each person should similarly love all human beings without distinguishing between his own relatives and those of others. In Mozi's Will of Heaven (天志), he writes:
"I know Heaven loves men dearly not without reason. Heaven ordered the sun, the moon, and the stars to enlighten and guide them. Heaven ordained the four seasons, Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Summer, to regulate them. Heaven sent down snow, frost, rain, and dew to grow the five grains and flax and silk that so the people could use and enjoy them. Heaven established the hills and rivers, ravines and valleys, and arranged many things to minister to man's good or bring him evil. He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing. This has been so from antiquity to the present."
Original Chinese: 「且吾所以知天之愛民之厚者有矣，曰以磨為日月星辰，以昭道之；制為四時春秋冬夏，以紀綱之；雷降雪霜雨露，以長遂五穀麻絲，使民得而財利之；列為山川谿谷，播賦百事，以臨司民之善否；為王公侯伯，使之賞賢而罰暴；賊金木鳥獸，從事乎五穀麻絲，以為民衣食之財。自古及今，未嘗不有此也。」
Mozi, Will of Heaven, Chapter 27, Paragraph 6, ca. 5th Century BC
Mozi criticized the Confucians of his own time for not following the teachings of Confucius. By the time of the later Han dynasty, however, under the influence of Xunzi, the Chinese concept of heaven and Confucianism itself had become mostly naturalistic, though some Confucians argued that Heaven was where ancestors reside. Worship of heaven in China continued with the erection of shrines, the last and greatest being the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and the offering of prayers. The ruler of China in every Chinese dynasty would perform annual sacrificial rituals to heaven, usually by slaughtering two healthy bulls as a sacrifice.
In Buddhism there are several heavens, all of which are still part of samsara (illusionary reality). Those who accumulate good karma may be reborn in one of them. However, their stay in heaven is not eternal—eventually they will use up their good karma and will undergo rebirth into another realm, as a human, animal or other beings. Because heaven is temporary and part of samsara, Buddhists focus more on escaping the cycle of rebirth and reaching enlightenment (nirvana). Nirvana is not a heaven but a mental state.
According to Buddhist cosmology the universe is impermanent and beings transmigrate through several existential "planes" in which this human world is only one "realm" or "path". These are traditionally envisioned as a vertical continuum with the heavens existing above the human realm, and the realms of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings existing beneath it. According to Jan Chozen Bays in her book, Jizo: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers, the realm of the asura is a later refinement of the heavenly realm and was inserted between the human realm and the heavens. One important Buddhist heaven is the Trāyastriṃśa, which resembles Olympus of Greek mythology.
In the Mahayana world view, there are also pure lands which lie outside this continuum and are created by the Buddhas upon attaining enlightenment. Rebirth in the pure land of Amitabha is seen as an assurance of Buddhahood, for once reborn there, beings do not fall back into cyclical existence unless they choose to do so to save other beings, the goal of Buddhism being the obtainment of enlightenment and freeing oneself and others from the birth-death cycle.
The Tibetan word Bardo means literally "intermediate state". In Sanskrit the concept has the name antarabhāva.
The lists below are classified from highest to lowest of the heavenly worlds.
Brahmāloka
Here the denizens are Brahmās, and the ruler is Mahābrahmā
After developing the four Brahmavihāras, King Makhādeva rebirths here after death. The monk Tissa and Brāhmana Jānussoni were also reborn here.
The lifespan of a Brahmās is not stated but is not eternal.
Parinirmita-vaśavartin (Pali: Paranimmita-vasavatti)
The heaven of devas "with power over (others') creations". These devas do not create pleasing forms that they desire for themselves, but their desires are fulfilled by the acts of other devas who wish for their favor. The ruler of this world is called Vaśavartin (Pāli: Vasavatti), who has longer life, greater beauty, more power and happiness and more delightful sense-objects than the other devas of his world. This world is also the home of the devaputra (being of a divine race) called Māra, who endeavors to keep all beings of the Kāmadhātu in the grip of sensual pleasures. Māra is also sometimes called Vaśavartin, but in general these two dwellers in this world are kept distinct. The beings of this world are 3 lǐ (1,400 m; 4,500 feet) tall and live for 9,216,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition).
Nirmāṇarati (Pali: Nimmānaratī)
The world of devas "delighting in their creations". The devas of this world are capable of making any appearance to please themselves. The lord of this world is called Sunirmita (Pāli Sunimmita); his wife is the rebirth of Visākhā, formerly the chief upāsikā (female lay devotee) of the Buddha. The beings of this world are 2+1⁄2 lǐ (1,140 m; 3,750 feet) tall and live for 2,304,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition).
Tuṣita (Pali: Tusita)
The world of the "joyful" devas. This world is best known for being the world in which a Bodhisattva lives before being reborn in the world of humans. Until a few thousand years ago, the Bodhisattva of this world was Śvetaketu (Pāli: Setaketu), who was reborn as Siddhārtha, who would become the Buddha Śākyamuni; since then the Bodhisattva has been Nātha (or Nāthadeva) who will be reborn as Ajita and will become the Buddha Maitreya (Pāli Metteyya). While this Bodhisattva is the foremost of the dwellers in Tuṣita, the ruler of this world is another deva called Santuṣita (Pāli: Santusita). The beings of this world are 2 lǐ (910 m; 3,000 feet) tall and live for 576,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition). Anāthapindika, a Kosālan householder and benefactor to the Buddha's order was reborn here.
Yāma
The denizens here have a lifespan of 144,000,000 years.
Trāyastriṃśa (Pali: Tāvatimsa)
The ruler of this heaven is Indra or Shakra, and the realm is also called Trayatrimia.
Each denizen addresses other denizens as the title "mārisa".
The governing hall of this heaven is called Sudhamma Hall.
This heaven has a garden Nandanavana with damsels, as its most magnificent sight.
Ajita the Licchavi army general was reborn here. Gopika the Sākyan girl was reborn as a male god in this realm.
Any Buddhist reborn in this realm can outshine any of the previously dwelling denizens because of the extra merit acquired for following the Buddha's teachings.
The denizens here have a lifespan of 36,000,000 years.
Cātummahārājika
The heaven "of the Four Great Kings". Its rulers are the four Great Kings of the name, Virūḍhaka विरुद्धक, Dhṛtarāṣṭra धृतराष्ट्र, Virūpākṣa विरुपाक्ष, and their leader Vaiśravaṇa वैश्यवर्ण. The devas who guide the Sun and Moon are also considered part of this world, as are the retinues of the four kings, composed of Kumbhāṇḍas कुम्भाण्ड (dwarfs), Gandharva गन्धर्वs (fairies), Nāgas (snakes) and Yakṣas यक्ष (goblins). The beings of this world are 230 m (750 feet) tall and live for 9,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition) or 90,000 years (Vibhajyavāda tradition).
The Heaven of the Comfort from Others’ Transformations
The Heaven of Bliss by Transformation
The Tushita Heaven
The Suyama Heaven
The Trayastrimsha Heaven
The Heaven of the Four Kings
Ou Yi Zhixu explains that the Shurangama sutra only emphasizes avoidance of deviant sexual desire, but one would naturally need to abide by the 10 good conducts to be born in these heavens.
Tibetan literature classifies the heavenly worlds into 5 major types:
Attaining heaven is not the final pursuit in Hinduism as heaven itself is ephemeral and related to physical body. Only being tied by the bhoot-tatvas, heaven cannot be perfect either and is just another name for pleasurable and mundane material life. According to Hindu cosmology, above the earthly plane, are other planes: (1) Bhuva Loka, (2) Swarga Loka, meaning Good Kingdom, is the general name for heaven in Hinduism, a heavenly paradise of pleasure, where most of the Hindu Devatas (Deva) reside along with the king of Devas, Indra, and beatified mortals. Some other planes are Mahar Loka, Jana Loka, Tapa Loka and Satya Loka. Since heavenly abodes are also tied to the cycle of birth and death, any dweller of heaven or hell will again be recycled to a different plane and in a different form per the karma and "maya" i.e. the illusion of Samsara. This cycle is broken only by self-realization by the Jivatma. This self-realization is Moksha (Turiya, Kaivalya).
The concept of moksha is unique to Hinduism. Moksha stands for liberation from the cycle of birth and death and final communion with Brahman. With moksha, a liberated soul attains the stature and oneness with Brahman or Paramatma. Different schools such as Vedanta, Mimansa, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Yoga offer subtle differences in the concept of Brahman, obvious Universe, its genesis and regular destruction, Jivatma, Nature (Prakriti) and also the right way in attaining perfect bliss or moksha.
In the Vaishnava traditions the highest heaven is Vaikuntha, which exists above the six heavenly lokas and outside of the mahat-tattva or mundane world. It's where eternally liberated souls who have attained moksha reside in eternal sublime beauty with Lakshmi and Narayana (a manifestation of Vishnu).
In the Nasadiya Sukta, the heavens/sky Vyoman is mentioned as a place from which an overseeing entity surveys what has been created. However, the Nasadiya Sukta questions the omniscience of this overseer.
The shape of the Universe as described in Jainism is shown alongside. Unlike the current convention of using North direction as the top of map, this uses South as the top. The shape is similar to a part of human form standing upright.
The Deva Loka (heavens) are at the symbolic "chest", where all souls enjoying the positive karmic effects reside. The heavenly beings are referred to as devas (masculine form) and devis (feminine form). According to Jainism, there is not one heavenly abode, but several layers to reward appropriately the souls of varying degree of karmic merits. Similarly, beneath the "waist" are the Narka Loka (hell). Human, animal, insect, plant and microscopic life forms reside on the middle.
The pure souls (who reached Siddha status) reside at the very south end (top) of the Universe. They are referred to in Tamil literature as தென்புலத்தார் (Kural 43).
Sikhs believe that heaven and hell are also both in this world where everyone reaps the fruit of karma. They refer to good and evil stages of life respectively and can be lived now and here during our life on Earth. Bhagat Kabir in the Guru Granth Sahib rejects the otherworldly heaven and says that one can experience heaven on this Earth through the company of holy people.
He claims to know the Lord, who is beyond measure and beyond thought; By mere words, he plans to enter heaven. I do not know where heaven is. Everyone claims that he plans to go there. By mere talk, the mind is not appeased. The mind is only appeased, when egotism is conquered. As long as the mind is filled with the desire for heaven, He does not dwell at the Lord's Feet. Says Kabeer, unto whom should I tell this? The Company of the Holy is heaven.
The Nahua people such as the Aztecs, Chichimecs and the Toltecs believed that the heavens were constructed and separated into 13 levels. Each level had from one to many Lords living in and ruling these heavens. Most important of these heavens was Omeyocan (Place of Two). The Thirteen Heavens were ruled by Ometeotl, the dual Lord, creator of the Dual-Genesis who, as male, takes the name Ometecuhtli (Two Lord), and as female is named Omecihuatl (Two Lady).
In the creation myths of Polynesian mythology are found various concepts of the heavens and the underworld. These differ from one island to another. What they share is the view of the universe as an egg or coconut that is divided between the world of humans (earth), the upper world of heavenly gods, and the underworld. Each of these is subdivided in a manner reminiscent of Dante's Divine Comedy, but the number of divisions and their names differs from one Polynesian culture to another.
In Māori mythology, the heavens are divided into a number of realms. Different tribes number the heaven differently, with as few as two and as many as fourteen levels. One of the more common versions divides heaven thus:
The Māori believe these heavens are supported by pillars. Other Polynesian peoples see them being supported by gods (as in Hawaii). In one Tahitian legend, heaven is supported by an octopus.
The Polynesian conception of the universe and its division is nicely illustrated by a famous drawing made by a Tuomotuan chief in 1869. Here, the nine heavens are further divided into left and right, and each stage is associated with a stage in the evolution of the earth that is portrayed below. The lowest division represents a period when the heavens hung low over the earth, which was inhabited by animals that were not known to the islanders. In the third division is shown the first murder, the first burials, and the first canoes, built by Rata. In the fourth division, the first coconut tree and other significant plants are born.
It is believed in Theosophy, founded mainly by Helena Blavatsky, that each religion (including Theosophy) has its own individual heaven in various regions of the upper astral plane that fits the description of that heaven that is given in each religion, which a soul that has been good in their previous life on Earth will go to. The area of the upper astral plane of Earth in the upper atmosphere where the various heavens are located is called Summerland (Theosophists believe hell is located in the lower astral plane of Earth which extends downward from the surface of the earth down to its center). However, Theosophists believe that the soul is recalled back to Earth after an average of about 1400 years by the Lords of Karma to incarnate again. The final heaven that souls go to billions of years in the future after they finish their cycle of incarnations is called Devachan.
Anarchist Emma Goldman expressed this view when she wrote, "Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment."
Some have argued that a belief in a reward after death is poor motivation for moral behavior while alive. Sam Harris wrote, "It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available."
Many neuroscientists and neurophilosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, believe that consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of the brain and death is a cessation of consciousness, which would rule out heaven. Scientific research has discovered that some areas of the brain, like the reticular activating system or the thalamus, appear to be necessary for consciousness, because dysfunction of or damage to these structures causes a loss of consciousness.
In Inside the Neolithic Mind (2005), Lewis-Williams and Pearce argue that many cultures around the world and through history neurally perceive a tiered structure of heaven, along with similarly structured circles of hell. The reports match so similarly across time and space that Lewis-Williams and Pearce argue for a neuroscientific explanation, accepting the percepts as real neural activations and subjective percepts during particular altered states of consciousness.
Many people who come close to death and have near-death experiences report meeting relatives or entering "the Light" in an otherworldly dimension, which shares similarities with the religious concept of heaven. Even though there are also reports of distressing experiences and negative life-reviews, which share some similarities with the concept of hell, the positive experience of meeting or entering "the Light" is reported as an immensely intense feeling of a state of love, peace and joy beyond human comprehension. Together with this intensely positive-feeling state, people who have near-death experiences also report that consciousness or a heightened state of awareness seems as if it is at the heart of experiencing a taste of "heaven".
Works of fiction have included numerous different conceptions of Heaven and Hell. The two most famous descriptions of Heaven are given in Dante Alighieri's Paradiso (of the Divine Comedy) and John Milton's Paradise Lost. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Heaven is often described as a \"highest place\", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the \"low places\" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svargaloka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as the otherworld.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "At least in the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam, and some schools of Judaism, as well as Zoroastrianism, heaven is the realm of afterlife where good actions in the previous life are rewarded for eternity (hell being the place where bad behavior is punished).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The modern English word heaven is derived from the earlier (Middle English) heven (attested 1159); this in turn was developed from the previous Old English form heofon. By about 1000, heofon was being used in reference to the Christianized \"place where God dwells\", but originally, it had signified \"sky, firmament\" (e.g. in Beowulf, c. 725). The English term has cognates in the other Germanic languages: Old Saxon heƀan \"sky, heaven\" (hence also Middle Low German heven \"sky\"), Old Icelandic himinn, Gothic himins; and those with a variant final -l: Old Frisian himel, himul \"sky, heaven\", Old Saxon and Old High German himil, Old Saxon and Middle Low German hemmel, Old Dutch and Dutch hemel, and modern German Himmel. All of these have been derived from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *hemina-. or *hemō.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The further derivation of this form is uncertain. A connection to Proto-Indo-European *ḱem- \"cover, shroud\", via a reconstructed *k̑emen- or *k̑ōmen- \"stone, heaven\", has been proposed. Others endorse the derivation from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₂éḱmō \"stone\" and, possibly, \"heavenly vault\" at the origin of this word, which then would have as cognates ancient Greek ἄκμων (ákmōn \"anvil, pestle; meteorite\"), Persian آسمان (âsemân, âsmân \"stone, sling-stone; sky, heaven\") and Sanskrit अश्मन् (aśman \"stone, rock, sling-stone; thunderbolt; the firmament\"). In the latter case English hammer would be another cognate to the word.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The ancient Mesopotamians regarded the sky as a series of domes (usually three, but sometimes seven) covering the flat Earth. Each dome was made of a different kind of precious stone. The lowest dome of heaven was made of jasper and was the home of the stars. The middle dome of heaven was made of saggilmut stone and was the abode of the Igigi. The highest and outermost dome of heaven was made of luludānītu stone and was personified as An, the god of the sky. The celestial bodies were equated with specific deities as well. The planet Venus was believed to be Inanna, the goddess of love, sex, and war. The Sun was her brother Utu, the god of justice, and the Moon was their father Nanna.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In ancient Near Eastern cultures in general and in Mesopotamia in particular, humans had little to no access to the divine realm. Heaven and Earth were separated by their very nature; humans could see and be affected by elements of the lower heaven, such as stars and storms, but ordinary mortals could not go to Heaven because it was the abode of the gods alone. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh says to Enkidu, \"Who can go up to heaven, my friend? Only the gods dwell with Shamash forever.\" Instead, after a person died, his or her soul went to Kur (later known as Irkalla), a dark shadowy underworld, located deep below the surface of the earth.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no impact on how he would be treated in the world to come. Nonetheless, funerary evidence indicates that some people believed that Inanna had the power to bestow special favors upon her devotees in the afterlife. Despite the separation between heaven and earth, humans sought access to the gods through oracles and omens. The gods were believed to live in Heaven, but also in their temples, which were seen as the channels of communication between Earth and Heaven, which allowed mortal access to the gods. The Ekur temple in Nippur was known as the \"Dur-an-ki\", the \"mooring-rope\" of heaven and earth. It was widely thought to have been built and established by Enlil himself.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Zoroaster, the Zoroastrian prophet who introduced the Gathas, spoke of the existence of Heaven and Hell.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its conception of heaven, hell, angels, monotheism, belief in free will, and the day of judgement, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Almost nothing is known of Bronze Age (pre-1200 BC) Canaanite views of heaven, and the archaeological findings at Ugarit (destroyed c. 1200 BC) have not provided information. The first century Greek author Philo of Byblos may preserve elements of Iron Age Phoenician religion in his Sanchuniathon.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The ancient Hittites believed that some deities lived in Heaven, while others lived in remote places on Earth, such as mountains, where humans had little access. In the Middle Hittite myths, Heaven is the abode of the gods. In the Song of Kumarbi, Alalu was king in Heaven for nine years before giving birth to his son, Anu. Anu was himself overthrown by his son, Kumarbi.",
"title": "Ancient Near East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "As in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, in the Hebrew Bible, the universe is commonly divided into two realms: heaven (šāmayim) and earth (’ereṣ). Sometimes a third realm is added: either \"sea\", \"water under the earth\", or sometimes a vague \"land of the dead\" that is never described in depth. The structure of heaven itself is never fully described in the Hebrew Bible, but the fact that the Hebrew word šāmayim is plural has been interpreted by scholars as an indication that the ancient Israelites envisioned the heavens as having multiple layers, much like the ancient Mesopotamians. This reading is also supported by the use of the phrase \"heaven of heavens\" in verses such as Deuteronomy 10:14, King 8:27, and 2 Chronicles 2:6.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In line with the typical view of most Near Eastern cultures, the Hebrew Bible depicts Heaven as a place that is inaccessible to humans. Although some prophets are occasionally granted temporary visionary access to heaven, such as in 1 Kings 22:19–23, Job 1:6–12 and 2:1–6, and Isaiah, they hear only God's deliberations concerning the Earth and learn nothing of what Heaven is like. There is almost no mention in the Hebrew Bible of Heaven as a possible afterlife destination for human beings, who are instead described as \"resting\" in Sheol. The only two possible exceptions to this are Enoch, who is described in Genesis 5:24 as having been \"taken\" by God, and the prophet Elijah, who is described in 2 Kings 2:11 as having ascended to Heaven in a chariot of fire. According to Michael B. Hundley, the text in both of these instances is ambiguous regarding the significance of the actions being described and in neither of these cases does the text explain what happened to the subject afterwards.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The God of the Israelites is described as ruling both Heaven and Earth. Other passages, such as 1 Kings 8:27 state that even the vastness of Heaven cannot contain God's majesty. A number of passages throughout the Hebrew Bible indicate that Heaven and Earth will one day come to an end. This view is paralleled in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, which also regarded Heaven and Earth as vulnerable and subject to dissolution. However, the Hebrew Bible differs from other ancient Near Eastern cultures in that it portrays the God of Israel as independent of creation and unthreatened by its potential destruction. Because most of the Hebrew Bible concerns the God of Israel's relationship with his people, most of the events described in it take place on Earth, not in Heaven. The Deuteronomistic source, Deuteronomistic History, and Priestly source all portray the Temple in Jerusalem as the sole channel of communication between Earth and Heaven.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire. Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them. Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is thought to be derived from Persian cosmology, although the later claim has been recently questioned. By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers. The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there. The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC). Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Descriptions of Heaven in the New Testament are more fully developed than those in the Old Testament, but are still generally vague. As in the Old Testament, in the New Testament God is described as the ruler of Heaven and Earth, but his power over the Earth is challenged by Satan. The Gospels of Mark and Luke speak of the \"Kingdom of God\" (Greek: βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ; basileía tou theou), while the Gospel of Matthew more commonly uses the term \"Kingdom of heaven\" (Greek: βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν; basileía tōn ouranōn). Both phrases are thought to have the same meaning, but the author of the Gospel of Matthew changed the name \"Kingdom of God\" to \"Kingdom of Heaven\" in most instances because it was the more acceptable phrase in his own cultural and religious context in the late first century.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Modern scholars agree that the Kingdom of God was an essential part of the teachings of the historical Jesus. In spite of this, none of the gospels ever record Jesus as having explained exactly what the phrase \"Kingdom of God\" means. The most likely explanation for this apparent omission is that the Kingdom of God was a commonly understood concept that required no explanation. Jews in Judea during the early first century believed that God reigns eternally in Heaven, but many also believed that God would eventually establish his kingdom on earth as well. This belief is referenced in the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, taught by Jesus to his disciples and recorded in both Matthew and Luke 11:2: \"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.\"",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Because God's Kingdom was believed to be superior to any human kingdom, this meant that God would necessarily drive out the Romans, who ruled Judea, and establish his own direct rule over the Jewish people. In the teachings of the historical Jesus, people are expected to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of God by living moral lives. Jesus's commands for his followers to adopt lifestyles of moral perfectionism are found in many passages throughout the Synoptic Gospels, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7. Jesus also taught that, in the Kingdom of Heaven, there would be a reversal of roles in which \"the last will be first and the first will be last.\" This teaching recurs throughout the recorded teachings of Jesus, including in the admonition to be like a child, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20, the Parable of the Great Banquet in Matthew 22, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Traditionally, Christianity has taught that Heaven is the location of the throne of God as well as the holy angels, although this is in varying degrees considered metaphorical. In traditional Christianity, it is considered a state or condition of existence (rather than a particular place somewhere in the cosmos) of the supreme fulfillment of theosis in the beatific vision of the Godhead. In most forms of Christianity, Heaven is also understood as the abode for the redeemed dead in the afterlife, usually a temporary stage before the resurrection of the dead and the saints' return to the New Earth.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The resurrected Jesus is said to have ascended to Heaven where he now sits at the Right Hand of God and will return to Earth in the Second Coming. Various people have been said to have entered Heaven while still alive, including Enoch, Elijah and Jesus himself, after his resurrection. According to Roman Catholic teaching, Mary, mother of Jesus, is also said to have been assumed into Heaven and is titled the Queen of Heaven.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the second century AD, Irenaeus of Lyons recorded a belief that, in accordance with John 14, those who in the afterlife see the Saviour are in different mansions, some dwelling in the heavens, others in paradise and others in \"the city\".",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "While the word used in all these writings, in particular the New Testament Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos), applies primarily to the sky, it is also used metaphorically of the dwelling place of God and the blessed. Similarly, though the English word \"heaven\" still keeps its original physical meaning when used, for instance, in allusions to the stars as \"lights shining through from heaven\", and in phrases such as heavenly body to mean an astronomical object, the heaven or happiness that Christianity looks forward to is, according to Pope John Paul II, \"neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.\"",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "While the concept of Heaven (malkuth hashamaim מלכות השמים, the Kingdom of Heaven) is much discussed in Christian thought, the Jewish concept of the afterlife, sometimes known as olam haba, the World-to-come, is not discussed so often. The Torah has little to say on the subject of survival after death, but by the time of the rabbis two ideas had made inroads among the Jews: one, which is probably derived from Greek thought, is that of the immortal soul which returns to its creator after death; the other, which is thought to be of Persian origin, is that of resurrection of the dead.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Jewish writings refer to a \"new earth\" as the abode of mankind following the resurrection of the dead. Originally, the two ideas of immortality and resurrection were different but in rabbinic thought they are combined: the soul departs from the body at death but is returned to it at the resurrection. This idea is linked to another rabbinic teaching, that men's good and bad actions are rewarded and punished not in this life but after death, whether immediately or at the subsequent resurrection. Around 1 CE, the Pharisees believed in an afterlife but the Sadducees did not.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Mishnah has many sayings about the World to Come, for example, \"Rabbi Yaakov said: This world is like a lobby before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall.\"",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Judaism holds that the righteous of all nations have a share in the World-to-come.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "According to Nicholas de Lange, Judaism offers no clear teaching about the destiny which lies in wait for the individual after death and its attitude to life after death has been expressed as follows: \"For the future is inscrutable, and the accepted sources of knowledge, whether experience, or reason, or revelation, offer no clear guidance about what is to come. The only certainty is that each man must die – beyond that we can only guess.\"",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Similar to Jewish traditions such as the Talmud, the Qur'an and Hadith frequently mention the existence of seven samāwāt (سماوات), the plural of samāʾ (سماء), meaning 'heaven, sky, celestial sphere', and cognate with Hebrew shamāyim (שמים). Some of the verses in the Qur'an mentioning the samaawat are 41:12, 65:12 and 71:15. Sidrat al-Muntaha, a large enigmatic Lote tree, marks the end of the seventh heaven and the utmost extremity for all of God's creatures and heavenly knowledge.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "One interpretation of \"heavens\" is that all the stars and galaxies (including the Milky Way) are all part of the \"first heaven\", and \"beyond that six still bigger worlds are there,\" which have yet to be discovered by scientists.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "According to Shi'ite sources, Ali mentioned the names of the seven heavens as below:",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Still an afterlife destination of the righteous is conceived in Islam as Jannah (Arabic: جنة \"Garden [of Eden]\" translated as \"paradise\"). Regarding Eden or paradise the Quran says, \"The description of the Paradise promised to the righteous is that under it rivers flow; eternal is its fruit as well as its shade. That is the ˹ultimate˺ outcome for the righteous. But the outcome for the disbelievers is the Fire!\" Islam rejects the concept of original sin, and Muslims believe that all human beings are born pure. Children automatically go to paradise when they die, regardless of the religion of their parents.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Paradise is described primarily in physical terms as a place where every wish is immediately fulfilled when asked. Islamic texts describe immortal life in Jannah as happy, without negative emotions. Those who dwell in Jannah are said to wear costly apparel, partake in exquisite banquets, and recline on couches inlaid with gold or precious stones. Inhabitants will rejoice in the company of their parents, spouses, and children. In Islam if one's good deeds outweigh one's sins then one may gain entrance to paradise. Conversely, if one's sins outweigh their good deeds they are sent to hell. The more good deeds one has performed the higher the level of Jannah one is directed to.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Quran verses which describe paradise include: 13:15, 18:31, 38:49–54, 35:33–35 and 52:17.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Quran refers to Jannah with different names: Al-Firdaws, Jannātu-′Adn (\"Garden of Eden\" or \"Everlasting Gardens\"), Jannatu-n-Na'īm (\"Garden of Delight\"), Jannatu-l-Ma'wa (\"Garden of Refuge\"), Dāru-s-Salām (\"Abode of Peace\"), Dāru-l-Muqāma (\"Abode of Permanent Stay\"), al-Muqāmu-l-Amin (\"The Secure Station\") and Jannātu-l-Khuld (\"Garden of Immortality\"). In the Hadiths, these are the different regions in paradise.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "According to the Ahmadiyya view, much of the imagery presented in the Quran regarding Heaven, but also Hell, is metaphorical. They propound the verse which describes, according to them, how the life to come after death is different from the life on Earth. The Quran says: \"From bringing in your place others like you, and from developing you into a form which at present you know not.\" According to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya sect in Islam, the soul will give birth to another rarer entity and will resemble the life on earth in the sense that this entity will bear a similar relationship to the soul, as the soul bears relationship with the human existence on earth. On earth, if a person leads a righteous life and submits to the will of God, his or her tastes become attuned to enjoying spiritual pleasures as opposed to carnal desires. With this, an \"embryonic soul\" begins to take shape. Different tastes are said to be born in which a person given to carnal passions finds no enjoyment. For example, sacrifice of one's own's rights over that of other's becomes enjoyable, or that forgiveness becomes second nature. In such a state a person finds contentment and Peace at heart and at this stage, according to Ahmadiyya beliefs, it can be said that a soul within the soul has begun to take shape.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Baháʼí Faith regards the conventional description of heaven (and hell) as a specific place as symbolic. The Baháʼí writings describe heaven as a \"spiritual condition\" where closeness to God is defined as heaven; conversely hell is seen as a state of remoteness from God. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane, but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "For Baháʼís, entry into the next life has the potential to bring great joy. Bahá'u'lláh likened death to the process of birth. He explains: \"The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother.\" The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Baháʼí view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Baháʼís view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities which will be needed in the next life. The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestation of God, which Baháʼís believe is currently Bahá'u'lláh. Bahá'u'lláh wrote, \"Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return and be gathered to the glory of the Beloved.\"",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Baháʼí teachings state that there exists a hierarchy of souls in the afterlife, where the merits of each soul determines their place in the hierarchy, and that souls lower in the hierarchy cannot completely understand the station of those above. Each soul can continue to progress in the afterlife, but the soul's development is not entirely dependent on its own conscious efforts, the nature of which we are not aware, but also augmented by the grace of God, the prayers of others, and good deeds performed by others on Earth in the name of that person.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Mandaeans believe in an afterlife or heaven called Alma d-Nhura (World of Light). The World of Light is the primeval, transcendent world from which Tibil and the World of Darkness emerged. The Great Living God (Hayyi Rabbi) and his uthras (angels or guardians) dwell in the World of Light. The World of Light is also the source of Piriawis, the Great Yardena (or Jordan River) of Life.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The cosmological description of the universe in the Gnostic codex On the Origin of the World presents seven heavens created by the lesser god or Demiurge called Yaldabaoth, which are individually ruled over by one of his Archons. Above these realms is the eighth heaven, where the benevolent, higher divinities dwell. During the end of days, the seven heavens of the Archons will collapse on each other. The heaven of Yaldabaoth will split in two and cause the stars in his celestial sphere to fall.",
"title": "Abrahamic and Abrahamic-inspired religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In the native Chinese Confucian traditions, heaven (Tian) is an important concept, where the ancestors reside and from which emperors drew their mandate to rule in their dynastic propaganda, for example.",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Heaven is a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophies, and religions, and is on one end of the spectrum a synonym of Shangdi (\"Supreme Deity\") and on the other naturalistic end, a synonym for nature and the sky. The Chinese term for \"heaven\", Tian (天), derives from the name of the supreme deity of the Zhou dynasty. After their conquest of the Shang dynasty in 1122 BC, the Zhou people considered their supreme deity Tian to be identical with the Shang supreme deity Shangdi. The Zhou people attributed Heaven with anthropomorphic attributes, evidenced in the etymology of the Chinese character for heaven or sky, which originally depicted a person with a large cranium. Heaven is said to see, hear and watch over all people. Heaven is affected by people's doings, and having personality, is happy and angry with them. Heaven blesses those who please it and sends calamities upon those who offend it. Heaven was also believed to transcend all other spirits and gods, with Confucius asserting, \"He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.\"",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Other philosophers born around the time of Confucius such as Mozi took an even more theistic view of heaven, believing that heaven is the divine ruler, just as the Son of Heaven (the King of Zhou) is the earthly ruler. Mozi believed that spirits and minor gods exist, but their function is merely to carry out the will of heaven, watching for evil-doers and punishing them. Thus they function as angels of heaven and do not detract from its monotheistic government of the world. With such a high monotheism, it is not surprising that Mohism championed a concept called \"universal love\" (jian'ai, 兼愛), which taught that heaven loves all people equally and that each person should similarly love all human beings without distinguishing between his own relatives and those of others. In Mozi's Will of Heaven (天志), he writes:",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "\"I know Heaven loves men dearly not without reason. Heaven ordered the sun, the moon, and the stars to enlighten and guide them. Heaven ordained the four seasons, Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Summer, to regulate them. Heaven sent down snow, frost, rain, and dew to grow the five grains and flax and silk that so the people could use and enjoy them. Heaven established the hills and rivers, ravines and valleys, and arranged many things to minister to man's good or bring him evil. He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing. This has been so from antiquity to the present.\"",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Original Chinese: 「且吾所以知天之愛民之厚者有矣，曰以磨為日月星辰，以昭道之；制為四時春秋冬夏，以紀綱之；雷降雪霜雨露，以長遂五穀麻絲，使民得而財利之；列為山川谿谷，播賦百事，以臨司民之善否；為王公侯伯，使之賞賢而罰暴；賊金木鳥獸，從事乎五穀麻絲，以為民衣食之財。自古及今，未嘗不有此也。」",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Mozi, Will of Heaven, Chapter 27, Paragraph 6, ca. 5th Century BC",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Mozi criticized the Confucians of his own time for not following the teachings of Confucius. By the time of the later Han dynasty, however, under the influence of Xunzi, the Chinese concept of heaven and Confucianism itself had become mostly naturalistic, though some Confucians argued that Heaven was where ancestors reside. Worship of heaven in China continued with the erection of shrines, the last and greatest being the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and the offering of prayers. The ruler of China in every Chinese dynasty would perform annual sacrificial rituals to heaven, usually by slaughtering two healthy bulls as a sacrifice.",
"title": "Chinese religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In Buddhism there are several heavens, all of which are still part of samsara (illusionary reality). Those who accumulate good karma may be reborn in one of them. However, their stay in heaven is not eternal—eventually they will use up their good karma and will undergo rebirth into another realm, as a human, animal or other beings. Because heaven is temporary and part of samsara, Buddhists focus more on escaping the cycle of rebirth and reaching enlightenment (nirvana). Nirvana is not a heaven but a mental state.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "According to Buddhist cosmology the universe is impermanent and beings transmigrate through several existential \"planes\" in which this human world is only one \"realm\" or \"path\". These are traditionally envisioned as a vertical continuum with the heavens existing above the human realm, and the realms of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings existing beneath it. According to Jan Chozen Bays in her book, Jizo: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers, the realm of the asura is a later refinement of the heavenly realm and was inserted between the human realm and the heavens. One important Buddhist heaven is the Trāyastriṃśa, which resembles Olympus of Greek mythology.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In the Mahayana world view, there are also pure lands which lie outside this continuum and are created by the Buddhas upon attaining enlightenment. Rebirth in the pure land of Amitabha is seen as an assurance of Buddhahood, for once reborn there, beings do not fall back into cyclical existence unless they choose to do so to save other beings, the goal of Buddhism being the obtainment of enlightenment and freeing oneself and others from the birth-death cycle.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Tibetan word Bardo means literally \"intermediate state\". In Sanskrit the concept has the name antarabhāva.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The lists below are classified from highest to lowest of the heavenly worlds.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Brahmāloka",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Here the denizens are Brahmās, and the ruler is Mahābrahmā",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "After developing the four Brahmavihāras, King Makhādeva rebirths here after death. The monk Tissa and Brāhmana Jānussoni were also reborn here.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The lifespan of a Brahmās is not stated but is not eternal.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Parinirmita-vaśavartin (Pali: Paranimmita-vasavatti)",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The heaven of devas \"with power over (others') creations\". These devas do not create pleasing forms that they desire for themselves, but their desires are fulfilled by the acts of other devas who wish for their favor. The ruler of this world is called Vaśavartin (Pāli: Vasavatti), who has longer life, greater beauty, more power and happiness and more delightful sense-objects than the other devas of his world. This world is also the home of the devaputra (being of a divine race) called Māra, who endeavors to keep all beings of the Kāmadhātu in the grip of sensual pleasures. Māra is also sometimes called Vaśavartin, but in general these two dwellers in this world are kept distinct. The beings of this world are 3 lǐ (1,400 m; 4,500 feet) tall and live for 9,216,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition).",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Nirmāṇarati (Pali: Nimmānaratī)",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The world of devas \"delighting in their creations\". The devas of this world are capable of making any appearance to please themselves. The lord of this world is called Sunirmita (Pāli Sunimmita); his wife is the rebirth of Visākhā, formerly the chief upāsikā (female lay devotee) of the Buddha. The beings of this world are 2+1⁄2 lǐ (1,140 m; 3,750 feet) tall and live for 2,304,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition).",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Tuṣita (Pali: Tusita)",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The world of the \"joyful\" devas. This world is best known for being the world in which a Bodhisattva lives before being reborn in the world of humans. Until a few thousand years ago, the Bodhisattva of this world was Śvetaketu (Pāli: Setaketu), who was reborn as Siddhārtha, who would become the Buddha Śākyamuni; since then the Bodhisattva has been Nātha (or Nāthadeva) who will be reborn as Ajita and will become the Buddha Maitreya (Pāli Metteyya). While this Bodhisattva is the foremost of the dwellers in Tuṣita, the ruler of this world is another deva called Santuṣita (Pāli: Santusita). The beings of this world are 2 lǐ (910 m; 3,000 feet) tall and live for 576,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition). Anāthapindika, a Kosālan householder and benefactor to the Buddha's order was reborn here.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Yāma",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The denizens here have a lifespan of 144,000,000 years.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Trāyastriṃśa (Pali: Tāvatimsa)",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The ruler of this heaven is Indra or Shakra, and the realm is also called Trayatrimia.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Each denizen addresses other denizens as the title \"mārisa\".",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The governing hall of this heaven is called Sudhamma Hall.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "This heaven has a garden Nandanavana with damsels, as its most magnificent sight.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Ajita the Licchavi army general was reborn here. Gopika the Sākyan girl was reborn as a male god in this realm.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Any Buddhist reborn in this realm can outshine any of the previously dwelling denizens because of the extra merit acquired for following the Buddha's teachings.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The denizens here have a lifespan of 36,000,000 years.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Cātummahārājika",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The heaven \"of the Four Great Kings\". Its rulers are the four Great Kings of the name, Virūḍhaka विरुद्धक, Dhṛtarāṣṭra धृतराष्ट्र, Virūpākṣa विरुपाक्ष, and their leader Vaiśravaṇa वैश्यवर्ण. The devas who guide the Sun and Moon are also considered part of this world, as are the retinues of the four kings, composed of Kumbhāṇḍas कुम्भाण्ड (dwarfs), Gandharva गन्धर्वs (fairies), Nāgas (snakes) and Yakṣas यक्ष (goblins). The beings of this world are 230 m (750 feet) tall and live for 9,000,000 years (Sarvāstivāda tradition) or 90,000 years (Vibhajyavāda tradition).",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The Heaven of the Comfort from Others’ Transformations",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Heaven of Bliss by Transformation",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Tushita Heaven",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The Suyama Heaven",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Trayastrimsha Heaven",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The Heaven of the Four Kings",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Ou Yi Zhixu explains that the Shurangama sutra only emphasizes avoidance of deviant sexual desire, but one would naturally need to abide by the 10 good conducts to be born in these heavens.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Tibetan literature classifies the heavenly worlds into 5 major types:",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Attaining heaven is not the final pursuit in Hinduism as heaven itself is ephemeral and related to physical body. Only being tied by the bhoot-tatvas, heaven cannot be perfect either and is just another name for pleasurable and mundane material life. According to Hindu cosmology, above the earthly plane, are other planes: (1) Bhuva Loka, (2) Swarga Loka, meaning Good Kingdom, is the general name for heaven in Hinduism, a heavenly paradise of pleasure, where most of the Hindu Devatas (Deva) reside along with the king of Devas, Indra, and beatified mortals. Some other planes are Mahar Loka, Jana Loka, Tapa Loka and Satya Loka. Since heavenly abodes are also tied to the cycle of birth and death, any dweller of heaven or hell will again be recycled to a different plane and in a different form per the karma and \"maya\" i.e. the illusion of Samsara. This cycle is broken only by self-realization by the Jivatma. This self-realization is Moksha (Turiya, Kaivalya).",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The concept of moksha is unique to Hinduism. Moksha stands for liberation from the cycle of birth and death and final communion with Brahman. With moksha, a liberated soul attains the stature and oneness with Brahman or Paramatma. Different schools such as Vedanta, Mimansa, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Yoga offer subtle differences in the concept of Brahman, obvious Universe, its genesis and regular destruction, Jivatma, Nature (Prakriti) and also the right way in attaining perfect bliss or moksha.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In the Vaishnava traditions the highest heaven is Vaikuntha, which exists above the six heavenly lokas and outside of the mahat-tattva or mundane world. It's where eternally liberated souls who have attained moksha reside in eternal sublime beauty with Lakshmi and Narayana (a manifestation of Vishnu).",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In the Nasadiya Sukta, the heavens/sky Vyoman is mentioned as a place from which an overseeing entity surveys what has been created. However, the Nasadiya Sukta questions the omniscience of this overseer.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The shape of the Universe as described in Jainism is shown alongside. Unlike the current convention of using North direction as the top of map, this uses South as the top. The shape is similar to a part of human form standing upright.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The Deva Loka (heavens) are at the symbolic \"chest\", where all souls enjoying the positive karmic effects reside. The heavenly beings are referred to as devas (masculine form) and devis (feminine form). According to Jainism, there is not one heavenly abode, but several layers to reward appropriately the souls of varying degree of karmic merits. Similarly, beneath the \"waist\" are the Narka Loka (hell). Human, animal, insect, plant and microscopic life forms reside on the middle.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The pure souls (who reached Siddha status) reside at the very south end (top) of the Universe. They are referred to in Tamil literature as தென்புலத்தார் (Kural 43).",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Sikhs believe that heaven and hell are also both in this world where everyone reaps the fruit of karma. They refer to good and evil stages of life respectively and can be lived now and here during our life on Earth. Bhagat Kabir in the Guru Granth Sahib rejects the otherworldly heaven and says that one can experience heaven on this Earth through the company of holy people.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "He claims to know the Lord, who is beyond measure and beyond thought; By mere words, he plans to enter heaven. I do not know where heaven is. Everyone claims that he plans to go there. By mere talk, the mind is not appeased. The mind is only appeased, when egotism is conquered. As long as the mind is filled with the desire for heaven, He does not dwell at the Lord's Feet. Says Kabeer, unto whom should I tell this? The Company of the Holy is heaven.",
"title": "Indian religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The Nahua people such as the Aztecs, Chichimecs and the Toltecs believed that the heavens were constructed and separated into 13 levels. Each level had from one to many Lords living in and ruling these heavens. Most important of these heavens was Omeyocan (Place of Two). The Thirteen Heavens were ruled by Ometeotl, the dual Lord, creator of the Dual-Genesis who, as male, takes the name Ometecuhtli (Two Lord), and as female is named Omecihuatl (Two Lady).",
"title": "Mesoamerican religions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "In the creation myths of Polynesian mythology are found various concepts of the heavens and the underworld. These differ from one island to another. What they share is the view of the universe as an egg or coconut that is divided between the world of humans (earth), the upper world of heavenly gods, and the underworld. Each of these is subdivided in a manner reminiscent of Dante's Divine Comedy, but the number of divisions and their names differs from one Polynesian culture to another.",
"title": "Polynesia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In Māori mythology, the heavens are divided into a number of realms. Different tribes number the heaven differently, with as few as two and as many as fourteen levels. One of the more common versions divides heaven thus:",
"title": "Polynesia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The Māori believe these heavens are supported by pillars. Other Polynesian peoples see them being supported by gods (as in Hawaii). In one Tahitian legend, heaven is supported by an octopus.",
"title": "Polynesia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The Polynesian conception of the universe and its division is nicely illustrated by a famous drawing made by a Tuomotuan chief in 1869. Here, the nine heavens are further divided into left and right, and each stage is associated with a stage in the evolution of the earth that is portrayed below. The lowest division represents a period when the heavens hung low over the earth, which was inhabited by animals that were not known to the islanders. In the third division is shown the first murder, the first burials, and the first canoes, built by Rata. In the fourth division, the first coconut tree and other significant plants are born.",
"title": "Polynesia"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "It is believed in Theosophy, founded mainly by Helena Blavatsky, that each religion (including Theosophy) has its own individual heaven in various regions of the upper astral plane that fits the description of that heaven that is given in each religion, which a soul that has been good in their previous life on Earth will go to. The area of the upper astral plane of Earth in the upper atmosphere where the various heavens are located is called Summerland (Theosophists believe hell is located in the lower astral plane of Earth which extends downward from the surface of the earth down to its center). However, Theosophists believe that the soul is recalled back to Earth after an average of about 1400 years by the Lords of Karma to incarnate again. The final heaven that souls go to billions of years in the future after they finish their cycle of incarnations is called Devachan.",
"title": "Theosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Anarchist Emma Goldman expressed this view when she wrote, \"Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.\"",
"title": "Criticism of the belief in heaven"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Some have argued that a belief in a reward after death is poor motivation for moral behavior while alive. Sam Harris wrote, \"It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.\"",
"title": "Criticism of the belief in heaven"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Many neuroscientists and neurophilosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, believe that consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of the brain and death is a cessation of consciousness, which would rule out heaven. Scientific research has discovered that some areas of the brain, like the reticular activating system or the thalamus, appear to be necessary for consciousness, because dysfunction of or damage to these structures causes a loss of consciousness.",
"title": "Neuroscience"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "In Inside the Neolithic Mind (2005), Lewis-Williams and Pearce argue that many cultures around the world and through history neurally perceive a tiered structure of heaven, along with similarly structured circles of hell. The reports match so similarly across time and space that Lewis-Williams and Pearce argue for a neuroscientific explanation, accepting the percepts as real neural activations and subjective percepts during particular altered states of consciousness.",
"title": "Neuroscience"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Many people who come close to death and have near-death experiences report meeting relatives or entering \"the Light\" in an otherworldly dimension, which shares similarities with the religious concept of heaven. Even though there are also reports of distressing experiences and negative life-reviews, which share some similarities with the concept of hell, the positive experience of meeting or entering \"the Light\" is reported as an immensely intense feeling of a state of love, peace and joy beyond human comprehension. Together with this intensely positive-feeling state, people who have near-death experiences also report that consciousness or a heightened state of awareness seems as if it is at the heart of experiencing a taste of \"heaven\".",
"title": "Neuroscience"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Works of fiction have included numerous different conceptions of Heaven and Hell. The two most famous descriptions of Heaven are given in Dante Alighieri's Paradiso (of the Divine Comedy) and John Milton's Paradise Lost.",
"title": "Representations in arts"
}
]
| Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying. Heaven is often described as a "highest place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come. Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svargaloka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world is referred to as the otherworld. At least in the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam, and some schools of Judaism, as well as Zoroastrianism, heaven is the realm of afterlife where good actions in the previous life are rewarded for eternity. | 2001-09-25T01:54:10Z | 2024-01-01T00:03:22Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven |
13,812 | History of Libya | Libya's history involves its rich mix of ethnic groups, including the indigenous Berbers/Amazigh people. Amazigh have been present throughout the entire history of the country. For most of its history, Libya has been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control, from Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The History of Libya comprises six distinct periods: Ancient Libya, the Roman era, the Islamic era, Ottoman rule, Italian rule, and the Modern era.
Tens of thousands of years ago, the Sahara Desert, which now covers roughly 90% of Libya, was lush with green vegetation. It was home to lakes, forests, diverse wildlife and a temperate Mediterranean climate. Archaeological evidence indicates that the coastal plain was inhabited by Neolithic peoples from as early as 8000 BCE. These peoples were perhaps drawn by the climate, which enabled their culture to grow, subsisting on the domestication of cattle and the cultivation of crops.
Egyptian inscriptions from the Old Kingdom are the oldest available documentation of the Berber people. The inscriptions record Berber tribes raiding the Nile Delta. Rock paintings at Wadi Mathendous and the mountainous region of Jebel Acacus are the best sources of information about prehistoric Libya, and the pastoralist culture that settled there. The paintings reveal that the Libyan Sahara contained rivers, grassy plateaus and an abundance of wildlife such as giraffes, elephants and crocodiles.
The onset of the Piora Oscillation's intense aridification resulted in the "green Sahara" rapidly transforming into the Sahara Desert. Dispersal in Africa from the Atlantic coast to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt seems to have followed, due to climatic changes which caused increasing desertification.
The African ancestors of the Berber people are assumed to have spread into the area by the Late Bronze Age. The earliest known name of such a tribe is that of the Garamantes, who were based in Germa, southern Libya. The Garamantes were a Saharan people of Berber origin who used an elaborate underground irrigation system; they were probably present as tribal people in the Fezzan by about 1000 BCE, and were a local power in the Sahara between 500 BCE and 500 CE. By the time of contact with the Phoenicians, the first of the Semitic civilizations to arrive in Libya from the East, the Lebu, Garamantes, Berbers and other tribes that lived in the Sahara were already well established.
The Phoenicians were some of the first to establish coastal trading posts in Libya, when the merchants of Tyre (in present-day Lebanon) developed commercial relations with the various Berber tribes and made treaties with them to ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials. By the 5th century BCE, the greatest of the Phoenician colonies, Carthage, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa, where a distinctive civilization, known as Punic, came into being. Punic settlements on the Libyan coast included Oea (later Tripoli), Libdah (later Leptis Magna) and Sabratha. These cities were in an area that was later called Tripolis, or "Three Cities", from which Libya's modern capital Tripoli takes its name.
In 630 BCE, the Ancient Greeks colonized Eastern Libya and founded the city of Cyrene. Within 200 years, four more important Greek cities were established in the area that became known as Cyrenaica: Barce (later Marj); Euhesperides (later Berenice, present-day Benghazi); Taucheira (later Arsinoe, present-day Taucheria); Balagrae (later Bayda and Beda Littoria under Italian occupation, present-day Bayda); and Apollonia (later Susa), the port of Cyrene. Together with Cyrene, they were known as the Pentapolis (Five Cities). Cyrene became one of the greatest intellectual and artistic centers of the Greek world, and was famous for its medical school, learned academies, and architecture. The Greeks of the Pentapolis resisted encroachments by the Ancient Egyptians from the East, as well as by the Carthaginians from the West.
In 525 BCE the Persian army of Cambyses II overran Cyrenaica, which for the next two centuries remained under Persian or Egyptian rule. Alexander was greeted by the Greeks when he entered Cyrenaica in 331 BCE, and Eastern Libya again fell under the control of the Greeks, this time as part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Later, a federation of the Pentapolis was formed that was customarily ruled by a king drawn from the Ptolemaic royal house.
After the fall of Carthage the Romans did not occupy immediately Tripolitania (the region around Tripoli), but left it under control of the Berber kings of Numidia, until the coastal cities asked and obtained its protection. Ptolemy Apion, the last Greek ruler, bequeathed Cyrenaica to Rome, which formally annexed the region in 74 BCE and joined it to Crete as a Roman province. During the Roman civil wars Tripolitania (still not formally annexed) and Cyrenaica sustained Pompey and Marc Antony against respectively Caesar and Octavian. The Romans completed the conquest of the region under Augustus, occupying northern Fezzan ("Fasania") with Cornelius Balbus Minor. As part of the Africa Nova province, Tripolitania was prosperous, and reached a golden age in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when the city of Leptis Magna, home to the Severan dynasty, was at its height. On the other side, Cyrenaica's first Christian communities were established by the time of the Emperor Claudius but was heavily devastated during the Kitos War and almost depopulated of Greeks and Jews alike, and, although repopulated by Trajan with military colonies, from then started its decadence.
Regardless, for more than 400 years Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were part of a cosmopolitan state whose citizens shared a common language, legal system, and Roman identity. Roman ruins like those of Leptis Magna and Sabratha, extant in present-day Libya, attest to the vitality of the region, where populous cities and even smaller towns enjoyed the amenities of urban life—the forum, markets, public entertainments, and baths—found in every corner of the Roman Empire. Merchants and artisans from many parts of the Roman world established themselves in North Africa, but the character of the cities of Tripolitania remained decidedly Punic and, in Cyrenaica, Greek. Tripolitania was a major exporter of olive oil, as well as a center for the trade of ivory and wild animals conveyed to the coast by the Garamantes, while Cyrenaica remained an important source of wines, drugs, and horses. The bulk of the population in the countryside consisted of Berber farmers, who in the west were thoroughly "romanized" in language and customs. Until the 10th century the African Romance remained in use in some Tripolitanian areas, mainly near the Tunisian border.
The decline of the Roman Empire saw the classical cities fall into ruin, a process hastened by the Vandals' destructive sweep though North Africa in the 5th century. The region's prosperity had shrunk under Vandal domination, and the old Roman political and social order, disrupted by the Vandals, could not be restored. In outlying areas neglected by the Vandals, the inhabitants had sought the protection of tribal chieftains and, having grown accustomed to their autonomy, resisted re-assimilation into the imperial system.
When the Empire returned (now as East Romans) as part of Justinian's reconquests of the 6th century, efforts were made to strengthen the old cities, but it was only a last gasp before they collapsed into disuse. Cyrenaica, which had remained an outpost of the Byzantine Empire during the Vandal period, also took on the characteristics of an armed camp. Unpopular Byzantine governors imposed burdensome taxation to meet military costs, while the towns and public services—including the water system—were left to decay. Byzantine rule in Africa did prolong the Roman ideal of imperial unity there for another century and a half however, and prevented the ascendancy of the Berber nomads in the coastal region. By the beginning of the 7th century, Byzantine control over the region was weak, Berber rebellions were becoming more frequent, and there was little to oppose Muslim invasion.
Tenuous Byzantine control over Libya was restricted to a few poorly defended coastal strongholds, and as such, the Arab horsemen who first crossed into the Pentapolis of Cyrenaica in September 643 CE encountered little resistance. Under the command of 'Amr ibn al-'As, the armies of Islam conquered Cyrenaica, and renamed the Pentapolis, Barqa. They took also Tripoli, but after destroying the Roman walls of the city and getting a tribute they withdrew. In 647 an army of 40,000 Arabs, led by Abdullah ibn Saad, the foster-brother of Caliph Uthman, penetrated deep into Western Libya and took Tripoli from the Byzantines definitively. From Barqa, the Fezzan (Libya's Southern region) was conquered by Uqba ibn Nafi in 663 and Berber resistance was overcome. During the following centuries Libya came under the rule of several Islamic dynasties, under various levels of autonomy from Ummayad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates of the time. Arab rule was easily imposed in the coastal farming areas and on the towns, which prospered again under Arab patronage. Townsmen valued the security that permitted them to practice their commerce and trade in peace, while the Punicized farmers recognized their affinity with the Semitic Arabs to whom they looked to protect their lands. In Cyrenaica, Monophysite adherents of the Coptic Church had welcomed the Muslim Arabs as liberators from Byzantine oppression. The Berber tribes of the hinterland accepted Islam, however they resisted Arab political rule.
For the next several decades, Libya was under the purview of the Umayyad Caliph of Damascus until the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in 750, and Libya came under the rule of Baghdad. When Caliph Harun al-Rashid appointed Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab as his governor of Ifriqiya in 800, Libya enjoyed considerable local autonomy under the Aghlabid dynasty. The Aghlabids were among the most attentive Islamic rulers of Libya; they brought about a measure of order to the region, and restored Roman irrigation systems, which brought prosperity to the area from the agricultural surplus. By the end of the 9th century, the Shiite Fatimids controlled Western Libya from their capital in Mahdia, before they ruled the entire region from their new capital of Cairo in 972 and appointed Bologhine ibn Ziri as governor. During Fatimid rule, Tripoli thrived on the trade in slaves and gold brought from the Sudan and on the sale of wool, leather, and salt shipped from its docks to Italy in exchange for wood and iron goods. Ibn Ziri's Berber Zirid dynasty ultimately broke away from the Shiite Fatimids, and recognised the Sunni Abbasids of Baghdad as rightful Caliphs. In retaliation, the Fatimids brought about the migration of thousands from two troublesome Arab Bedouin tribes, the Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal to North Africa. This act drastically altered the fabric of the Libyan countryside, and cemented the cultural and linguistic Arabisation of the region. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.
Zirid rule in Tripolitania was short-lived though, and already in 1001 the Berbers of the Banu Khazrun broke away. Tripolitania remained under their control until 1146, when the region was overtaken by the Normans of Sicily. It was not until 1159 that the Moroccan Almohad leader Abd al-Mu'min reconquered Tripoli from European rule. For the next 50 years, Tripolitania was the scene of numerous battles between the Almohad rulers and insurgents of the Banu Ghaniya. Later, a general of the Almohads, Muhammad ibn Abu Hafs, ruled Libya from 1207 to 1221 before the later establishment of a Tunisian Hafsid dynasty independent from the Almohads. The Hafsids ruled Tripolitania for nearly 300 years, and established significant trade with the city-states of Europe. Hafsid rulers also encouraged art, literature, architecture and scholarship. Ahmad Zarruq was one of the most famous Islamic scholars to settle in Libya, and did so during this time. By the 16th century however, the Hafsids became increasingly caught up in the power struggle between Spain and the Ottoman Empire. After a successful invasion of Tripoli by Habsburg Spain in 1510, and its handover to the Knights of St. John, the Ottoman admiral Sinan Pasha finally took control of Libya in 1551.
After a successful invasion by the Habsburgs of Spain in the early 16th century, Charles V entrusted its defense to the Knights of St. John in Malta. Lured by the piracy that spread through the Maghreb coastline, adventurers such as Barbarossa and his successors consolidated Ottoman control in the central Maghreb. The Ottoman Turks conquered Tripoli in 1551 under the command of Sinan Pasha. In the next year his successor Turgut Reis was named the Bey of Tripoli and later Pasha of Tripoli in 1556. As Pasha, he adorned and built up Tripoli, making it one of the most impressive cities along the North African coast. By 1565, administrative authority as regent in Tripoli was vested in a pasha appointed directly by the sultan in Constantinople. In the 1580s, the rulers of Fezzan gave their allegiance to the sultan, and although Ottoman authority was absent in Cyrenaica, a bey was stationed in Benghazi late in the next century to act as agent of the government in Tripoli.
In time, real power came to rest with the pasha's corps of janissaries, a self-governing military guild, and in time the pasha's role was reduced to that of ceremonial head of state. Mutinies and coups were frequent, and in 1611 the deys staged a coup against the pasha, and Dey Sulayman Safar was appointed as head of government. For the next hundred years, a series of deys effectively ruled Tripolitania, some for only a few weeks, and at various times the dey was also pasha-regent. The regency governed by the dey was autonomous in internal affairs and, although dependent on the sultan for fresh recruits to the corps of janissaries, his government was left to pursue a virtually independent foreign policy as well. The two most important Deys were Mehmed Saqizli (r. 1631–49) and Osman Saqizli (r. 1649–72), both also Pasha, who ruled effectively the region. The latter conquered also Cyrenaica.
Tripoli was the only city of size in Ottoman Libya (then known as Tripolitania Eyalet) at the end of the 17th century and had a population of about 30,000. The bulk of its residents were Moors, as city-dwelling Arabs were then known. Several hundred Turks and renegades formed a governing elite, a large portion of which were kouloughlis (lit. sons of servants—offspring of Turkish soldiers and Arab women); they identified with local interests and were respected by locals. Jews and Moriscos were active as merchants and craftsmen and a small number of European traders also frequented the city. European slaves and large numbers of enslaved blacks transported from Sudan were also a feature of everyday life in Tripoli. In 1551, Turgut Reis enslaved almost the entire population of the Maltese island of Gozo, some 6,300 people, sending them to Libya. The most pronounced slavery activity involved the enslavement of black Africans who were brought via trans-Saharan trade routes. Even though the slave trade was officially abolished in Tripoli in 1853, in practice it continued until the 1890s.
Lacking direction from the Ottoman government, Tripoli lapsed into a period of military anarchy during which coup followed coup and few deys survived in office more than a year. One such coup was led by Turkish officer Ahmed Karamanli. The Karamanlis ruled from 1711 until 1835 mainly in Tripolitania, but had influence in Cyrenaica and Fezzan as well by the mid 18th century. Ahmed was a Janissary and popular cavalry officer. He murdered the Ottoman Dey of Tripolitania and seized the throne in 1711. After persuading Sultan Ahmed III to recognize him as governor, Ahmed established himself as pasha and made his post hereditary. Though Tripolitania continued to pay nominal tribute to the Ottoman padishah, it otherwise acted as an independent kingdom. Ahmed greatly expanded his city's economy, particularly through the employment of corsairs (pirates) on crucial Mediterranean shipping routes; nations that wished to protect their ships from the corsairs were forced to pay tribute to the pasha. Ahmad's successors proved to be less capable than himself, however, the region's delicate balance of power allowed the Karamanli to survive several dynastic crises without invasion. The Libyan Civil War of 1791–1795 occurred in those years. In 1793, Turkish officer Ali Pasha deposed Hamet Karamanli and briefly restored Tripolitania to Ottoman rule. However, Hamet's brother Yusuf (r. 1795–1832) reestablished Tripolitania's independence.
In the early 19th century war broke out between the United States and Tripolitania, and a series of battles ensued in what came to be known as the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War. By 1819, the various treaties of the Napoleonic Wars had forced the Barbary states to give up piracy almost entirely, and Tripolitania's economy began to crumble. As Yusuf weakened, factions sprung up around his three sons; though Yusuf abdicated in 1832 in favor of his son Ali II, civil war soon resulted. Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II sent in troops ostensibly to restore order, but instead deposed and exiled Ali II, marking the end of both the Karamanli dynasty and an independent Tripolitania. Anyway, order was not recovered easily, and the revolt of the Libyan under Abd-El-Gelil and Gûma ben Khalifa lasted until the death of the latter in 1858.
The second period of direct Ottoman rule saw administrative changes, and what seemed as greater order in the governance of the three provinces of Libya. It would not be long before the Scramble for Africa and European colonial interests set their eyes on the marginal Turkish provinces of Libya. The Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Senussi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa. Reunification came about through the unlikely route of an invasion (Italo-Turkish War, 1911–1912) and occupation starting from 1911 when Italy simultaneously turned the three regions into colonies.
From 1912 to 1927, the territory of Libya was known as Italian North Africa. From 1927 to 1934, the territory was split into two colonies, Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania, run by Italian governors. Some 150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting roughly 20% of the total population.
In 1934, Italy adopted the name "Libya" (used by the Greeks for all of North Africa, except Egypt) as the official name of the colony (made up of the three provinces of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan). Idris al-Mahdi as-Senussi (later King Idris I), Emir of Cyrenaica, led Libyan resistance to Italian occupation between the two world wars. Ilan Pappe estimates that between 1928 and 1932 the Italian military "killed half the Bedouin population (directly or through disease and starvation in camps)." Italian historian Emilio Gentile sets to about 50,000 the number of victims of the repression.
In 1934, the political entity called "Libya" was created by governor Balbo with capital Tripoli. The Italians emphasized infrastructure improvements and public works. In particular, they hugely expanded Libyan railway and road networks from 1934 to 1940, building hundreds of kilometers of new roads and railways and encouraging the establishment of new industries and dozens of new agricultural villages.
During WW2, since June 1940 Libya was at the center of destructive fighting between the Axis and the British empire: the Allies conquered from Italy all of Libya only by February 1943.
From 1943 to 1951, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were under British military administration, while the French controlled Fezzan. In 1944, Idris returned from exile in Cairo but declined to resume permanent residence in Cyrenaica until the removal of some aspects of foreign control in 1947. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya.
On 21 November 1949, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before 1 January 1952. Idris represented Libya in the subsequent UN negotiations. On 24 December 1951, Libya declared its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya, a constitutional and hereditary monarchy under King Idris, Libya's only monarch.
1951 also saw the enactment of the first Libyan Constitution. The Libyan National Assembly drafted the Constitution and passed a resolution accepting it in a meeting held in the city of Benghazi on Sunday, 6th Muharram, Hegiras 1371: 7 October 1951. Mohamed Abulas’ad El-Alem, President of the National Assembly and the two Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly, Omar Faiek Shennib and Abu Baker Ahmed Abu Baker executed and submitted the Constitution to King Idris following which it was published in the Official Gazette of Libya.
The enactment of the Libyan Constitution was significant in that it was the first piece of legislation to formally entrench the rights of Libyan citizens following the post-war creation of the Libyan nation state. Following on from the intense UN debates during which Idris had argued that the creation of a single Libyan state would be of benefit to the regions of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica, the Libyan government was keen to formulate a constitution which contained many of the entrenched rights common to European and North American nation states. Though not creating a secular state – Article 5 proclaims Islam the religion of the State – the Libyan Constitution did formally set out rights such as equality before the law as well as equal civil and political rights, equal opportunities, and an equal responsibility for public duties and obligations, "without distinction of religion, belief, race, language, wealth, kinship or political or social opinions" (Article 11).
During this period, Britain was involved in extensive engineering projects in Libya and was also the country's biggest supplier of arms. The United States also maintained the large Wheelus Air Base in Libya.
On 1 September 1969, a small group of military officers led by 27-year-old army officer Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d'état against King Idris, launching the Libyan Revolution. Gaddafi was referred to as the "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" in government statements and the official Libyan press.
On the birthday of Muhammad in 1973, Gaddafi delivered a "Five-Point Address". He announced the suspension of all existing laws and the implementation of Sharia. He said that the country would be purged of the "politically sick". A "people's militia" would "protect the revolution". There would be an administrative revolution, and a cultural revolution. Gaddafi set up an extensive surveillance system. 10 to 20 percent of Libyans worked in surveillance for the Revolutionary committees, which monitored activities in government, in factories, and in the education sector. Gaddafi executed dissidents publicly and the executions were often rebroadcast on state television channels. Gaddafi employed his network of diplomats and recruits to assassinate dozens of critical refugees around the world. Amnesty International listed at least 25 assassinations between 1980 and 1987.
In 1977, Libya officially became the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya". Gaddafi officially passed power to the General People's Committees and henceforth claimed to be no more than a symbolic figurehead, but domestic and international critics claimed the reforms gave him virtually unlimited power. Dissidents against the new system were not tolerated, with punitive actions including capital punishment authorized by Gaddafi himself. The new "jamahiriya" governance structure he established was officially referred to as a form of direct democracy, though the government refused to publish election results. Later that same year, Libya and Egypt fought a four-day border war that came to be known as the Libyan-Egyptian War, both nations agreed to a ceasefire under the mediation of the Algerian president Houari Boumediène. In February 1977, Libya began to provide military supplies to Goukouni Oueddei and the People's Armed Forces in Chad. The Chadian–Libyan conflict began in earnest when Libya's support of rebel forces in northern Chad escalated into an invasion. Much of the country's income from oil, which soared in the 1970s, was spent on arms purchases and on sponsoring dozens of rebels groups around the world. An airstrike failed to kill Gaddafi in 1986. Libya was accused in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772 over Chad and Niger; Libya was finally put under United Nations sanctions in 1992. Gaddafi financed various other groups from anti-nuclear movements to Australian trade unions.
From 1977 onward, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000, the fifth-highest in Africa, while the Human Development Index became the highest in Africa and greater than that of Saudi Arabia. This was achieved without borrowing any foreign loans, keeping Libya debt-free. In addition, the country's literacy rate rose from 10% to 90%, life expectancy rose from 57 to 77 years, employment opportunities were established for migrant workers, and welfare systems were introduced that allowed access to free education, free healthcare, and financial assistance for housing. The Great Manmade River was also built to allow free access to fresh water across large parts of the country. In addition, financial support was provided for university scholarships and employment programs.
Gaddafi doubled the minimum wage, introduced statutory price controls, and implemented compulsory rent reductions of between 30 and 40%. Gaddafi also wanted to combat the strict social restrictions that had been imposed on women by the previous regime, establishing the Revolutionary Women's Formation to encourage reform. In 1970, a law was introduced affirming equality of the sexes and insisting on wage parity. In 1971, Gaddafi sponsored the creation of a Libyan General Women's Federation. In 1972, a law was passed criminalizing the marriage of any females under the age of sixteen and ensuring that a woman's consent was a necessary prerequisite for a marriage.
Gaddafi assumed the honorific title of "King of Kings of Africa" in 2008 as part of his campaign for a United States of Africa. By the early 2010s, in addition to attempting to assume a leadership role in the African Union, Libya was also viewed as having formed closer ties with Italy, one of its former colonial rulers, than any other country in the European Union. The eastern parts of the country have been "ruined" due to Gaddafi's economic theories, according to The Economist.
After popular movements overturned the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, its immediate neighbors to the west and east, Libya experienced a full-scale revolt beginning on 17 February 2011. By 20 February, the unrest had spread to Tripoli. In the early hours of 21 February 2011, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, oldest son of Muammar Gaddafi, spoke on Libyan television of his fears that the country would fragment and be replaced by "15 Islamic fundamentalist emirates" if the uprising engulfed the entire state. He admitted that "mistakes had been made" in quelling recent protests and announced plans for a constitutional convention, but warned that the country's economic wealth and recent prosperity was at risk and warned of "rivers of blood" if the protests continued.
On 27 February 2011, the National Transitional Council was established under the stewardship of Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Gaddafi's former justice minister, to administer the areas of Libya under rebel control. This marked the first serious effort to organize the broad-based opposition to the Gaddafi regime. While the council was based in Benghazi, it claimed Tripoli as its capital. Hafiz Ghoga, a human rights lawyer, later assumed the role of spokesman for the council. On 10 March 2011, France became the first state to officially recognise the council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
By early March 2011, some parts of Libya had tipped out of Gaddafi's control, coming under the control of a coalition of opposition forces, including soldiers who decided to support the rebels. Eastern Libya, centered on the port city of Benghazi, was said to be firmly in the hands of the opposition, while Tripoli and its environs remained in dispute. Pro-Gaddafi forces were able to respond militarily to rebel pushes in Western Libya and launched a counterattack along the coast toward Benghazi, the de facto centre of the uprising. The town of Zawiya, 48 kilometres (30 mi) from Tripoli, was bombarded by Air Force planes and Army tanks and seized by Jamahiriya troops, "exercising a level of brutality not yet seen in the conflict."
In several public appearances, Gaddafi threatened to destroy the protest movement, and Al Jazeera and other agencies reported his government was arming pro-Gaddafi militiamen to kill protesters and defectors against the regime in Tripoli. Organs of the United Nations, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Human Rights Council, condemned the crackdown as violating international law, with the latter body expelling Libya outright in an unprecedented action urged by Libya's own delegation to the UN. The United States imposed economic sanctions against Libya, followed shortly by Australia, Canada and the United Nations Security Council, which also voted to refer Gaddafi and other government officials to the International Criminal Court for investigation.
On 17 March 2011 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 with a 10–0 vote and five abstentions. The resolution sanctioned the establishment of a no-fly zone and the use of "all means necessary" to protect civilians within Libya.
Shortly afterwards, Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa stated that "Libya has decided an immediate ceasefire and an immediate halt to all military operations".
On 19 March, the first Allied act to secure the no-fly zone began when French military jets entered Libyan airspace on a reconnaissance mission heralding attacks on enemy targets. Allied military action to enforce the ceasefire commenced the same day when a French aircraft opened fire and destroyed a vehicle on the ground. French jets also destroyed five tanks belonging to the Gaddafi regime. The United States and United Kingdom launched attacks on over 20 "integrated air defense systems" using more than 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles during operations Odyssey Dawn and Ellamy.
On 27 June 2011, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi, alleging that Gaddafi had been personally involved in planning and implementing "a policy of widespread and systematic attacks against civilians and demonstrators and dissidents".
By 22 August 2011, rebel fighters had entered Tripoli and occupied Green Square, which they renamed to its original name, Martyrs' Square in honour of those killed during the Italian occupation. Meanwhile, Gaddafi asserted that he was still in Libya and would not concede power to the rebels.
On 16 September 2011, the U.N. General Assembly approved a request from the National Transitional Council to accredit envoys of the country's interim controlling body as Tripoli's sole representatives at the UN, effectively recognising the National Transitional Council as the legitimate holder of that country's UN seat.
The National Transitional Council had been plagued by internal divisions during its tenure as Libya's interim governing authority. It postponed the formation of a caretaker, or "interim" government on several occasions during the period prior to the death of Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte on 20 October 2011. Mustafa Abdul Jalil led the National Transitional Council and was generally considered to be the principal leadership figure. Mahmoud Jibril served as the NTC's de facto head of government from 5 March 2011 through the end of the war, but he announced he would resign after Libya was declared to have been "liberated" from Gaddafi's rule.
The "liberation" of Libya was celebrated on 23 October 2011, and Jibril announced that consultations were under way to form an interim government within one month, followed by elections for a constitutional assembly within eight months and parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within a year after that. He stepped down as expected the same day and was succeeded by Ali Tarhouni. At least 30,000 Libyans died in the civil war.
After the First Civil War, the National Transitional Council (NTC) has been responsible for the transition of the administration of the governing of Libya. The "liberation" of Libya was celebrated on 23 October 2011. Then Jibril announced that consultations were under way to form an interim government within one month, followed by elections for a constitutional assembly within eight months and parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within a year after that. He stepped down as expected the same day and was succeeded by Ali Tarhouni.
On 24 November, Tarhouni was replaced by Abdurrahim El-Keib. El-Keib formed a provisional government, filling it with independent or CNT politicians, including women.
After the fall of Gaddafi, Libya has been faced with internal struggles. A protest started against the new regime of NTC. The loyalists of Gaddafi rebelled and fought with the new Libyan army.
Because the Constitutional Declaration allowed a multi-party system, the political parties, like Democratic Party, Party of Reform and Development, National Gathering for Freedom, Justice and Development appeared. The Islamist movement started. To stop it, the CNT (NTC) government denied power to parties based on religion, tribal and ethnic bases.
On 7 July 2012, Libyans voted in their first parliamentary elections since the end of Gaddafi's rule. The election, in which more than 100 political parties registered, formed an interim 200-member national assembly. This will replace the unelected National Transitional Council, name a prime minister, and form a committee to draft a constitution. The vote was postponed several times to resolve logistical and technical problems, and to give more time to register to vote, and to investigate candidates.
On 8 August 2012, the National Transitional Council officially handed power to the wholly elected General National Congress, which is tasked with the formation of an interim government and the drafting of a new Libyan Constitution to be approved in a general referendum.
On 25 August 2012, in what "appears to be the most blatant sectarian attack" since the end of the civil war, unnamed organized assailants bulldozed a Sufi mosque with graves, in broad daylight in the center of the Libyan capital Tripoli. It was the second such razing of a Sufi site in two days.
On 7 October 2012, Libya's Prime Minister-elect Mustafa A.G. Abushagur stepped down after failing a second time to win parliamentary approval for a new cabinet. On 14 October 2012, the General National Congress elected former GNC member and human rights lawyer Ali Zeidan as prime minister-designate.
Libyan Constitutional Assembly elections took place in Libya on 20 February 2014. Ali Zidan was ousted by the parliament committee and fled from Libya on 14 March 2014 after rogue oil tanker Morning Glory left the rebel port of Sidra, Libya with Libyan oil that had been confiscated by the rebels. Ali Zeidan had promised to stop the departure, but failed.
On 30 March 2014 General National Congress voted to replace itself with new House of Representatives.
Abdullah al-Thani served as the prime minister since 11 March 2014 in interim capacity. He resigned on 13 April 2014, after he and his family were victims of a "traitorous attack" but continued to remain prime minister since there was no replacement. Ahmed Maiteeq was elected Prime Minister of Libya in May 2014 but his election as prime minister took place under disputed circumstances, Libyan Supreme Court ruled on 9 June that Maiteeq's appointment was illegal and Maiteeq resigned the same day.
As of 18 May 2014, the parliament building was reported to have been stormed by troops loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, reportedly including the Zintan Brigade, in what the Libyan government described as an attempted coup.
House of Representatives elections were held in Libya on 25 June 2014.
On 14 July, the United States Support Mission in Libya evacuated its staff after 13 people were killed in clashes in Tripoli and Benghazi. The fighting, between government forces and rival militia groups, also forced Tripoli International Airport to close. A militia, including members of the Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room (LROR), tried to seize control of the airport from the Zintan militia, which has controlled it since Gaddafi was toppled. Both militias are believed to be on the official payroll. In addition Misrata Airport was closed, due to its dependence on Tripoli International Airport for its operations. Government spokesman, Ahmed Lamine, stated that approximately 90% of the planes stationed at Tripoli International Airport were destroyed or made inoperable in the attack, and that the government may make an appeal for international forces to assist in reestablishing security.
In December 2015, the Libyan Political Agreement was signed after talks in Skhirat, as the result of protracted negotiations between rival political camps based in Tripoli, Tobruk, and elsewhere which agreed to unite as the Government of National Accord (GNA). On 30 March 2016, Fayez Sarraj, the head of GNA, arrived in Tripoli and began working from there despite opposition from GNC.
On 4 April 2019, Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Libyan National Army, called on his military forces to advance on Tripoli, the capital of the internationally recognized government of Libya, in the 2019–20 Western Libya campaign This was met with reproach from United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and the United Nations Security Council.
On 23 October 2020, the 5+5 Joint Libyan Military Commission representing the Libyan National Army and the GNA reached a "permanent ceasefire agreement in all areas of Libya". The agreement, effective immediately, required that all foreign fighters leave Libya within three months while a joint police force would patrol disputed areas. The first commercial flight between Tripoli and Benghazi took place that same day. On 10 March 2021, an interim unity government was formed, which was slated to remain in place until the next Libyan presidential election scheduled for 10 December. However, the election has been delayed several times since, effectively rendering the unity government in power indefinitely, causing tensions which threaten to reignite the war.
On September 10, 2023, catastrophic floods due to dam failures generated by Storm Daniel devastated the port city of Derna, killing nearly 7,000 and leaving over 10,000 missing. The floods were the worst natural disaster in Libya's modern history. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Libya's history involves its rich mix of ethnic groups, including the indigenous Berbers/Amazigh people. Amazigh have been present throughout the entire history of the country. For most of its history, Libya has been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control, from Europe, Asia, and Africa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The History of Libya comprises six distinct periods: Ancient Libya, the Roman era, the Islamic era, Ottoman rule, Italian rule, and the Modern era.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Tens of thousands of years ago, the Sahara Desert, which now covers roughly 90% of Libya, was lush with green vegetation. It was home to lakes, forests, diverse wildlife and a temperate Mediterranean climate. Archaeological evidence indicates that the coastal plain was inhabited by Neolithic peoples from as early as 8000 BCE. These peoples were perhaps drawn by the climate, which enabled their culture to grow, subsisting on the domestication of cattle and the cultivation of crops.",
"title": "Prehistoric and Berber Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Egyptian inscriptions from the Old Kingdom are the oldest available documentation of the Berber people. The inscriptions record Berber tribes raiding the Nile Delta. Rock paintings at Wadi Mathendous and the mountainous region of Jebel Acacus are the best sources of information about prehistoric Libya, and the pastoralist culture that settled there. The paintings reveal that the Libyan Sahara contained rivers, grassy plateaus and an abundance of wildlife such as giraffes, elephants and crocodiles.",
"title": "Prehistoric and Berber Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The onset of the Piora Oscillation's intense aridification resulted in the \"green Sahara\" rapidly transforming into the Sahara Desert. Dispersal in Africa from the Atlantic coast to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt seems to have followed, due to climatic changes which caused increasing desertification.",
"title": "Prehistoric and Berber Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The African ancestors of the Berber people are assumed to have spread into the area by the Late Bronze Age. The earliest known name of such a tribe is that of the Garamantes, who were based in Germa, southern Libya. The Garamantes were a Saharan people of Berber origin who used an elaborate underground irrigation system; they were probably present as tribal people in the Fezzan by about 1000 BCE, and were a local power in the Sahara between 500 BCE and 500 CE. By the time of contact with the Phoenicians, the first of the Semitic civilizations to arrive in Libya from the East, the Lebu, Garamantes, Berbers and other tribes that lived in the Sahara were already well established.",
"title": "Prehistoric and Berber Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Phoenicians were some of the first to establish coastal trading posts in Libya, when the merchants of Tyre (in present-day Lebanon) developed commercial relations with the various Berber tribes and made treaties with them to ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials. By the 5th century BCE, the greatest of the Phoenician colonies, Carthage, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa, where a distinctive civilization, known as Punic, came into being. Punic settlements on the Libyan coast included Oea (later Tripoli), Libdah (later Leptis Magna) and Sabratha. These cities were in an area that was later called Tripolis, or \"Three Cities\", from which Libya's modern capital Tripoli takes its name.",
"title": "Phoenician and Greek Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 630 BCE, the Ancient Greeks colonized Eastern Libya and founded the city of Cyrene. Within 200 years, four more important Greek cities were established in the area that became known as Cyrenaica: Barce (later Marj); Euhesperides (later Berenice, present-day Benghazi); Taucheira (later Arsinoe, present-day Taucheria); Balagrae (later Bayda and Beda Littoria under Italian occupation, present-day Bayda); and Apollonia (later Susa), the port of Cyrene. Together with Cyrene, they were known as the Pentapolis (Five Cities). Cyrene became one of the greatest intellectual and artistic centers of the Greek world, and was famous for its medical school, learned academies, and architecture. The Greeks of the Pentapolis resisted encroachments by the Ancient Egyptians from the East, as well as by the Carthaginians from the West.",
"title": "Phoenician and Greek Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 525 BCE the Persian army of Cambyses II overran Cyrenaica, which for the next two centuries remained under Persian or Egyptian rule. Alexander was greeted by the Greeks when he entered Cyrenaica in 331 BCE, and Eastern Libya again fell under the control of the Greeks, this time as part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Later, a federation of the Pentapolis was formed that was customarily ruled by a king drawn from the Ptolemaic royal house.",
"title": "Achaemenid and Ptolemaic Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After the fall of Carthage the Romans did not occupy immediately Tripolitania (the region around Tripoli), but left it under control of the Berber kings of Numidia, until the coastal cities asked and obtained its protection. Ptolemy Apion, the last Greek ruler, bequeathed Cyrenaica to Rome, which formally annexed the region in 74 BCE and joined it to Crete as a Roman province. During the Roman civil wars Tripolitania (still not formally annexed) and Cyrenaica sustained Pompey and Marc Antony against respectively Caesar and Octavian. The Romans completed the conquest of the region under Augustus, occupying northern Fezzan (\"Fasania\") with Cornelius Balbus Minor. As part of the Africa Nova province, Tripolitania was prosperous, and reached a golden age in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when the city of Leptis Magna, home to the Severan dynasty, was at its height. On the other side, Cyrenaica's first Christian communities were established by the time of the Emperor Claudius but was heavily devastated during the Kitos War and almost depopulated of Greeks and Jews alike, and, although repopulated by Trajan with military colonies, from then started its decadence.",
"title": "Roman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Regardless, for more than 400 years Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were part of a cosmopolitan state whose citizens shared a common language, legal system, and Roman identity. Roman ruins like those of Leptis Magna and Sabratha, extant in present-day Libya, attest to the vitality of the region, where populous cities and even smaller towns enjoyed the amenities of urban life—the forum, markets, public entertainments, and baths—found in every corner of the Roman Empire. Merchants and artisans from many parts of the Roman world established themselves in North Africa, but the character of the cities of Tripolitania remained decidedly Punic and, in Cyrenaica, Greek. Tripolitania was a major exporter of olive oil, as well as a center for the trade of ivory and wild animals conveyed to the coast by the Garamantes, while Cyrenaica remained an important source of wines, drugs, and horses. The bulk of the population in the countryside consisted of Berber farmers, who in the west were thoroughly \"romanized\" in language and customs. Until the 10th century the African Romance remained in use in some Tripolitanian areas, mainly near the Tunisian border.",
"title": "Roman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The decline of the Roman Empire saw the classical cities fall into ruin, a process hastened by the Vandals' destructive sweep though North Africa in the 5th century. The region's prosperity had shrunk under Vandal domination, and the old Roman political and social order, disrupted by the Vandals, could not be restored. In outlying areas neglected by the Vandals, the inhabitants had sought the protection of tribal chieftains and, having grown accustomed to their autonomy, resisted re-assimilation into the imperial system.",
"title": "Roman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "When the Empire returned (now as East Romans) as part of Justinian's reconquests of the 6th century, efforts were made to strengthen the old cities, but it was only a last gasp before they collapsed into disuse. Cyrenaica, which had remained an outpost of the Byzantine Empire during the Vandal period, also took on the characteristics of an armed camp. Unpopular Byzantine governors imposed burdensome taxation to meet military costs, while the towns and public services—including the water system—were left to decay. Byzantine rule in Africa did prolong the Roman ideal of imperial unity there for another century and a half however, and prevented the ascendancy of the Berber nomads in the coastal region. By the beginning of the 7th century, Byzantine control over the region was weak, Berber rebellions were becoming more frequent, and there was little to oppose Muslim invasion.",
"title": "Roman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Tenuous Byzantine control over Libya was restricted to a few poorly defended coastal strongholds, and as such, the Arab horsemen who first crossed into the Pentapolis of Cyrenaica in September 643 CE encountered little resistance. Under the command of 'Amr ibn al-'As, the armies of Islam conquered Cyrenaica, and renamed the Pentapolis, Barqa. They took also Tripoli, but after destroying the Roman walls of the city and getting a tribute they withdrew. In 647 an army of 40,000 Arabs, led by Abdullah ibn Saad, the foster-brother of Caliph Uthman, penetrated deep into Western Libya and took Tripoli from the Byzantines definitively. From Barqa, the Fezzan (Libya's Southern region) was conquered by Uqba ibn Nafi in 663 and Berber resistance was overcome. During the following centuries Libya came under the rule of several Islamic dynasties, under various levels of autonomy from Ummayad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates of the time. Arab rule was easily imposed in the coastal farming areas and on the towns, which prospered again under Arab patronage. Townsmen valued the security that permitted them to practice their commerce and trade in peace, while the Punicized farmers recognized their affinity with the Semitic Arabs to whom they looked to protect their lands. In Cyrenaica, Monophysite adherents of the Coptic Church had welcomed the Muslim Arabs as liberators from Byzantine oppression. The Berber tribes of the hinterland accepted Islam, however they resisted Arab political rule.",
"title": "Islamic Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "For the next several decades, Libya was under the purview of the Umayyad Caliph of Damascus until the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in 750, and Libya came under the rule of Baghdad. When Caliph Harun al-Rashid appointed Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab as his governor of Ifriqiya in 800, Libya enjoyed considerable local autonomy under the Aghlabid dynasty. The Aghlabids were among the most attentive Islamic rulers of Libya; they brought about a measure of order to the region, and restored Roman irrigation systems, which brought prosperity to the area from the agricultural surplus. By the end of the 9th century, the Shiite Fatimids controlled Western Libya from their capital in Mahdia, before they ruled the entire region from their new capital of Cairo in 972 and appointed Bologhine ibn Ziri as governor. During Fatimid rule, Tripoli thrived on the trade in slaves and gold brought from the Sudan and on the sale of wool, leather, and salt shipped from its docks to Italy in exchange for wood and iron goods. Ibn Ziri's Berber Zirid dynasty ultimately broke away from the Shiite Fatimids, and recognised the Sunni Abbasids of Baghdad as rightful Caliphs. In retaliation, the Fatimids brought about the migration of thousands from two troublesome Arab Bedouin tribes, the Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal to North Africa. This act drastically altered the fabric of the Libyan countryside, and cemented the cultural and linguistic Arabisation of the region. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.",
"title": "Islamic Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Zirid rule in Tripolitania was short-lived though, and already in 1001 the Berbers of the Banu Khazrun broke away. Tripolitania remained under their control until 1146, when the region was overtaken by the Normans of Sicily. It was not until 1159 that the Moroccan Almohad leader Abd al-Mu'min reconquered Tripoli from European rule. For the next 50 years, Tripolitania was the scene of numerous battles between the Almohad rulers and insurgents of the Banu Ghaniya. Later, a general of the Almohads, Muhammad ibn Abu Hafs, ruled Libya from 1207 to 1221 before the later establishment of a Tunisian Hafsid dynasty independent from the Almohads. The Hafsids ruled Tripolitania for nearly 300 years, and established significant trade with the city-states of Europe. Hafsid rulers also encouraged art, literature, architecture and scholarship. Ahmad Zarruq was one of the most famous Islamic scholars to settle in Libya, and did so during this time. By the 16th century however, the Hafsids became increasingly caught up in the power struggle between Spain and the Ottoman Empire. After a successful invasion of Tripoli by Habsburg Spain in 1510, and its handover to the Knights of St. John, the Ottoman admiral Sinan Pasha finally took control of Libya in 1551.",
"title": "Islamic Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "After a successful invasion by the Habsburgs of Spain in the early 16th century, Charles V entrusted its defense to the Knights of St. John in Malta. Lured by the piracy that spread through the Maghreb coastline, adventurers such as Barbarossa and his successors consolidated Ottoman control in the central Maghreb. The Ottoman Turks conquered Tripoli in 1551 under the command of Sinan Pasha. In the next year his successor Turgut Reis was named the Bey of Tripoli and later Pasha of Tripoli in 1556. As Pasha, he adorned and built up Tripoli, making it one of the most impressive cities along the North African coast. By 1565, administrative authority as regent in Tripoli was vested in a pasha appointed directly by the sultan in Constantinople. In the 1580s, the rulers of Fezzan gave their allegiance to the sultan, and although Ottoman authority was absent in Cyrenaica, a bey was stationed in Benghazi late in the next century to act as agent of the government in Tripoli.",
"title": "Ottoman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In time, real power came to rest with the pasha's corps of janissaries, a self-governing military guild, and in time the pasha's role was reduced to that of ceremonial head of state. Mutinies and coups were frequent, and in 1611 the deys staged a coup against the pasha, and Dey Sulayman Safar was appointed as head of government. For the next hundred years, a series of deys effectively ruled Tripolitania, some for only a few weeks, and at various times the dey was also pasha-regent. The regency governed by the dey was autonomous in internal affairs and, although dependent on the sultan for fresh recruits to the corps of janissaries, his government was left to pursue a virtually independent foreign policy as well. The two most important Deys were Mehmed Saqizli (r. 1631–49) and Osman Saqizli (r. 1649–72), both also Pasha, who ruled effectively the region. The latter conquered also Cyrenaica.",
"title": "Ottoman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Tripoli was the only city of size in Ottoman Libya (then known as Tripolitania Eyalet) at the end of the 17th century and had a population of about 30,000. The bulk of its residents were Moors, as city-dwelling Arabs were then known. Several hundred Turks and renegades formed a governing elite, a large portion of which were kouloughlis (lit. sons of servants—offspring of Turkish soldiers and Arab women); they identified with local interests and were respected by locals. Jews and Moriscos were active as merchants and craftsmen and a small number of European traders also frequented the city. European slaves and large numbers of enslaved blacks transported from Sudan were also a feature of everyday life in Tripoli. In 1551, Turgut Reis enslaved almost the entire population of the Maltese island of Gozo, some 6,300 people, sending them to Libya. The most pronounced slavery activity involved the enslavement of black Africans who were brought via trans-Saharan trade routes. Even though the slave trade was officially abolished in Tripoli in 1853, in practice it continued until the 1890s.",
"title": "Ottoman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Lacking direction from the Ottoman government, Tripoli lapsed into a period of military anarchy during which coup followed coup and few deys survived in office more than a year. One such coup was led by Turkish officer Ahmed Karamanli. The Karamanlis ruled from 1711 until 1835 mainly in Tripolitania, but had influence in Cyrenaica and Fezzan as well by the mid 18th century. Ahmed was a Janissary and popular cavalry officer. He murdered the Ottoman Dey of Tripolitania and seized the throne in 1711. After persuading Sultan Ahmed III to recognize him as governor, Ahmed established himself as pasha and made his post hereditary. Though Tripolitania continued to pay nominal tribute to the Ottoman padishah, it otherwise acted as an independent kingdom. Ahmed greatly expanded his city's economy, particularly through the employment of corsairs (pirates) on crucial Mediterranean shipping routes; nations that wished to protect their ships from the corsairs were forced to pay tribute to the pasha. Ahmad's successors proved to be less capable than himself, however, the region's delicate balance of power allowed the Karamanli to survive several dynastic crises without invasion. The Libyan Civil War of 1791–1795 occurred in those years. In 1793, Turkish officer Ali Pasha deposed Hamet Karamanli and briefly restored Tripolitania to Ottoman rule. However, Hamet's brother Yusuf (r. 1795–1832) reestablished Tripolitania's independence.",
"title": "Ottoman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the early 19th century war broke out between the United States and Tripolitania, and a series of battles ensued in what came to be known as the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War. By 1819, the various treaties of the Napoleonic Wars had forced the Barbary states to give up piracy almost entirely, and Tripolitania's economy began to crumble. As Yusuf weakened, factions sprung up around his three sons; though Yusuf abdicated in 1832 in favor of his son Ali II, civil war soon resulted. Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II sent in troops ostensibly to restore order, but instead deposed and exiled Ali II, marking the end of both the Karamanli dynasty and an independent Tripolitania. Anyway, order was not recovered easily, and the revolt of the Libyan under Abd-El-Gelil and Gûma ben Khalifa lasted until the death of the latter in 1858.",
"title": "Ottoman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The second period of direct Ottoman rule saw administrative changes, and what seemed as greater order in the governance of the three provinces of Libya. It would not be long before the Scramble for Africa and European colonial interests set their eyes on the marginal Turkish provinces of Libya. The Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II twice sent his aide-de-camp Azmzade Sadik El Mueyyed to meet Sheikh Senussi to cultivate positive relations and counter the West European scramble for Africa. Reunification came about through the unlikely route of an invasion (Italo-Turkish War, 1911–1912) and occupation starting from 1911 when Italy simultaneously turned the three regions into colonies.",
"title": "Ottoman Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "From 1912 to 1927, the territory of Libya was known as Italian North Africa. From 1927 to 1934, the territory was split into two colonies, Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania, run by Italian governors. Some 150,000 Italians settled in Libya, constituting roughly 20% of the total population.",
"title": "Italian Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1934, Italy adopted the name \"Libya\" (used by the Greeks for all of North Africa, except Egypt) as the official name of the colony (made up of the three provinces of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan). Idris al-Mahdi as-Senussi (later King Idris I), Emir of Cyrenaica, led Libyan resistance to Italian occupation between the two world wars. Ilan Pappe estimates that between 1928 and 1932 the Italian military \"killed half the Bedouin population (directly or through disease and starvation in camps).\" Italian historian Emilio Gentile sets to about 50,000 the number of victims of the repression.",
"title": "Italian Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1934, the political entity called \"Libya\" was created by governor Balbo with capital Tripoli. The Italians emphasized infrastructure improvements and public works. In particular, they hugely expanded Libyan railway and road networks from 1934 to 1940, building hundreds of kilometers of new roads and railways and encouraging the establishment of new industries and dozens of new agricultural villages.",
"title": "Italian Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "During WW2, since June 1940 Libya was at the center of destructive fighting between the Axis and the British empire: the Allies conquered from Italy all of Libya only by February 1943.",
"title": "Italian Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "From 1943 to 1951, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were under British military administration, while the French controlled Fezzan. In 1944, Idris returned from exile in Cairo but declined to resume permanent residence in Cyrenaica until the removal of some aspects of foreign control in 1947. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya.",
"title": "Italian Libya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On 21 November 1949, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution stating that Libya should become independent before 1 January 1952. Idris represented Libya in the subsequent UN negotiations. On 24 December 1951, Libya declared its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya, a constitutional and hereditary monarchy under King Idris, Libya's only monarch.",
"title": "Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "1951 also saw the enactment of the first Libyan Constitution. The Libyan National Assembly drafted the Constitution and passed a resolution accepting it in a meeting held in the city of Benghazi on Sunday, 6th Muharram, Hegiras 1371: 7 October 1951. Mohamed Abulas’ad El-Alem, President of the National Assembly and the two Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly, Omar Faiek Shennib and Abu Baker Ahmed Abu Baker executed and submitted the Constitution to King Idris following which it was published in the Official Gazette of Libya.",
"title": "Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The enactment of the Libyan Constitution was significant in that it was the first piece of legislation to formally entrench the rights of Libyan citizens following the post-war creation of the Libyan nation state. Following on from the intense UN debates during which Idris had argued that the creation of a single Libyan state would be of benefit to the regions of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica, the Libyan government was keen to formulate a constitution which contained many of the entrenched rights common to European and North American nation states. Though not creating a secular state – Article 5 proclaims Islam the religion of the State – the Libyan Constitution did formally set out rights such as equality before the law as well as equal civil and political rights, equal opportunities, and an equal responsibility for public duties and obligations, \"without distinction of religion, belief, race, language, wealth, kinship or political or social opinions\" (Article 11).",
"title": "Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "During this period, Britain was involved in extensive engineering projects in Libya and was also the country's biggest supplier of arms. The United States also maintained the large Wheelus Air Base in Libya.",
"title": "Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On 1 September 1969, a small group of military officers led by 27-year-old army officer Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d'état against King Idris, launching the Libyan Revolution. Gaddafi was referred to as the \"Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution\" in government statements and the official Libyan press.",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On the birthday of Muhammad in 1973, Gaddafi delivered a \"Five-Point Address\". He announced the suspension of all existing laws and the implementation of Sharia. He said that the country would be purged of the \"politically sick\". A \"people's militia\" would \"protect the revolution\". There would be an administrative revolution, and a cultural revolution. Gaddafi set up an extensive surveillance system. 10 to 20 percent of Libyans worked in surveillance for the Revolutionary committees, which monitored activities in government, in factories, and in the education sector. Gaddafi executed dissidents publicly and the executions were often rebroadcast on state television channels. Gaddafi employed his network of diplomats and recruits to assassinate dozens of critical refugees around the world. Amnesty International listed at least 25 assassinations between 1980 and 1987.",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1977, Libya officially became the \"Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya\". Gaddafi officially passed power to the General People's Committees and henceforth claimed to be no more than a symbolic figurehead, but domestic and international critics claimed the reforms gave him virtually unlimited power. Dissidents against the new system were not tolerated, with punitive actions including capital punishment authorized by Gaddafi himself. The new \"jamahiriya\" governance structure he established was officially referred to as a form of direct democracy, though the government refused to publish election results. Later that same year, Libya and Egypt fought a four-day border war that came to be known as the Libyan-Egyptian War, both nations agreed to a ceasefire under the mediation of the Algerian president Houari Boumediène. In February 1977, Libya began to provide military supplies to Goukouni Oueddei and the People's Armed Forces in Chad. The Chadian–Libyan conflict began in earnest when Libya's support of rebel forces in northern Chad escalated into an invasion. Much of the country's income from oil, which soared in the 1970s, was spent on arms purchases and on sponsoring dozens of rebels groups around the world. An airstrike failed to kill Gaddafi in 1986. Libya was accused in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772 over Chad and Niger; Libya was finally put under United Nations sanctions in 1992. Gaddafi financed various other groups from anti-nuclear movements to Australian trade unions.",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "From 1977 onward, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000, the fifth-highest in Africa, while the Human Development Index became the highest in Africa and greater than that of Saudi Arabia. This was achieved without borrowing any foreign loans, keeping Libya debt-free. In addition, the country's literacy rate rose from 10% to 90%, life expectancy rose from 57 to 77 years, employment opportunities were established for migrant workers, and welfare systems were introduced that allowed access to free education, free healthcare, and financial assistance for housing. The Great Manmade River was also built to allow free access to fresh water across large parts of the country. In addition, financial support was provided for university scholarships and employment programs.",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Gaddafi doubled the minimum wage, introduced statutory price controls, and implemented compulsory rent reductions of between 30 and 40%. Gaddafi also wanted to combat the strict social restrictions that had been imposed on women by the previous regime, establishing the Revolutionary Women's Formation to encourage reform. In 1970, a law was introduced affirming equality of the sexes and insisting on wage parity. In 1971, Gaddafi sponsored the creation of a Libyan General Women's Federation. In 1972, a law was passed criminalizing the marriage of any females under the age of sixteen and ensuring that a woman's consent was a necessary prerequisite for a marriage.",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Gaddafi assumed the honorific title of \"King of Kings of Africa\" in 2008 as part of his campaign for a United States of Africa. By the early 2010s, in addition to attempting to assume a leadership role in the African Union, Libya was also viewed as having formed closer ties with Italy, one of its former colonial rulers, than any other country in the European Union. The eastern parts of the country have been \"ruined\" due to Gaddafi's economic theories, according to The Economist.",
"title": "Arab Republic and Jamahiriya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "After popular movements overturned the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, its immediate neighbors to the west and east, Libya experienced a full-scale revolt beginning on 17 February 2011. By 20 February, the unrest had spread to Tripoli. In the early hours of 21 February 2011, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, oldest son of Muammar Gaddafi, spoke on Libyan television of his fears that the country would fragment and be replaced by \"15 Islamic fundamentalist emirates\" if the uprising engulfed the entire state. He admitted that \"mistakes had been made\" in quelling recent protests and announced plans for a constitutional convention, but warned that the country's economic wealth and recent prosperity was at risk and warned of \"rivers of blood\" if the protests continued.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On 27 February 2011, the National Transitional Council was established under the stewardship of Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Gaddafi's former justice minister, to administer the areas of Libya under rebel control. This marked the first serious effort to organize the broad-based opposition to the Gaddafi regime. While the council was based in Benghazi, it claimed Tripoli as its capital. Hafiz Ghoga, a human rights lawyer, later assumed the role of spokesman for the council. On 10 March 2011, France became the first state to officially recognise the council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "By early March 2011, some parts of Libya had tipped out of Gaddafi's control, coming under the control of a coalition of opposition forces, including soldiers who decided to support the rebels. Eastern Libya, centered on the port city of Benghazi, was said to be firmly in the hands of the opposition, while Tripoli and its environs remained in dispute. Pro-Gaddafi forces were able to respond militarily to rebel pushes in Western Libya and launched a counterattack along the coast toward Benghazi, the de facto centre of the uprising. The town of Zawiya, 48 kilometres (30 mi) from Tripoli, was bombarded by Air Force planes and Army tanks and seized by Jamahiriya troops, \"exercising a level of brutality not yet seen in the conflict.\"",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In several public appearances, Gaddafi threatened to destroy the protest movement, and Al Jazeera and other agencies reported his government was arming pro-Gaddafi militiamen to kill protesters and defectors against the regime in Tripoli. Organs of the United Nations, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Human Rights Council, condemned the crackdown as violating international law, with the latter body expelling Libya outright in an unprecedented action urged by Libya's own delegation to the UN. The United States imposed economic sanctions against Libya, followed shortly by Australia, Canada and the United Nations Security Council, which also voted to refer Gaddafi and other government officials to the International Criminal Court for investigation.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "On 17 March 2011 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 with a 10–0 vote and five abstentions. The resolution sanctioned the establishment of a no-fly zone and the use of \"all means necessary\" to protect civilians within Libya.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Shortly afterwards, Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa stated that \"Libya has decided an immediate ceasefire and an immediate halt to all military operations\".",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "On 19 March, the first Allied act to secure the no-fly zone began when French military jets entered Libyan airspace on a reconnaissance mission heralding attacks on enemy targets. Allied military action to enforce the ceasefire commenced the same day when a French aircraft opened fire and destroyed a vehicle on the ground. French jets also destroyed five tanks belonging to the Gaddafi regime. The United States and United Kingdom launched attacks on over 20 \"integrated air defense systems\" using more than 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles during operations Odyssey Dawn and Ellamy.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On 27 June 2011, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi, alleging that Gaddafi had been personally involved in planning and implementing \"a policy of widespread and systematic attacks against civilians and demonstrators and dissidents\".",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "By 22 August 2011, rebel fighters had entered Tripoli and occupied Green Square, which they renamed to its original name, Martyrs' Square in honour of those killed during the Italian occupation. Meanwhile, Gaddafi asserted that he was still in Libya and would not concede power to the rebels.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On 16 September 2011, the U.N. General Assembly approved a request from the National Transitional Council to accredit envoys of the country's interim controlling body as Tripoli's sole representatives at the UN, effectively recognising the National Transitional Council as the legitimate holder of that country's UN seat.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The National Transitional Council had been plagued by internal divisions during its tenure as Libya's interim governing authority. It postponed the formation of a caretaker, or \"interim\" government on several occasions during the period prior to the death of Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte on 20 October 2011. Mustafa Abdul Jalil led the National Transitional Council and was generally considered to be the principal leadership figure. Mahmoud Jibril served as the NTC's de facto head of government from 5 March 2011 through the end of the war, but he announced he would resign after Libya was declared to have been \"liberated\" from Gaddafi's rule.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The \"liberation\" of Libya was celebrated on 23 October 2011, and Jibril announced that consultations were under way to form an interim government within one month, followed by elections for a constitutional assembly within eight months and parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within a year after that. He stepped down as expected the same day and was succeeded by Ali Tarhouni. At least 30,000 Libyans died in the civil war.",
"title": "2011 uprising and the First Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "After the First Civil War, the National Transitional Council (NTC) has been responsible for the transition of the administration of the governing of Libya. The \"liberation\" of Libya was celebrated on 23 October 2011. Then Jibril announced that consultations were under way to form an interim government within one month, followed by elections for a constitutional assembly within eight months and parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within a year after that. He stepped down as expected the same day and was succeeded by Ali Tarhouni.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "On 24 November, Tarhouni was replaced by Abdurrahim El-Keib. El-Keib formed a provisional government, filling it with independent or CNT politicians, including women.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "After the fall of Gaddafi, Libya has been faced with internal struggles. A protest started against the new regime of NTC. The loyalists of Gaddafi rebelled and fought with the new Libyan army.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Because the Constitutional Declaration allowed a multi-party system, the political parties, like Democratic Party, Party of Reform and Development, National Gathering for Freedom, Justice and Development appeared. The Islamist movement started. To stop it, the CNT (NTC) government denied power to parties based on religion, tribal and ethnic bases.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "On 7 July 2012, Libyans voted in their first parliamentary elections since the end of Gaddafi's rule. The election, in which more than 100 political parties registered, formed an interim 200-member national assembly. This will replace the unelected National Transitional Council, name a prime minister, and form a committee to draft a constitution. The vote was postponed several times to resolve logistical and technical problems, and to give more time to register to vote, and to investigate candidates.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "On 8 August 2012, the National Transitional Council officially handed power to the wholly elected General National Congress, which is tasked with the formation of an interim government and the drafting of a new Libyan Constitution to be approved in a general referendum.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On 25 August 2012, in what \"appears to be the most blatant sectarian attack\" since the end of the civil war, unnamed organized assailants bulldozed a Sufi mosque with graves, in broad daylight in the center of the Libyan capital Tripoli. It was the second such razing of a Sufi site in two days.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "On 7 October 2012, Libya's Prime Minister-elect Mustafa A.G. Abushagur stepped down after failing a second time to win parliamentary approval for a new cabinet. On 14 October 2012, the General National Congress elected former GNC member and human rights lawyer Ali Zeidan as prime minister-designate.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Libyan Constitutional Assembly elections took place in Libya on 20 February 2014. Ali Zidan was ousted by the parliament committee and fled from Libya on 14 March 2014 after rogue oil tanker Morning Glory left the rebel port of Sidra, Libya with Libyan oil that had been confiscated by the rebels. Ali Zeidan had promised to stop the departure, but failed.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "On 30 March 2014 General National Congress voted to replace itself with new House of Representatives.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Abdullah al-Thani served as the prime minister since 11 March 2014 in interim capacity. He resigned on 13 April 2014, after he and his family were victims of a \"traitorous attack\" but continued to remain prime minister since there was no replacement. Ahmed Maiteeq was elected Prime Minister of Libya in May 2014 but his election as prime minister took place under disputed circumstances, Libyan Supreme Court ruled on 9 June that Maiteeq's appointment was illegal and Maiteeq resigned the same day.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "As of 18 May 2014, the parliament building was reported to have been stormed by troops loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, reportedly including the Zintan Brigade, in what the Libyan government described as an attempted coup.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "House of Representatives elections were held in Libya on 25 June 2014.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "On 14 July, the United States Support Mission in Libya evacuated its staff after 13 people were killed in clashes in Tripoli and Benghazi. The fighting, between government forces and rival militia groups, also forced Tripoli International Airport to close. A militia, including members of the Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room (LROR), tried to seize control of the airport from the Zintan militia, which has controlled it since Gaddafi was toppled. Both militias are believed to be on the official payroll. In addition Misrata Airport was closed, due to its dependence on Tripoli International Airport for its operations. Government spokesman, Ahmed Lamine, stated that approximately 90% of the planes stationed at Tripoli International Airport were destroyed or made inoperable in the attack, and that the government may make an appeal for international forces to assist in reestablishing security.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In December 2015, the Libyan Political Agreement was signed after talks in Skhirat, as the result of protracted negotiations between rival political camps based in Tripoli, Tobruk, and elsewhere which agreed to unite as the Government of National Accord (GNA). On 30 March 2016, Fayez Sarraj, the head of GNA, arrived in Tripoli and began working from there despite opposition from GNC.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "On 4 April 2019, Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Libyan National Army, called on his military forces to advance on Tripoli, the capital of the internationally recognized government of Libya, in the 2019–20 Western Libya campaign This was met with reproach from United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and the United Nations Security Council.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On 23 October 2020, the 5+5 Joint Libyan Military Commission representing the Libyan National Army and the GNA reached a \"permanent ceasefire agreement in all areas of Libya\". The agreement, effective immediately, required that all foreign fighters leave Libya within three months while a joint police force would patrol disputed areas. The first commercial flight between Tripoli and Benghazi took place that same day. On 10 March 2021, an interim unity government was formed, which was slated to remain in place until the next Libyan presidential election scheduled for 10 December. However, the election has been delayed several times since, effectively rendering the unity government in power indefinitely, causing tensions which threaten to reignite the war.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "On September 10, 2023, catastrophic floods due to dam failures generated by Storm Daniel devastated the port city of Derna, killing nearly 7,000 and leaving over 10,000 missing. The floods were the worst natural disaster in Libya's modern history.",
"title": "Transition and the Second Civil War"
}
]
| Libya's history involves its rich mix of ethnic groups, including the indigenous Berbers/Amazigh people. Amazigh have been present throughout the entire history of the country. For most of its history, Libya has been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control, from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The History of Libya comprises six distinct periods: Ancient Libya, the Roman era, the Islamic era, Ottoman rule, Italian rule, and the Modern era. | 2001-09-24T21:01:06Z | 2023-11-28T13:51:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya |
13,813 | History of Afghanistan | The history of Afghanistan, preceding the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1823 is shared with that of neighbouring Iran, central Asia and Indian subcontinent. The Sadozai monarchy ruled the Afghan Durrani Empire, considered the founding state of modern Afghanistan.
Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic era, and the country's strategic location along the historic Silk Road has led it to being described, picturesquely, as the ‘roundabout of the ancient world’. The land has historically been home to various peoples and has witnessed numerous military campaigns, including those by the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Maurya Empire, Arab Muslims, the Mongols, the British, the Soviet Union, and most recently by a US-led coalition. The various conquests and periods in both the Indian and Iranian cultural spheres made the area a center for , Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and later Islam throughout history.
The Durrani Empire is considered to be the foundational polity of the modern nation-state of Afghanistan, with Ahmad Shah Durrani being credited as its Father of the Nation. However, Dost Mohammad Khan is sometimes considered to be the founder of the first modern Afghan state. Following the Durrani Empire's decline and the death of Ahmad Shah Durrani and Timur Shah, it was divided into multiple smaller independent kingdoms, including but not limited to Herat, Kandahar and Kabul. Afghanistan would be reunited in the 19th century after seven decades of civil war from 1793 to 1863, with wars of unification led by Dost Mohammad Khan from 1823 to 1863, where he conquered the independent principalities of Afghanistan under the Emirate of Kabul. Dost Mohammad died in 1863, days after his last campaign to unite Afghanistan, and Afghanistan was consequently thrown back into civil war with fighting amongst his successors. During this time, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the Great Game between the British Raj in South Asia and the Russian Empire. The British Raj attempted to subjugate Afghanistan but was repelled in the First Anglo-Afghan War. However, the Second Anglo-Afghan War saw a British victory and the successful establishment of British political influence over Afghanistan. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Afghanistan became free of foreign political hegemony, and emerged as the independent Kingdom of Afghanistan in June 1926 under Amanullah Khan. This monarchy lasted almost half a century, until Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973, following which the Republic of Afghanistan was established.
Since the late 1970s, Afghanistan's history has been dominated by extensive warfare, including coups, invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars. The conflict began in 1978 when a communist revolution established a socialist state, and subsequent infighting prompted the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in 1979. Mujahideen fought against the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War and continued fighting amongst themselves following the Soviets' withdrawal in 1989. The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban controlled most of the country by 1996, but their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan received little international recognition before its overthrow in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power in 2021 after capturing Kabul and overthrowing the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, thus bringing an end to the 2001–2021 war. Although initially claiming it would form an inclusive government for the country, in September 2021 the Taliban re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with an interim government made up entirely of Taliban members. The Taliban government remains internationally unrecognized.
Excavations of prehistoric sites by Louis Dupree and others at Darra-e Kur in 1966 where 800 stone implements were recovered along with a fragment of Neanderthal right temporal bone, suggest that early humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 52,000 years ago. A cave called Kara Kamar contained Upper Paleolithic blades Carbon-14 dated at 34,000 years old. Farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world. Artifacts indicate that the indigenous people were small farmers and herdsmen, very probably grouped into tribes, with small local kingdoms rising and falling through the ages. Urbanization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE. Gandhara is the name of an ancient kingdom from the Vedic period and its capital city located between the Hindukush and Sulaiman Mountains (mountains of Solomon), although Kandahar in modern times and the ancient Gandhara are not geographically identical.
Early inhabitants, around 3000 BCE were likely to have been connected through culture and trade to neighboring civilizations like Jiroft and Tappeh Sialk and the Indus Valley civilization. Urban civilization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE and it is possible that the early city of Mundigak (near Kandahar) was a part of Helmand culture. The first known people were Indo-Iranians, but their date of arrival has been estimated widely from as early as about 3000 BCE to 1500 BCE. (For further detail see Indo-Aryan migration.)
The Indus Valley civilisation (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) extending from present-day northwest Pakistan to present-day northwest India and present-day northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley trading colony has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. Apart from Shortughai, Mundigak is another known site. There are several other smaller IVC sites to be found in Afghanistan as well.
The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex became prominent between 2200 and 1700 BCE (approximately). The city of Balkh (Bactra) was founded about this time (c. 2000–1500 BCE).
The Gandhara region centered around the Peshawar Valley and Swat river valley, though the cultural influence of "Greater Gandhara" extended across the Indus river to the Taxila region in Potohar Plateau and westwards into the Kabul and Bamiyan valleys in Afghanistan, and northwards up to the Karakoram range.
During the 6th century BCE, Gandhāra was an important imperial power in north-west South Asia, with the valley of Kaśmīra being part of the kingdom, while the other states of the Punjab region, such as the Kekayas, Madrakas, Uśīnaras, and Shivis being under Gāndhārī suzerainty. The Gāndhārī king Pukkusāti, who reigned around 550 BCE, engaged in expansionist ventures which brought him into conflict with the king Pradyota of the rising power of Avanti. Pukkusāti was successful in this struggle with Pradyota.
By the later 6th century BCE, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, soon after his conquests of Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, marched into Gandhara and annexed it into his empire. The scholar Kaikhosru Danjibuoy Sethna advanced that Cyrus had conquered only the trans-Indus borderlands around Peshawar which had belonged to Gandhāra while Pukkusāti remained a powerful king who maintained his rule over the rest of Gandhāra and the western Punjab.
The Kambojas entered into conflict with Alexander the Great as he invaded Central Asia. The Macedonian conqueror made short shrift of the arrangements of Darius and after over-running the Achaemenid Empire he dashed into today's eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. There he encountered resistance from the Kamboja Aspasioi and Assakenoi tribes. The Region of the Hindukush that was inhabitanted by the Kambojas has gone through many rules such as Vedic Mahajanapada, Pali Kapiśi, Indo-Greeks, Kushan and Gandharans to Paristan and modern day being split between Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan.
The descendants of Kambojas have mostly been assimilated into newer identities, however, some tribes remain today that still retain the names of their ancestors. The Yusufzai Pashtuns are said to be the Esapzai/Aśvakas from the Kamboja age. The Kom/Kamoz people of Nuristan retain their Kamboj name. The Ashkun of Nuristan also retain the name of Aśvakas. The Yashkun Shina dards are another group that retain the name of the Kamboja Aśvakans. The Kamboj of Punjab are another group that still retain the name however have integrated into new identity. The country of Cambodia derives its name from the Kamboja.
Afghanistan fell to the Achaemenid Empire after it was conquered by Darius I of Persia. The area was divided into several provinces called satrapies, which were each ruled by a governor, or satrap. These ancient satrapies included: Aria: The region of Aria was separated by mountain ranges from the Paropamisadae in the east, Parthia in the west and Margiana and Hyrcania in the north, while a desert separated it from Carmania and Drangiana in the south. It is described in a very detailed manner by Ptolemy and Strabo and corresponds, according to that, almost to the Herat Province of today's Afghanistan; Arachosia, corresponds to the modern-day Kandahar, Lashkar Gah, and Quetta. Arachosia bordered Drangiana to the west, Paropamisadae (i.e. Gandahara) to the north and to the east, and Gedrosia to the south. The inhabitants of Arachosia were Iranian peoples, referred to as Arachosians or Arachoti. It is assumed that they were called Paktyans by ethnicity, and that name may have been in reference to the ethnic Paṣtun (Pashtun) tribes;
Bactriana was the area north of the Hindu Kush, west of the Pamirs and south of the Tian Shan, with the Amu Darya flowing west through the center (Balkh); Sattagydia was the easternmost regions of the Achaemenid Empire, part of its Seventh tax district according to Herodotus, along with Gandārae, Dadicae and Aparytae. It is believed to have been situated east of the Sulaiman Mountains up to the Indus River in the basin around Bannu.[ (Ghazni); and Gandhara which corresponds to modern day Kabul, Jalalabad, and Peshawar.
Alexander the Great arrived in the area of Afghanistan in 330 BCE after defeating Darius III of Persia a year earlier at the Battle of Gaugamela. His army faced very strong resistance in the Afghan tribal areas where he is said to have commented that Afghanistan is "easy to march into, hard to march out of." Although his expedition through Afghanistan was brief, Alexander left behind a Hellenic cultural influence that lasted several centuries. Several great cities were built in the region named "Alexandria," including: Alexandria-of-the-Arians (modern-day Herat); Alexandria-on-the-Tarnak (near Kandahar); Alexandria-ad-Caucasum (near Begram, at Bordj-i-Abdullah); and finally, Alexandria-Eschate (near Kojend), in the north. After Alexander's death, his loosely connected empire was divided. Seleucus, a Macedonian officer during Alexander's campaign, declared himself ruler of his own Seleucid Empire, which also included present-day Afghanistan.
The territory fell to the Maurya Empire, which was led by Chandragupta Maurya. The Mauryas further entrenched Hinduism and introduced Buddhism to the region, and were planning to capture more territory of Central Asia until they faced local Greco-Bactrian forces. Seleucus is said to have reached a peace treaty with Chandragupta by giving control of the territory south of the Hindu Kush to the Mauryas upon intermarriage and 500 elephants.
Alexander took these away from the Hindus and established settlements of his own, but Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus (Chandragupta), upon terms of intermarriage and of receiving in exchange 500 elephants.
Some time after, as he was going to war with the generals of Alexander, a wild elephant of great bulk presented itself before him of its own accord, and, as if tamed down to gentleness, took him on its back, and became his guide in the war, and conspicuous in fields of battle. Sandrocottus, having thus acquired a throne, was in possession of India, when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness; who, after making a league with him, and settling his affairs in the east, proceeded to join in the war against Antigonus. As soon as the forces, therefore, of all the confederates were united, a battle was fought, in which Antigonus was slain, and his son Demetrius put to flight.
Having consolidated power in the northwest, Chandragupta pushed east towards the Nanda Empire. Afghanistan's significant ancient tangible and intangible Buddhist heritage is recorded through wide-ranging archeological finds, including religious and artistic remnants. Buddhist doctrines are reported to have reached as far as Balkh even during the life of the Buddha (563 BCE to 483 BCE), as recorded by Husang Tsang.
In this context a legend recorded by Husang Tsang refers to the first two lay disciples of Buddha, Trapusa and Bhallika responsible for introducing Buddhism in that country. Originally these two were merchants of the kingdom of Balhika, as the name Bhalluka or Bhallika probably suggests the association of one with that country. They had gone to India for trade and had happened to be at Bodhgaya when the Buddha had just attained enlightenment.
The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was a Hellenistic kingdom, founded when Diodotus I, the satrap of Bactria (and probably the surrounding provinces) seceded from the Seleucid Empire around 250 BCE.
The Greco-Bactria Kingdom continued until c. 130 BCE, when Eucratides I's son, King Heliocles I, was defeated and driven out of Bactria by the Yuezhi tribes from the east. The Yuezhi now had complete occupation of Bactria. It is thought that Eucratides' dynasty continued to rule in Kabul and Alexandria of the Caucasus until 70 BCE when King Hermaeus was also defeated by the Yuezhi.
One of Demetrius I's successors, Menander I, brought the Indo-Greek Kingdom (now isolated from the rest of the Hellenistic world after the fall of Bactria) to its height between 165 and 130 BCE, expanding the kingdom in Afghanistan and Pakistan to even larger proportions than Demetrius. After Menander's death, the Indo-Greeks steadily declined and the last Indo-Greek kings (Strato II and Strato III) were defeated in c. 10 CE. The Indo-Greek Kingdom was succeeded by the Indo-Scythians.
The Indo-Scythians were descended from the Sakas (Scythians) who migrated from southern Siberia to Pakistan and Arachosia from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. They displaced the Indo-Greeks and ruled a kingdom that stretched from Gandhara to Mathura. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Scythians were defeated by the south Indian Emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Satavahana dynasty. Later the Saka kingdom was completely destroyed by Chandragupta II of the Gupta Empire from eastern India in the 4th century.
The Indo-Parthian Kingdom was ruled by the Gondopharid dynasty, named after its eponymous first ruler Gondophares. They ruled parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India, during or slightly before the 1st century CE. For most of their history, the leading Gondopharid kings held Taxila (in the present Punjab province of Pakistan) as their residence, but during their last few years of existence the capital shifted between Kabul and Peshawar. These kings have traditionally been referred to as Indo-Parthians, as their coinage was often inspired by the Arsacid dynasty, but they probably belonged to a wider groups of Iranic tribes who lived east of Parthia proper, and there is no evidence that all the kings who assumed the title Gondophares, which means "Holder of Glory", were even related. Christian writings claim that the Apostle Saint Thomas – an architect and skilled carpenter – had a long sojourn in the court of king Gondophares, had built a palace for the king at Taxila and had also ordained leaders for the Church before leaving for the Indus Valley in a chariot, for sailing out to eventually reach Malabar Coast.
The Kushan Empire expanded out of Bactria (Central Asia) into the northwest of the subcontinent under the leadership of their first emperor, Kujula Kadphises, about the middle of the 1st century CE. They came from an Indo-European language speaking Central Asian tribe called the Yuezhi, a branch of which was known as the Kushans. By the time of his grandson, Kanishka the Great, the empire spread to encompass much of Afghanistan, and then the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares).
Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of Buddhism; however, as Kushans expanded southward, the deities of their later coinage came to reflect its new Hindu majority.
They played an important role in the establishment of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent and its spread to Central Asia and China.
Historian Vincent Smith said about Kanishka:
He played the part of a second Ashoka in the history of Buddhism.
The empire linked the Indian Ocean maritime trade with the commerce of the Silk Road through the Indus valley, encouraging long-distance trade, particularly between China and Rome. The Kushans brought new trends to the budding and blossoming Gandhara Art, which reached its peak during Kushan Rule.
H. G. Rowlinson commented:
The Kushan period is a fitting prelude to the Age of the Guptas.
By the 3rd century, their empire in India was disintegrating and their last known great emperor was Vasudeva I.
After the Kushan Empire's rule was ended by Sassanids— officially known as the Empire of Iranians— was the last kingdom of the Persian Empire before the rise of Islam. Named after the House of Sasan, it ruled from 224 to 651 AD. In the east around 325, Shapur II regained the upper hand against the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom and took control of large territories in areas now known as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Much of modern-day Afghanistan became part of the Sasanian Empire, since Shapur I extended his authority eastwards into Afghanistan and the previously autonomous Kushans were obliged to accept his suzerainty.
From around 370, however, towards the end of the reign of Shapur II, the Sassanids lost the control of Bactria to invaders from the north. These were the Kidarites, the Hephthalites, the Alchon Huns, and the Nezaks: The four Huna tribes to rule Afghanistan. These invaders initially issued coins based on Sasanian designs.
The Hunas were peoples who were of a group of Central Asian tribes. Four of the Huna tribe conquered and ruled Afghanistan: the Kidarites, Hepthalites, Alchon Huns and the Nezaks.
The Kidarites were a nomadic clan, the first of the four Huna people in Afghanistan. They are supposed to have originated in Western China and arrived in Bactria with the great migrations of the second half of the 4th century.
The Alchons are one of the four Huna people that ruled in Afghanistan. A group of Central Asian tribes, Hunas or Huna, via the Khyber Pass, entered India at the end of the 5th or early 6th century and successfully occupied areas as far as Eran and Kausambi, greatly weakening the Gupta Empire. The 6th-century Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3), related the Huns of Europe with the Hephthalites or "White Huns" who subjugated the Sassanids and invaded northwestern India, stating that they were of the same stock, "in fact as well as in name", although he contrasted the Huns with the Hephthalites, in that the Hephthalites were sedentary, white-skinned, and possessed "not ugly" features. Song Yun and Hui Zheng, who visited the chief of the Hephthalite nomads at his summer residence in Badakshan and later in Gandhara, observed that they had no belief in the Buddhist law and served a large number of divinities."
The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites), also known as the White Huns and one of the four Huna people in Afghanistan, were a nomadic confederation in Central Asia during the late antiquity period. The White Huns established themselves in modern-day Afghanistan by the first half of the 5th century. Led by the Hun military leader Toramana, they overran the northern region of Pakistan and North India. Toramana's son Mihirakula, a Saivite Hindu, moved up to near Pataliputra to the east and Gwalior to central India. Hiuen Tsiang narrates Mihirakula's merciless persecution of Buddhists and destruction of monasteries, though the description is disputed as far as the authenticity is concerned. The Huns were defeated by the Indian kings Yasodharman of Malwa and Narasimhagupta in the 6th century. Some of them were driven out of India and others were assimilated in the Indian society.
The Nezaks are one of the four Huna people that ruled in Afghanistan.
From the Middle Ages to around 1750 the eastern regions of Afghanistan such as Kabulistan and Zabulistan (now Kabul, Kandahar and Ghazni) were recognized as being part of Indian subcontinent (Al-Hind), while its western parts were included in Khorasan, Tokharistan and Sistan. Two of the four main capitals of Khorasan (Balkh and Herat) are now located in Afghanistan. The countries of Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul formed the frontier region between Khorasan and the Indus. This land, inhabited by the Afghan tribes (i.e. ancestors of Pashtuns), was called Afghanistan, which loosely covered a wide area between the Hindu Kush and the Indus River, principally around the Sulaiman Mountains. The earliest record of the name "Afghan" ("Abgân") being mentioned is by Shapur I of the Sassanid Empire during the 3rd century CE which is later recorded in the form of "Avagānā" by the Vedic astronomer Varāha Mihira in his 6th century CE Brihat-samhita. It was used to refer to a common legendary ancestor known as "Afghana", grandson of King Saul of Israel. Hiven Tsiang, a Chinese pilgrim, visiting the Afghanistan area several times between 630 and 644 CE also speaks about them. Ancestors of many of today's Turkic-speaking Afghans settled in the Hindu Kush area and began to assimilate much of the culture and language of the Pashtun tribes already present there. Among these were the Khalaj people which are known today as Ghilzai.
The Kabul Shahi dynasties ruled the Kabul Valley and Gandhara from the decline of the Kushan Empire in the 3rd century to the early 9th century. The Shahis are generally split up into two eras: the Buddhist Shahis and the Hindu Shahis, with the change-over thought to have occurred sometime around 870. The kingdom was known as the Kabul Shahan or Ratbelshahan from 565 to 670, when the capitals were located in Kapisa and Kabul, and later Udabhandapura, also known as Hund for its new capital.
The Hindu Shahis under ruler Jayapala, is known for his struggles in defending his kingdom against the Ghaznavids in the modern-day eastern Afghanistan region. Jayapala saw a danger in the consolidation of the Ghaznavids and invaded their capital city of Ghazni both in the reign of Sebuktigin and in that of his son Mahmud, which initiated the Muslim Ghaznavid and Hindu Shahi struggles. Sebuktigin, however, defeated him, and he was forced to pay an indemnity. Jayapala defaulted on the payment and took to the battlefield once more. Jayapala however, lost control of the entire region between the Kabul Valley and Indus River.
Before his struggle began Jaipal had raised a large army of Punjabi Hindus. When Jaipal went to the Punjab region, his army was raised to 100,000 horsemen and an innumerable host of foot soldiers. According to Ferishta:
The two armies having met on the confines of Lumghan, Subooktugeen ascended a hill to view the forces of Jeipal, which appeared in extent like the boundless ocean, and in number like the ants or the locusts of the wilderness. But Subooktugeen considered himself as a wolf about to attack a flock of sheep: calling, therefore, his chiefs together, he encouraged them to glory, and issued to each his commands. His soldiers, though few in number, were divided into squadrons of five hundred men each, which were directed to attack successively, one particular point of the Hindoo line, so that it might continually have to encounter fresh troops.
However, the army was hopeless in battle against the western forces, particularly against the young Mahmud of Ghazni. In the year 1001, soon after Sultan Mahmud came to power and was occupied with the Qarakhanids north of the Hindu Kush, Jaipal attacked Ghazni once more and suffered yet another defeat by the powerful Ghaznavid forces, near present-day Peshawar. After the Battle of Peshawar, he committed suicide because his subjects thought he had brought disaster and disgrace to the Shahi dynasty.
Jayapala was succeeded by his son Anandapala, who along with other succeeding generations of the Shahiya dynasty took part in various campaigns against the advancing Ghaznavids but were unsuccessful. The Hindu rulers eventually exiled themselves to the Kashmir Siwalik Hills.
In 642 CE, Rashidun Arabs had conquered most of West Asia from the Sassanids and Byzantines, and from the western city of Herat they introduced the religion of Islam as they entered new cities. Afghanistan at that period had a number of different independent rulers, depending on the area. Ancestors of Abū Ḥanīfa, including his father, were from the Kabul region.
The early Arab forces did not fully explore Afghanistan due to attacks by the mountain tribes. Much of the eastern parts of the country remained independent, as part of the Hindu Shahi kingdoms of Kabul and Gandhara, which lasted that way until the forces of the Muslim Saffarid dynasty followed by the Ghaznavids conquered them.
Arab armies carrying the banner of Islam came out of the west to defeat the Sasanians in 642 CE and then they marched with confidence to the east. On the western periphery of the Afghan area the princes of Herat and Seistan gave way to rule by Arab governors but in the east, in the mountains, cities submitted only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their old beliefs once the armies passed. The harshness and avariciousness of Arab rule produced such unrest, however, that once the waning power of the Caliphate became apparent, native rulers once again established themselves independent. Among these the Saffarids of Seistan shone briefly in the Afghan area. The fanatic founder of this dynasty, the persian Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, came forth from his capital at Zaranj in 870 CE and marched through Bost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Bamyan, Balkh and Herat, conquering in the name of Islam.
The Ghaznavid dynasty ruled from the city of Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan. From 997 to his death in 1030, Mahmud of Ghazni turned the former provincial city of Ghazni into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire which covered most of today's Afghanistan, eastern and central Iran, Pakistan, parts of India, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Mahmud of Ghazni (Mahmude Ghaznavi in local pronunciation) consolidated the conquests of his predecessors and the city of Ghazni became a great cultural centre as well as a base for frequent forays into the Indian subcontinent. The Nasher Khans became princes of the Kharoti until the Soviet invasion.
The Ghaznavid dynasty was defeated in 1148 by the Ghurids from Ghor, but the Ghaznavid Sultans continued to live in Ghazni as the 'Nasher' until the early 20th century. The empire was established by three brothers from Ghor region of Afghanistan Qutb al-Din, Sayf al-Din, Baha al-Din which all them fought against Ghaznavid emperor Bahram Shah of Ghazni but were not successful and killed in the process. Initially Ala al-Din Husayn, the son of Baha al-Din defeated the Ghazanavid ruler Bahram Shah and to take revenge of his father and uncle's death ordered the city to be sacked. The Ghorids or Ghurids lost the northern territory of Transoxiana and northern Great Korasan especially their capital Ghor province due to the invasion of Seljucks but Sultan Ala al-Din's successors consolidated their power in India by defeating the remainder of Ghaznavid rulers. At their largest extent they ruled east of Iran, much of the Indian subcontinent like Pakistan, and north and central part of modern India.
The Mongols invaded Afghanistan in 1221 having defeated the Khwarazmian armies. The Mongols invasion had long-term consequences with many parts of Afghanistan never recovering from the devastation. The towns and villages suffered much more than the nomads who were able to avoid attack. The destruction of irrigation systems maintained by the sedentary people led to the shift of the weight of the country towards the hills. The city of Balkh was destroyed and even 100 years later Ibn Battuta described it as a city still in ruins. While the Mongols were pursuing the forces of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu they besieged the city of Bamyan. In the course of the siege a defender's arrow killed Genghis Khan's grandson Mutukan. The Mongols razed the city and massacred its inhabitants in revenge, with its former site known as the City of Screams. Herat, located in a fertile valley, was destroyed as well but was rebuilt under the local Kart dynasty. After the Mongol Empire splintered, Herat eventually became part of the Ilkhanate while Balkh and the strip of land from Kabul through Ghazni to Kandahar went to the Chagatai Khanate. The Afghan tribal areas south of the Hindu Kush were usually either allied with the Khalji dynasty of northern India or independent.
Timur (Tamerlane) incorporated much of the area into his own vast Timurid Empire. The city of Herat became one of the capitals of his empire, and his grandson Pir Muhammad held the seat of Kandahar. Timur rebuilt most of Afghanistan's infrastructure which was destroyed by his early ancestor. The area was progressing under his rule. Timurid rule began declining in the early 16th century with the rise of a new ruler in Kabul, Babur. Timur, a descendant of Genghis Khan, created a vast new empire across Russia and Persia which he ruled from his capital in Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. Timur captured Herat in 1381 and his son, Shah Rukh moved the capital of the Timurid empire to Herat in 1405. The Timurids, a Turkic people, brought the Turkic nomadic culture of Central Asia within the orbit of Persian civilisation, establishing Herat as one of the most cultured and refined cities in the world. This fusion of Central Asian and Persian culture was a major legacy for the future Afghanistan. Under the rule of Shah Rukh the city served as the focal point of the Timurid Renaissance, whose glory matched Florence of the Italian Renaissance as the center of a cultural rebirth. A century later, the emperor Babur, a descendant of Timur, visited Herat and wrote, "the whole habitable world had not such a town as Herat." For the next 300 years the eastern Afghan tribes periodically invaded India creating vast Indo-Afghan empires. In 1500 CE, Babur was driven out of his home in the Ferghana valley. By the 16th century western Afghanistan again reverted to Persian rule under the Safavid dynasty.
In 1504, Babur, a descendant of Timur, arrived from present-day Uzbekistan and moved to the city of Kabul. He began exploring new territories in the region, with Kabul serving as his military headquarters. Instead of looking towards the powerful Safavids towards the Persian west, Babur was more focused on the Indian subcontinent. In 1526, he left with his army to capture the seat of the Delhi Sultanate, which at that point was possessed by the Afghan Lodi dynasty of India. After defeating Ibrahim Lodi and his army, Babur turned (Old) Delhi into the capital of his newly established Mughal Empire.
From the 16th century to the 17th century CE, Afghanistan was divided into three major areas. The north was ruled by the Khanate of Bukhara, the west was under the rule of the Iranian Shia Safavids, and the eastern section was under the Sunni Mughals of northern India, who under Akbar established in Kabul one of the original twelve subahs (imperial top-level provinces), bordering Lahore, Multan and Kashmir (added to Kabul in 1596, later split-off) and short-lived Balkh Subah and Badakhshan Subah (only 1646–47). The Kandahar region in the south served as a buffer zone between the Mughals (who shortly established a Qandahar subah 1638–1648) and Persia's Safavids, with the native Afghans often switching support from one side to the other. Babur explored a number of cities in the region before his campaign into India. In the city of Kandahar, his personal epigraphy can be found in the Chilzina rock mountain. Like in the rest of the territories that used to make part of the Indian Mughal Empire, Afghanistan holds tombs, palaces, and forts built by the Mughals.
In 1704, the Safavid Shah Husayn appointed George XI (Gurgīn Khān), a ruthless Georgian subject, to govern their easternmost territories in the Greater Kandahar region. One of Gurgīn's main objectives was to crush the rebellions started by native Afghans. Under his rule the revolts were successfully suppressed and he ruled Kandahar with uncompromising severity. He began imprisoning and executing the native Afghans, especially those suspected in having taken part in the rebellions. One of those arrested and imprisoned was Mirwais Hotak who belonged to an influential family in Kandahar. Mirwais was sent as a prisoner to the Persian court in Isfahan, but the charges against him were dismissed by the king, so he was sent back to his native land as a free man.
In April 1709, Mirwais along with his militia under Saydal Khan Naseri revolted. The uprising began when George XI and his escort were killed after a banquet that had been prepared by Mirwais at his house outside the city. Around four days later, an army of well-trained Georgian troops arrived in the city after hearing of Gurgīn's death, but Mirwais and his Afghan forces successfully held the city against the troops. Between 1710 and 1713, the Afghan forces defeated several large Persian armies that were dispatched from Isfahan by the Safavids, which included Qizilbash and Georgian/Circassian troops.
Several half-hearted attempts to subdue the rebellious city having failed, the Persian Government despatched Khusraw Khán, nephew of the late Gurgín Khán, with an army of 30,000 men to effect its subjugation, but in spite of an initial success, which led the Afghans to offer to surrender on terms, his uncompromising attitude impelled them to make a fresh desperate effort, resulting in the complete defeat of the Persian army (of whom only some 700 escaped) and the death of their general. Two years later, in 1713, another Persian army commanded by Rustam Khán was also defeated by the rebels, who thus secured possession of the whole province of Qandahár.
Southern Afghanistan was made into an independent local Pashtun kingdom. Refusing the title of king, Mirwais was called "Prince of Qandahár and general of the national troops" by his Afghan countrymen. He died of natural causes in November 1715 and was succeeded by his brother Abdul Aziz Hotak. Aziz was killed about two years later by Mirwais' son Mahmud Hotaki, allegedly for planning to give Kandahar's sovereignty back to Persia. Mahmud led an Afghan army into Persia in 1722 and defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Gulnabad. The Afghans captured Isfahan (Safavid capital) and Mahmud briefly became the new Persian Shah. He was known after that as Shah Mahmud.
Mahmud began a short-lived reign of terror against his Persian subjects who defied his rule from the very start, and he was eventually murdered in 1725 by his own cousin, Shah Ashraf Hotaki. Some sources say he died of madness . Ashraf became the new Afghan Shah of Persia soon after Mahmud's death, while the home region of Afghanistan was ruled by Mahmud's younger brother Shah Hussain Hotaki. Ashraf was able to secure peace with the Ottoman Empire in 1727 (See Treaty of Hamedan), winning against a superior Ottoman army during the Ottoman-Hotaki War, but the Russian Empire took advantage of the continuing political unrest and civil strife to seize former Persian territories for themselves, limiting the amount of territory under Shah Mahmud's control.
The short lived Hotaki dynasty was a troubled and violent one from the very start as internecine conflict made it difficult for them to establish permanent control. The dynasty lived under great turmoil due to bloody succession feuds that made their hold on power tenuous. There was a massacre of thousands of civilians in Isfahan; including more than three thousand religious scholars, nobles, and members of the Safavid family. The vast majority of the Persians rejected the Afghan regime which they considered to have been usurping power from the very start. Hotaki's rule continued in Afghanistan until 1738 when Shah Hussain was defeated and banished by Nader Shah of Persia.
The Hotakis were eventually removed from power in 1729, after a very short lived reign. They were defeated in the October 1729 by the Iranian military commander Nader Shah, head of the Afsharids, at the Battle of Damghan. After several military campaigns against the Afghans, he effectively reduced the Hotaki's power to only southern Afghanistan. The last ruler of the Hotaki dynasty, Shah Hussain, ruled southern Afghanistan until 1738 when the Afsharids and the Abdali Pashtuns defeated him at the long Siege of Kandahar.
Nader Shah and his Afsharid army arrived in the town of Kandahar in 1738 and defeated Hussain Hotaki subsequently absorbing all of Afghanistan in his empire and renaming Kandahar as Naderabad. Around this time, a young teenager Ahmad Shah joined Nader Shah's army for his invasion of India.
Nadir Shah was assassinated on 19 June 1747 by several of his Persian officers, and the Afsharid empire fell to pieces. At the same time the 25-year-old Ahmad Khan was busy in Afghanistan calling for a loya jirga ("grand assembly") to select a leader among his people. The Afghans gathered near Kandahar in October 1747 and chose Ahmad Shah from among the challengers, making him their new head of state. After the inauguration or coronation, he became known as Ahmad Shah Durrani. He adopted the title padshah durr-i dawran ('King, "pearl of the age") and the Abdali tribe became known as the Durrani tribe after this. Ahmad Shah not only represented the Durranis but he also united all the Pashtun tribes. By 1751, Ahmad Shah Durrani and his Afghan army conquered the entire present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and for a short time, subjugated large swathes of the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran, along with Delhi in India. He defeated the Maratha Empire in 1761 at the Battle of Panipat.
In October 1772, Ahmad Shah retired to his home in Kandahar where he died peacefully and was buried at a site that is now adjacent to the Shrine of the Cloak. He was succeeded by his son, Timur Shah Durrani, who transferred the capital of their Afghan Empire from Kandahar to Kabul. Timur died in 1793 and his son Zaman Shah Durrani took over the reign.
Zaman Shah and his brothers had a weak hold on the legacy left to them by their famous ancestor. They sorted out their differences through a "round robin of expulsions, blindings and executions," which resulted in the deterioration of the Afghan hold over far-flung territories, such as Attock and Kashmir. Durrani's other grandson, Shuja Shah Durrani, fled the wrath of his brother and sought refuge with the Sikhs. Not only had Durrani invaded the Punjab region many times, but had destroyed the holiest shrine of the Sikhs – the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, defiling its sarowar with the blood of cows and decapitating Baba Deep Singh in 1757. The Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, eventually wrested a large part of the Durrani Kingdom (present day Pakistan, but not including Sindh) from the Afghans while they were in civil war.
The Emir Dost Mohammed Khan (1793–1863) gained control in Kabul in 1826 after toppling his brother, Sultan Mohammad Khan, and founded (c. 1837) the Barakzai dynasty. In 1837, the Afghan army descended through the Khyber Pass on Sikh forces at Jamrud killed the Sikh general Hari Singh Nalwa but could not capture the fort. Rivalry between the expanding British and Russian Empires in what became known as "The Great Game" significantly influenced Afghanistan during the 19th century. British concern over Russian advances in Central Asia and over Russia's growing influence in West Asia and in Persia in particular culminated in two Anglo-Afghan wars and in the Siege of Herat (1837–1838), in which the Persians, trying to retake Afghanistan and throw out the British, sent armies into the country and fought the British mostly around and in the city of Herat. The first Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842) resulted in the destruction of a British army; causing great panic throughout British India and the dispatch of a second British invasion army. Following the British defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan War, where they tried to re-establish the Durrani Kingdom as a de facto vassal, Dost Mohammad could focus on reuniting Afghanistan, which was divided following the Durrani-Barakzai civil wars. Dost Mohammad began his conquest while only ruling the major cities of Kabul, Ghazni, Jalalabad, and Bamyan. By the time of his death in 1863, Dost Mohammad had reunited most of Afghanistan. Following Dost Mohammad's death, a civil war broke out amongst his sons, leading to Sher Ali succeeding and beginning his rule. The Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880) resulted from the refusal by Emir Shir Ali (reigned 1863 to 1866 and from 1868 to 1879) to accept a British diplomatic mission in Kabul. In the wake of this conflict Shir Ali's nephew, Emir Abdur Rahman, known as "Iron Emir", came to the Afghan throne. During his reign (1880–1901), the British and Russians officially established the boundaries of what would become modern Afghanistan. The British retained effective control over Kabul's foreign affairs. Abdur Rahman's reforms of the army, legal system and structure of government gave Afghanistan a degree of unity and stability which it had not before known. This, however, came at the cost of strong centralisation, of harsh punishments for crime and corruption, and of a certain degree of international isolation.
Habibullah Khan, Abdur Rahman's son, came to the throne in 1901 and kept Afghanistan neutral during World War I, despite encouragement by Central Powers of anti-British feelings and of Afghan rebellion along the borders of India. His policy of neutrality was not universally popular within the country, and Habibullah was assassinated in 1919, possibly by family members opposed to British influence. His third son, Amanullah (r. 1919–1929), regained control of Afghanistan's foreign policy after launching the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May to August 1919) with an attack on India. During the ensuing conflict the war-weary British relinquished their control over Afghan foreign affairs by signing the Treaty of Rawalpindi in August 1919. In commemoration of this event Afghans celebrate 19 August as their Independence Day.
King Amanullah Khan moved to end his country's traditional isolation in the years following the Third Anglo-Afghan war. After quelling the Khost rebellion in 1925, he established diplomatic relations with most major countries and, following a 1927 tour of Europe and Turkey (during which he noted the modernization and secularization advanced by Atatürk), introduced several reforms intended to modernize Afghanistan. A key force behind these reforms was Mahmud Tarzi, Amanullah Khan's Foreign Minister and father-in-law — and an ardent supporter of the education of women. He fought for Article 68 of Afghanistan's first constitution (declared through a Loya Jirga), which made elementary education compulsory. Some of the reforms that were actually put in place, such as the abolition of the traditional Muslim veil for women and the opening of a number of co-educational schools, quickly alienated many tribal and religious leaders, which led to the revolt of the Shinwari in November 1928, marking the beginning of the Afghan Civil War (1928–1929). Although the Shinwari revolt was quelled, a concurrent Saqqawist uprising in the north eventually managed to depose Amanullah, leading to Habibullāh Kalakāni taking control of Kabul.
Mohammed Nadir Khan became King of Afghanistan on 15 October 1929 after he took control of Afghanistan by defeating the Habibullah Kalakani. He then executed him in 1 November of same year. He began consolidating power and regenerating the country. He abandoned the reforms of Amanullah Khan in favour of a more gradual approach to modernisation. In 1933, however, he was assassinated in a revenge killing by a student from Kabul.
Mohammad Zahir Shah, Nadir Khan's 19-year-old son, succeeded to the throne and reigned from 1933 to 1973. The Afghan tribal revolts of 1944–1947 saw Zahir Shah's reign being challenged by Zadran, Safi and Mangal tribesmen led by Mazrak Zadran and Salemai among others. Until 1946 Zahir Shah ruled with the assistance of his uncle Sardar Mohammad Hashim Khan, who held the post of Prime Minister and continued the policies of Nadir Khan. In 1946, another of Zahir Shah's uncles, Sardar Shah Mahmud Khan, became Prime Minister and began an experiment allowing greater political freedom, but reversed the policy when it went further than he expected. In 1953, he was replaced as Prime Minister by Mohammed Daoud Khan, the king's cousin and brother-in-law. Daoud looked for a closer relationship with the Soviet Union and a more distant one towards Pakistan. However, disputes with Pakistan led to an economic crisis and he was asked to resign in 1963. From 1963 until 1973, Zahir Shah took a more active role.
In 1964, King Zahir Shah promulgated a liberal constitution providing for a bicameral legislature to which the king appointed one-third of the deputies. The people elected another third, and the remainder were selected indirectly by provincial assemblies. Although Zahir's "experiment in democracy" produced few lasting reforms, it permitted the growth of parties on both the left and the right. This included the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had close ideological ties to the Soviet Union. In 1967, the PDPA split into two major rival factions: the Khalq (Masses) was headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin who were supported by elements within the military, and the Parcham (Banner) led by Babrak Karmal.
Amid corruption charges and malfeasance against the royal family and the poor economic conditions created by the severe 1971–72 drought, former Prime Minister Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup on July 17, 1973, while Zahir Shah was receiving treatment for eye problems and therapy for lumbago in Italy. Daoud abolished the monarchy, abrogated the 1964 constitution, and declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as its first President and Prime Minister. His attempts to carry out badly needed economic and social reforms met with little success, and the new constitution promulgated in February 1977 failed to quell chronic political instability.
As disillusionment set in, in 1978 a prominent member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Mir Akbar Khyber (or "Kaibar"), was killed by the government. The leaders of PDPA apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all, especially since most of them were arrested by the government shortly after. Nonetheless, Hafizullah Amin and a number of military wing officers of the PDPA's Khalq faction managed to remain at large and organize a military coup.
On 28 April 1978, the PDPA, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Amin Taha overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud, who was assassinated along with all his family members in a bloody military coup. The coup became known as the Saur Revolution. On 1 May, Taraki became head of state, head of government and General Secretary of the PDPA. The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), and the PDPA regime lasted, in some form or another, until April 1992.
In March 1979, Hafizullah Amin took over as prime minister, retaining the position of field marshal and becoming vice-president of the Supreme Defence Council. Taraki remained General Secretary, Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and in control of the Army. On 14 September, Amin overthrew Taraki, who was killed. Amin stated that "the Afghans recognize only crude force." Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal writes: "As his powers grew, so apparently did his craving for personal dictatorship ... and his vision of the revolutionary process based on terror."
Once it was in power, the PDPA implemented a Marxist–Leninist agenda. It moved to replace religious and traditional laws with secular and Marxist–Leninist ones. Men were obliged to cut their beards, women could not wear chadors, and mosques were declared off limits. The PDPA made a number of reforms on women's rights, banning forced marriages and giving state recognition of women's right to vote. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978) which declared: "Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country ... Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention." The PDPA also carried out socialist land reforms and moved to promote state atheism. They also prohibited usury. The PDPA invited the Soviet Union to assist in modernizing its economic infrastructure (predominantly its exploration and mining of rare minerals and natural gas). The Soviet Union also sent contractors to build roads, hospitals and schools and to drill water wells; they also trained and equipped the Afghan Armed Forces. Upon the PDPA's ascension to power, and the establishment of the DRA, the Soviet Union promised monetary aid amounting to at least $1.262 billion.
At the same time, the PDPA imprisoned, tortured or murdered thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia. The government launched a campaign of violent repression, killing some 10,000 to 27,000 people and imprisoning 14,000 to 20,000 more, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison. In December 1978 the PDPA leadership signed an agreement with the Soviet Union which would allow military support for the PDPA in Afghanistan if needed. The majority of people in the cities including Kabul either welcomed or were ambivalent to these policies. However, the Marxist–Leninist and secular nature of the government as well as its heavy dependence on the Soviet Union made it unpopular with a majority of the Afghan population. Repressions plunged large parts of the country, especially the rural areas, into open revolt against the new Marxist–Leninist government. By spring 1979 unrests had reached 24 out of 28 Afghan provinces including major urban areas. Over half of the Afghan army would either desert or join the insurrection. Most of the government's new policies clashed directly with the traditional Afghan understanding of Islam, making religion one of the only forces capable of unifying the tribally and ethnically divided population against the unpopular new government, and ushering in the advent of Islamist participation in Afghan politics.
To bolster the Parcham faction, the Soviet Union decided to intervene on December 27, 1979, when the Red Army invaded its southern neighbor. Over 100,000 Soviet troops took part in the invasion, which was backed by another 100,000 Afghan military men and supporters of the Parcham faction. In the meantime, Hafizullah Amin was killed and replaced by Babrak Karmal.
The Carter administration started providing limited assistance to rebels before the Soviet invasion. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. began arming the Afghan mujahideen, thanks in large part to the efforts of Charlie Wilson and CIA officer Gust Avrakotos. Early reports estimated that $6–20 billion had been spent by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia but more recent reports state that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia provided as much as up to $40 billion in cash and weapons, which included over two thousand FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, for building up Islamic groups against the Soviet Union. The U.S. handled most of its support through Pakistan's ISI.
Scholars such as W. Michael Reisman, Charles Norchi and Mohammed Kakar, believe that the Afghans were victims of a genocide which was committed against them by the Soviet Union. Soviet forces and their proxies killed between 562,000 and 2 million Afghans and Russian soldiers also engaged in abductions and rapes of Afghan women. About 6 million fled as Afghan refugees to Pakistan and Iran, and from there over 38,000 made it to the United States and many more to the European Union. The Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan brought with them verifiable stories of murder, collective rape, torture and depopulation of civilians by the Soviet forces. Faced with mounting international pressure and great number of casualties on both sides, the Soviets withdrew in 1989. Their withdrawal from Afghanistan was seen as an ideological victory in the United States, which had backed some Mujahideen factions through three U.S. presidential administrations to counter Soviet influence in the vicinity of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The USSR continued to support Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah (former head of the Afghan secret service, KHAD) until 1992.
Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), headed by Hamid Gul at the time, was interested in a trans-national Islamic revolution which would cover Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. For this purpose the ISI masterminded an attack on Jalalabad in March 1989, for the Mujahideen to establish their own government in Afghanistan, but this failed in three months.
With the crumbling of the Najibullah regime early in 1992, Afghanistan fell into further disarray and civil war. A U.N.-supported attempt to have the mujahideen parties and armies form a coalition government shattered. Mujahideen did not abide by the mutual pledges and Ahmad Shah Masood forces because of his proximity to Kabul captured the capital before Mujahideen Govt was established. So the elected prime minister and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, started war on his president and Massod force entrenched in Kabul. This ignited civil war, because the other mujahideen parties would not settle for Hekmatyar ruling alone or sharing actual power with him. Within weeks, the still frail unity of the other mujahideen forces also evaporated, and six militias were fighting each other in and around Kabul.
Sibghatuallah Mojaddedi was elected as Afghanistan's elected interim president for two months and then professor Burhanuddin Rabbani a well known Kabul university professor and the leader of Jamiat-e-Islami party of Mujahiddin who fought against Russians during the occupation was chosen by all of the Jahadi leaders except Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Rabbani reigned as the official and elected president of Afghanistan by Shurai Mujahiddin Peshawer (Peshawer Mujahiddin Council) from 1992 until 2001 when he officially handed over the presidency post to Hamid Karzai the next US appointed interim president. During Rabbani's presidency some parts of the country including a few provinces in the north such as Mazar e-Sharif, Jawzjan, Faryab, Shuburghan and some parts of Baghlan provinces were ruled by general Abdul Rashid Dostum. During Rabbani's first five years illegal term before the emergence of the Taliban, the eastern and western provinces and some of the northern provinces such as Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz, the main parts of Baghlan Province, and some parts of Kandahar and other southern provinces were under the control of the central government while the other parts of southern provinces did not obey him because of his Tajik ethnicity. During the 9 year presidency of Burhanuddin Rabani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was directed, funded and supplied by the Pakistani army. Afghanistan analyst Amin Saikal concludes in his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival:
Pakistan was keen to gear up for a breakthrough in Central Asia. [...] Islamabad could not possibly expect the new Islamic government leaders [...] to subordinate their own nationalist objectives in order to help Pakistan realize its regional ambitions. [...] Had it not been for the ISI's logistic support and supply of a large number of rockets, Hekmatyar's forces would not have been able to target and destroy half of Kabul.
There was no time for the interim government to create working government departments, police units or a system of justice and accountability. Saudi Arabia and Iran also armed and directed Afghan militias. A publication by the George Washington University describes:
[O]utside forces saw instability in Afghanistan as an opportunity to press their own security and political agendas.
According to Human Rights Watch, numerous Iranian agents were assisting the Shia Hezb-i Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari, as Iran was attempting to maximize Wahdat's military power and influence. Saudi Arabia was trying to strengthen the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his Ittihad-i Islami faction. Atrocities were committed by individuals of the different factions while Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. Again, Human Rights Watch writes:
Rare ceasefires, usually negotiated by representatives of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi or Burhanuddin Rabbani (the interim government), or officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commonly collapsed within days.
The main forces involved during that period in Kabul, northern, central and eastern Afghanistan were the Hezb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar directed by Pakistan, the Hezb-i Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari directed by Iran, the Ittehad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf supported by Saudi Arabia, the Junbish-i Milli of Abdul Rashid Dostum backed by Uzbekisten, the Harakat-i Islami of Hussain Anwari and the Shura-i Nazar operating as the regular Islamic State forces (as agreed upon in the Peshawar Accords) under the Defence Ministry of Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Meanwhile, the southern city of Kandahar was a centre of lawlessness, crime and atrocities fuelled by complex Pashtun tribal rivalries. In 1994, the Taliban (a movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-run religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan) also developed in Afghanistan as a politico-religious force, reportedly in opposition to the tyranny of the local governor. Mullah Omar started his movement with fewer than 50 armed madrassah students in his hometown of Kandahar. As Gulbuddin Hekmatyar remained unsuccessful in conquering Kabul, Pakistan started supporting the Taliban. Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests. In 1994 the Taliban took power in several provinces in southern and central Afghanistan.
In 1995 the Hezb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Iranian-backed Hezb-i Wahdat as well as Rashid Dostum's Junbish forces were defeated militarily in the capital Kabul by forces of the interim government under Massoud who subsequently tried to initiate a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation and democratic elections, also inviting the Taliban to join the process. The Taliban declined.
The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. Amnesty International, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report:
This is the first time in several months that Kabul civilians have become the targets of rocket attacks and shelling aimed at residential areas in the city.
On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban, with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia, prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban seized Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their political and judicial interpretation of Islam, issuing edicts forbidding women from working outside the home, attending school or leaving their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said:
To PHR's knowledge, no other regime in the world has methodically and violently forced half of its population into virtual house arrest, prohibiting them on pain of physical punishment.
After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on September 27, 1996, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two former enemies, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban, who were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under the control of Massoud and Dostum. The United Front included beside the dominantly Tajik forces of Massoud and the Uzbek forces of Dostum, Hazara factions and Pashtun forces under the leadership of commanders such as Abdul Haq, Haji Abdul Qadir, Qari Baba or diplomat Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001 the United Front controlled roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population in provinces such as Badakhshan, Kapisa, Takhar and parts of Parwan, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.
According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." The Taliban especially targeted people of Shia religious or Hazara ethnic background. Upon taking Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, about 4,000 civilians were executed by the Taliban and many more reported torture. Among those killed in Mazari Sharif were several Iranian diplomats. Others were kidnapped by the Taliban, touching off a hostage crisis that nearly escalated to a full-scale war, with 150,000 Iranian soldiers massed on the Afghan border at one time. It was later admitted that the diplomats were killed by the Taliban, and their bodies were returned to Iran.
The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in these killings. Osama bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Massoud. In total there were believed to be 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting inside Afghanistan. 20,000 were regular Pakistani soldiers either from the Frontier Corps or army and an estimated 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. The estimated 25,000 Taliban regular force thus comprised more than 8,000 Pakistani nationals. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani." The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan." A further 3,000 fighter of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian militants. From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the fight against the United Front. Of roughly 45,000 Pakistani, Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers fighting against the forces of Massoud only 14,000 were Afghan.
According to Human Rights Watch in 1997 Taliban soldiers were summarily executed in and around Mazar-i Sharif by Dostum's Junbish forces. Dostum was defeated by the Taliban in 1998 with the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif. Massoud remained the only leader of the United Front in Afghanistan.
In the areas under his control Ahmad Shah Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women's Rights Charter. Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for the forces under direct control of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. As a consequence many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud. National Geographic concluded in its documentary Inside the Taliban:
The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud.
The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined for he did not fight to obtain a position of power. He said in one interview:
The Taliban say: "Come and accept the post of prime minister and be with us", and they would keep the highest office in the country, the presidentship. But for what price?! The difference between us concerns mainly our way of thinking about the very principles of the society and the state. We can not accept their conditions of compromise, or else we would have to give up the principles of modern democracy. We are fundamentally against the system called "the Emirate of Afghanistan".
and
There should be an Afghanistan where every Afghan finds himself or herself happy. And I think that can only be assured by democracy based on consensus.
Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future. Massoud stated that:
The Taliban are not a force to be considered invincible. They are distanced from the people now. They are weaker than in the past. There is only the assistance given by Pakistan, Osama bin Laden and other extremist groups that keep the Taliban on their feet. With a halt to that assistance, it is extremely difficult to survive.
In early 2001 Massoud employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. Massoud publicized their cause "popular consensus, general elections and democracy" worldwide. At the same time he was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999 he started the training of police forces which he trained specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.
In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year.
On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide attackers inside Afghanistan. Two days later about 3,000 people became victims of the September 11 attacks in the United States, when Afghan-based Al-Qaeda suicide bombers hijacked planes and flew them into four targets in the Northeastern United States. Then US President George W. Bush accused Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the faces behind the attacks. When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to US authorities and to disband al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom was launched in which teams of American and British special forces worked with commanders of the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban. At the same time the US-led forces were bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda targets everywhere inside Afghanistan with cruise missiles. These actions led to the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north followed by all the other cities, as the Taliban and al-Qaeda crossed over the porous Durand Line border into Pakistan. In December 2001, after the Taliban government was toppled and the new Afghan government under Hamid Karzai was formed, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council to help assist the Karzai administration and provide basic security to the Afghan people. The majority of Afghans supported the American invasion of their country.
While the Taliban began regrouping inside Pakistan, the rebuilding of war-torn Afghanistan kicked off in 2002 (see also War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)). The Afghan nation was able to build democratic structures over the years by the creation of an emergency loya jirga to set up the modern Afghan government, and some progress was made in key areas such as governance, economy, health, education, transport, and agriculture. NATO had been training the Afghan armed forces as well its national police. ISAF and Afghan troops led many offensives against the Taliban but failed to fully defeat them. By 2009, a Taliban-led shadow government began to form in many parts of the country complete with their own version of mediation court. After U.S. President Barack Obama announced the deployment of another 30,000 soldiers in 2010 for a period of two years, Der Spiegel published images of the US soldiers who killed unarmed Afghan civilians.
In 2009, the United States resettled 328 refugees from Afghanistan. Over five million Afghan refugees were repatriated in the last decade, including many who were forcefully deported from NATO countries. This large return of Afghans may have helped the nation's economy but the country still remains one of the poorest in the world due to the decades of war, lack of foreign investment, ongoing government corruption and the Pakistani-backed Taliban insurgency. The United States also accuses neighboring Iran of providing small level of support to the Taliban insurgents. According to a report by the United Nations, the Taliban and other militants were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.
In October 2008 U.S. Defense Secretary Gates had asserted that a political settlement with the Taliban was the endgame for the Afghanistan war. "There has to be ultimately – and I'll underscore ultimately – reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this," Gates stated. By 2010 peace efforts began. In early January, Taliban commanders held secret exploratory talks with a United Nations special envoy to discuss peace terms. Regional commanders on the Taliban's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, sought a meeting with the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and it took place in Dubai on January 8. It was the first such meeting between the UN and senior members of the Taliban. On 26 January 2010, at a major conference in London which brought together some 70 countries and organizations, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he intends to reach out to the Taliban leadership (including Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar). Supported by NATO, Karzai called on the group's leadership to take part in a loya jirga meeting to initiate peace talks. These steps have resulted in an intensification of bombings, assassinations and ambushes. Some Afghan groups (including the former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh and opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) believe that Karzai plans to appease the insurgents' senior leadership at the cost of the democratic constitution, the democratic process and progress in the field of human rights especially women's rights. Dr. Abdullah stated:
I should say that Taliban are not fighting in order to be accommodated. They are fighting in order to bring the state down. So it's a futile exercise, and it's just misleading. ... There are groups that will fight to the death. Whether we like to talk to them or we don't like to talk to them, they will continue to fight. So, for them, I don't think that we have a way forward with talks or negotiations or contacts or anything as such. Then we have to be prepared to tackle and deal with them militarily. In terms of the Taliban on the ground, there are lots of possibilities and opportunities that with the help of the people in different parts of the country, we can attract them to the peace process; provided, we create a favorable environment on this side of the line. At the moment, the people are leaving support for the government because of corruption. So that expectation is also not realistic at this stage.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told world leaders during the London conference that he intends to reach out to the top echelons of the Taliban within a few weeks with a peace initiative. Karzai set the framework for dialogue with Taliban leaders when he called on the group's leadership to take part in a "loya jirga" – or large assembly of elders – to initiate peace talks. Karzai also asked for creation of a new peacemaking organization, to be called the National Council for Peace, Reconciliation and Reintegration. Karzai's top adviser on the reconciliation process with the insurgents said that the country must learn to forgive the Taliban. In March 2010, the Karzai government held preliminary talks with Hezb-i-Islami, who presented a plan which included the withdrawal of all foreign troops by the end of 2010. The Taliban declined to participate, saying "The Islamic Emirate has a clear position. We have said this many, many times. There will be no talks when there are foreign troops on Afghanistan's soil killing innocent Afghans on daily basis." In June 2010 the Afghan Peace Jirga 2010 took place. In September 2010 General David Petraeus commented on the progress of peace talks to date, stating, "The prospect for reconciliation with senior Taliban leaders certainly looms out there...and there have been approaches at (a) very senior level that hold some promise."
After the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, many prominent Afghan figures began being assassinated, including Mohammed Daud Daud, Ahmad Wali Karzai, Jan Mohammad Khan, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, Burhanuddin Rabbani and others. Also in the same year, the Pakistani-Afghan border skirmishes intensified and many large scale attacks by the Pakistani-based Haqqani network took place across Afghanistan. This led to the United States warning Pakistan of a possible military action against the Haqqanis in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The U.S. blamed Pakistan's government, mainly Pakistani Army and its ISI spy network as the masterminds behind all of this.
In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence. They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet.
The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, told Radio Pakistan that "The attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago, that was the work of the Haqqani network. There is evidence linking the Haqqani Network to the Pakistan government. This is something that must stop." Other top U.S. officials such as Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta made similar statements. On October 16, 2011, "Operation Knife Edge" was launched by NATO and Afghan forces against the Haqqani network in south-eastern Afghanistan. Afghan Defense Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, explained that the operation will "help eliminate the insurgents before they struck in areas along the troubled frontier". In November 2011, NATO forces attacked Pakistani soldiers in the Pakistan border region. In 2014, Ashraf Ghani was elected to be the president of Afghanistan.
In 2021, the United States forces and allies withdrew from Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to intensify their insurgency. On 15 August 2021, as the Taliban entered Kabul, President Ghani fled to Tajikistan, and the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed. Anti-Taliban forces formed the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and launched an uprising from the Panjshir Valley.
On 7 September 2021 Taliban announced an interim government headed by Mohammad Hassan Akhund, although the government remained unrecognized internationally.
Western countries have suspended most humanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the country in August 2021. The United States has frozen about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. bank accounts. In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage. On 11 November 2021, the Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Program has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity.
online Archived 2021-09-09 at the Wayback Machine | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The history of Afghanistan, preceding the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1823 is shared with that of neighbouring Iran, central Asia and Indian subcontinent. The Sadozai monarchy ruled the Afghan Durrani Empire, considered the founding state of modern Afghanistan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic era, and the country's strategic location along the historic Silk Road has led it to being described, picturesquely, as the ‘roundabout of the ancient world’. The land has historically been home to various peoples and has witnessed numerous military campaigns, including those by the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Maurya Empire, Arab Muslims, the Mongols, the British, the Soviet Union, and most recently by a US-led coalition. The various conquests and periods in both the Indian and Iranian cultural spheres made the area a center for , Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and later Islam throughout history.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Durrani Empire is considered to be the foundational polity of the modern nation-state of Afghanistan, with Ahmad Shah Durrani being credited as its Father of the Nation. However, Dost Mohammad Khan is sometimes considered to be the founder of the first modern Afghan state. Following the Durrani Empire's decline and the death of Ahmad Shah Durrani and Timur Shah, it was divided into multiple smaller independent kingdoms, including but not limited to Herat, Kandahar and Kabul. Afghanistan would be reunited in the 19th century after seven decades of civil war from 1793 to 1863, with wars of unification led by Dost Mohammad Khan from 1823 to 1863, where he conquered the independent principalities of Afghanistan under the Emirate of Kabul. Dost Mohammad died in 1863, days after his last campaign to unite Afghanistan, and Afghanistan was consequently thrown back into civil war with fighting amongst his successors. During this time, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the Great Game between the British Raj in South Asia and the Russian Empire. The British Raj attempted to subjugate Afghanistan but was repelled in the First Anglo-Afghan War. However, the Second Anglo-Afghan War saw a British victory and the successful establishment of British political influence over Afghanistan. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Afghanistan became free of foreign political hegemony, and emerged as the independent Kingdom of Afghanistan in June 1926 under Amanullah Khan. This monarchy lasted almost half a century, until Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973, following which the Republic of Afghanistan was established.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Since the late 1970s, Afghanistan's history has been dominated by extensive warfare, including coups, invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars. The conflict began in 1978 when a communist revolution established a socialist state, and subsequent infighting prompted the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in 1979. Mujahideen fought against the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War and continued fighting amongst themselves following the Soviets' withdrawal in 1989. The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban controlled most of the country by 1996, but their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan received little international recognition before its overthrow in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power in 2021 after capturing Kabul and overthrowing the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, thus bringing an end to the 2001–2021 war. Although initially claiming it would form an inclusive government for the country, in September 2021 the Taliban re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with an interim government made up entirely of Taliban members. The Taliban government remains internationally unrecognized.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Excavations of prehistoric sites by Louis Dupree and others at Darra-e Kur in 1966 where 800 stone implements were recovered along with a fragment of Neanderthal right temporal bone, suggest that early humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 52,000 years ago. A cave called Kara Kamar contained Upper Paleolithic blades Carbon-14 dated at 34,000 years old. Farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world. Artifacts indicate that the indigenous people were small farmers and herdsmen, very probably grouped into tribes, with small local kingdoms rising and falling through the ages. Urbanization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE. Gandhara is the name of an ancient kingdom from the Vedic period and its capital city located between the Hindukush and Sulaiman Mountains (mountains of Solomon), although Kandahar in modern times and the ancient Gandhara are not geographically identical.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Early inhabitants, around 3000 BCE were likely to have been connected through culture and trade to neighboring civilizations like Jiroft and Tappeh Sialk and the Indus Valley civilization. Urban civilization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE and it is possible that the early city of Mundigak (near Kandahar) was a part of Helmand culture. The first known people were Indo-Iranians, but their date of arrival has been estimated widely from as early as about 3000 BCE to 1500 BCE. (For further detail see Indo-Aryan migration.)",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Indus Valley civilisation (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) extending from present-day northwest Pakistan to present-day northwest India and present-day northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley trading colony has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. Apart from Shortughai, Mundigak is another known site. There are several other smaller IVC sites to be found in Afghanistan as well.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex became prominent between 2200 and 1700 BCE (approximately). The city of Balkh (Bactra) was founded about this time (c. 2000–1500 BCE).",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Gandhara region centered around the Peshawar Valley and Swat river valley, though the cultural influence of \"Greater Gandhara\" extended across the Indus river to the Taxila region in Potohar Plateau and westwards into the Kabul and Bamiyan valleys in Afghanistan, and northwards up to the Karakoram range.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "During the 6th century BCE, Gandhāra was an important imperial power in north-west South Asia, with the valley of Kaśmīra being part of the kingdom, while the other states of the Punjab region, such as the Kekayas, Madrakas, Uśīnaras, and Shivis being under Gāndhārī suzerainty. The Gāndhārī king Pukkusāti, who reigned around 550 BCE, engaged in expansionist ventures which brought him into conflict with the king Pradyota of the rising power of Avanti. Pukkusāti was successful in this struggle with Pradyota.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "By the later 6th century BCE, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, soon after his conquests of Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, marched into Gandhara and annexed it into his empire. The scholar Kaikhosru Danjibuoy Sethna advanced that Cyrus had conquered only the trans-Indus borderlands around Peshawar which had belonged to Gandhāra while Pukkusāti remained a powerful king who maintained his rule over the rest of Gandhāra and the western Punjab.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Kambojas entered into conflict with Alexander the Great as he invaded Central Asia. The Macedonian conqueror made short shrift of the arrangements of Darius and after over-running the Achaemenid Empire he dashed into today's eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. There he encountered resistance from the Kamboja Aspasioi and Assakenoi tribes. The Region of the Hindukush that was inhabitanted by the Kambojas has gone through many rules such as Vedic Mahajanapada, Pali Kapiśi, Indo-Greeks, Kushan and Gandharans to Paristan and modern day being split between Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The descendants of Kambojas have mostly been assimilated into newer identities, however, some tribes remain today that still retain the names of their ancestors. The Yusufzai Pashtuns are said to be the Esapzai/Aśvakas from the Kamboja age. The Kom/Kamoz people of Nuristan retain their Kamboj name. The Ashkun of Nuristan also retain the name of Aśvakas. The Yashkun Shina dards are another group that retain the name of the Kamboja Aśvakans. The Kamboj of Punjab are another group that still retain the name however have integrated into new identity. The country of Cambodia derives its name from the Kamboja.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Afghanistan fell to the Achaemenid Empire after it was conquered by Darius I of Persia. The area was divided into several provinces called satrapies, which were each ruled by a governor, or satrap. These ancient satrapies included: Aria: The region of Aria was separated by mountain ranges from the Paropamisadae in the east, Parthia in the west and Margiana and Hyrcania in the north, while a desert separated it from Carmania and Drangiana in the south. It is described in a very detailed manner by Ptolemy and Strabo and corresponds, according to that, almost to the Herat Province of today's Afghanistan; Arachosia, corresponds to the modern-day Kandahar, Lashkar Gah, and Quetta. Arachosia bordered Drangiana to the west, Paropamisadae (i.e. Gandahara) to the north and to the east, and Gedrosia to the south. The inhabitants of Arachosia were Iranian peoples, referred to as Arachosians or Arachoti. It is assumed that they were called Paktyans by ethnicity, and that name may have been in reference to the ethnic Paṣtun (Pashtun) tribes;",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Bactriana was the area north of the Hindu Kush, west of the Pamirs and south of the Tian Shan, with the Amu Darya flowing west through the center (Balkh); Sattagydia was the easternmost regions of the Achaemenid Empire, part of its Seventh tax district according to Herodotus, along with Gandārae, Dadicae and Aparytae. It is believed to have been situated east of the Sulaiman Mountains up to the Indus River in the basin around Bannu.[ (Ghazni); and Gandhara which corresponds to modern day Kabul, Jalalabad, and Peshawar.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Alexander the Great arrived in the area of Afghanistan in 330 BCE after defeating Darius III of Persia a year earlier at the Battle of Gaugamela. His army faced very strong resistance in the Afghan tribal areas where he is said to have commented that Afghanistan is \"easy to march into, hard to march out of.\" Although his expedition through Afghanistan was brief, Alexander left behind a Hellenic cultural influence that lasted several centuries. Several great cities were built in the region named \"Alexandria,\" including: Alexandria-of-the-Arians (modern-day Herat); Alexandria-on-the-Tarnak (near Kandahar); Alexandria-ad-Caucasum (near Begram, at Bordj-i-Abdullah); and finally, Alexandria-Eschate (near Kojend), in the north. After Alexander's death, his loosely connected empire was divided. Seleucus, a Macedonian officer during Alexander's campaign, declared himself ruler of his own Seleucid Empire, which also included present-day Afghanistan.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The territory fell to the Maurya Empire, which was led by Chandragupta Maurya. The Mauryas further entrenched Hinduism and introduced Buddhism to the region, and were planning to capture more territory of Central Asia until they faced local Greco-Bactrian forces. Seleucus is said to have reached a peace treaty with Chandragupta by giving control of the territory south of the Hindu Kush to the Mauryas upon intermarriage and 500 elephants.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Alexander took these away from the Hindus and established settlements of his own, but Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus (Chandragupta), upon terms of intermarriage and of receiving in exchange 500 elephants.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Some time after, as he was going to war with the generals of Alexander, a wild elephant of great bulk presented itself before him of its own accord, and, as if tamed down to gentleness, took him on its back, and became his guide in the war, and conspicuous in fields of battle. Sandrocottus, having thus acquired a throne, was in possession of India, when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness; who, after making a league with him, and settling his affairs in the east, proceeded to join in the war against Antigonus. As soon as the forces, therefore, of all the confederates were united, a battle was fought, in which Antigonus was slain, and his son Demetrius put to flight.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Having consolidated power in the northwest, Chandragupta pushed east towards the Nanda Empire. Afghanistan's significant ancient tangible and intangible Buddhist heritage is recorded through wide-ranging archeological finds, including religious and artistic remnants. Buddhist doctrines are reported to have reached as far as Balkh even during the life of the Buddha (563 BCE to 483 BCE), as recorded by Husang Tsang.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In this context a legend recorded by Husang Tsang refers to the first two lay disciples of Buddha, Trapusa and Bhallika responsible for introducing Buddhism in that country. Originally these two were merchants of the kingdom of Balhika, as the name Bhalluka or Bhallika probably suggests the association of one with that country. They had gone to India for trade and had happened to be at Bodhgaya when the Buddha had just attained enlightenment.",
"title": "Ancient period (c. 1500 – 250 BCE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was a Hellenistic kingdom, founded when Diodotus I, the satrap of Bactria (and probably the surrounding provinces) seceded from the Seleucid Empire around 250 BCE.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Greco-Bactria Kingdom continued until c. 130 BCE, when Eucratides I's son, King Heliocles I, was defeated and driven out of Bactria by the Yuezhi tribes from the east. The Yuezhi now had complete occupation of Bactria. It is thought that Eucratides' dynasty continued to rule in Kabul and Alexandria of the Caucasus until 70 BCE when King Hermaeus was also defeated by the Yuezhi.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "One of Demetrius I's successors, Menander I, brought the Indo-Greek Kingdom (now isolated from the rest of the Hellenistic world after the fall of Bactria) to its height between 165 and 130 BCE, expanding the kingdom in Afghanistan and Pakistan to even larger proportions than Demetrius. After Menander's death, the Indo-Greeks steadily declined and the last Indo-Greek kings (Strato II and Strato III) were defeated in c. 10 CE. The Indo-Greek Kingdom was succeeded by the Indo-Scythians.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Indo-Scythians were descended from the Sakas (Scythians) who migrated from southern Siberia to Pakistan and Arachosia from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century BCE. They displaced the Indo-Greeks and ruled a kingdom that stretched from Gandhara to Mathura. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Scythians were defeated by the south Indian Emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Satavahana dynasty. Later the Saka kingdom was completely destroyed by Chandragupta II of the Gupta Empire from eastern India in the 4th century.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Indo-Parthian Kingdom was ruled by the Gondopharid dynasty, named after its eponymous first ruler Gondophares. They ruled parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India, during or slightly before the 1st century CE. For most of their history, the leading Gondopharid kings held Taxila (in the present Punjab province of Pakistan) as their residence, but during their last few years of existence the capital shifted between Kabul and Peshawar. These kings have traditionally been referred to as Indo-Parthians, as their coinage was often inspired by the Arsacid dynasty, but they probably belonged to a wider groups of Iranic tribes who lived east of Parthia proper, and there is no evidence that all the kings who assumed the title Gondophares, which means \"Holder of Glory\", were even related. Christian writings claim that the Apostle Saint Thomas – an architect and skilled carpenter – had a long sojourn in the court of king Gondophares, had built a palace for the king at Taxila and had also ordained leaders for the Church before leaving for the Indus Valley in a chariot, for sailing out to eventually reach Malabar Coast.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Kushan Empire expanded out of Bactria (Central Asia) into the northwest of the subcontinent under the leadership of their first emperor, Kujula Kadphises, about the middle of the 1st century CE. They came from an Indo-European language speaking Central Asian tribe called the Yuezhi, a branch of which was known as the Kushans. By the time of his grandson, Kanishka the Great, the empire spread to encompass much of Afghanistan, and then the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares).",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of Buddhism; however, as Kushans expanded southward, the deities of their later coinage came to reflect its new Hindu majority.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "They played an important role in the establishment of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent and its spread to Central Asia and China.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Historian Vincent Smith said about Kanishka:",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "He played the part of a second Ashoka in the history of Buddhism.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The empire linked the Indian Ocean maritime trade with the commerce of the Silk Road through the Indus valley, encouraging long-distance trade, particularly between China and Rome. The Kushans brought new trends to the budding and blossoming Gandhara Art, which reached its peak during Kushan Rule.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "H. G. Rowlinson commented:",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Kushan period is a fitting prelude to the Age of the Guptas.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "By the 3rd century, their empire in India was disintegrating and their last known great emperor was Vasudeva I.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "After the Kushan Empire's rule was ended by Sassanids— officially known as the Empire of Iranians— was the last kingdom of the Persian Empire before the rise of Islam. Named after the House of Sasan, it ruled from 224 to 651 AD. In the east around 325, Shapur II regained the upper hand against the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom and took control of large territories in areas now known as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Much of modern-day Afghanistan became part of the Sasanian Empire, since Shapur I extended his authority eastwards into Afghanistan and the previously autonomous Kushans were obliged to accept his suzerainty.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "From around 370, however, towards the end of the reign of Shapur II, the Sassanids lost the control of Bactria to invaders from the north. These were the Kidarites, the Hephthalites, the Alchon Huns, and the Nezaks: The four Huna tribes to rule Afghanistan. These invaders initially issued coins based on Sasanian designs.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Hunas were peoples who were of a group of Central Asian tribes. Four of the Huna tribe conquered and ruled Afghanistan: the Kidarites, Hepthalites, Alchon Huns and the Nezaks.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Kidarites were a nomadic clan, the first of the four Huna people in Afghanistan. They are supposed to have originated in Western China and arrived in Bactria with the great migrations of the second half of the 4th century.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Alchons are one of the four Huna people that ruled in Afghanistan. A group of Central Asian tribes, Hunas or Huna, via the Khyber Pass, entered India at the end of the 5th or early 6th century and successfully occupied areas as far as Eran and Kausambi, greatly weakening the Gupta Empire. The 6th-century Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3), related the Huns of Europe with the Hephthalites or \"White Huns\" who subjugated the Sassanids and invaded northwestern India, stating that they were of the same stock, \"in fact as well as in name\", although he contrasted the Huns with the Hephthalites, in that the Hephthalites were sedentary, white-skinned, and possessed \"not ugly\" features. Song Yun and Hui Zheng, who visited the chief of the Hephthalite nomads at his summer residence in Badakshan and later in Gandhara, observed that they had no belief in the Buddhist law and served a large number of divinities.\"",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites), also known as the White Huns and one of the four Huna people in Afghanistan, were a nomadic confederation in Central Asia during the late antiquity period. The White Huns established themselves in modern-day Afghanistan by the first half of the 5th century. Led by the Hun military leader Toramana, they overran the northern region of Pakistan and North India. Toramana's son Mihirakula, a Saivite Hindu, moved up to near Pataliputra to the east and Gwalior to central India. Hiuen Tsiang narrates Mihirakula's merciless persecution of Buddhists and destruction of monasteries, though the description is disputed as far as the authenticity is concerned. The Huns were defeated by the Indian kings Yasodharman of Malwa and Narasimhagupta in the 6th century. Some of them were driven out of India and others were assimilated in the Indian society.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Nezaks are one of the four Huna people that ruled in Afghanistan.",
"title": "Classical Period (c. 250 BCE – 565 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "From the Middle Ages to around 1750 the eastern regions of Afghanistan such as Kabulistan and Zabulistan (now Kabul, Kandahar and Ghazni) were recognized as being part of Indian subcontinent (Al-Hind), while its western parts were included in Khorasan, Tokharistan and Sistan. Two of the four main capitals of Khorasan (Balkh and Herat) are now located in Afghanistan. The countries of Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul formed the frontier region between Khorasan and the Indus. This land, inhabited by the Afghan tribes (i.e. ancestors of Pashtuns), was called Afghanistan, which loosely covered a wide area between the Hindu Kush and the Indus River, principally around the Sulaiman Mountains. The earliest record of the name \"Afghan\" (\"Abgân\") being mentioned is by Shapur I of the Sassanid Empire during the 3rd century CE which is later recorded in the form of \"Avagānā\" by the Vedic astronomer Varāha Mihira in his 6th century CE Brihat-samhita. It was used to refer to a common legendary ancestor known as \"Afghana\", grandson of King Saul of Israel. Hiven Tsiang, a Chinese pilgrim, visiting the Afghanistan area several times between 630 and 644 CE also speaks about them. Ancestors of many of today's Turkic-speaking Afghans settled in the Hindu Kush area and began to assimilate much of the culture and language of the Pashtun tribes already present there. Among these were the Khalaj people which are known today as Ghilzai.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Kabul Shahi dynasties ruled the Kabul Valley and Gandhara from the decline of the Kushan Empire in the 3rd century to the early 9th century. The Shahis are generally split up into two eras: the Buddhist Shahis and the Hindu Shahis, with the change-over thought to have occurred sometime around 870. The kingdom was known as the Kabul Shahan or Ratbelshahan from 565 to 670, when the capitals were located in Kapisa and Kabul, and later Udabhandapura, also known as Hund for its new capital.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Hindu Shahis under ruler Jayapala, is known for his struggles in defending his kingdom against the Ghaznavids in the modern-day eastern Afghanistan region. Jayapala saw a danger in the consolidation of the Ghaznavids and invaded their capital city of Ghazni both in the reign of Sebuktigin and in that of his son Mahmud, which initiated the Muslim Ghaznavid and Hindu Shahi struggles. Sebuktigin, however, defeated him, and he was forced to pay an indemnity. Jayapala defaulted on the payment and took to the battlefield once more. Jayapala however, lost control of the entire region between the Kabul Valley and Indus River.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Before his struggle began Jaipal had raised a large army of Punjabi Hindus. When Jaipal went to the Punjab region, his army was raised to 100,000 horsemen and an innumerable host of foot soldiers. According to Ferishta:",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The two armies having met on the confines of Lumghan, Subooktugeen ascended a hill to view the forces of Jeipal, which appeared in extent like the boundless ocean, and in number like the ants or the locusts of the wilderness. But Subooktugeen considered himself as a wolf about to attack a flock of sheep: calling, therefore, his chiefs together, he encouraged them to glory, and issued to each his commands. His soldiers, though few in number, were divided into squadrons of five hundred men each, which were directed to attack successively, one particular point of the Hindoo line, so that it might continually have to encounter fresh troops.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "However, the army was hopeless in battle against the western forces, particularly against the young Mahmud of Ghazni. In the year 1001, soon after Sultan Mahmud came to power and was occupied with the Qarakhanids north of the Hindu Kush, Jaipal attacked Ghazni once more and suffered yet another defeat by the powerful Ghaznavid forces, near present-day Peshawar. After the Battle of Peshawar, he committed suicide because his subjects thought he had brought disaster and disgrace to the Shahi dynasty.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Jayapala was succeeded by his son Anandapala, who along with other succeeding generations of the Shahiya dynasty took part in various campaigns against the advancing Ghaznavids but were unsuccessful. The Hindu rulers eventually exiled themselves to the Kashmir Siwalik Hills.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 642 CE, Rashidun Arabs had conquered most of West Asia from the Sassanids and Byzantines, and from the western city of Herat they introduced the religion of Islam as they entered new cities. Afghanistan at that period had a number of different independent rulers, depending on the area. Ancestors of Abū Ḥanīfa, including his father, were from the Kabul region.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The early Arab forces did not fully explore Afghanistan due to attacks by the mountain tribes. Much of the eastern parts of the country remained independent, as part of the Hindu Shahi kingdoms of Kabul and Gandhara, which lasted that way until the forces of the Muslim Saffarid dynasty followed by the Ghaznavids conquered them.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Arab armies carrying the banner of Islam came out of the west to defeat the Sasanians in 642 CE and then they marched with confidence to the east. On the western periphery of the Afghan area the princes of Herat and Seistan gave way to rule by Arab governors but in the east, in the mountains, cities submitted only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their old beliefs once the armies passed. The harshness and avariciousness of Arab rule produced such unrest, however, that once the waning power of the Caliphate became apparent, native rulers once again established themselves independent. Among these the Saffarids of Seistan shone briefly in the Afghan area. The fanatic founder of this dynasty, the persian Yaqub ibn Layth Saffari, came forth from his capital at Zaranj in 870 CE and marched through Bost, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Bamyan, Balkh and Herat, conquering in the name of Islam.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Ghaznavid dynasty ruled from the city of Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan. From 997 to his death in 1030, Mahmud of Ghazni turned the former provincial city of Ghazni into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire which covered most of today's Afghanistan, eastern and central Iran, Pakistan, parts of India, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Mahmud of Ghazni (Mahmude Ghaznavi in local pronunciation) consolidated the conquests of his predecessors and the city of Ghazni became a great cultural centre as well as a base for frequent forays into the Indian subcontinent. The Nasher Khans became princes of the Kharoti until the Soviet invasion.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Ghaznavid dynasty was defeated in 1148 by the Ghurids from Ghor, but the Ghaznavid Sultans continued to live in Ghazni as the 'Nasher' until the early 20th century. The empire was established by three brothers from Ghor region of Afghanistan Qutb al-Din, Sayf al-Din, Baha al-Din which all them fought against Ghaznavid emperor Bahram Shah of Ghazni but were not successful and killed in the process. Initially Ala al-Din Husayn, the son of Baha al-Din defeated the Ghazanavid ruler Bahram Shah and to take revenge of his father and uncle's death ordered the city to be sacked. The Ghorids or Ghurids lost the northern territory of Transoxiana and northern Great Korasan especially their capital Ghor province due to the invasion of Seljucks but Sultan Ala al-Din's successors consolidated their power in India by defeating the remainder of Ghaznavid rulers. At their largest extent they ruled east of Iran, much of the Indian subcontinent like Pakistan, and north and central part of modern India.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The Mongols invaded Afghanistan in 1221 having defeated the Khwarazmian armies. The Mongols invasion had long-term consequences with many parts of Afghanistan never recovering from the devastation. The towns and villages suffered much more than the nomads who were able to avoid attack. The destruction of irrigation systems maintained by the sedentary people led to the shift of the weight of the country towards the hills. The city of Balkh was destroyed and even 100 years later Ibn Battuta described it as a city still in ruins. While the Mongols were pursuing the forces of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu they besieged the city of Bamyan. In the course of the siege a defender's arrow killed Genghis Khan's grandson Mutukan. The Mongols razed the city and massacred its inhabitants in revenge, with its former site known as the City of Screams. Herat, located in a fertile valley, was destroyed as well but was rebuilt under the local Kart dynasty. After the Mongol Empire splintered, Herat eventually became part of the Ilkhanate while Balkh and the strip of land from Kabul through Ghazni to Kandahar went to the Chagatai Khanate. The Afghan tribal areas south of the Hindu Kush were usually either allied with the Khalji dynasty of northern India or independent.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Timur (Tamerlane) incorporated much of the area into his own vast Timurid Empire. The city of Herat became one of the capitals of his empire, and his grandson Pir Muhammad held the seat of Kandahar. Timur rebuilt most of Afghanistan's infrastructure which was destroyed by his early ancestor. The area was progressing under his rule. Timurid rule began declining in the early 16th century with the rise of a new ruler in Kabul, Babur. Timur, a descendant of Genghis Khan, created a vast new empire across Russia and Persia which he ruled from his capital in Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. Timur captured Herat in 1381 and his son, Shah Rukh moved the capital of the Timurid empire to Herat in 1405. The Timurids, a Turkic people, brought the Turkic nomadic culture of Central Asia within the orbit of Persian civilisation, establishing Herat as one of the most cultured and refined cities in the world. This fusion of Central Asian and Persian culture was a major legacy for the future Afghanistan. Under the rule of Shah Rukh the city served as the focal point of the Timurid Renaissance, whose glory matched Florence of the Italian Renaissance as the center of a cultural rebirth. A century later, the emperor Babur, a descendant of Timur, visited Herat and wrote, \"the whole habitable world had not such a town as Herat.\" For the next 300 years the eastern Afghan tribes periodically invaded India creating vast Indo-Afghan empires. In 1500 CE, Babur was driven out of his home in the Ferghana valley. By the 16th century western Afghanistan again reverted to Persian rule under the Safavid dynasty.",
"title": "Middle Ages (565–1504 CE)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 1504, Babur, a descendant of Timur, arrived from present-day Uzbekistan and moved to the city of Kabul. He began exploring new territories in the region, with Kabul serving as his military headquarters. Instead of looking towards the powerful Safavids towards the Persian west, Babur was more focused on the Indian subcontinent. In 1526, he left with his army to capture the seat of the Delhi Sultanate, which at that point was possessed by the Afghan Lodi dynasty of India. After defeating Ibrahim Lodi and his army, Babur turned (Old) Delhi into the capital of his newly established Mughal Empire.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "From the 16th century to the 17th century CE, Afghanistan was divided into three major areas. The north was ruled by the Khanate of Bukhara, the west was under the rule of the Iranian Shia Safavids, and the eastern section was under the Sunni Mughals of northern India, who under Akbar established in Kabul one of the original twelve subahs (imperial top-level provinces), bordering Lahore, Multan and Kashmir (added to Kabul in 1596, later split-off) and short-lived Balkh Subah and Badakhshan Subah (only 1646–47). The Kandahar region in the south served as a buffer zone between the Mughals (who shortly established a Qandahar subah 1638–1648) and Persia's Safavids, with the native Afghans often switching support from one side to the other. Babur explored a number of cities in the region before his campaign into India. In the city of Kandahar, his personal epigraphy can be found in the Chilzina rock mountain. Like in the rest of the territories that used to make part of the Indian Mughal Empire, Afghanistan holds tombs, palaces, and forts built by the Mughals.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 1704, the Safavid Shah Husayn appointed George XI (Gurgīn Khān), a ruthless Georgian subject, to govern their easternmost territories in the Greater Kandahar region. One of Gurgīn's main objectives was to crush the rebellions started by native Afghans. Under his rule the revolts were successfully suppressed and he ruled Kandahar with uncompromising severity. He began imprisoning and executing the native Afghans, especially those suspected in having taken part in the rebellions. One of those arrested and imprisoned was Mirwais Hotak who belonged to an influential family in Kandahar. Mirwais was sent as a prisoner to the Persian court in Isfahan, but the charges against him were dismissed by the king, so he was sent back to his native land as a free man.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In April 1709, Mirwais along with his militia under Saydal Khan Naseri revolted. The uprising began when George XI and his escort were killed after a banquet that had been prepared by Mirwais at his house outside the city. Around four days later, an army of well-trained Georgian troops arrived in the city after hearing of Gurgīn's death, but Mirwais and his Afghan forces successfully held the city against the troops. Between 1710 and 1713, the Afghan forces defeated several large Persian armies that were dispatched from Isfahan by the Safavids, which included Qizilbash and Georgian/Circassian troops.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Several half-hearted attempts to subdue the rebellious city having failed, the Persian Government despatched Khusraw Khán, nephew of the late Gurgín Khán, with an army of 30,000 men to effect its subjugation, but in spite of an initial success, which led the Afghans to offer to surrender on terms, his uncompromising attitude impelled them to make a fresh desperate effort, resulting in the complete defeat of the Persian army (of whom only some 700 escaped) and the death of their general. Two years later, in 1713, another Persian army commanded by Rustam Khán was also defeated by the rebels, who thus secured possession of the whole province of Qandahár.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Southern Afghanistan was made into an independent local Pashtun kingdom. Refusing the title of king, Mirwais was called \"Prince of Qandahár and general of the national troops\" by his Afghan countrymen. He died of natural causes in November 1715 and was succeeded by his brother Abdul Aziz Hotak. Aziz was killed about two years later by Mirwais' son Mahmud Hotaki, allegedly for planning to give Kandahar's sovereignty back to Persia. Mahmud led an Afghan army into Persia in 1722 and defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Gulnabad. The Afghans captured Isfahan (Safavid capital) and Mahmud briefly became the new Persian Shah. He was known after that as Shah Mahmud.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Mahmud began a short-lived reign of terror against his Persian subjects who defied his rule from the very start, and he was eventually murdered in 1725 by his own cousin, Shah Ashraf Hotaki. Some sources say he died of madness . Ashraf became the new Afghan Shah of Persia soon after Mahmud's death, while the home region of Afghanistan was ruled by Mahmud's younger brother Shah Hussain Hotaki. Ashraf was able to secure peace with the Ottoman Empire in 1727 (See Treaty of Hamedan), winning against a superior Ottoman army during the Ottoman-Hotaki War, but the Russian Empire took advantage of the continuing political unrest and civil strife to seize former Persian territories for themselves, limiting the amount of territory under Shah Mahmud's control.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The short lived Hotaki dynasty was a troubled and violent one from the very start as internecine conflict made it difficult for them to establish permanent control. The dynasty lived under great turmoil due to bloody succession feuds that made their hold on power tenuous. There was a massacre of thousands of civilians in Isfahan; including more than three thousand religious scholars, nobles, and members of the Safavid family. The vast majority of the Persians rejected the Afghan regime which they considered to have been usurping power from the very start. Hotaki's rule continued in Afghanistan until 1738 when Shah Hussain was defeated and banished by Nader Shah of Persia.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Hotakis were eventually removed from power in 1729, after a very short lived reign. They were defeated in the October 1729 by the Iranian military commander Nader Shah, head of the Afsharids, at the Battle of Damghan. After several military campaigns against the Afghans, he effectively reduced the Hotaki's power to only southern Afghanistan. The last ruler of the Hotaki dynasty, Shah Hussain, ruled southern Afghanistan until 1738 when the Afsharids and the Abdali Pashtuns defeated him at the long Siege of Kandahar.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Nader Shah and his Afsharid army arrived in the town of Kandahar in 1738 and defeated Hussain Hotaki subsequently absorbing all of Afghanistan in his empire and renaming Kandahar as Naderabad. Around this time, a young teenager Ahmad Shah joined Nader Shah's army for his invasion of India.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Nadir Shah was assassinated on 19 June 1747 by several of his Persian officers, and the Afsharid empire fell to pieces. At the same time the 25-year-old Ahmad Khan was busy in Afghanistan calling for a loya jirga (\"grand assembly\") to select a leader among his people. The Afghans gathered near Kandahar in October 1747 and chose Ahmad Shah from among the challengers, making him their new head of state. After the inauguration or coronation, he became known as Ahmad Shah Durrani. He adopted the title padshah durr-i dawran ('King, \"pearl of the age\") and the Abdali tribe became known as the Durrani tribe after this. Ahmad Shah not only represented the Durranis but he also united all the Pashtun tribes. By 1751, Ahmad Shah Durrani and his Afghan army conquered the entire present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and for a short time, subjugated large swathes of the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran, along with Delhi in India. He defeated the Maratha Empire in 1761 at the Battle of Panipat.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In October 1772, Ahmad Shah retired to his home in Kandahar where he died peacefully and was buried at a site that is now adjacent to the Shrine of the Cloak. He was succeeded by his son, Timur Shah Durrani, who transferred the capital of their Afghan Empire from Kandahar to Kabul. Timur died in 1793 and his son Zaman Shah Durrani took over the reign.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Zaman Shah and his brothers had a weak hold on the legacy left to them by their famous ancestor. They sorted out their differences through a \"round robin of expulsions, blindings and executions,\" which resulted in the deterioration of the Afghan hold over far-flung territories, such as Attock and Kashmir. Durrani's other grandson, Shuja Shah Durrani, fled the wrath of his brother and sought refuge with the Sikhs. Not only had Durrani invaded the Punjab region many times, but had destroyed the holiest shrine of the Sikhs – the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, defiling its sarowar with the blood of cows and decapitating Baba Deep Singh in 1757. The Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, eventually wrested a large part of the Durrani Kingdom (present day Pakistan, but not including Sindh) from the Afghans while they were in civil war.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The Emir Dost Mohammed Khan (1793–1863) gained control in Kabul in 1826 after toppling his brother, Sultan Mohammad Khan, and founded (c. 1837) the Barakzai dynasty. In 1837, the Afghan army descended through the Khyber Pass on Sikh forces at Jamrud killed the Sikh general Hari Singh Nalwa but could not capture the fort. Rivalry between the expanding British and Russian Empires in what became known as \"The Great Game\" significantly influenced Afghanistan during the 19th century. British concern over Russian advances in Central Asia and over Russia's growing influence in West Asia and in Persia in particular culminated in two Anglo-Afghan wars and in the Siege of Herat (1837–1838), in which the Persians, trying to retake Afghanistan and throw out the British, sent armies into the country and fought the British mostly around and in the city of Herat. The first Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842) resulted in the destruction of a British army; causing great panic throughout British India and the dispatch of a second British invasion army. Following the British defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan War, where they tried to re-establish the Durrani Kingdom as a de facto vassal, Dost Mohammad could focus on reuniting Afghanistan, which was divided following the Durrani-Barakzai civil wars. Dost Mohammad began his conquest while only ruling the major cities of Kabul, Ghazni, Jalalabad, and Bamyan. By the time of his death in 1863, Dost Mohammad had reunited most of Afghanistan. Following Dost Mohammad's death, a civil war broke out amongst his sons, leading to Sher Ali succeeding and beginning his rule. The Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880) resulted from the refusal by Emir Shir Ali (reigned 1863 to 1866 and from 1868 to 1879) to accept a British diplomatic mission in Kabul. In the wake of this conflict Shir Ali's nephew, Emir Abdur Rahman, known as \"Iron Emir\", came to the Afghan throne. During his reign (1880–1901), the British and Russians officially established the boundaries of what would become modern Afghanistan. The British retained effective control over Kabul's foreign affairs. Abdur Rahman's reforms of the army, legal system and structure of government gave Afghanistan a degree of unity and stability which it had not before known. This, however, came at the cost of strong centralisation, of harsh punishments for crime and corruption, and of a certain degree of international isolation.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Habibullah Khan, Abdur Rahman's son, came to the throne in 1901 and kept Afghanistan neutral during World War I, despite encouragement by Central Powers of anti-British feelings and of Afghan rebellion along the borders of India. His policy of neutrality was not universally popular within the country, and Habibullah was assassinated in 1919, possibly by family members opposed to British influence. His third son, Amanullah (r. 1919–1929), regained control of Afghanistan's foreign policy after launching the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May to August 1919) with an attack on India. During the ensuing conflict the war-weary British relinquished their control over Afghan foreign affairs by signing the Treaty of Rawalpindi in August 1919. In commemoration of this event Afghans celebrate 19 August as their Independence Day.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "King Amanullah Khan moved to end his country's traditional isolation in the years following the Third Anglo-Afghan war. After quelling the Khost rebellion in 1925, he established diplomatic relations with most major countries and, following a 1927 tour of Europe and Turkey (during which he noted the modernization and secularization advanced by Atatürk), introduced several reforms intended to modernize Afghanistan. A key force behind these reforms was Mahmud Tarzi, Amanullah Khan's Foreign Minister and father-in-law — and an ardent supporter of the education of women. He fought for Article 68 of Afghanistan's first constitution (declared through a Loya Jirga), which made elementary education compulsory. Some of the reforms that were actually put in place, such as the abolition of the traditional Muslim veil for women and the opening of a number of co-educational schools, quickly alienated many tribal and religious leaders, which led to the revolt of the Shinwari in November 1928, marking the beginning of the Afghan Civil War (1928–1929). Although the Shinwari revolt was quelled, a concurrent Saqqawist uprising in the north eventually managed to depose Amanullah, leading to Habibullāh Kalakāni taking control of Kabul.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Mohammed Nadir Khan became King of Afghanistan on 15 October 1929 after he took control of Afghanistan by defeating the Habibullah Kalakani. He then executed him in 1 November of same year. He began consolidating power and regenerating the country. He abandoned the reforms of Amanullah Khan in favour of a more gradual approach to modernisation. In 1933, however, he was assassinated in a revenge killing by a student from Kabul.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Mohammad Zahir Shah, Nadir Khan's 19-year-old son, succeeded to the throne and reigned from 1933 to 1973. The Afghan tribal revolts of 1944–1947 saw Zahir Shah's reign being challenged by Zadran, Safi and Mangal tribesmen led by Mazrak Zadran and Salemai among others. Until 1946 Zahir Shah ruled with the assistance of his uncle Sardar Mohammad Hashim Khan, who held the post of Prime Minister and continued the policies of Nadir Khan. In 1946, another of Zahir Shah's uncles, Sardar Shah Mahmud Khan, became Prime Minister and began an experiment allowing greater political freedom, but reversed the policy when it went further than he expected. In 1953, he was replaced as Prime Minister by Mohammed Daoud Khan, the king's cousin and brother-in-law. Daoud looked for a closer relationship with the Soviet Union and a more distant one towards Pakistan. However, disputes with Pakistan led to an economic crisis and he was asked to resign in 1963. From 1963 until 1973, Zahir Shah took a more active role.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 1964, King Zahir Shah promulgated a liberal constitution providing for a bicameral legislature to which the king appointed one-third of the deputies. The people elected another third, and the remainder were selected indirectly by provincial assemblies. Although Zahir's \"experiment in democracy\" produced few lasting reforms, it permitted the growth of parties on both the left and the right. This included the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had close ideological ties to the Soviet Union. In 1967, the PDPA split into two major rival factions: the Khalq (Masses) was headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin who were supported by elements within the military, and the Parcham (Banner) led by Babrak Karmal.",
"title": "Modern era (1504–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Amid corruption charges and malfeasance against the royal family and the poor economic conditions created by the severe 1971–72 drought, former Prime Minister Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup on July 17, 1973, while Zahir Shah was receiving treatment for eye problems and therapy for lumbago in Italy. Daoud abolished the monarchy, abrogated the 1964 constitution, and declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as its first President and Prime Minister. His attempts to carry out badly needed economic and social reforms met with little success, and the new constitution promulgated in February 1977 failed to quell chronic political instability.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "As disillusionment set in, in 1978 a prominent member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Mir Akbar Khyber (or \"Kaibar\"), was killed by the government. The leaders of PDPA apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all, especially since most of them were arrested by the government shortly after. Nonetheless, Hafizullah Amin and a number of military wing officers of the PDPA's Khalq faction managed to remain at large and organize a military coup.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "On 28 April 1978, the PDPA, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Amin Taha overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud, who was assassinated along with all his family members in a bloody military coup. The coup became known as the Saur Revolution. On 1 May, Taraki became head of state, head of government and General Secretary of the PDPA. The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), and the PDPA regime lasted, in some form or another, until April 1992.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In March 1979, Hafizullah Amin took over as prime minister, retaining the position of field marshal and becoming vice-president of the Supreme Defence Council. Taraki remained General Secretary, Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and in control of the Army. On 14 September, Amin overthrew Taraki, who was killed. Amin stated that \"the Afghans recognize only crude force.\" Afghanistan expert Amin Saikal writes: \"As his powers grew, so apparently did his craving for personal dictatorship ... and his vision of the revolutionary process based on terror.\"",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Once it was in power, the PDPA implemented a Marxist–Leninist agenda. It moved to replace religious and traditional laws with secular and Marxist–Leninist ones. Men were obliged to cut their beards, women could not wear chadors, and mosques were declared off limits. The PDPA made a number of reforms on women's rights, banning forced marriages and giving state recognition of women's right to vote. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978) which declared: \"Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country ... Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention.\" The PDPA also carried out socialist land reforms and moved to promote state atheism. They also prohibited usury. The PDPA invited the Soviet Union to assist in modernizing its economic infrastructure (predominantly its exploration and mining of rare minerals and natural gas). The Soviet Union also sent contractors to build roads, hospitals and schools and to drill water wells; they also trained and equipped the Afghan Armed Forces. Upon the PDPA's ascension to power, and the establishment of the DRA, the Soviet Union promised monetary aid amounting to at least $1.262 billion.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "At the same time, the PDPA imprisoned, tortured or murdered thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia. The government launched a campaign of violent repression, killing some 10,000 to 27,000 people and imprisoning 14,000 to 20,000 more, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison. In December 1978 the PDPA leadership signed an agreement with the Soviet Union which would allow military support for the PDPA in Afghanistan if needed. The majority of people in the cities including Kabul either welcomed or were ambivalent to these policies. However, the Marxist–Leninist and secular nature of the government as well as its heavy dependence on the Soviet Union made it unpopular with a majority of the Afghan population. Repressions plunged large parts of the country, especially the rural areas, into open revolt against the new Marxist–Leninist government. By spring 1979 unrests had reached 24 out of 28 Afghan provinces including major urban areas. Over half of the Afghan army would either desert or join the insurrection. Most of the government's new policies clashed directly with the traditional Afghan understanding of Islam, making religion one of the only forces capable of unifying the tribally and ethnically divided population against the unpopular new government, and ushering in the advent of Islamist participation in Afghan politics.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "To bolster the Parcham faction, the Soviet Union decided to intervene on December 27, 1979, when the Red Army invaded its southern neighbor. Over 100,000 Soviet troops took part in the invasion, which was backed by another 100,000 Afghan military men and supporters of the Parcham faction. In the meantime, Hafizullah Amin was killed and replaced by Babrak Karmal.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The Carter administration started providing limited assistance to rebels before the Soviet invasion. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. began arming the Afghan mujahideen, thanks in large part to the efforts of Charlie Wilson and CIA officer Gust Avrakotos. Early reports estimated that $6–20 billion had been spent by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia but more recent reports state that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia provided as much as up to $40 billion in cash and weapons, which included over two thousand FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, for building up Islamic groups against the Soviet Union. The U.S. handled most of its support through Pakistan's ISI.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Scholars such as W. Michael Reisman, Charles Norchi and Mohammed Kakar, believe that the Afghans were victims of a genocide which was committed against them by the Soviet Union. Soviet forces and their proxies killed between 562,000 and 2 million Afghans and Russian soldiers also engaged in abductions and rapes of Afghan women. About 6 million fled as Afghan refugees to Pakistan and Iran, and from there over 38,000 made it to the United States and many more to the European Union. The Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan brought with them verifiable stories of murder, collective rape, torture and depopulation of civilians by the Soviet forces. Faced with mounting international pressure and great number of casualties on both sides, the Soviets withdrew in 1989. Their withdrawal from Afghanistan was seen as an ideological victory in the United States, which had backed some Mujahideen factions through three U.S. presidential administrations to counter Soviet influence in the vicinity of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The USSR continued to support Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah (former head of the Afghan secret service, KHAD) until 1992.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), headed by Hamid Gul at the time, was interested in a trans-national Islamic revolution which would cover Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. For this purpose the ISI masterminded an attack on Jalalabad in March 1989, for the Mujahideen to establish their own government in Afghanistan, but this failed in three months.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "With the crumbling of the Najibullah regime early in 1992, Afghanistan fell into further disarray and civil war. A U.N.-supported attempt to have the mujahideen parties and armies form a coalition government shattered. Mujahideen did not abide by the mutual pledges and Ahmad Shah Masood forces because of his proximity to Kabul captured the capital before Mujahideen Govt was established. So the elected prime minister and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, started war on his president and Massod force entrenched in Kabul. This ignited civil war, because the other mujahideen parties would not settle for Hekmatyar ruling alone or sharing actual power with him. Within weeks, the still frail unity of the other mujahideen forces also evaporated, and six militias were fighting each other in and around Kabul.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Sibghatuallah Mojaddedi was elected as Afghanistan's elected interim president for two months and then professor Burhanuddin Rabbani a well known Kabul university professor and the leader of Jamiat-e-Islami party of Mujahiddin who fought against Russians during the occupation was chosen by all of the Jahadi leaders except Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Rabbani reigned as the official and elected president of Afghanistan by Shurai Mujahiddin Peshawer (Peshawer Mujahiddin Council) from 1992 until 2001 when he officially handed over the presidency post to Hamid Karzai the next US appointed interim president. During Rabbani's presidency some parts of the country including a few provinces in the north such as Mazar e-Sharif, Jawzjan, Faryab, Shuburghan and some parts of Baghlan provinces were ruled by general Abdul Rashid Dostum. During Rabbani's first five years illegal term before the emergence of the Taliban, the eastern and western provinces and some of the northern provinces such as Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz, the main parts of Baghlan Province, and some parts of Kandahar and other southern provinces were under the control of the central government while the other parts of southern provinces did not obey him because of his Tajik ethnicity. During the 9 year presidency of Burhanuddin Rabani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was directed, funded and supplied by the Pakistani army. Afghanistan analyst Amin Saikal concludes in his book Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Pakistan was keen to gear up for a breakthrough in Central Asia. [...] Islamabad could not possibly expect the new Islamic government leaders [...] to subordinate their own nationalist objectives in order to help Pakistan realize its regional ambitions. [...] Had it not been for the ISI's logistic support and supply of a large number of rockets, Hekmatyar's forces would not have been able to target and destroy half of Kabul.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "There was no time for the interim government to create working government departments, police units or a system of justice and accountability. Saudi Arabia and Iran also armed and directed Afghan militias. A publication by the George Washington University describes:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "[O]utside forces saw instability in Afghanistan as an opportunity to press their own security and political agendas.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "According to Human Rights Watch, numerous Iranian agents were assisting the Shia Hezb-i Wahdat forces of Abdul Ali Mazari, as Iran was attempting to maximize Wahdat's military power and influence. Saudi Arabia was trying to strengthen the Wahhabite Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and his Ittihad-i Islami faction. Atrocities were committed by individuals of the different factions while Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. Again, Human Rights Watch writes:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Rare ceasefires, usually negotiated by representatives of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi or Burhanuddin Rabbani (the interim government), or officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commonly collapsed within days.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The main forces involved during that period in Kabul, northern, central and eastern Afghanistan were the Hezb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar directed by Pakistan, the Hezb-i Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari directed by Iran, the Ittehad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf supported by Saudi Arabia, the Junbish-i Milli of Abdul Rashid Dostum backed by Uzbekisten, the Harakat-i Islami of Hussain Anwari and the Shura-i Nazar operating as the regular Islamic State forces (as agreed upon in the Peshawar Accords) under the Defence Ministry of Ahmad Shah Massoud.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Meanwhile, the southern city of Kandahar was a centre of lawlessness, crime and atrocities fuelled by complex Pashtun tribal rivalries. In 1994, the Taliban (a movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-run religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan) also developed in Afghanistan as a politico-religious force, reportedly in opposition to the tyranny of the local governor. Mullah Omar started his movement with fewer than 50 armed madrassah students in his hometown of Kandahar. As Gulbuddin Hekmatyar remained unsuccessful in conquering Kabul, Pakistan started supporting the Taliban. Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests. In 1994 the Taliban took power in several provinces in southern and central Afghanistan.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "In 1995 the Hezb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Iranian-backed Hezb-i Wahdat as well as Rashid Dostum's Junbish forces were defeated militarily in the capital Kabul by forces of the interim government under Massoud who subsequently tried to initiate a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation and democratic elections, also inviting the Taliban to join the process. The Taliban declined.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. Amnesty International, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "This is the first time in several months that Kabul civilians have become the targets of rocket attacks and shelling aimed at residential areas in the city.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban, with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia, prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban seized Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed on the parts of Afghanistan under their control their political and judicial interpretation of Islam, issuing edicts forbidding women from working outside the home, attending school or leaving their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "To PHR's knowledge, no other regime in the world has methodically and violently forced half of its population into virtual house arrest, prohibiting them on pain of physical punishment.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on September 27, 1996, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two former enemies, created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban, who were preparing offensives against the remaining areas under the control of Massoud and Dostum. The United Front included beside the dominantly Tajik forces of Massoud and the Uzbek forces of Dostum, Hazara factions and Pashtun forces under the leadership of commanders such as Abdul Haq, Haji Abdul Qadir, Qari Baba or diplomat Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001 the United Front controlled roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population in provinces such as Badakhshan, Kapisa, Takhar and parts of Parwan, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been \"15 massacres\" between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that \"[t]hese have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the [Taliban] Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself.\" The Taliban especially targeted people of Shia religious or Hazara ethnic background. Upon taking Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, about 4,000 civilians were executed by the Taliban and many more reported torture. Among those killed in Mazari Sharif were several Iranian diplomats. Others were kidnapped by the Taliban, touching off a hostage crisis that nearly escalated to a full-scale war, with 150,000 Iranian soldiers massed on the Afghan border at one time. It was later admitted that the diplomats were killed by the Taliban, and their bodies were returned to Iran.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in these killings. Osama bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Massoud. In total there were believed to be 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting inside Afghanistan. 20,000 were regular Pakistani soldiers either from the Frontier Corps or army and an estimated 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks. The estimated 25,000 Taliban regular force thus comprised more than 8,000 Pakistani nationals. A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that \"20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani.\" The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals \"know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan.\" A further 3,000 fighter of the regular Taliban army were Arab and Central Asian militants. From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state. Bin Laden sent Arab recruits to join the fight against the United Front. Of roughly 45,000 Pakistani, Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers fighting against the forces of Massoud only 14,000 were Afghan.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "According to Human Rights Watch in 1997 Taliban soldiers were summarily executed in and around Mazar-i Sharif by Dostum's Junbish forces. Dostum was defeated by the Taliban in 1998 with the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif. Massoud remained the only leader of the United Front in Afghanistan.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In the areas under his control Ahmad Shah Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women's Rights Charter. Human Rights Watch cites no human rights crimes for the forces under direct control of Massoud for the period from October 1996 until the assassination of Massoud in September 2001. As a consequence many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud. National Geographic concluded in its documentary Inside the Taliban:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined for he did not fight to obtain a position of power. He said in one interview:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The Taliban say: \"Come and accept the post of prime minister and be with us\", and they would keep the highest office in the country, the presidentship. But for what price?! The difference between us concerns mainly our way of thinking about the very principles of the society and the state. We can not accept their conditions of compromise, or else we would have to give up the principles of modern democracy. We are fundamentally against the system called \"the Emirate of Afghanistan\".",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "and",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "There should be an Afghanistan where every Afghan finds himself or herself happy. And I think that can only be assured by democracy based on consensus.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future. Massoud stated that:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The Taliban are not a force to be considered invincible. They are distanced from the people now. They are weaker than in the past. There is only the assistance given by Pakistan, Osama bin Laden and other extremist groups that keep the Taliban on their feet. With a halt to that assistance, it is extremely difficult to survive.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In early 2001 Massoud employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. Massoud publicized their cause \"popular consensus, general elections and democracy\" worldwide. At the same time he was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999 he started the training of police forces which he trained specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced \"a very wrong perception of Islam\" and that without the support of Pakistan the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide attackers inside Afghanistan. Two days later about 3,000 people became victims of the September 11 attacks in the United States, when Afghan-based Al-Qaeda suicide bombers hijacked planes and flew them into four targets in the Northeastern United States. Then US President George W. Bush accused Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the faces behind the attacks. When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to US authorities and to disband al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom was launched in which teams of American and British special forces worked with commanders of the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban. At the same time the US-led forces were bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda targets everywhere inside Afghanistan with cruise missiles. These actions led to the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north followed by all the other cities, as the Taliban and al-Qaeda crossed over the porous Durand Line border into Pakistan. In December 2001, after the Taliban government was toppled and the new Afghan government under Hamid Karzai was formed, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council to help assist the Karzai administration and provide basic security to the Afghan people. The majority of Afghans supported the American invasion of their country.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "While the Taliban began regrouping inside Pakistan, the rebuilding of war-torn Afghanistan kicked off in 2002 (see also War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)). The Afghan nation was able to build democratic structures over the years by the creation of an emergency loya jirga to set up the modern Afghan government, and some progress was made in key areas such as governance, economy, health, education, transport, and agriculture. NATO had been training the Afghan armed forces as well its national police. ISAF and Afghan troops led many offensives against the Taliban but failed to fully defeat them. By 2009, a Taliban-led shadow government began to form in many parts of the country complete with their own version of mediation court. After U.S. President Barack Obama announced the deployment of another 30,000 soldiers in 2010 for a period of two years, Der Spiegel published images of the US soldiers who killed unarmed Afghan civilians.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "In 2009, the United States resettled 328 refugees from Afghanistan. Over five million Afghan refugees were repatriated in the last decade, including many who were forcefully deported from NATO countries. This large return of Afghans may have helped the nation's economy but the country still remains one of the poorest in the world due to the decades of war, lack of foreign investment, ongoing government corruption and the Pakistani-backed Taliban insurgency. The United States also accuses neighboring Iran of providing small level of support to the Taliban insurgents. According to a report by the United Nations, the Taliban and other militants were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "In October 2008 U.S. Defense Secretary Gates had asserted that a political settlement with the Taliban was the endgame for the Afghanistan war. \"There has to be ultimately – and I'll underscore ultimately – reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this,\" Gates stated. By 2010 peace efforts began. In early January, Taliban commanders held secret exploratory talks with a United Nations special envoy to discuss peace terms. Regional commanders on the Taliban's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, sought a meeting with the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and it took place in Dubai on January 8. It was the first such meeting between the UN and senior members of the Taliban. On 26 January 2010, at a major conference in London which brought together some 70 countries and organizations, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he intends to reach out to the Taliban leadership (including Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar). Supported by NATO, Karzai called on the group's leadership to take part in a loya jirga meeting to initiate peace talks. These steps have resulted in an intensification of bombings, assassinations and ambushes. Some Afghan groups (including the former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh and opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah) believe that Karzai plans to appease the insurgents' senior leadership at the cost of the democratic constitution, the democratic process and progress in the field of human rights especially women's rights. Dr. Abdullah stated:",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "I should say that Taliban are not fighting in order to be accommodated. They are fighting in order to bring the state down. So it's a futile exercise, and it's just misleading. ... There are groups that will fight to the death. Whether we like to talk to them or we don't like to talk to them, they will continue to fight. So, for them, I don't think that we have a way forward with talks or negotiations or contacts or anything as such. Then we have to be prepared to tackle and deal with them militarily. In terms of the Taliban on the ground, there are lots of possibilities and opportunities that with the help of the people in different parts of the country, we can attract them to the peace process; provided, we create a favorable environment on this side of the line. At the moment, the people are leaving support for the government because of corruption. So that expectation is also not realistic at this stage.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Afghan President Hamid Karzai told world leaders during the London conference that he intends to reach out to the top echelons of the Taliban within a few weeks with a peace initiative. Karzai set the framework for dialogue with Taliban leaders when he called on the group's leadership to take part in a \"loya jirga\" – or large assembly of elders – to initiate peace talks. Karzai also asked for creation of a new peacemaking organization, to be called the National Council for Peace, Reconciliation and Reintegration. Karzai's top adviser on the reconciliation process with the insurgents said that the country must learn to forgive the Taliban. In March 2010, the Karzai government held preliminary talks with Hezb-i-Islami, who presented a plan which included the withdrawal of all foreign troops by the end of 2010. The Taliban declined to participate, saying \"The Islamic Emirate has a clear position. We have said this many, many times. There will be no talks when there are foreign troops on Afghanistan's soil killing innocent Afghans on daily basis.\" In June 2010 the Afghan Peace Jirga 2010 took place. In September 2010 General David Petraeus commented on the progress of peace talks to date, stating, \"The prospect for reconciliation with senior Taliban leaders certainly looms out there...and there have been approaches at (a) very senior level that hold some promise.\"",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "After the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, many prominent Afghan figures began being assassinated, including Mohammed Daud Daud, Ahmad Wali Karzai, Jan Mohammad Khan, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, Burhanuddin Rabbani and others. Also in the same year, the Pakistani-Afghan border skirmishes intensified and many large scale attacks by the Pakistani-based Haqqani network took place across Afghanistan. This led to the United States warning Pakistan of a possible military action against the Haqqanis in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The U.S. blamed Pakistan's government, mainly Pakistani Army and its ISI spy network as the masterminds behind all of this.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence. They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, told Radio Pakistan that \"The attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago, that was the work of the Haqqani network. There is evidence linking the Haqqani Network to the Pakistan government. This is something that must stop.\" Other top U.S. officials such as Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta made similar statements. On October 16, 2011, \"Operation Knife Edge\" was launched by NATO and Afghan forces against the Haqqani network in south-eastern Afghanistan. Afghan Defense Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, explained that the operation will \"help eliminate the insurgents before they struck in areas along the troubled frontier\". In November 2011, NATO forces attacked Pakistani soldiers in the Pakistan border region. In 2014, Ashraf Ghani was elected to be the president of Afghanistan.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In 2021, the United States forces and allies withdrew from Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to intensify their insurgency. On 15 August 2021, as the Taliban entered Kabul, President Ghani fled to Tajikistan, and the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed. Anti-Taliban forces formed the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and launched an uprising from the Panjshir Valley.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "On 7 September 2021 Taliban announced an interim government headed by Mohammad Hassan Akhund, although the government remained unrecognized internationally.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Western countries have suspended most humanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the country in August 2021. The United States has frozen about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. bank accounts. In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage. On 11 November 2021, the Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Program has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity.",
"title": "Contemporary era (1973–present)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "online Archived 2021-09-09 at the Wayback Machine",
"title": "Further reading"
}
]
| The history of Afghanistan, preceding the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1823 is shared with that of neighbouring Iran, central Asia and Indian subcontinent. The Sadozai monarchy ruled the Afghan Durrani Empire, considered the founding state of modern Afghanistan. Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic era, and the country's strategic location along the historic Silk Road has led it to being described, picturesquely, as the ‘roundabout of the ancient world’. The land has historically been home to various peoples and has witnessed numerous military campaigns, including those by the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Maurya Empire, Arab Muslims, the Mongols, the British, the Soviet Union, and most recently by a US-led coalition. The various conquests and periods in both the Indian and Iranian cultural spheres made the area a center for, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and later Islam throughout history. The Durrani Empire is considered to be the foundational polity of the modern nation-state of Afghanistan, with Ahmad Shah Durrani being credited as its Father of the Nation. However, Dost Mohammad Khan is sometimes considered to be the founder of the first modern Afghan state. Following the Durrani Empire's decline and the death of Ahmad Shah Durrani and Timur Shah, it was divided into multiple smaller independent kingdoms, including but not limited to Herat, Kandahar and Kabul. Afghanistan would be reunited in the 19th century after seven decades of civil war from 1793 to 1863, with wars of unification led by Dost Mohammad Khan from 1823 to 1863, where he conquered the independent principalities of Afghanistan under the Emirate of Kabul. Dost Mohammad died in 1863, days after his last campaign to unite Afghanistan, and Afghanistan was consequently thrown back into civil war with fighting amongst his successors. During this time, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the Great Game between the British Raj in South Asia and the Russian Empire. The British Raj attempted to subjugate Afghanistan but was repelled in the First Anglo-Afghan War. However, the Second Anglo-Afghan War saw a British victory and the successful establishment of British political influence over Afghanistan. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Afghanistan became free of foreign political hegemony, and emerged as the independent Kingdom of Afghanistan in June 1926 under Amanullah Khan. This monarchy lasted almost half a century, until Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973, following which the Republic of Afghanistan was established. Since the late 1970s, Afghanistan's history has been dominated by extensive warfare, including coups, invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars. The conflict began in 1978 when a communist revolution established a socialist state, and subsequent infighting prompted the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in 1979. Mujahideen fought against the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War and continued fighting amongst themselves following the Soviets' withdrawal in 1989. The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban controlled most of the country by 1996, but their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan received little international recognition before its overthrow in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power in 2021 after capturing Kabul and overthrowing the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, thus bringing an end to the 2001–2021 war. Although initially claiming it would form an inclusive government for the country, in September 2021 the Taliban re-established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with an interim government made up entirely of Taliban members. The Taliban government remains internationally unrecognized. | 2001-11-19T21:25:42Z | 2023-12-29T19:23:04Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan |
13,814 | History of modern Greece | The history of modern Greece covers the history of Greece from the recognition by the Great Powers — Britain, France and Russia — of its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1828 to the present day.
The Byzantine Empire had ruled most of the Greek-speaking world since late Antiquity, but experienced a decline as a result of Muslim Arab and Seljuk Turkish invasions and was fatally weakened by the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204. The establishment of Catholic Latin states on Greek soil, and the struggles of the Orthodox Byzantine Greeks against them, led to the emergence of a distinct Greek national identity. The Byzantine Empire was restored by the Palaiologos dynasty in 1261, but it was a shadow of its former self, and constant civil wars and foreign attacks in the 14th century brought about its terminal decline. As a result, most of Greece gradually became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the conquest of the Duchy of Athens in 1458, and of the Despotate of the Morea in 1460.
Ottoman control was largely absent in the mountainous interior of Greece, and many fled there, often becoming brigands. Otherwise, only the islands of the Aegean and a few coastal fortresses on the mainland, under Venetian and Genoese rule, remained free from Ottoman rule, but by the mid-16th century, the Ottomans had conquered most of them as well. Rhodes fell in 1522, Cyprus in 1571, and the Venetians retained Crete until 1670. The Ionian Islands were only briefly ruled by the Ottomans (Kefalonia from 1479 to 1481 and from 1485 to 1500), and remained primarily under the rule of Venice.
The first large-scale insurrection against Ottoman rule was the Orlov Revolt of the early 1770s, but it was brutally repressed. The same time, however, also marks the start of the Modern Greek Enlightenment, as Greeks who studied in Western Europe brought knowledge and ideas back to their homeland, and as Greek merchants and shipowners increased their wealth. As a result, especially in the aftermath of the French Revolution, liberal and nationalist ideas began to spread across the Greek lands.
In 1821, the Greeks rose up against the Ottoman Empire. Initial successes were followed by infighting, which almost caused the Greek struggle to collapse; nevertheless, the prolongation of the fight forced the Great Powers (Britain, Russia and France) to recognize the claims of the Greek rebels to separate statehood (Treaty of London) and intervene against the Ottomans at the Battle of Navarino. Greece was initially to be an autonomous state under Ottoman suzerainty, but by 1832, in the Treaty of Constantinople, it was recognized as a fully independent kingdom. In the meantime, the 3rd National Assembly of the Greek insurgents called upon Ioannis Kapodistrias, a former foreign minister of Russia, to take over the governance of the fledgling state in 1827.
On his arrival, Kapodistrias launched a major reform and modernisation programme that covered all areas. He re-established military unity by bringing an end to the second phase of the civil war; re-organised the military, which was then able to reconquer territory lost to the Ottoman military during the civil wars; and introduced the first modern quarantine system in Greece, which brought diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery under control for the first time since the start of the War of Independence.
Kapodistrias also negotiated with the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire to establish the borders and degree of independence of the Greek state; signed the peace treaty that ended the War of Independence with the Ottomans; introduced the phoenix, the first modern Greek currency; organised local administration; and, in an effort to raise the living standards of the population, introduced the cultivation of the potato into Greece.
Furthermore, he tried to undermine the authority of the traditional clans (or dynasties) that he considered the useless legacy of a bygone and obsolete era. However, he underestimated the political and military strength of the capetanei (καπεταναίοι – commanders) who had led the revolt against Ottoman Empire in 1821, and who had expected a leadership role in the post-revolution Government. When a dispute between the capetanei of Laconia and the appointed governor of the province escalated into an armed conflict, he called in Russian troops to restore order, because much of the army was controlled by capetanei who had been part of the rebellion.
George Finlay's 1861 History of Greek Revolution records that by 1831 Kapodistrias's government had become hated, chiefly by the independent Maniots, but also by the Roumeliotes and the rich and influential merchant families of Hydra, Spetses and Psara. The customs dues of the inhabitants of Hydra were the chief source of revenue for these municipalities, and they refused to hand these over to Kapodistrias. It appears that Kapodistrias had refused to convene the National Assembly and was ruling as a despot, possibly influenced by his Russian experiences. The municipality of Hydra instructed Admiral Miaoulis and Alexandros Mavrokordatos to go to Poros and seize the Hellenic Navy's fleet there. This Miaoulis did so with the intention of preventing a blockade of the islands, so for a time it seemed as if the National Assembly would be called.
Kapodistrias called on the British and French residents to support him in putting down the rebellion, but this they refused to do. Nonetheless, an Admiral Rikord (or Ricord) took his ships north to Poros. Colonel (later General) Kallergis took a half-trained force of Greek Army regulars and a force of irregulars in support. With less than 200 men, Miaoulis was unable to make much of a fight; Fort Heidek on Bourtzi Island was overrun by the regulars and the brig Spetses (once Laskarina Bouboulina's Agamemnon) sunk by Ricord's force. Encircled by the Russians in the harbor and Kallergis' force on land, Poros surrendered. Miaoulis was forced to set charges in the flagship Hellas and the corvette Hydra to blow them up when he and his handful of followers returned to Hydra. Kallergis' men were enraged by the loss of the ships and sacked Poros, carrying off plunder to Nauplion.
The loss of the best ships in the fleet crippled the Hellenic Navy for many years, but it also weakened Kapodistrias' position. He did finally call the National Assembly, but his other actions triggered more opposition and that led to his downfall.
In 1831, Kapodistrias ordered the imprisonment of Petrobey Mavromichalis, the Bey of the Mani Peninsula, one of the wildest and most rebellious parts of Greece. This was a mortal offence to the Mavromichalis family, and on 9 October 1831 (27 September in the Julian Calendar) Kapodistrias was assassinated by Petros' brother Konstantis and son Georgios on the steps of the church of Saint Spyridon in Nafplio.
Ioannis Kapodistrias was succeeded as Governor by his younger brother, Augustinos Kapodistrias. Augustinos ruled only for six months, during which the country was very much plunged into chaos. Under the protocol signed at the London Conference of 1832 on 7 May 1832 between Bavaria and the protecting Powers, Greece was defined as an independent kingdom, free of Ottoman control, with the Arta-Volos line as its northern frontier. The protocol also dealt with the way in which a Regency was to be managed until Otto of Bavaria reached his majority to assume the throne of Greece. The Ottoman Empire was indemnified in the sum of 40,000,000 piastres for the loss of territory in the new kingdom.
Otto's reign would prove troubled, but he managed to hang on for 30 years before he and his wife, Queen Amalia, left the same way they came, aboard a British warship. During the early years of his reign, a group of Bavarian regents ruled in his name, and they made themselves very unpopular by trying to impose German ideas of rigid hierarchical government on the Greeks, while keeping most significant state offices away from them. Nevertheless, they laid the foundations of a Greek administration, army, justice system and education system. Otto was sincere in his desire to give Greece good government, but he suffered from two great handicaps: his Roman Catholic faith and his childless marriage to Queen Amalia. This meant he could neither be crowned as King of Greece under the Orthodox rite nor establish a dynasty.
Otto came of age in 1835 and assumed the reins of government, but Bavarians remained as heads of the government until 1837. Otto thereafter appointed Greek ministers, although Bavarian officials still ran much of the army. At this time, Greece still had no legislature and no constitution. Discontent at the continued "Bavarocracy" grew until the 3 September 1843 Revolution broke out in Athens. Otto agreed to grant a constitution and convened a National Assembly that met in November of the same year. The Greek Constitution of 1844 then created a bicameral parliament consisting of an Assembly (Vouli) and a Senate (Gerousia). Power then passed into the hands of a group of Greek politicians, most of whom who had been commanders in the War of Independence against the Ottomans.
Greek politics in the 19th century was dominated by the "national question". The majority of Greeks continued to live under Ottoman rule, and Greeks dreamed of liberating them all and reconstituting a state embracing all the Greek lands, with Constantinople as its capital. This was called the Great Idea (Megali Idea), and it was sustained by almost continuous rebellions against Ottoman rule in Greek-speaking territories, particularly Crete, Thessaly and Macedonia.
When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, Greece saw an opportunity to gain Ottoman-controlled territory that had large Greek populations. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians attacked the Ottoman forces, Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Crete. The revolts failed and Greece made no gains during the Crimean War, which Russia lost.
A new generation of Greek politicians was growing increasingly intolerant of King Otto's continuing interference in government. In 1862, the King dismissed his Prime Minister, the former admiral Konstantinos Kanaris, the most prominent politician of the period. This provoked a military rebellion, forcing Otto to accept the inevitable and leave the country.
The Greeks then asked Britain to send Queen Victoria's son Prince Alfred as their new king, but this was vetoed by the other Powers. Instead, a young Danish Prince became King George I. George was a very popular choice as a constitutional monarch, and he agreed that his sons would be raised in the Greek Orthodox faith. As a reward to the Greeks for adopting a pro-British King, Britain ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece.
At the urging of Britain and King George, Greece adopted the much more democratic Greek Constitution of 1864. The powers of the King were reduced, the Senate was abolished, and the franchise was extended to all adult males. Approval voting was used in elections, with one urn for each candidate divided into "yes" and "no" portions into which voters dropped lead beads. Nevertheless, Greek politics remained heavily dynastic, as it has always been. Family names such as Zaimis, Rallis and Trikoupis occurred repeatedly as Prime Ministers.
Although parties were centered around the individual leaders, often bearing their names, two broad political tendencies existed: the liberals, led first by Charilaos Trikoupis and later by Eleftherios Venizelos, and the conservatives, led initially by Theodoros Deligiannis and later by Thrasivoulos Zaimis. Trikoupis and Deligiannis dominated Greek politics in the later 19th century, alternating in office. Trikoupis favoured co-operation with Great Britain in foreign affairs, the creation of infrastructure and an indigenous industry, raising protective tariffs and progressive social legislation, while the more populist Deligiannis depended on the promotion of Greek nationalism and the Megali Idea.
Greece remained a very poor country throughout the 19th century. The country lacked raw materials, infrastructure and capital. Agriculture was mostly at the subsistence level, and the only important export commodities were currants, raisins and tobacco. Some Greeks grew rich as merchants and shipowners, and Piraeus became a major port, but little of this wealth found its way to the Greek peasantry. Greece remained hopelessly in debt to London finance houses.
By the 1890s, Greece was virtually bankrupt. Poverty was rife in the rural areas and the islands, and was eased only by large-scale emigration to the United States. There was little education in the rural areas. Nevertheless, there was progress in building communications and infrastructure, and fine public buildings were erected in Athens. The capital staged the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, which proved a great success.
The parliamentary process developed greatly in Greece during the reign of George I. Initially, the royal prerogative in choosing his prime minister remained and contributed to governmental instability, until the introduction of the dedilomeni principle of parliamentary confidence in 1875 by the reformist Charilaos Trikoupis. Clientelism and frequent electoral upheavals however remained the norm in Greek politics, and frustrated the country's development.
Corruption and Trikoupis' increased spending (to create necessary infrastructure such as the Corinth Canal) overtaxed the weak Greek economy, forcing the declaration of public insolvency in 1893 and to accept the imposition of an International Financial Control authority to pay off the country's creditors.
Another political issue in 19th-century Greece was the Greek language question. The Greek people spoke a form of Greek called Demotic. Many of the educated elite saw this as a peasant dialect and were determined to restore the glories of Ancient Greek. Government documents and newspapers were consequently published in Katharevousa (purified) Greek, a form that few ordinary Greeks could read. Liberals favoured recognising Demotic as the national language, but conservatives and the Orthodox Church resisted all such efforts, to the extent that when the New Testament was translated into Demotic in 1901, riots erupted in Athens and the government fell (the Evangeliaka). This issue would continue to plague Greek politics until the 1970s.
All Greeks were united, however, in their determination to liberate the Greek-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Especially in Crete, the Cretan Revolt (1866–1869) raised nationalist fervour. When war broke out between Russian and the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), Greek popular sentiment rallied to Russia's side, but Greece was too poor and too concerned about British intervention to enter the war officially. Nevertheless, in 1881, Thessaly and small parts of Epirus were ceded to Greece as part of the Treaty of Berlin.
Greeks in Crete continued to stage regular revolts, and in 1897, the Greek government under Theodoros Deligiannis, bowing to popular pressure, declared war on the Ottomans. In the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the badly trained and equipped Greek army was defeated by the Ottomans. Through the intervention of the Great Powers however, Greece lost only a little territory along the border to Turkey, while Crete was established as an autonomous state under Prince George of Greece as the Cretan State.
Nationalist sentiment among Greeks in the Ottoman Empire continued to grow, and by the 1890s there were constant disturbances in Macedonia. Here, the Greeks were in competition not only with the Ottomans, but also with the Bulgarians, in an armed propaganda struggle for the hearts and minds of the ethnically mixed local population, the so-called "Macedonian Struggle".
In July 1908, the Young Turk Revolution broke out in the Ottoman Empire. Taking advantage of the Ottoman internal turmoil, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. On Crete, the local population, led by a young politician named Eleftherios Venizelos, declared Enosis, Union with Greece, provoking another crisis. The fact that the Greek government, led by Dimitrios Rallis, proved unable to likewise take advantage of the situation and bring Crete into the fold, rankled many Greeks, especially young military officers. These formed a secret society, the "Military League", with the purpose of emulating their Ottoman colleagues to seek governmental reforms.
The resulting Goudi coup on 15 August 1909 marked a watershed in modern Greek history: as the military conspirators were inexperienced in politics, they asked Venizelos, who had impeccable liberal credentials, to come to Greece as their political adviser. Venizelos quickly established himself as a powerful political figure, and his allies won the August 1910 elections. Venizelos became Prime Minister in October 1910, ushering a period of 25 years where his personality would dominate Greek politics.
Venizelos initiated a major reform program, including a new and more liberal constitution and reforms in the spheres of public administration, education and economy. French and British military missions were invited for the army and navy respectively, and arms purchases were made. In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire's weaknesses were revealed by the ongoing Italo-Turkish War in Libya.
Through the spring of 1912, a series of bilateral agreements between the Christian Balkan states (Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia) formed the Balkan League, which in October 1912 declared war on the Ottoman Empire. In the First Balkan War, the Ottomans were defeated on all fronts, and the four allies rushed to grab as much territory as they could. The Greeks occupied Thessaloniki just ahead of the Bulgarians, and also took much of Epirus with Ioannina, as well as Crete and the Aegean Islands.
The Treaty of London (1913) ended the war, but no one was left satisfied, and soon, the four allies fell out over the partition of Macedonia. In June 1913, Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia, beginning the Second Balkan War, but was beaten back. The Treaty of Bucharest (1913), which concluded the Second Balkan War, left Greece with southern Epirus, the southern half of Macedonia (known as Greek Macedonia), Crete and the Aegean islands, except for the Dodecanese, which had been occupied by Italy since 1911. These gains nearly doubled Greece's area and population.
In March 1913, an anarchist, Alexandros Schinas, assassinated King George in Thessaloniki, and his son came to the throne as Constantine I. Constantine was the first Greek king born in Greece and the first to be Greek Orthodox by birth. His very name had been chosen in the spirit of romantic Greek nationalism (the Megali Idea), evoking the Byzantine emperors of that name. In addition, as the Commander-in-chief of the Greek Army during the Balkan Wars, his popularity was enormous, rivalled only by that of Venizelos, his Prime Minister.
When World War I broke out in 1914, the King and his Prime Minister Venizelos both preferred to maintain a neutral stance, in spite of Greece's treaty of alliance with Serbia, which had been attacked by Austria-Hungary as the first belligerent action of the conflict. But when the Allies asked for Greek help in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, offering Cyprus in exchange, their diverging views became apparent: Constantine had been educated in Germany, was married to Sophia of Prussia, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm, and was convinced of the Central Powers' victory. Venizelos, on the other hand, was an ardent anglophile, and believed in an Allied victory.
Since Greece, a maritime country, could not oppose the mighty British navy, and citing the need for a respite after two wars, King Constantine favored continued neutrality, while Venizelos actively sought Greek entry in the war on the Allied side. Venizelos resigned, but won the Greek elections of 1915 and again formed the government. When Bulgaria entered the war as a German ally in October 1915, Venizelos invited Allied forces into Greece (the Salonika front), for which he was again dismissed by Constantine.
In August 1916, after several incidents in which both sides in the war had encroached upon the still theoretically neutral Greek territory, Venizelist officers rose up in Allied-controlled Thessaloniki and Venizelos established a separate government there known as the result of a so-called Movement of National Defence. Constantine was now ruling only in what was Greece before the Balkan Wars ("Old Greece"), and his government was subject to repeated humiliations from the Allies. In November 1916 the French occupied Piraeus, bombarded Athens and forced the Greek fleet to surrender. The royalist troops fired at them, leading to a battle between French and Greek royalist troops. There were also riots against supporters of Venizelos in Athens (the Noemvriana).
Following the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Tsar's support for his cousin Constantine was eliminated, and he was forced to leave the country, without actually abdicating, in June 1917. His second son Alexander became King, while the remaining royal family and the most prominent royalists followed him into exile. Venizelos now led a superficially united Greece into the war on the Allied side, but underneath the surface, the division of Greek society into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, the so-called National Schism, became more entrenched.
With the end of the war in November 1918, the moribund Ottoman Empire was ready to be carved up among the victors, and Greece now expected the Allies to deliver on their promises. In no small measure through the diplomatic efforts of Venizelos, Greece secured Western Thrace in the Treaty of Neuilly in November 1919 and Eastern Thrace and a zone around Smyrna in western Anatolia (already under Greek administration as the Occupation of Smyrna since May 1919) in the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920. The future of Constantinople was left to be determined. But at the same time, a Turkish National Movement rose in Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk), who set up a rival government in Ankara and was engaged in fighting the Greek army.
At this point, the fulfillment of the Megali Idea seemed near. Yet so deep was the rift in Greek society that on his return to Greece, an assassination attempt was made on Venizelos by two royalist former officers. Even more surprisingly, Venizelos' Liberal Party lost the Greek elections of November 1920, and in the Greek plebescite of 1920, the Greek people voted for the return of King Constantine from exile after the sudden death of King Alexander.
The United Opposition, which had campaigned on the slogan of an end to the Asia Minor Campaign in Anatolia, instead intensified it. But the royalist restoration had dire consequences: many veteran Venizelist officers were dismissed or left the army, while Italy and France found the return of the hated Constantine a useful pretext for switching their support to Kemal. Finally, in August 1922, the Turkish army shattered the Greek front, and took Smyrna in an operation that led to the disastrous Great Fire of Smyrna.
The Greek army evacuated not only Anatolia, but also Eastern Thrace and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). A population exchange between Greece and Turkey was agreed between the two countries, with over 1.5 million Christians and almost half a million Muslims being uprooted. This catastrophe marked the end of the Megali Idea, and left Greece financially exhausted, demoralized, and having to house and feed a proportionately huge number of Greek refugees.
The catastrophe deepened the political crisis, with the returning army rising up under Venizelist officers and forcing King Constantine to abdicate again, in September 1922, in favour of his firstborn son, George II. The "Revolutionary Committee" headed by Colonels Stylianos Gonatas (soon to become Prime Minister) and Nikolaos Plastiras engaged in a witch-hunt against the royalists, culminating in the "Trial of the Six".
The Greek election of 1923 was held to form a National Assembly with powers to draft a new constitution. Following a failed royalist Leonardopoulos-Gargalidis coup attempt, the monarchist parties abstained, leading to a landslide for the Liberals and their allies. King George II was asked to leave the country, and on 25 March 1924, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaimed the Second Hellenic Republic, ratified by the Greek plebiscite of 1924 a month later.
However, the new Republic was built on unstable foundations. The National Schism lived on, as the monarchists, with the exception of Ioannis Metaxas, did not acknowledge the Venizelist-sponsored Republican regime. The army, which had power and provided many of the leading proponents of both sides, became a factor to be reckoned with, prone to intervene in politics.
Greece was diplomatically isolated and vulnerable, as the Corfu incident of 1923 showed, and the economic foundations of the state were in ruins after a decade of war and the sudden increase of the country's population by a quarter. The refugees, however, also brought a new air into Greece. They were impoverished now, but before 1922 many had been entrepreneurs and well-educated. Staunch supporters of Venizelos and the Republic, many would radicalize and play a leading role in the nascent Communist Party of Greece.
In June 1925, General Theodoros Pangalos launched a coup and ruled as a dictator for a year until a counter-coup by another General, Georgios Kondylis, unseated him and restored the Republic. In the meantime, Pangalos managed to embroil Greece in a short-lived war with Bulgaria precipitated by the Incident at Petrich and make unacceptable concessions in Thessaloniki and its hinterland to Yugoslavia in an effort to gain its support for his revanchist policies against Turkey.
In 1928, Venizelos returned from exile. After a landslide victory in the Greek election of 1928, he formed a government. This was the only cabinet of the Second Republic to run its full four-year term, and the work it left behind was considerable. Alongside domestic reforms, Venizelos restored Greece's frayed international relations, even initiating a Greco-Turkish reconciliation with a visit to Ankara and the signing of a Friendship Agreement in 1930.
The Great Depression hit Greece, an already poor country dependent on agricultural exports, particularly hard. Matters were made worse by the closing off of emigration to the United States, the traditional safety valve of rural poverty. High unemployment and consequent social unrest resulted, and the Communist Party of Greece made rapid advances. Venizelos was forced to default on Greece's national debt in 1932, and he fell from office after the Greek elections of 1932. He was succeeded by a monarchist coalition government led by Panagis Tsaldaris of the People's Party.
Two failed Venizelist military coups followed in 1933 and 1935 in an effort to preserve the Republic, but they had the opposite effect. On 10 October 1935, a few months after he suppressed the 1935 Greek coup d'état attempt, Georgios Kondylis, the former Venizelist stalwart, abolished the Republic in another coup, and declared the monarchy restored. The rigged Greek plebiscite of 1935 confirmed the regime change (with an unsurprising 97.88% of votes), and King George II returned.
King George II immediately dismissed Kondylis and appointed professor Konstantinos Demertzis as interim Prime Minister. Venizelos meanwhile, in exile, urged an end to the conflict over the monarchy in view of the threat to Greece from the rise of Fascist Italy. His successors as Liberal leader, Themistoklis Sophoulis and Georgios Papandreou, agreed, and the restoration of the monarchy was accepted. The Greek elections of 1936 resulted in a hung parliament, with the Communists holding the balance. As no government could be formed, Demertzis continued on. At the same time, a series of deaths left the Greek political scene in disarray: Kondylis died in February, Venizelos in March, Demertzis in April and Tsaldaris in May. The road was now clear for Ioannis Metaxas, who had succeeded Demertzis as interim Prime Minister.
Metaxas, a retired royalist general, believed that an authoritarian government was necessary to prevent social conflict and quell the rising power of the Communists. On 4 August 1936, with the King's support, he suspended parliament and established the 4th of August Regime. The Communists were suppressed and the Liberal leaders went into internal exile. Patterning itself after Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy, Metaxas' regime promoted various concepts such as the "Third Hellenic Civilization", the Roman salute, a National Organisation of Youth, and introduced measures to gain popular support, such as the Greek Social Insurance Institute (IKA), still the biggest social security institution in Greece.
Despite these efforts, the regime lacked a broad popular base or a mass movement supporting it. The Greek people were generally apathetic, without actively opposing Metaxas. Metaxas also improved the country's defenses in preparation for the forthcoming European war, constructing, among other defensive measures, the "Metaxas Line". Despite his aping of Fascism, and the strong economic ties with resurgent Nazi Germany, Metaxas followed a policy of neutrality, given Greece's traditionally strong ties to Britain, reinforced by King George II's personal anglophilia. In April 1939, the Italian threat suddenly loomed closer when Italy annexed Albania, whereupon Britain publicly guaranteed Greece's borders. Thus, when World War II broke out in September 1939, Greece remained neutral.
Despite this declared neutrality, Greece became a target for Mussolini's expansionist policies. Provocations against Greece included the sinking of the Greek cruiser Elli on 15 August 1940. Italian troops crossed the border on 28 October 1940, beginning the Greco-Italian War, but were stopped by a determined Greek defence that ultimately drove them back into Albania.
Metaxas died suddenly in January 1941. His death raised hopes for a liberalization of his regime and the restoration of parliamentary rule, but King George quashed these hopes when he retained the regime's machinery in place. In the meantime, Adolf Hitler was reluctantly forced to divert German troops to rescue Mussolini from defeat, and attacked Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on 6 April 1941. Despite British assistance, the Germans overran most of the country by the end of May. The King and the government escaped to Crete, where they stayed until the end of the Battle of Crete. They then transferred to Egypt, where a Greek government in exile was established.
Greece was divided into German, Italian and Bulgarian zones and in Athens, a puppet regime was established. The members were either conservatives or nationalists with fascist leanings. The three quisling prime ministers were Georgios Tsolakoglou, the general who had signed the armistice with the Wehrmacht, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, and Ioannis Rallis, who took office when the German defeat was inevitable and aimed primarily at combating the left-wing Resistance movement. To this end, he created the collaborationist Security Battalions.
Greece suffered terrible privations during World War II as the Germans appropriated most of the country's agricultural production and prevented its fishing fleets from operating. As a result, and because a British blockade initially hindered foreign relief efforts, the Great Greek Famine resulted. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks perished, especially in the winter of 1941–1942. In the mountains of the Greek mainland, in the meantime, several Greek resistance movements sprang up, and by mid-1943, the Axis forces controlled only the main towns and the connecting roads, while a "Free Greece" was set up in the mountains. In September 1943, the Italian occupation zones of Greece were invaded by German forces following Mussolini's deposition and Italy's decision to join Greece as an Allied nation in the war.
The largest resistance group, the National Liberation Front (EAM), was controlled by the Communist Party of Greece, as was the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS), led by Aris Velouchiotis, and a civil war soon broke out between it and non-Communist groups such as the National Republican Greek League (EDES) in those areas liberated from the Germans. The exiled government in Cairo was only intermittently in touch with the resistance movement and exercised virtually no influence in the occupied country. Part of this was due to the unpopularity of King George II in Greece itself, but despite efforts by Greek politicians, British support ensured his retention at the head of the Cairo government.
As the German defeat drew nearer, the various Greek political factions convened in Lebanon in May 1944 under British auspices and formed a government of national unity under George Papandreou, in which EAM was represented by six ministers.
German forces withdrew on 12 October 1944, and the government in exile returned to Athens. After the German withdrawal, the EAM-ELAS guerrilla army effectively controlled most of Greece, but its leaders were reluctant to take control of the country, as they knew that Soviet premier Joseph Stalin had agreed that Greece would be in the British sphere of influence after the war. Tensions between the British-backed Papandreou and the EAM, especially over the issue of disarmament of the various armed groups, led to the resignation of the latter's ministers from the government.
A few days later, on 3 December 1944, a large-scale pro-EAM demonstration in Athens ended in violence and ushered an intense, house-to-house struggle with British and monarchist forces (the Dekemvriana). After three weeks, the Communists were defeated: the Varkiza agreement ended the conflict and disarmed ELAS, and an unstable coalition government was formed. The anti-EAM backlash grew into a full-scale "White Terror", which exacerbated tensions.
The Communists boycotted the March 1946 elections, and on the same day, fighting broke out again. By the end of 1946, the Communist Democratic Army of Greece had been formed, pitted against the governmental National Army, which was backed first by Britain and after 1947 by the United States.
Communist successes in 1947–1948 enabled them to move freely over much of mainland Greece, but with extensive reorganization, the deportation of rural populations and American material support, the National Army was slowly able to regain control over most of the countryside. In 1949, the insurgents suffered a major blow, as Yugoslavia closed its borders following the split between Marshal Josip Broz Tito with the Soviet Union. Finally, in August 1949, the National Army under Marshal Alexander Papagos launched an offensive that forced the remaining insurgents to surrender or flee across the northern border into the territory of Greece's northern Communist neighbors.
The civil war resulted in 100,000 killed and caused catastrophic economic disruption. In addition, at least 25,000 Greeks and an unspecified number of Macedonian Slavs were either voluntarily or forcibly evacuated to Eastern bloc countries, while 700,000 became displaced persons inside the country. Many more emigrated to Australia and other countries.
The postwar settlement ended Greece's territorial expansion, which had begun in 1832. The 1947 Treaty of Paris required Italy to hand over the Dodecanese islands to Greece. These were the last majority-Greek-speaking areas to be united with the Greek state, apart from Cyprus which was a British possession until it became independent in 1960. Greece's ethnic homogeneity was increased by the postwar expulsion of 25,000 Albanians from Epirus (see Cham Albanians). The only significant remaining minorities are the Muslims in Western Thrace (about 100,000) and a small Slavic-speaking minority in the north. Greek nationalists continued to claim southern Albania (which they called Northern Epirus), home of a significant Greek population (about 3%-12% in the whole of Albania), and the Turkish-held islands of Imvros and Tenedos, where there were smaller Greek minorities.
After the civil war, Greece sought to join the Western democracies and became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1952.
Since the Civil war (1946–49) but even more after that, the parties in the parliament were divided in three political concentrations. The political formation Right-Centre-Left, given the exacerbation of political animosity that had preceded dividing the country in the 40s, tended to turn the concurrence of parties into ideological positions.
In the beginning of the 1950s, the forces of the centre (EPEK) succeeded in gaining the power and under the leadership of the aged general N. Plastiras they governed for about half a four-year term. These were a series of governments having limited maneuverability and inadequate influence in the political arena. This government, as well as those that followed, was constantly under the American auspices. The defeat of EPEK in the elections of 1952, apart from increasing the repressive measures that concerned the defeated of the Civil war, also marked the end of the general political position that it represented, namely political consensus and social reconciliation.
The Left, which had been ostracized from the political life of the country, found a way of expression through the constitution of EDA (United Democratic Left) in 1951, which turned out to be a significant pole, yet steadily excluded from the decision making centres. After the disbandment of the centre as an autonomous political institution, EDA practically expanded its electoral influence to a significant part of the EAM-based Centre-Left.
The 1960s are part of the period 1953–72, during which Greek economy developed rapidly and was structured within the scope of European and worldwide economic developments. One of the main characteristics of that period was the major political event of the country's accession in the European Economic Community, in an attempt to create a common market. The relevant treaty was contracted in 1962.
The developmental strategy adopted by the country was embodied in centrally organized five-year plans; yet their orientation was indistinct. The average annual emigration, which absorbed the excess workforce and contributed to extremely high growth rates, exceeded the annual natural increase in population. The influx of large amounts of foreign private capital was being facilitated and consumption was expanded. These, associated with the rise of tourism, the expansion of shipping activity and with the migrant remittances, had a positive effect on the country's balance of payments.
The peak of development was registered principally in manufacturing, mainly in the textile, chemical and metallurgical industries, the growth rate of which reached 11% during 1965–70. The other large area where obvious economic and social consequences occurred, was that of construction. The policy of αντιπαροχή (antiparochi, "property-swap"), a Greek invention which entailed the concession of construction land to developers in return for a share in the resulting multi-storey apartment buildings, favoured the creation of a class of small-medium contractors on the one hand and settled the housing system and property status on the other. However, it was also responsible for the demolition of much of the country's traditional and 19th-century neoclassical architecture, and the transformation of Greek cities, and especially Athens, into a "form-less, border-less and placeless urban landscape".
During that decade, youth culture came to the fore in society as a distinct social power with autonomous presence (creation of a new culture in music, fashion etc.) and young people displayed dynamism in the assertion of their social rights. The independence granted to Cyprus, which was mined from the very beginning, constituted the main focus of young activist mobilizations, along with struggles aiming at reforms in education, which were provisionally realized to a certain extent through the educational reform of 1964. The country reckoned on and was influenced by Europe—usually behind time—and by the current trends like never before.
The country descended into a prolonged political crisis, and elections were scheduled for late April 1967. On 21 April 1967 a group of right-wing colonels led by Colonel George Papadopoulos seized power in a coup d'état establishing the Regime of the Colonels. Civil liberties were suppressed, special military courts were established, and political parties were dissolved.
Several thousand suspected communists and political opponents were imprisoned or exiled to remote Greek islands. Alleged US support for the junta is claimed to be the cause of rising anti-americanism in Greece during and following the junta's harsh rule. The junta's early years also saw a marked upturn in the economy, with increased foreign investment and large-scale infrastructure works. The junta was widely condemned abroad, but inside the country, discontent began to increase only after 1970, when the economy slowed down.
Even the armed forces, the regime's foundation, were not immune: In May 1973, a planned coup by the Hellenic Navy was narrowly suppressed, but led to the mutiny of the Velos, whose officers sought political asylum in Italy. In response, junta leader Papadopoulos attempted to steer the regime towards a controlled democratization, abolishing the monarchy and declaring himself President of the Republic.
On 25 November 1973, following the bloody suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising on 17 November, the hardliner Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannides overthrew Papadopoulos and tried to continue the dictatorship despite the popular unrest the uprising had triggered. Ioannides' attempt in July 1974 to overthrow Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus, brought Greece to the brink of war with Turkey, which invaded Cyprus and occupied part of the island.
Senior Greek military officers then withdrew their support from the junta, which collapsed. Constantine Karamanlis returned from exile in France to establish a government of national unity until elections could be held. Karamanlis worked to defuse the risk of war with Turkey and also legalised the Communist Party, which had been illegal since 1947. His newly organized party, New Democracy (ND), won the elections held in November 1974 by a wide margin, and he became prime minister.
Following the 1974 referendum which resulted in the abolition of the monarchy, a new constitution was approved by parliament on 19 June 1975. Parliament elected Constantine Tsatsos as President of the Republic. In the parliamentary elections of 1977, New Democracy again won a majority of seats. In May 1980, Prime Minister Karamanlis was elected to succeed Tsatsos as president. George Rallis succeeded Karamanlis as Prime Minister.
On 1 January 1981, Greece became the tenth member of the European Community (now the European Union). In parliamentary elections held on 18 October 1981, Greece elected its first socialist government when the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), led by Andreas Papandreou, won 172 of 300 seats. On 29 March 1985, after Prime Minister Papandreou declined to support President Karamanlis for a second term, Supreme Court Justice Christos Sartzetakis was elected president by the Greek parliament.
Greece had two rounds of parliamentary elections in 1989; both produced weak coalition governments with limited mandates. Party leaders withdrew their support in February 1990, and elections were held on 8 April. New Democracy, led by Constantine Mitsotakis, won 150 seats in that election and subsequently gained two others. However, a split between Mitsotakis and his first Foreign Minister, Antonis Samaras, in 1992, led to Samaras' dismissal and the eventual collapse of the ND government. In new elections in September 1993, Papandreou returned to power.
On 17 January 1996, following a protracted illness, Papandreou resigned and was replaced as Prime Minister by former Minister of Trade and Industry Costas Simitis. Within days, the new prime minister had to handle a major Greek-Turkish crisis over the Imia/Kardak islands. Simitis subsequently won re-election in the 1996 and 2000 elections. In 2004, Simitis retired and George Papandreou succeeded him as PASOK leader.
In the March 2004 elections, PASOK was defeated by New Democracy, led by Kostas Karamanlis, the nephew of the former president. The government called early elections in September 2007 (normally, elections would have been held in March 2008), and New Democracy again was the majority party in the Parliament. As a result of that defeat, PASOK undertook a party election for a new leader. In that contest, George Papandreou was reelected as the head of the socialist party in Greece. In the 2009 elections however, PASOK became the majority party in the Parliament and George Papandreou became Prime Minister of Greece. After PASOK lost its majority in the Parliament, ND and PASOK joined the smaller Popular Orthodox Rally in a grand coalition, pledging their parliamentary support for a government of national unity headed by former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos.
From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed among investors concerning Greece's ability to meet its debt obligations due to strong increase in government debt levels. This led to a crisis of confidence, indicated by a widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps compared to other countries, most importantly Germany. Downgrading of Greek government debt to junk bonds created alarm in financial markets.
On 2 May 2010, the Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund agreed on a €110 billion loan for Greece, conditional on the implementation of harsh austerity measures. In October 2011, Eurozone leaders also agreed on a proposal to write off 50% of Greek debt owed to private creditors, increasing the EFSF to about €1 trillion and requiring European banks to achieve 9% capitalisation to reduce the risk of contagion to other countries. These austerity measures proved to be extremely unpopular with the public in Greece, precipitating demonstrations and civil unrest.
There are widespread fears that a Greek default on its debt would have global repercussions, endangering the economies of many other countries in the European Union, threatening the stability of the European currency, the euro, and possibly plunging the world into another recession. It has been speculated that the crisis may force Greece to abandon the euro and return to the drachma. In April 2014, Greece returned to the global bond market as it successfully sold €3 billion worth of five-year government bonds at a yield of 4.95%. According to the IMF, Greece will have real GDP growth of 0.6% in 2014 after five years of decline.
Following the May 2012 legislative election where the New Democracy party became the largest party in the Hellenic Parliament, Samaras, leader of ND, was asked by Greek President Karolos Papoulias to try to form a government. However, after a day of hard negotiations with the other parties in Parliament, Samaras officially announced he was giving up the mandate to form a government. The task passed to Alexis Tsipras, leader of the SYRIZA (the second-largest party) who was also unable to form a government. After PASOK also failed to negotiate a successful agreement to form a government, emergency talks with the President ended with a new election being called while Panagiotis Pikrammenos was appointed as Prime Minister in a caretaker government.
Voters once again took to the polls in the widely watched June 2012 election. New Democracy came out on top in a stronger position with 129 seats, compared to 108 in the May election. On 20 June 2012, Samaras successfully formed a coalition with PASOK (now led by former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos) and DIMAR. The new government would have a majority of 58, with SYRIZA, Independent Greeks (ANEL), Golden Dawn (XA) and the Communist Party (KKE) comprising the opposition. PASOK and DIMAR chose to take a limited role in Samaras' Cabinet, being represented by party officials and independent technocrats instead of MPs.
In wake of the austerity measures adopted by the Samaras government, Greeks voted the anti-austerity, left-wing SYRIZA into office in the January 2015 legislative election. Samaras accepted defeat and said that his party had done much to restore the country's finances.
SYRIZA government lost its majority in August 2015, when some of its MPs withdrew their support in favor of the governing coalition. SYRIZA won the September elections, but failed to get an outright majority. Later they formed a coalition with Independent Greeks, a right-wing party.
The party suffered heavy defeats at the 2019 European Parliament election, and prime minister and SYRIZA leader, Alexis Tsipras resigned to organize a snap election. It resulted in a majority for New Democracy, and the appointment of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as prime minister.
On 7 July 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Greece. He formed a centre-right government after the landslide election victory of his New Democracy party.
In March 2020, Greece's parliament elected a non-partisan candidate, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, as the first female President of Greece.
In June 2023, conservative New Democracy party won the legislative election, meaning another four-year term as prime minister for Kyriakos Mitsotakis. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The history of modern Greece covers the history of Greece from the recognition by the Great Powers — Britain, France and Russia — of its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1828 to the present day.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Byzantine Empire had ruled most of the Greek-speaking world since late Antiquity, but experienced a decline as a result of Muslim Arab and Seljuk Turkish invasions and was fatally weakened by the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204. The establishment of Catholic Latin states on Greek soil, and the struggles of the Orthodox Byzantine Greeks against them, led to the emergence of a distinct Greek national identity. The Byzantine Empire was restored by the Palaiologos dynasty in 1261, but it was a shadow of its former self, and constant civil wars and foreign attacks in the 14th century brought about its terminal decline. As a result, most of Greece gradually became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the conquest of the Duchy of Athens in 1458, and of the Despotate of the Morea in 1460.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ottoman control was largely absent in the mountainous interior of Greece, and many fled there, often becoming brigands. Otherwise, only the islands of the Aegean and a few coastal fortresses on the mainland, under Venetian and Genoese rule, remained free from Ottoman rule, but by the mid-16th century, the Ottomans had conquered most of them as well. Rhodes fell in 1522, Cyprus in 1571, and the Venetians retained Crete until 1670. The Ionian Islands were only briefly ruled by the Ottomans (Kefalonia from 1479 to 1481 and from 1485 to 1500), and remained primarily under the rule of Venice.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The first large-scale insurrection against Ottoman rule was the Orlov Revolt of the early 1770s, but it was brutally repressed. The same time, however, also marks the start of the Modern Greek Enlightenment, as Greeks who studied in Western Europe brought knowledge and ideas back to their homeland, and as Greek merchants and shipowners increased their wealth. As a result, especially in the aftermath of the French Revolution, liberal and nationalist ideas began to spread across the Greek lands.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1821, the Greeks rose up against the Ottoman Empire. Initial successes were followed by infighting, which almost caused the Greek struggle to collapse; nevertheless, the prolongation of the fight forced the Great Powers (Britain, Russia and France) to recognize the claims of the Greek rebels to separate statehood (Treaty of London) and intervene against the Ottomans at the Battle of Navarino. Greece was initially to be an autonomous state under Ottoman suzerainty, but by 1832, in the Treaty of Constantinople, it was recognized as a fully independent kingdom. In the meantime, the 3rd National Assembly of the Greek insurgents called upon Ioannis Kapodistrias, a former foreign minister of Russia, to take over the governance of the fledgling state in 1827.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On his arrival, Kapodistrias launched a major reform and modernisation programme that covered all areas. He re-established military unity by bringing an end to the second phase of the civil war; re-organised the military, which was then able to reconquer territory lost to the Ottoman military during the civil wars; and introduced the first modern quarantine system in Greece, which brought diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery under control for the first time since the start of the War of Independence.",
"title": "Administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kapodistrias also negotiated with the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire to establish the borders and degree of independence of the Greek state; signed the peace treaty that ended the War of Independence with the Ottomans; introduced the phoenix, the first modern Greek currency; organised local administration; and, in an effort to raise the living standards of the population, introduced the cultivation of the potato into Greece.",
"title": "Administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Furthermore, he tried to undermine the authority of the traditional clans (or dynasties) that he considered the useless legacy of a bygone and obsolete era. However, he underestimated the political and military strength of the capetanei (καπεταναίοι – commanders) who had led the revolt against Ottoman Empire in 1821, and who had expected a leadership role in the post-revolution Government. When a dispute between the capetanei of Laconia and the appointed governor of the province escalated into an armed conflict, he called in Russian troops to restore order, because much of the army was controlled by capetanei who had been part of the rebellion.",
"title": "Administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "George Finlay's 1861 History of Greek Revolution records that by 1831 Kapodistrias's government had become hated, chiefly by the independent Maniots, but also by the Roumeliotes and the rich and influential merchant families of Hydra, Spetses and Psara. The customs dues of the inhabitants of Hydra were the chief source of revenue for these municipalities, and they refused to hand these over to Kapodistrias. It appears that Kapodistrias had refused to convene the National Assembly and was ruling as a despot, possibly influenced by his Russian experiences. The municipality of Hydra instructed Admiral Miaoulis and Alexandros Mavrokordatos to go to Poros and seize the Hellenic Navy's fleet there. This Miaoulis did so with the intention of preventing a blockade of the islands, so for a time it seemed as if the National Assembly would be called.",
"title": "Administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Kapodistrias called on the British and French residents to support him in putting down the rebellion, but this they refused to do. Nonetheless, an Admiral Rikord (or Ricord) took his ships north to Poros. Colonel (later General) Kallergis took a half-trained force of Greek Army regulars and a force of irregulars in support. With less than 200 men, Miaoulis was unable to make much of a fight; Fort Heidek on Bourtzi Island was overrun by the regulars and the brig Spetses (once Laskarina Bouboulina's Agamemnon) sunk by Ricord's force. Encircled by the Russians in the harbor and Kallergis' force on land, Poros surrendered. Miaoulis was forced to set charges in the flagship Hellas and the corvette Hydra to blow them up when he and his handful of followers returned to Hydra. Kallergis' men were enraged by the loss of the ships and sacked Poros, carrying off plunder to Nauplion.",
"title": "Administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The loss of the best ships in the fleet crippled the Hellenic Navy for many years, but it also weakened Kapodistrias' position. He did finally call the National Assembly, but his other actions triggered more opposition and that led to his downfall.",
"title": "Administration of Ioannis Kapodistrias"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1831, Kapodistrias ordered the imprisonment of Petrobey Mavromichalis, the Bey of the Mani Peninsula, one of the wildest and most rebellious parts of Greece. This was a mortal offence to the Mavromichalis family, and on 9 October 1831 (27 September in the Julian Calendar) Kapodistrias was assassinated by Petros' brother Konstantis and son Georgios on the steps of the church of Saint Spyridon in Nafplio.",
"title": "Assassination of Kapodistrias and the creation of the Kingdom of Greece"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Ioannis Kapodistrias was succeeded as Governor by his younger brother, Augustinos Kapodistrias. Augustinos ruled only for six months, during which the country was very much plunged into chaos. Under the protocol signed at the London Conference of 1832 on 7 May 1832 between Bavaria and the protecting Powers, Greece was defined as an independent kingdom, free of Ottoman control, with the Arta-Volos line as its northern frontier. The protocol also dealt with the way in which a Regency was to be managed until Otto of Bavaria reached his majority to assume the throne of Greece. The Ottoman Empire was indemnified in the sum of 40,000,000 piastres for the loss of territory in the new kingdom.",
"title": "Assassination of Kapodistrias and the creation of the Kingdom of Greece"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Otto's reign would prove troubled, but he managed to hang on for 30 years before he and his wife, Queen Amalia, left the same way they came, aboard a British warship. During the early years of his reign, a group of Bavarian regents ruled in his name, and they made themselves very unpopular by trying to impose German ideas of rigid hierarchical government on the Greeks, while keeping most significant state offices away from them. Nevertheless, they laid the foundations of a Greek administration, army, justice system and education system. Otto was sincere in his desire to give Greece good government, but he suffered from two great handicaps: his Roman Catholic faith and his childless marriage to Queen Amalia. This meant he could neither be crowned as King of Greece under the Orthodox rite nor establish a dynasty.",
"title": "Reign of King Otto, 1833–1863"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Otto came of age in 1835 and assumed the reins of government, but Bavarians remained as heads of the government until 1837. Otto thereafter appointed Greek ministers, although Bavarian officials still ran much of the army. At this time, Greece still had no legislature and no constitution. Discontent at the continued \"Bavarocracy\" grew until the 3 September 1843 Revolution broke out in Athens. Otto agreed to grant a constitution and convened a National Assembly that met in November of the same year. The Greek Constitution of 1844 then created a bicameral parliament consisting of an Assembly (Vouli) and a Senate (Gerousia). Power then passed into the hands of a group of Greek politicians, most of whom who had been commanders in the War of Independence against the Ottomans.",
"title": "Reign of King Otto, 1833–1863"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Greek politics in the 19th century was dominated by the \"national question\". The majority of Greeks continued to live under Ottoman rule, and Greeks dreamed of liberating them all and reconstituting a state embracing all the Greek lands, with Constantinople as its capital. This was called the Great Idea (Megali Idea), and it was sustained by almost continuous rebellions against Ottoman rule in Greek-speaking territories, particularly Crete, Thessaly and Macedonia.",
"title": "Reign of King Otto, 1833–1863"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, Greece saw an opportunity to gain Ottoman-controlled territory that had large Greek populations. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians attacked the Ottoman forces, Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Crete. The revolts failed and Greece made no gains during the Crimean War, which Russia lost.",
"title": "Reign of King Otto, 1833–1863"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "A new generation of Greek politicians was growing increasingly intolerant of King Otto's continuing interference in government. In 1862, the King dismissed his Prime Minister, the former admiral Konstantinos Kanaris, the most prominent politician of the period. This provoked a military rebellion, forcing Otto to accept the inevitable and leave the country.",
"title": "Reign of King Otto, 1833–1863"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Greeks then asked Britain to send Queen Victoria's son Prince Alfred as their new king, but this was vetoed by the other Powers. Instead, a young Danish Prince became King George I. George was a very popular choice as a constitutional monarch, and he agreed that his sons would be raised in the Greek Orthodox faith. As a reward to the Greeks for adopting a pro-British King, Britain ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece.",
"title": "Reign of King Otto, 1833–1863"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "At the urging of Britain and King George, Greece adopted the much more democratic Greek Constitution of 1864. The powers of the King were reduced, the Senate was abolished, and the franchise was extended to all adult males. Approval voting was used in elections, with one urn for each candidate divided into \"yes\" and \"no\" portions into which voters dropped lead beads. Nevertheless, Greek politics remained heavily dynastic, as it has always been. Family names such as Zaimis, Rallis and Trikoupis occurred repeatedly as Prime Ministers.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Although parties were centered around the individual leaders, often bearing their names, two broad political tendencies existed: the liberals, led first by Charilaos Trikoupis and later by Eleftherios Venizelos, and the conservatives, led initially by Theodoros Deligiannis and later by Thrasivoulos Zaimis. Trikoupis and Deligiannis dominated Greek politics in the later 19th century, alternating in office. Trikoupis favoured co-operation with Great Britain in foreign affairs, the creation of infrastructure and an indigenous industry, raising protective tariffs and progressive social legislation, while the more populist Deligiannis depended on the promotion of Greek nationalism and the Megali Idea.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Greece remained a very poor country throughout the 19th century. The country lacked raw materials, infrastructure and capital. Agriculture was mostly at the subsistence level, and the only important export commodities were currants, raisins and tobacco. Some Greeks grew rich as merchants and shipowners, and Piraeus became a major port, but little of this wealth found its way to the Greek peasantry. Greece remained hopelessly in debt to London finance houses.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "By the 1890s, Greece was virtually bankrupt. Poverty was rife in the rural areas and the islands, and was eased only by large-scale emigration to the United States. There was little education in the rural areas. Nevertheless, there was progress in building communications and infrastructure, and fine public buildings were erected in Athens. The capital staged the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, which proved a great success.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The parliamentary process developed greatly in Greece during the reign of George I. Initially, the royal prerogative in choosing his prime minister remained and contributed to governmental instability, until the introduction of the dedilomeni principle of parliamentary confidence in 1875 by the reformist Charilaos Trikoupis. Clientelism and frequent electoral upheavals however remained the norm in Greek politics, and frustrated the country's development.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Corruption and Trikoupis' increased spending (to create necessary infrastructure such as the Corinth Canal) overtaxed the weak Greek economy, forcing the declaration of public insolvency in 1893 and to accept the imposition of an International Financial Control authority to pay off the country's creditors.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Another political issue in 19th-century Greece was the Greek language question. The Greek people spoke a form of Greek called Demotic. Many of the educated elite saw this as a peasant dialect and were determined to restore the glories of Ancient Greek. Government documents and newspapers were consequently published in Katharevousa (purified) Greek, a form that few ordinary Greeks could read. Liberals favoured recognising Demotic as the national language, but conservatives and the Orthodox Church resisted all such efforts, to the extent that when the New Testament was translated into Demotic in 1901, riots erupted in Athens and the government fell (the Evangeliaka). This issue would continue to plague Greek politics until the 1970s.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "All Greeks were united, however, in their determination to liberate the Greek-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Especially in Crete, the Cretan Revolt (1866–1869) raised nationalist fervour. When war broke out between Russian and the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), Greek popular sentiment rallied to Russia's side, but Greece was too poor and too concerned about British intervention to enter the war officially. Nevertheless, in 1881, Thessaly and small parts of Epirus were ceded to Greece as part of the Treaty of Berlin.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Greeks in Crete continued to stage regular revolts, and in 1897, the Greek government under Theodoros Deligiannis, bowing to popular pressure, declared war on the Ottomans. In the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the badly trained and equipped Greek army was defeated by the Ottomans. Through the intervention of the Great Powers however, Greece lost only a little territory along the border to Turkey, while Crete was established as an autonomous state under Prince George of Greece as the Cretan State.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Nationalist sentiment among Greeks in the Ottoman Empire continued to grow, and by the 1890s there were constant disturbances in Macedonia. Here, the Greeks were in competition not only with the Ottomans, but also with the Bulgarians, in an armed propaganda struggle for the hearts and minds of the ethnically mixed local population, the so-called \"Macedonian Struggle\".",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In July 1908, the Young Turk Revolution broke out in the Ottoman Empire. Taking advantage of the Ottoman internal turmoil, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. On Crete, the local population, led by a young politician named Eleftherios Venizelos, declared Enosis, Union with Greece, provoking another crisis. The fact that the Greek government, led by Dimitrios Rallis, proved unable to likewise take advantage of the situation and bring Crete into the fold, rankled many Greeks, especially young military officers. These formed a secret society, the \"Military League\", with the purpose of emulating their Ottoman colleagues to seek governmental reforms.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The resulting Goudi coup on 15 August 1909 marked a watershed in modern Greek history: as the military conspirators were inexperienced in politics, they asked Venizelos, who had impeccable liberal credentials, to come to Greece as their political adviser. Venizelos quickly established himself as a powerful political figure, and his allies won the August 1910 elections. Venizelos became Prime Minister in October 1910, ushering a period of 25 years where his personality would dominate Greek politics.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Venizelos initiated a major reform program, including a new and more liberal constitution and reforms in the spheres of public administration, education and economy. French and British military missions were invited for the army and navy respectively, and arms purchases were made. In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire's weaknesses were revealed by the ongoing Italo-Turkish War in Libya.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Through the spring of 1912, a series of bilateral agreements between the Christian Balkan states (Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia) formed the Balkan League, which in October 1912 declared war on the Ottoman Empire. In the First Balkan War, the Ottomans were defeated on all fronts, and the four allies rushed to grab as much territory as they could. The Greeks occupied Thessaloniki just ahead of the Bulgarians, and also took much of Epirus with Ioannina, as well as Crete and the Aegean Islands.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Treaty of London (1913) ended the war, but no one was left satisfied, and soon, the four allies fell out over the partition of Macedonia. In June 1913, Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia, beginning the Second Balkan War, but was beaten back. The Treaty of Bucharest (1913), which concluded the Second Balkan War, left Greece with southern Epirus, the southern half of Macedonia (known as Greek Macedonia), Crete and the Aegean islands, except for the Dodecanese, which had been occupied by Italy since 1911. These gains nearly doubled Greece's area and population.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In March 1913, an anarchist, Alexandros Schinas, assassinated King George in Thessaloniki, and his son came to the throne as Constantine I. Constantine was the first Greek king born in Greece and the first to be Greek Orthodox by birth. His very name had been chosen in the spirit of romantic Greek nationalism (the Megali Idea), evoking the Byzantine emperors of that name. In addition, as the Commander-in-chief of the Greek Army during the Balkan Wars, his popularity was enormous, rivalled only by that of Venizelos, his Prime Minister.",
"title": "Reign of King George I, 1864–1913"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "When World War I broke out in 1914, the King and his Prime Minister Venizelos both preferred to maintain a neutral stance, in spite of Greece's treaty of alliance with Serbia, which had been attacked by Austria-Hungary as the first belligerent action of the conflict. But when the Allies asked for Greek help in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, offering Cyprus in exchange, their diverging views became apparent: Constantine had been educated in Germany, was married to Sophia of Prussia, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm, and was convinced of the Central Powers' victory. Venizelos, on the other hand, was an ardent anglophile, and believed in an Allied victory.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Since Greece, a maritime country, could not oppose the mighty British navy, and citing the need for a respite after two wars, King Constantine favored continued neutrality, while Venizelos actively sought Greek entry in the war on the Allied side. Venizelos resigned, but won the Greek elections of 1915 and again formed the government. When Bulgaria entered the war as a German ally in October 1915, Venizelos invited Allied forces into Greece (the Salonika front), for which he was again dismissed by Constantine.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In August 1916, after several incidents in which both sides in the war had encroached upon the still theoretically neutral Greek territory, Venizelist officers rose up in Allied-controlled Thessaloniki and Venizelos established a separate government there known as the result of a so-called Movement of National Defence. Constantine was now ruling only in what was Greece before the Balkan Wars (\"Old Greece\"), and his government was subject to repeated humiliations from the Allies. In November 1916 the French occupied Piraeus, bombarded Athens and forced the Greek fleet to surrender. The royalist troops fired at them, leading to a battle between French and Greek royalist troops. There were also riots against supporters of Venizelos in Athens (the Noemvriana).",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Following the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Tsar's support for his cousin Constantine was eliminated, and he was forced to leave the country, without actually abdicating, in June 1917. His second son Alexander became King, while the remaining royal family and the most prominent royalists followed him into exile. Venizelos now led a superficially united Greece into the war on the Allied side, but underneath the surface, the division of Greek society into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, the so-called National Schism, became more entrenched.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "With the end of the war in November 1918, the moribund Ottoman Empire was ready to be carved up among the victors, and Greece now expected the Allies to deliver on their promises. In no small measure through the diplomatic efforts of Venizelos, Greece secured Western Thrace in the Treaty of Neuilly in November 1919 and Eastern Thrace and a zone around Smyrna in western Anatolia (already under Greek administration as the Occupation of Smyrna since May 1919) in the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920. The future of Constantinople was left to be determined. But at the same time, a Turkish National Movement rose in Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk), who set up a rival government in Ankara and was engaged in fighting the Greek army.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "At this point, the fulfillment of the Megali Idea seemed near. Yet so deep was the rift in Greek society that on his return to Greece, an assassination attempt was made on Venizelos by two royalist former officers. Even more surprisingly, Venizelos' Liberal Party lost the Greek elections of November 1920, and in the Greek plebescite of 1920, the Greek people voted for the return of King Constantine from exile after the sudden death of King Alexander.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The United Opposition, which had campaigned on the slogan of an end to the Asia Minor Campaign in Anatolia, instead intensified it. But the royalist restoration had dire consequences: many veteran Venizelist officers were dismissed or left the army, while Italy and France found the return of the hated Constantine a useful pretext for switching their support to Kemal. Finally, in August 1922, the Turkish army shattered the Greek front, and took Smyrna in an operation that led to the disastrous Great Fire of Smyrna.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Greek army evacuated not only Anatolia, but also Eastern Thrace and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). A population exchange between Greece and Turkey was agreed between the two countries, with over 1.5 million Christians and almost half a million Muslims being uprooted. This catastrophe marked the end of the Megali Idea, and left Greece financially exhausted, demoralized, and having to house and feed a proportionately huge number of Greek refugees.",
"title": "World War I and subsequent crises, 1914-1922"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The catastrophe deepened the political crisis, with the returning army rising up under Venizelist officers and forcing King Constantine to abdicate again, in September 1922, in favour of his firstborn son, George II. The \"Revolutionary Committee\" headed by Colonels Stylianos Gonatas (soon to become Prime Minister) and Nikolaos Plastiras engaged in a witch-hunt against the royalists, culminating in the \"Trial of the Six\".",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Greek election of 1923 was held to form a National Assembly with powers to draft a new constitution. Following a failed royalist Leonardopoulos-Gargalidis coup attempt, the monarchist parties abstained, leading to a landslide for the Liberals and their allies. King George II was asked to leave the country, and on 25 March 1924, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaimed the Second Hellenic Republic, ratified by the Greek plebiscite of 1924 a month later.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "However, the new Republic was built on unstable foundations. The National Schism lived on, as the monarchists, with the exception of Ioannis Metaxas, did not acknowledge the Venizelist-sponsored Republican regime. The army, which had power and provided many of the leading proponents of both sides, became a factor to be reckoned with, prone to intervene in politics.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Greece was diplomatically isolated and vulnerable, as the Corfu incident of 1923 showed, and the economic foundations of the state were in ruins after a decade of war and the sudden increase of the country's population by a quarter. The refugees, however, also brought a new air into Greece. They were impoverished now, but before 1922 many had been entrepreneurs and well-educated. Staunch supporters of Venizelos and the Republic, many would radicalize and play a leading role in the nascent Communist Party of Greece.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In June 1925, General Theodoros Pangalos launched a coup and ruled as a dictator for a year until a counter-coup by another General, Georgios Kondylis, unseated him and restored the Republic. In the meantime, Pangalos managed to embroil Greece in a short-lived war with Bulgaria precipitated by the Incident at Petrich and make unacceptable concessions in Thessaloniki and its hinterland to Yugoslavia in an effort to gain its support for his revanchist policies against Turkey.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1928, Venizelos returned from exile. After a landslide victory in the Greek election of 1928, he formed a government. This was the only cabinet of the Second Republic to run its full four-year term, and the work it left behind was considerable. Alongside domestic reforms, Venizelos restored Greece's frayed international relations, even initiating a Greco-Turkish reconciliation with a visit to Ankara and the signing of a Friendship Agreement in 1930.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Great Depression hit Greece, an already poor country dependent on agricultural exports, particularly hard. Matters were made worse by the closing off of emigration to the United States, the traditional safety valve of rural poverty. High unemployment and consequent social unrest resulted, and the Communist Party of Greece made rapid advances. Venizelos was forced to default on Greece's national debt in 1932, and he fell from office after the Greek elections of 1932. He was succeeded by a monarchist coalition government led by Panagis Tsaldaris of the People's Party.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Two failed Venizelist military coups followed in 1933 and 1935 in an effort to preserve the Republic, but they had the opposite effect. On 10 October 1935, a few months after he suppressed the 1935 Greek coup d'état attempt, Georgios Kondylis, the former Venizelist stalwart, abolished the Republic in another coup, and declared the monarchy restored. The rigged Greek plebiscite of 1935 confirmed the regime change (with an unsurprising 97.88% of votes), and King George II returned.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "King George II immediately dismissed Kondylis and appointed professor Konstantinos Demertzis as interim Prime Minister. Venizelos meanwhile, in exile, urged an end to the conflict over the monarchy in view of the threat to Greece from the rise of Fascist Italy. His successors as Liberal leader, Themistoklis Sophoulis and Georgios Papandreou, agreed, and the restoration of the monarchy was accepted. The Greek elections of 1936 resulted in a hung parliament, with the Communists holding the balance. As no government could be formed, Demertzis continued on. At the same time, a series of deaths left the Greek political scene in disarray: Kondylis died in February, Venizelos in March, Demertzis in April and Tsaldaris in May. The road was now clear for Ioannis Metaxas, who had succeeded Demertzis as interim Prime Minister.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Metaxas, a retired royalist general, believed that an authoritarian government was necessary to prevent social conflict and quell the rising power of the Communists. On 4 August 1936, with the King's support, he suspended parliament and established the 4th of August Regime. The Communists were suppressed and the Liberal leaders went into internal exile. Patterning itself after Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy, Metaxas' regime promoted various concepts such as the \"Third Hellenic Civilization\", the Roman salute, a National Organisation of Youth, and introduced measures to gain popular support, such as the Greek Social Insurance Institute (IKA), still the biggest social security institution in Greece.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Despite these efforts, the regime lacked a broad popular base or a mass movement supporting it. The Greek people were generally apathetic, without actively opposing Metaxas. Metaxas also improved the country's defenses in preparation for the forthcoming European war, constructing, among other defensive measures, the \"Metaxas Line\". Despite his aping of Fascism, and the strong economic ties with resurgent Nazi Germany, Metaxas followed a policy of neutrality, given Greece's traditionally strong ties to Britain, reinforced by King George II's personal anglophilia. In April 1939, the Italian threat suddenly loomed closer when Italy annexed Albania, whereupon Britain publicly guaranteed Greece's borders. Thus, when World War II broke out in September 1939, Greece remained neutral.",
"title": "Republic and Monarchy (1922–1940)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Despite this declared neutrality, Greece became a target for Mussolini's expansionist policies. Provocations against Greece included the sinking of the Greek cruiser Elli on 15 August 1940. Italian troops crossed the border on 28 October 1940, beginning the Greco-Italian War, but were stopped by a determined Greek defence that ultimately drove them back into Albania.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Metaxas died suddenly in January 1941. His death raised hopes for a liberalization of his regime and the restoration of parliamentary rule, but King George quashed these hopes when he retained the regime's machinery in place. In the meantime, Adolf Hitler was reluctantly forced to divert German troops to rescue Mussolini from defeat, and attacked Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on 6 April 1941. Despite British assistance, the Germans overran most of the country by the end of May. The King and the government escaped to Crete, where they stayed until the end of the Battle of Crete. They then transferred to Egypt, where a Greek government in exile was established.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Greece was divided into German, Italian and Bulgarian zones and in Athens, a puppet regime was established. The members were either conservatives or nationalists with fascist leanings. The three quisling prime ministers were Georgios Tsolakoglou, the general who had signed the armistice with the Wehrmacht, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, and Ioannis Rallis, who took office when the German defeat was inevitable and aimed primarily at combating the left-wing Resistance movement. To this end, he created the collaborationist Security Battalions.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Greece suffered terrible privations during World War II as the Germans appropriated most of the country's agricultural production and prevented its fishing fleets from operating. As a result, and because a British blockade initially hindered foreign relief efforts, the Great Greek Famine resulted. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks perished, especially in the winter of 1941–1942. In the mountains of the Greek mainland, in the meantime, several Greek resistance movements sprang up, and by mid-1943, the Axis forces controlled only the main towns and the connecting roads, while a \"Free Greece\" was set up in the mountains. In September 1943, the Italian occupation zones of Greece were invaded by German forces following Mussolini's deposition and Italy's decision to join Greece as an Allied nation in the war.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The largest resistance group, the National Liberation Front (EAM), was controlled by the Communist Party of Greece, as was the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS), led by Aris Velouchiotis, and a civil war soon broke out between it and non-Communist groups such as the National Republican Greek League (EDES) in those areas liberated from the Germans. The exiled government in Cairo was only intermittently in touch with the resistance movement and exercised virtually no influence in the occupied country. Part of this was due to the unpopularity of King George II in Greece itself, but despite efforts by Greek politicians, British support ensured his retention at the head of the Cairo government.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "As the German defeat drew nearer, the various Greek political factions convened in Lebanon in May 1944 under British auspices and formed a government of national unity under George Papandreou, in which EAM was represented by six ministers.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "German forces withdrew on 12 October 1944, and the government in exile returned to Athens. After the German withdrawal, the EAM-ELAS guerrilla army effectively controlled most of Greece, but its leaders were reluctant to take control of the country, as they knew that Soviet premier Joseph Stalin had agreed that Greece would be in the British sphere of influence after the war. Tensions between the British-backed Papandreou and the EAM, especially over the issue of disarmament of the various armed groups, led to the resignation of the latter's ministers from the government.",
"title": "Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "A few days later, on 3 December 1944, a large-scale pro-EAM demonstration in Athens ended in violence and ushered an intense, house-to-house struggle with British and monarchist forces (the Dekemvriana). After three weeks, the Communists were defeated: the Varkiza agreement ended the conflict and disarmed ELAS, and an unstable coalition government was formed. The anti-EAM backlash grew into a full-scale \"White Terror\", which exacerbated tensions.",
"title": "Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Communists boycotted the March 1946 elections, and on the same day, fighting broke out again. By the end of 1946, the Communist Democratic Army of Greece had been formed, pitted against the governmental National Army, which was backed first by Britain and after 1947 by the United States.",
"title": "Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Communist successes in 1947–1948 enabled them to move freely over much of mainland Greece, but with extensive reorganization, the deportation of rural populations and American material support, the National Army was slowly able to regain control over most of the countryside. In 1949, the insurgents suffered a major blow, as Yugoslavia closed its borders following the split between Marshal Josip Broz Tito with the Soviet Union. Finally, in August 1949, the National Army under Marshal Alexander Papagos launched an offensive that forced the remaining insurgents to surrender or flee across the northern border into the territory of Greece's northern Communist neighbors.",
"title": "Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The civil war resulted in 100,000 killed and caused catastrophic economic disruption. In addition, at least 25,000 Greeks and an unspecified number of Macedonian Slavs were either voluntarily or forcibly evacuated to Eastern bloc countries, while 700,000 became displaced persons inside the country. Many more emigrated to Australia and other countries.",
"title": "Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The postwar settlement ended Greece's territorial expansion, which had begun in 1832. The 1947 Treaty of Paris required Italy to hand over the Dodecanese islands to Greece. These were the last majority-Greek-speaking areas to be united with the Greek state, apart from Cyprus which was a British possession until it became independent in 1960. Greece's ethnic homogeneity was increased by the postwar expulsion of 25,000 Albanians from Epirus (see Cham Albanians). The only significant remaining minorities are the Muslims in Western Thrace (about 100,000) and a small Slavic-speaking minority in the north. Greek nationalists continued to claim southern Albania (which they called Northern Epirus), home of a significant Greek population (about 3%-12% in the whole of Albania), and the Turkish-held islands of Imvros and Tenedos, where there were smaller Greek minorities.",
"title": "Civil War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "After the civil war, Greece sought to join the Western democracies and became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1952.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Since the Civil war (1946–49) but even more after that, the parties in the parliament were divided in three political concentrations. The political formation Right-Centre-Left, given the exacerbation of political animosity that had preceded dividing the country in the 40s, tended to turn the concurrence of parties into ideological positions.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In the beginning of the 1950s, the forces of the centre (EPEK) succeeded in gaining the power and under the leadership of the aged general N. Plastiras they governed for about half a four-year term. These were a series of governments having limited maneuverability and inadequate influence in the political arena. This government, as well as those that followed, was constantly under the American auspices. The defeat of EPEK in the elections of 1952, apart from increasing the repressive measures that concerned the defeated of the Civil war, also marked the end of the general political position that it represented, namely political consensus and social reconciliation.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The Left, which had been ostracized from the political life of the country, found a way of expression through the constitution of EDA (United Democratic Left) in 1951, which turned out to be a significant pole, yet steadily excluded from the decision making centres. After the disbandment of the centre as an autonomous political institution, EDA practically expanded its electoral influence to a significant part of the EAM-based Centre-Left.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The 1960s are part of the period 1953–72, during which Greek economy developed rapidly and was structured within the scope of European and worldwide economic developments. One of the main characteristics of that period was the major political event of the country's accession in the European Economic Community, in an attempt to create a common market. The relevant treaty was contracted in 1962.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The developmental strategy adopted by the country was embodied in centrally organized five-year plans; yet their orientation was indistinct. The average annual emigration, which absorbed the excess workforce and contributed to extremely high growth rates, exceeded the annual natural increase in population. The influx of large amounts of foreign private capital was being facilitated and consumption was expanded. These, associated with the rise of tourism, the expansion of shipping activity and with the migrant remittances, had a positive effect on the country's balance of payments.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The peak of development was registered principally in manufacturing, mainly in the textile, chemical and metallurgical industries, the growth rate of which reached 11% during 1965–70. The other large area where obvious economic and social consequences occurred, was that of construction. The policy of αντιπαροχή (antiparochi, \"property-swap\"), a Greek invention which entailed the concession of construction land to developers in return for a share in the resulting multi-storey apartment buildings, favoured the creation of a class of small-medium contractors on the one hand and settled the housing system and property status on the other. However, it was also responsible for the demolition of much of the country's traditional and 19th-century neoclassical architecture, and the transformation of Greek cities, and especially Athens, into a \"form-less, border-less and placeless urban landscape\".",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "During that decade, youth culture came to the fore in society as a distinct social power with autonomous presence (creation of a new culture in music, fashion etc.) and young people displayed dynamism in the assertion of their social rights. The independence granted to Cyprus, which was mined from the very beginning, constituted the main focus of young activist mobilizations, along with struggles aiming at reforms in education, which were provisionally realized to a certain extent through the educational reform of 1964. The country reckoned on and was influenced by Europe—usually behind time—and by the current trends like never before.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The country descended into a prolonged political crisis, and elections were scheduled for late April 1967. On 21 April 1967 a group of right-wing colonels led by Colonel George Papadopoulos seized power in a coup d'état establishing the Regime of the Colonels. Civil liberties were suppressed, special military courts were established, and political parties were dissolved.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Several thousand suspected communists and political opponents were imprisoned or exiled to remote Greek islands. Alleged US support for the junta is claimed to be the cause of rising anti-americanism in Greece during and following the junta's harsh rule. The junta's early years also saw a marked upturn in the economy, with increased foreign investment and large-scale infrastructure works. The junta was widely condemned abroad, but inside the country, discontent began to increase only after 1970, when the economy slowed down.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Even the armed forces, the regime's foundation, were not immune: In May 1973, a planned coup by the Hellenic Navy was narrowly suppressed, but led to the mutiny of the Velos, whose officers sought political asylum in Italy. In response, junta leader Papadopoulos attempted to steer the regime towards a controlled democratization, abolishing the monarchy and declaring himself President of the Republic.",
"title": "Postwar Greece (1950–1973)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "On 25 November 1973, following the bloody suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising on 17 November, the hardliner Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannides overthrew Papadopoulos and tried to continue the dictatorship despite the popular unrest the uprising had triggered. Ioannides' attempt in July 1974 to overthrow Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus, brought Greece to the brink of war with Turkey, which invaded Cyprus and occupied part of the island.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Senior Greek military officers then withdrew their support from the junta, which collapsed. Constantine Karamanlis returned from exile in France to establish a government of national unity until elections could be held. Karamanlis worked to defuse the risk of war with Turkey and also legalised the Communist Party, which had been illegal since 1947. His newly organized party, New Democracy (ND), won the elections held in November 1974 by a wide margin, and he became prime minister.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Following the 1974 referendum which resulted in the abolition of the monarchy, a new constitution was approved by parliament on 19 June 1975. Parliament elected Constantine Tsatsos as President of the Republic. In the parliamentary elections of 1977, New Democracy again won a majority of seats. In May 1980, Prime Minister Karamanlis was elected to succeed Tsatsos as president. George Rallis succeeded Karamanlis as Prime Minister.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "On 1 January 1981, Greece became the tenth member of the European Community (now the European Union). In parliamentary elections held on 18 October 1981, Greece elected its first socialist government when the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), led by Andreas Papandreou, won 172 of 300 seats. On 29 March 1985, after Prime Minister Papandreou declined to support President Karamanlis for a second term, Supreme Court Justice Christos Sartzetakis was elected president by the Greek parliament.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Greece had two rounds of parliamentary elections in 1989; both produced weak coalition governments with limited mandates. Party leaders withdrew their support in February 1990, and elections were held on 8 April. New Democracy, led by Constantine Mitsotakis, won 150 seats in that election and subsequently gained two others. However, a split between Mitsotakis and his first Foreign Minister, Antonis Samaras, in 1992, led to Samaras' dismissal and the eventual collapse of the ND government. In new elections in September 1993, Papandreou returned to power.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "On 17 January 1996, following a protracted illness, Papandreou resigned and was replaced as Prime Minister by former Minister of Trade and Industry Costas Simitis. Within days, the new prime minister had to handle a major Greek-Turkish crisis over the Imia/Kardak islands. Simitis subsequently won re-election in the 1996 and 2000 elections. In 2004, Simitis retired and George Papandreou succeeded him as PASOK leader.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In the March 2004 elections, PASOK was defeated by New Democracy, led by Kostas Karamanlis, the nephew of the former president. The government called early elections in September 2007 (normally, elections would have been held in March 2008), and New Democracy again was the majority party in the Parliament. As a result of that defeat, PASOK undertook a party election for a new leader. In that contest, George Papandreou was reelected as the head of the socialist party in Greece. In the 2009 elections however, PASOK became the majority party in the Parliament and George Papandreou became Prime Minister of Greece. After PASOK lost its majority in the Parliament, ND and PASOK joined the smaller Popular Orthodox Rally in a grand coalition, pledging their parliamentary support for a government of national unity headed by former European Central Bank vice-president Lucas Papademos.",
"title": "Transition and democracy (1973–2009)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed among investors concerning Greece's ability to meet its debt obligations due to strong increase in government debt levels. This led to a crisis of confidence, indicated by a widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps compared to other countries, most importantly Germany. Downgrading of Greek government debt to junk bonds created alarm in financial markets.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "On 2 May 2010, the Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund agreed on a €110 billion loan for Greece, conditional on the implementation of harsh austerity measures. In October 2011, Eurozone leaders also agreed on a proposal to write off 50% of Greek debt owed to private creditors, increasing the EFSF to about €1 trillion and requiring European banks to achieve 9% capitalisation to reduce the risk of contagion to other countries. These austerity measures proved to be extremely unpopular with the public in Greece, precipitating demonstrations and civil unrest.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "There are widespread fears that a Greek default on its debt would have global repercussions, endangering the economies of many other countries in the European Union, threatening the stability of the European currency, the euro, and possibly plunging the world into another recession. It has been speculated that the crisis may force Greece to abandon the euro and return to the drachma. In April 2014, Greece returned to the global bond market as it successfully sold €3 billion worth of five-year government bonds at a yield of 4.95%. According to the IMF, Greece will have real GDP growth of 0.6% in 2014 after five years of decline.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Following the May 2012 legislative election where the New Democracy party became the largest party in the Hellenic Parliament, Samaras, leader of ND, was asked by Greek President Karolos Papoulias to try to form a government. However, after a day of hard negotiations with the other parties in Parliament, Samaras officially announced he was giving up the mandate to form a government. The task passed to Alexis Tsipras, leader of the SYRIZA (the second-largest party) who was also unable to form a government. After PASOK also failed to negotiate a successful agreement to form a government, emergency talks with the President ended with a new election being called while Panagiotis Pikrammenos was appointed as Prime Minister in a caretaker government.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Voters once again took to the polls in the widely watched June 2012 election. New Democracy came out on top in a stronger position with 129 seats, compared to 108 in the May election. On 20 June 2012, Samaras successfully formed a coalition with PASOK (now led by former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos) and DIMAR. The new government would have a majority of 58, with SYRIZA, Independent Greeks (ANEL), Golden Dawn (XA) and the Communist Party (KKE) comprising the opposition. PASOK and DIMAR chose to take a limited role in Samaras' Cabinet, being represented by party officials and independent technocrats instead of MPs.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In wake of the austerity measures adopted by the Samaras government, Greeks voted the anti-austerity, left-wing SYRIZA into office in the January 2015 legislative election. Samaras accepted defeat and said that his party had done much to restore the country's finances.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "SYRIZA government lost its majority in August 2015, when some of its MPs withdrew their support in favor of the governing coalition. SYRIZA won the September elections, but failed to get an outright majority. Later they formed a coalition with Independent Greeks, a right-wing party.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The party suffered heavy defeats at the 2019 European Parliament election, and prime minister and SYRIZA leader, Alexis Tsipras resigned to organize a snap election. It resulted in a majority for New Democracy, and the appointment of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as prime minister.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "On 7 July 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Greece. He formed a centre-right government after the landslide election victory of his New Democracy party.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In March 2020, Greece's parliament elected a non-partisan candidate, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, as the first female President of Greece.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "In June 2023, conservative New Democracy party won the legislative election, meaning another four-year term as prime minister for Kyriakos Mitsotakis.",
"title": "Greek Government and Economic Crisis (2009–)"
}
]
| The history of modern Greece covers the history of Greece from the recognition by the Great Powers — Britain, France and Russia — of its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1828 to the present day. | 2001-09-24T20:37:23Z | 2023-12-30T18:55:33Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_modern_Greece |
13,815 | Heracles | Heracles (/ˈhɛrəkliːz/ HERR-ə-kleez; Greek: Ἡρακλῆς, lit. "glory/fame of Hera"), born Alcaeus (Ἀλκαῖος, Alkaios) or Alcides (Ἀλκείδης, Alkeidēs), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a descendant and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.
Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was widely known.
Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, no tomb was identified as his. Heracles was both hero and god, as Pindar says heros theos; at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic libation, and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a "demi-god".
The core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. It is possible that the myths surrounding Heracles were based on the life of a real person or several people whose accomplishments became exaggerated with time.
Heracles' role as a culture hero, whose death could be a subject of mythic telling (see below), was accepted into the Olympian Pantheon during Classical times. This created an awkwardness in the encounter with Odysseus in the episode of Odyssey XI, called the Nekuia, where Odysseus encounters Heracles in Hades:
And next I caught a glimpse of powerful Heracles— His ghost I mean: the man himself delights in the grand feasts of the deathless gods on high ... Around him cries of the dead rang out like cries of birds scattering left and right in horror as on he came like night ...
Ancient critics were aware of the problem of the aside that interrupts the vivid and complete description, in which Heracles recognizes Odysseus and hails him, and some modern critics deny that the verse's beginning, in Fagles' translation His ghost I mean ..., was part of the original composition: "once people knew of Heracles' admission to Olympus, they would not tolerate his presence in the underworld", remarks Friedrich Solmsen, noting that the interpolated verses represent a compromise between conflicting representations of Heracles.
The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of the Heracleia, which commemorated the death of Heracles, on the second day of the month of Metageitnion (which would fall in late July or early August). What is believed to be an Egyptian Temple of Heracles in the Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BCE. A reassessment of Ptolemy's descriptions of the island of Malta attempted to link the site at Ras ir-Raħeb with a temple to Heracles, but the arguments are not conclusive. Several ancient cities were named Heraclea in his honor. A very small island close to the island of Lemnos was called Neai (Νέαι), from νέω, which means "I dive/swim", because Heracles swam there. According to the Greek legends, the Herculaneum in Italy was founded by him.
Several poleis provided two separate sanctuaries for Heracles, one recognizing him as a god, the other only as a hero. Sacrifice was made to him as a hero and as a god within the same festival. This ambiguity helped create the Heracles cult especially when historians (e.g. Herodotus) and artists encouraged worship such as the painters during the time of the Peisistratos, who often presented Heracles entering Olympus in their works.
Some sources explained that the cult of Heracles persisted because of the hero's ascent to heaven and his suffering, which became the basis for festivals, ritual, rites, and the organization of mysteries. There is the observation, for example, that sufferings (pathea) gave rise to the rituals of grief and mourning, which came before the joy in the mysteries in the sequence of cult rituals. Also, like the case of Apollo, the cult of Hercules had been sustained through the years by absorbing local cult figures such as those who share the same nature. He was also constantly invoked as a patron for men, especially the young ones. For example, he was considered the ideal in warfare so he presided over gymnasiums and the ephebes or those men undergoing military training.
There were ancient towns and cities that also adopted Heracles as a patron deity, contributing to the spread of his cult. There was the case of the royal house of Macedonia, which claimed lineal descent from the hero, primarily for purposes of divine protection and legitimator of actions.
The earliest evidence that shows the worship of Heracles in popular cult was in 6th century BCE (121–122 and 160–165) via an ancient inscription from Phaleron. After the 4th century BCE, Heracles became identified with the Phoenician God Melqart
Oitaeans worshiped Heracles and called him Cornopion (Κορνοπίων) because he helped them get rid of locusts (which they called cornopes), while the citizens of Erythrae at Mima called him Ipoctonus (ἰποκτόνος) because he destroyed the vine-eating ips (ἀμπελοφάγων ἰπῶν), a kind of cynips wasp, there.
Extraordinary strength, courage, ingenuity, and sexual prowess with both males and females were among the characteristics commonly attributed to him. Heracles used his wits on several occasions when his strength did not suffice, such as when laboring for the king Augeas of Elis, wrestling the giant Antaeus, or tricking Atlas into taking the sky back onto his shoulders. Together with Hermes he was the patron and protector of gymnasia and palaestrae. His iconographic attributes are the lion skin and the club. These qualities did not prevent him from being regarded as a playful figure who used games to relax from his labors and played a great deal with children. By conquering dangerous archaic forces he is said to have "made the world safe for mankind" and to be its benefactor. Heracles was an extremely passionate and emotional individual, capable of doing both great deeds for his friends (such as wrestling with Thanatos on behalf of Prince Admetus, who had regaled Heracles with his hospitality, or restoring his friend Tyndareus to the throne of Sparta after he was overthrown) and being a terrible enemy who would wreak horrible vengeance on those who crossed him, as Augeas, Neleus, and Laomedon all found out to their cost. There was also a coldness to his character, which was demonstrated by Sophocles' depiction of the hero in The Trachiniae. Heracles threatened his marriage with his desire to bring two women under the same roof; one of them was his wife Deianeira.
In the works of Euripides involving Heracles, his actions were partly driven by forces outside rational human control. By highlighting the divine causation of his madness, Euripides problematized Heracles' character and status within the civilized context. This aspect is also highlighted in Hercules Furens where Seneca linked the hero's madness to an illusion and a consequence of Heracles' refusal to live a simple life, as offered by Amphitryon. It was indicated that he preferred the extravagant violence of the heroic life and that its ghosts eventually manifested in his madness and that the hallucinatory visions defined Heracles' character.
A major factor in the well-known tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, had for him. Heracles was the son of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman Alcmene. When Zeus desired Alcmene, he decided to make one night last three by ordering Helios, the god of the sun, not to rise for three days, so he would have more time with Alcmene. Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon, home early from war (Amphitryon did return later the same night, and Alcmene became pregnant with his son at the same time, a case of heteropaternal superfecundation, where a woman carries twins sired by different fathers). Thus, Heracles' very existence proved at least one of Zeus' many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus' mortal offspring as revenge for her husband's infidelities. His twin mortal brother, son of Amphitryon, was Iphicles, father of Heracles' charioteer Iolaus.
On the night Heracles and Iphicles were to be born, Hera, knowing of her husband Zeus' adultery, persuaded Zeus to swear an oath that the child born that night to a member of the House of Perseus would become High King. Hera did this knowing that while Heracles was to be born a descendant of Perseus, so too was Eurystheus. Once the oath was sworn, Hera hurried to Alcmene's dwelling and slowed the birth of Heracles and Iphicles by forcing Ilithyia, goddess of childbirth, to sit cross-legged with her clothing tied in knots, thereby causing the twins to be trapped in the womb. Meanwhile, Hera caused Eurystheus to be born prematurely, making him High King in place of Heracles. She would have permanently delayed Heracles' birth had she not been fooled by Galanthis, Alcmene's servant, who lied to Ilithyia, saying that Alcmene had already delivered the baby. Upon hearing this, she jumped in surprise, loosing the knots and inadvertently allowing Alcmene to give birth to Heracles and Iphicles.
Fear of Hera's revenge led Alcmene to expose the infant Heracles, but he was taken up and brought to Hera by his half-sister Athena, who played an important role as protectress of heroes. Hera did not recognize Heracles and nursed him out of pity. Heracles suckled so strongly that he caused Hera pain, and she pushed him away. Her milk sprayed across the heavens and there formed the Milky Way. But with divine milk, Heracles had acquired supernatural powers. Athena brought the infant back to his mother, and he was subsequently raised by his parents.
The child was originally given the name Alcides by his parents; it was only later that he became known as Heracles. He was renamed Heracles in an unsuccessful attempt to mollify Hera, with Heracles meaning Hera's "pride" or "glory". He and his twin were just eight months old when Hera sent two giant snakes into the children's chamber. Iphicles cried from fear, but his brother grabbed a snake in each hand and strangled them. He was found by his nurse playing with them on his cot as if they were toys. Astonished, Amphitryon sent for the seer Tiresias, who prophesied an unusual future for the boy, saying he would vanquish numerous monsters.
After killing his music tutor Linus with a lyre, he was sent to tend cattle on a mountain by his foster father Amphitryon. Here, according to an allegorical parable, "The Choice of Heracles", invented by the sophist Prodicus (c. 400 BCE) and reported in Xenophon's Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, he was visited by two allegorical figures—Vice and Virtue—who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life: he chose the latter. This was part of a pattern of "ethicizing" Heracles over the 5th century BCE.
Later, in Thebes, Heracles married King Creon's daughter, Megara.
In a fit of madness, induced by Hera, Heracles killed his children and Megara. After his madness had been cured with hellebore by Antikyreus, the founder of Antikyra, he realized what he had done and fled to the Oracle of Delphi. Unbeknownst to him, the Oracle was guided by Hera. He was directed to serve King Eurystheus for ten years and perform any task Eurystheus required of him. Eurystheus decided to give Heracles ten labours, but after completing them, Heracles was cheated by Eurystheus when he added two more, resulting in the Twelve Labors of Heracles. If he succeeded, he would be purified of his sin and, as myth says, he would become a god, and be granted immortality.
Other traditions place Heracles' madness at a later time and relate the circumstances differently. In some traditions, there was only a divine reason for Heracles' twelve labours: Zeus, in his desire not to leave Heracles the victim of Hera's jealousy, made her promise that, if Heracles executed twelve great works in the service of Eurystheus, he should become immortal. In the play Herakles by Euripides, Heracles is driven to madness by Hera and kills his children after his twelve labours.
Despite the difficulty, Heracles accomplished these tasks, but Eurystheus in the end did not accept the success the hero had with two of the labours: the cleansing of the Augean stables, because Heracles was going to accept pay for the labour; and the killing of the Lernaean Hydra, as Heracles' nephew, Iolaus, had helped him burn the stumps of the multiplying heads.
Eurystheus set two more tasks, fetching the Golden Apples of Hesperides and capturing Cerberus. In the end, with ease, the hero successfully performed each added task, bringing the total number of labours up to twelve.
Not all versions and writers give the labours in the same order. The Bibliotheca (2.5.1–2.5.12) gives the following order:
After completing these tasks, Heracles fell in love with Princess Iole of Oechalia. King Eurytus of Oechalia promised his daughter, Iole, to whoever could beat his sons in an archery contest. Heracles won but Eurytus abandoned his promise. Heracles' advances were spurned by the king and his sons, except for one: Iole's brother Iphitus. Heracles killed the king and his sons—excluding Iphitus—and abducted Iole. Iphitus became Heracles' best friend. However, once again, Hera drove Heracles mad and he threw Iphitus over the city wall to his death. Once again, Heracles purified himself through three years of servitude—this time to Queen Omphale of Lydia.
Omphale was a queen or princess of Lydia. As penalty for a murder, imposed by Xenoclea, the Delphic Oracle, Heracles was to serve as her slave for a year. He was forced to do women's work and to wear women's clothes, while she wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried his olive-wood club. After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and married him. Some sources mention a son born to them who is variously named. It was at that time that the cercopes, mischievous wood spirits, stole Heracles' weapons. He punished them by tying them to a stick with their faces pointing downward.
While walking through the wilderness, Heracles was set upon by the Dryopes. In Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica it is recalled that Heracles had mercilessly slain their king, Theiodamas, over one of the latter's bulls, and made war upon the Dryopes "because they gave no heed to justice in their lives". After the death of their king, the Dryopes gave in and offered him Prince Hylas. He took the youth on as his weapons bearer. Years later, Heracles and Hylas joined the crew of the Argo. As Argonauts, they only participated in part of the journey. In Mysia, Hylas was kidnapped by the nymphs of a local spring. Heracles, searched for a long time but Hylas had fallen in love with the nymphs and never showed up again. In other versions, he simply drowned. Either way, the Argo set sail without them.
Hesiod's Theogony and Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound both tell that Heracles shot and killed the eagle that tortured Prometheus (which was his punishment by Zeus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mortals). Heracles freed the Titan from his chains and his torments. Prometheus then made predictions regarding further deeds of Heracles.
On his way back to Mycenae from Iberia, having obtained the Cattle of Geryon as his tenth labour, Heracles came to Liguria in North-Western Italy where he engaged in battle with two giants, Albion and Bergion or Dercynus, sons of Poseidon. The opponents were strong; Heracles was in a difficult position so he prayed to his father Zeus for help. Under the aegis of Zeus, Heracles won the battle. It was this kneeling position of Heracles when he prayed to his father Zeus that gave the name Engonasin ("Εγγόνασιν", derived from "εν γόνασιν"), meaning "on his knees" or "the Kneeler", to the constellation known as Heracles' constellation. The story, among others, is described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
Before Homer's Trojan War, Heracles had made an expedition to Troy and sacked it. Previously, Poseidon had sent a sea monster (Greek: kētŏs, Latin: cetus) to attack Troy. The story is related in several digressions in the Iliad (7.451–53; 20.145–48; 21.442–57) and is found in pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke (2.5.9). This expedition became the theme of the Eastern pediment of the Temple of Aphaea. Laomedon planned on sacrificing his daughter Hesione to Poseidon in the hope of appeasing him. Heracles happened to arrive (along with Telamon and Oicles) and agreed to kill the monster if Laomedon would give him the horses received from Zeus as compensation for Zeus' kidnapping Ganymede. Laomedon agreed. Heracles killed the monster, but Laomedon went back on his word. Accordingly, in a later expedition, Heracles and his followers attacked Troy and sacked it. Then they slew all Laomedon's sons present there save Podarces, who was renamed Priam, who saved his own life by giving Heracles a golden veil Hesione had made. Telamon took Hesione as a war prize and they had a son, Teucer.
After Heracles had performed his Labours, gods told him that before he passed into the company of the gods, he should create a colony at Sardinia and make his sons, whom he had with the daughters of Thespius, the leaders of the settlement. When his sons became adults, he sent them together with Iolaus to the island.
This is described in Sophocles's Trachiniae and in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book IX. Having wrestled and defeated Achelous, god of the Acheloos river, Heracles takes Deianira as his wife. Travelling to Tiryns, a centaur, Nessus, offers to help Deianira across a fast flowing river while Heracles swims it. However, Nessus is true to the archetype of the mischievous centaur and tries to steal Deianira away while Heracles is still in the water. Angry, Heracles shoots him with his arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. Thinking of revenge, Nessus gives Deianira his blood-soaked tunic before he dies, telling her it will "excite the love of her husband".
Several years later, rumor tells Deianira that she has a rival for the love of Heracles. Deianira, remembering Nessus' words, gives Heracles the bloodstained shirt. Lichas, the herald, delivers the shirt to Heracles. However, it is still covered in the Hydra's blood from Heracles' arrows, and this poisons him, tearing his skin and exposing his bones. Before he dies, Heracles throws Lichas into the sea, thinking he was the one who poisoned him (according to several versions, Lichas turns to stone, becoming a rock standing in the sea, named for him). Heracles then uproots several trees and builds a funeral pyre on Mount Oeta, which Poeas, father of Philoctetes, lights. As his body burns, only his immortal side is left. Through Zeus' apotheosis, Heracles rises to Olympus as he dies.
No one but Heracles' friend Philoctetes (Poeas in some versions) would light his funeral pyre (in an alternative version, it is Iolaus who lights the pyre). For this action, Philoctetes or Poeas received Heracles' bow and arrows, which were later needed by the Greeks to defeat Troy in the Trojan War.
Philoctetes confronted Paris and shot a poisoned arrow at him. The Hydra poison subsequently led to the death of Paris. The Trojan War, however, continued until the Trojan Horse was used to defeat Troy.
According to Herodotus, Heracles lived 900 years before Herodotus' own time (c. 1300 BCE).
After his death in the pyre, Heracles ascended to Olympus as a god, and having finally reconciled with Hera, he got her daughter Hebe as his fourth and final wife. They had two sons together, Alexiares and Anicetus.
When Typhon attacked Olympus, all gods transformed into animals and ran terrified to Egypt; Heracles became a fawn.
In the Dialogues of the Gods, a satirical work by Lucian of Samosata, Heracles and another recently deified mortal, Asclepius, fight over which gets the most prestigious seat on the table of the gods, each arguing that they are the one who deserve it. Zeus intervenes, and rules in favour of Asclepius, reasoning that the best seat should go to the one who became a god first.
Heracles also appears to Philoctetes, stranded and abandoned by the other Greeks on Lemnos island, and through his deus ex machina intervention, Philoctetes is convinced to join the other Greeks at Troy, where he kills Paris with Heracles's arrows.
In Christian circles, a Euhemerist reading of the widespread Heracles cult was attributed to a historical figure who had been offered cult status after his death. Thus Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel (10.12), reported that Clement could offer historical dates for Heracles as a king in Argos: "from the reign of Heracles in Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius there are comprised thirty-eight years, according to Apollodorus the chronicler: and from that point to the deification of Castor and Pollux fifty-three years: and somewhere about this time was the capture of Troy."
Readers with a literalist bent, following Clement's reasoning, have asserted from this remark that, since Heracles ruled over Tiryns in Argos at the same time that Eurystheus ruled over Mycenae, and since at about this time Linus was Heracles' teacher, one can conclude, based on Jerome's date—in his universal history, his Chronicon—given to Linus' notoriety in teaching Heracles in 1264 BCE, that Heracles' death and deification occurred 38 years later, in approximately 1226 BCE.
During the course of his life, Heracles married four times.
An episode of his female affairs that stands out was his stay at the palace of Thespius, king of Thespiae, who wished him to kill the Lion of Cithaeron. As a reward, the king offered him the chance to perform sexual intercourse with all fifty of his daughters in one night. Heracles complied and they all became pregnant and all bore sons. This is sometimes referred to as his Thirteenth Labour. Many of the kings of ancient Greece traced their lines to one or another of these, notably the kings of Sparta and Macedon.
Yet another episode of his female affairs that stands out was when he carried away the oxen of Geryon, he also visited the country of the Scythians. Once there, while asleep, his horses suddenly disappeared. When he woke and wandered about in search of them, he came into the country of Hylaea. He then found the dracaena of Scythia (sometimes identified as Echidna) in a cave. When he asked whether she knew anything about his horses, she answered, that they were in her own possession, but that she would not give them up, unless he would consent to stay with her for a time. Heracles accepted the request, and became by her the father of Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. The last of them became king of the Scythians, according to his father's arrangement, because he was the only one among the three brothers that was able to manage the bow which Heracles had left behind and to use his father's girdle.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes that Heracles and Lavinia, daughter of Evander, had a son named Pallas.
As a symbol of masculinity and warriorship, Heracles also had a number of male lovers. Plutarch, in his Eroticos, maintains that Heracles' male lovers were beyond counting. Of these, the one most closely linked to Heracles is the Theban Iolaus. According to a myth thought to be of ancient origins, Iolaus was Heracles' charioteer and squire. Heracles in the end helped Iolaus find a wife. Plutarch reports that down to his own time, male couples would go to Iolaus's tomb in Thebes to swear an oath of loyalty to the hero and to each other. He also mentions Admetus, known in myth for assisting the Calydonian boar hunt, as one of Heracles's male lovers.
One of Heracles' male lovers, and one represented in ancient as well as modern art, is Hylas, who sailed with Heracles on the Argo.
Another reputed male lover of Heracles is Elacatas, who was honored in Sparta with a sanctuary and yearly games, Elacatea. The myth of their love is an ancient one.
Abdera's eponymous hero, Abderus, was another of Heracles' lovers. He was said to have been entrusted with—and slain by—the carnivorous mares of Thracian Diomedes. Heracles founded the city of Abdera in Thrace in his memory, where he was honored with athletic games.
Another myth is that of Iphitus.
Another story is the one of his love for Nireus, who was "the most beautiful man who came beneath Ilion" (Iliad, 673). But Ptolemy adds that certain authors made Nireus out to be a son of Heracles.
Pausanias makes mention of Sostratus, a youth of Dyme, Achaea, as a lover of Heracles. Sostratus was said to have died young and to have been buried by Heracles outside the city. The tomb was still there in historical times, and the inhabitants of Dyme honored Sostratus as a hero. The youth seems to have also been referred to as Polystratus.
A series of lovers are only known in later literature. Among these are Eurystheus, Adonis, Corythus, Argus, and Nestor who was said to have been loved for his wisdom. In the account of Ptolemaeus Chennus, Nestor's role as lover explains why he was the only son of Neleus to be spared by the hero.
A scholiast commenting on Apollonius' Argonautica lists the following male lovers of Heracles: "Hylas, Philoctetes, Diomus, Perithoas, and Phrix, after whom a city in Libya was named". Diomus is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium as the eponym of the deme Diomeia of the Attic phyle Aegeis: Heracles is said to have fallen in love with Diomus when he was received as guest by Diomus' father Collytus. Perithoas and Phrix are otherwise unknown, and so is the version that suggests a sexual relationship between Heracles and Philoctetes.
All of Heracles' marriages and almost all of his heterosexual affairs resulted in births of a number of sons and at least four daughters. One of the most prominent is Hyllus, the son of Heracles and Deianeira or Melite. The term Heracleidae, although it could refer to all of Heracles' children and further descendants, is most commonly used to indicate the descendants of Hyllus, in the context of their lasting struggle for return to Peloponnesus, out of where Hyllus and his brothers—the children of Heracles by Deianeira—were thought to have been expelled by Eurystheus.
The children of Heracles by Megara are collectively well known because of their ill fate, but there is some disagreement among sources as to their number and individual names. Apollodorus lists three, Therimachus, Creontiades and Deicoon; to these Hyginus adds Ophitus and, probably by mistake, Archelaus, who is otherwise known to have belonged to the Heracleidae, but to have lived several generations later. A scholiast on Pindar' s odes provides a list of seven completely different names: Anicetus, Chersibius, Mecistophonus, Menebrontes, Patrocles, Polydorus, Toxocleitus.
Other well-known children of Heracles include Telephus, king of Mysia (by Auge), and Tlepolemus, one of the Greek commanders in the Trojan War (by Astyoche).
According to Herodotus, a line of 22 Kings of Lydia descended from Heracles and Omphale. The line was called Tylonids after his Lydian name.
The divine sons of Heracles and Hebe are Alexiares and Anicetus.
In Rome, Heracles was honored as Hercules, and had a number of distinctively Roman myths and practices associated with him under that name.
Herodotus connected Heracles to the Egyptian god Shu. Also he was associated with Khonsu, another Egyptian god who was in some ways similar to Shu. As Khonsu, Heracles was worshipped at the now sunken city of Heracleion, where a large temple was constructed.
Most often the Egyptians identified Heracles with Heryshaf, transcribed in Greek as Arsaphes or Harsaphes (Ἁρσαφής). He was an ancient ram-god whose cult was centered in Herakleopolis Magna.
Via the Greco-Buddhist culture, Heraclean symbolism was transmitted to the Far East. An example remains to this day in the Nio guardian deities in front of Japanese Buddhist temples.
Herodotus also connected Heracles to Phoenician god Melqart.
Sallust mentions in his work on the Jugurthine War that the Africans believe Heracles to have died in Spain where, his multicultural army being left without a leader, the Medes, Persians, and Armenians who were once under his command split off and populated the Mediterranean coast of Africa.
Temples dedicated to Heracles abounded all along the Mediterranean coastal countries. For example, the temple of Heracles Monoikos (i.e. the lone dweller), built far from any nearby town upon a promontory in what is now the Côte d'Azur, gave its name to the area's more recent name, Monaco.
The gateway to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, where the southernmost tip of Spain and the northernmost of Morocco face each other is, classically speaking, referred to as the Pillars of Hercules/Heracles, owing to the story that he set up two massive spires of stone to stabilise the area and ensure the safety of ships sailing between the two landmasses.
In various languages, variants of Heracles' name are used as a male given name, such as Hercule in French, Hércules in Spanish, Iraklis (Greek: Ηρακλής) in Modern Greek and Irakli (Georgian: ირაკლი, romanized: irak'li) in Georgian.
There are many teams around the world that have this name or have Heracles as their symbol. The most popular in Greece is G.S. Iraklis Thessaloniki.
Heracleum is a genus of flowering plants in the carrot family Apiaceae. Some of the species in this genus are quite large. In particular, the giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is exceptionally large, growing up to 5 m tall. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Heracles (/ˈhɛrəkliːz/ HERR-ə-kleez; Greek: Ἡρακλῆς, lit. \"glory/fame of Hera\"), born Alcaeus (Ἀλκαῖος, Alkaios) or Alcides (Ἀλκείδης, Alkeidēs), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a descendant and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was widely known.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, no tomb was identified as his. Heracles was both hero and god, as Pindar says heros theos; at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic libation, and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a \"demi-god\".",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. It is possible that the myths surrounding Heracles were based on the life of a real person or several people whose accomplishments became exaggerated with time.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Heracles' role as a culture hero, whose death could be a subject of mythic telling (see below), was accepted into the Olympian Pantheon during Classical times. This created an awkwardness in the encounter with Odysseus in the episode of Odyssey XI, called the Nekuia, where Odysseus encounters Heracles in Hades:",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "And next I caught a glimpse of powerful Heracles— His ghost I mean: the man himself delights in the grand feasts of the deathless gods on high ... Around him cries of the dead rang out like cries of birds scattering left and right in horror as on he came like night ...",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Ancient critics were aware of the problem of the aside that interrupts the vivid and complete description, in which Heracles recognizes Odysseus and hails him, and some modern critics deny that the verse's beginning, in Fagles' translation His ghost I mean ..., was part of the original composition: \"once people knew of Heracles' admission to Olympus, they would not tolerate his presence in the underworld\", remarks Friedrich Solmsen, noting that the interpolated verses represent a compromise between conflicting representations of Heracles.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of the Heracleia, which commemorated the death of Heracles, on the second day of the month of Metageitnion (which would fall in late July or early August). What is believed to be an Egyptian Temple of Heracles in the Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BCE. A reassessment of Ptolemy's descriptions of the island of Malta attempted to link the site at Ras ir-Raħeb with a temple to Heracles, but the arguments are not conclusive. Several ancient cities were named Heraclea in his honor. A very small island close to the island of Lemnos was called Neai (Νέαι), from νέω, which means \"I dive/swim\", because Heracles swam there. According to the Greek legends, the Herculaneum in Italy was founded by him.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Several poleis provided two separate sanctuaries for Heracles, one recognizing him as a god, the other only as a hero. Sacrifice was made to him as a hero and as a god within the same festival. This ambiguity helped create the Heracles cult especially when historians (e.g. Herodotus) and artists encouraged worship such as the painters during the time of the Peisistratos, who often presented Heracles entering Olympus in their works.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Some sources explained that the cult of Heracles persisted because of the hero's ascent to heaven and his suffering, which became the basis for festivals, ritual, rites, and the organization of mysteries. There is the observation, for example, that sufferings (pathea) gave rise to the rituals of grief and mourning, which came before the joy in the mysteries in the sequence of cult rituals. Also, like the case of Apollo, the cult of Hercules had been sustained through the years by absorbing local cult figures such as those who share the same nature. He was also constantly invoked as a patron for men, especially the young ones. For example, he was considered the ideal in warfare so he presided over gymnasiums and the ephebes or those men undergoing military training.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There were ancient towns and cities that also adopted Heracles as a patron deity, contributing to the spread of his cult. There was the case of the royal house of Macedonia, which claimed lineal descent from the hero, primarily for purposes of divine protection and legitimator of actions.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The earliest evidence that shows the worship of Heracles in popular cult was in 6th century BCE (121–122 and 160–165) via an ancient inscription from Phaleron. After the 4th century BCE, Heracles became identified with the Phoenician God Melqart",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Oitaeans worshiped Heracles and called him Cornopion (Κορνοπίων) because he helped them get rid of locusts (which they called cornopes), while the citizens of Erythrae at Mima called him Ipoctonus (ἰποκτόνος) because he destroyed the vine-eating ips (ἀμπελοφάγων ἰπῶν), a kind of cynips wasp, there.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Extraordinary strength, courage, ingenuity, and sexual prowess with both males and females were among the characteristics commonly attributed to him. Heracles used his wits on several occasions when his strength did not suffice, such as when laboring for the king Augeas of Elis, wrestling the giant Antaeus, or tricking Atlas into taking the sky back onto his shoulders. Together with Hermes he was the patron and protector of gymnasia and palaestrae. His iconographic attributes are the lion skin and the club. These qualities did not prevent him from being regarded as a playful figure who used games to relax from his labors and played a great deal with children. By conquering dangerous archaic forces he is said to have \"made the world safe for mankind\" and to be its benefactor. Heracles was an extremely passionate and emotional individual, capable of doing both great deeds for his friends (such as wrestling with Thanatos on behalf of Prince Admetus, who had regaled Heracles with his hospitality, or restoring his friend Tyndareus to the throne of Sparta after he was overthrown) and being a terrible enemy who would wreak horrible vengeance on those who crossed him, as Augeas, Neleus, and Laomedon all found out to their cost. There was also a coldness to his character, which was demonstrated by Sophocles' depiction of the hero in The Trachiniae. Heracles threatened his marriage with his desire to bring two women under the same roof; one of them was his wife Deianeira.",
"title": "Character"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the works of Euripides involving Heracles, his actions were partly driven by forces outside rational human control. By highlighting the divine causation of his madness, Euripides problematized Heracles' character and status within the civilized context. This aspect is also highlighted in Hercules Furens where Seneca linked the hero's madness to an illusion and a consequence of Heracles' refusal to live a simple life, as offered by Amphitryon. It was indicated that he preferred the extravagant violence of the heroic life and that its ghosts eventually manifested in his madness and that the hallucinatory visions defined Heracles' character.",
"title": "Character"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "A major factor in the well-known tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, had for him. Heracles was the son of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman Alcmene. When Zeus desired Alcmene, he decided to make one night last three by ordering Helios, the god of the sun, not to rise for three days, so he would have more time with Alcmene. Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon, home early from war (Amphitryon did return later the same night, and Alcmene became pregnant with his son at the same time, a case of heteropaternal superfecundation, where a woman carries twins sired by different fathers). Thus, Heracles' very existence proved at least one of Zeus' many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus' mortal offspring as revenge for her husband's infidelities. His twin mortal brother, son of Amphitryon, was Iphicles, father of Heracles' charioteer Iolaus.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On the night Heracles and Iphicles were to be born, Hera, knowing of her husband Zeus' adultery, persuaded Zeus to swear an oath that the child born that night to a member of the House of Perseus would become High King. Hera did this knowing that while Heracles was to be born a descendant of Perseus, so too was Eurystheus. Once the oath was sworn, Hera hurried to Alcmene's dwelling and slowed the birth of Heracles and Iphicles by forcing Ilithyia, goddess of childbirth, to sit cross-legged with her clothing tied in knots, thereby causing the twins to be trapped in the womb. Meanwhile, Hera caused Eurystheus to be born prematurely, making him High King in place of Heracles. She would have permanently delayed Heracles' birth had she not been fooled by Galanthis, Alcmene's servant, who lied to Ilithyia, saying that Alcmene had already delivered the baby. Upon hearing this, she jumped in surprise, loosing the knots and inadvertently allowing Alcmene to give birth to Heracles and Iphicles.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Fear of Hera's revenge led Alcmene to expose the infant Heracles, but he was taken up and brought to Hera by his half-sister Athena, who played an important role as protectress of heroes. Hera did not recognize Heracles and nursed him out of pity. Heracles suckled so strongly that he caused Hera pain, and she pushed him away. Her milk sprayed across the heavens and there formed the Milky Way. But with divine milk, Heracles had acquired supernatural powers. Athena brought the infant back to his mother, and he was subsequently raised by his parents.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The child was originally given the name Alcides by his parents; it was only later that he became known as Heracles. He was renamed Heracles in an unsuccessful attempt to mollify Hera, with Heracles meaning Hera's \"pride\" or \"glory\". He and his twin were just eight months old when Hera sent two giant snakes into the children's chamber. Iphicles cried from fear, but his brother grabbed a snake in each hand and strangled them. He was found by his nurse playing with them on his cot as if they were toys. Astonished, Amphitryon sent for the seer Tiresias, who prophesied an unusual future for the boy, saying he would vanquish numerous monsters.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "After killing his music tutor Linus with a lyre, he was sent to tend cattle on a mountain by his foster father Amphitryon. Here, according to an allegorical parable, \"The Choice of Heracles\", invented by the sophist Prodicus (c. 400 BCE) and reported in Xenophon's Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, he was visited by two allegorical figures—Vice and Virtue—who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life: he chose the latter. This was part of a pattern of \"ethicizing\" Heracles over the 5th century BCE.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Later, in Thebes, Heracles married King Creon's daughter, Megara.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In a fit of madness, induced by Hera, Heracles killed his children and Megara. After his madness had been cured with hellebore by Antikyreus, the founder of Antikyra, he realized what he had done and fled to the Oracle of Delphi. Unbeknownst to him, the Oracle was guided by Hera. He was directed to serve King Eurystheus for ten years and perform any task Eurystheus required of him. Eurystheus decided to give Heracles ten labours, but after completing them, Heracles was cheated by Eurystheus when he added two more, resulting in the Twelve Labors of Heracles. If he succeeded, he would be purified of his sin and, as myth says, he would become a god, and be granted immortality.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Other traditions place Heracles' madness at a later time and relate the circumstances differently. In some traditions, there was only a divine reason for Heracles' twelve labours: Zeus, in his desire not to leave Heracles the victim of Hera's jealousy, made her promise that, if Heracles executed twelve great works in the service of Eurystheus, he should become immortal. In the play Herakles by Euripides, Heracles is driven to madness by Hera and kills his children after his twelve labours.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Despite the difficulty, Heracles accomplished these tasks, but Eurystheus in the end did not accept the success the hero had with two of the labours: the cleansing of the Augean stables, because Heracles was going to accept pay for the labour; and the killing of the Lernaean Hydra, as Heracles' nephew, Iolaus, had helped him burn the stumps of the multiplying heads.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Eurystheus set two more tasks, fetching the Golden Apples of Hesperides and capturing Cerberus. In the end, with ease, the hero successfully performed each added task, bringing the total number of labours up to twelve.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Not all versions and writers give the labours in the same order. The Bibliotheca (2.5.1–2.5.12) gives the following order:",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "After completing these tasks, Heracles fell in love with Princess Iole of Oechalia. King Eurytus of Oechalia promised his daughter, Iole, to whoever could beat his sons in an archery contest. Heracles won but Eurytus abandoned his promise. Heracles' advances were spurned by the king and his sons, except for one: Iole's brother Iphitus. Heracles killed the king and his sons—excluding Iphitus—and abducted Iole. Iphitus became Heracles' best friend. However, once again, Hera drove Heracles mad and he threw Iphitus over the city wall to his death. Once again, Heracles purified himself through three years of servitude—this time to Queen Omphale of Lydia.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Omphale was a queen or princess of Lydia. As penalty for a murder, imposed by Xenoclea, the Delphic Oracle, Heracles was to serve as her slave for a year. He was forced to do women's work and to wear women's clothes, while she wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried his olive-wood club. After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and married him. Some sources mention a son born to them who is variously named. It was at that time that the cercopes, mischievous wood spirits, stole Heracles' weapons. He punished them by tying them to a stick with their faces pointing downward.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "While walking through the wilderness, Heracles was set upon by the Dryopes. In Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica it is recalled that Heracles had mercilessly slain their king, Theiodamas, over one of the latter's bulls, and made war upon the Dryopes \"because they gave no heed to justice in their lives\". After the death of their king, the Dryopes gave in and offered him Prince Hylas. He took the youth on as his weapons bearer. Years later, Heracles and Hylas joined the crew of the Argo. As Argonauts, they only participated in part of the journey. In Mysia, Hylas was kidnapped by the nymphs of a local spring. Heracles, searched for a long time but Hylas had fallen in love with the nymphs and never showed up again. In other versions, he simply drowned. Either way, the Argo set sail without them.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hesiod's Theogony and Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound both tell that Heracles shot and killed the eagle that tortured Prometheus (which was his punishment by Zeus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mortals). Heracles freed the Titan from his chains and his torments. Prometheus then made predictions regarding further deeds of Heracles.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On his way back to Mycenae from Iberia, having obtained the Cattle of Geryon as his tenth labour, Heracles came to Liguria in North-Western Italy where he engaged in battle with two giants, Albion and Bergion or Dercynus, sons of Poseidon. The opponents were strong; Heracles was in a difficult position so he prayed to his father Zeus for help. Under the aegis of Zeus, Heracles won the battle. It was this kneeling position of Heracles when he prayed to his father Zeus that gave the name Engonasin (\"Εγγόνασιν\", derived from \"εν γόνασιν\"), meaning \"on his knees\" or \"the Kneeler\", to the constellation known as Heracles' constellation. The story, among others, is described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Before Homer's Trojan War, Heracles had made an expedition to Troy and sacked it. Previously, Poseidon had sent a sea monster (Greek: kētŏs, Latin: cetus) to attack Troy. The story is related in several digressions in the Iliad (7.451–53; 20.145–48; 21.442–57) and is found in pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke (2.5.9). This expedition became the theme of the Eastern pediment of the Temple of Aphaea. Laomedon planned on sacrificing his daughter Hesione to Poseidon in the hope of appeasing him. Heracles happened to arrive (along with Telamon and Oicles) and agreed to kill the monster if Laomedon would give him the horses received from Zeus as compensation for Zeus' kidnapping Ganymede. Laomedon agreed. Heracles killed the monster, but Laomedon went back on his word. Accordingly, in a later expedition, Heracles and his followers attacked Troy and sacked it. Then they slew all Laomedon's sons present there save Podarces, who was renamed Priam, who saved his own life by giving Heracles a golden veil Hesione had made. Telamon took Hesione as a war prize and they had a son, Teucer.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "After Heracles had performed his Labours, gods told him that before he passed into the company of the gods, he should create a colony at Sardinia and make his sons, whom he had with the daughters of Thespius, the leaders of the settlement. When his sons became adults, he sent them together with Iolaus to the island.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "This is described in Sophocles's Trachiniae and in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book IX. Having wrestled and defeated Achelous, god of the Acheloos river, Heracles takes Deianira as his wife. Travelling to Tiryns, a centaur, Nessus, offers to help Deianira across a fast flowing river while Heracles swims it. However, Nessus is true to the archetype of the mischievous centaur and tries to steal Deianira away while Heracles is still in the water. Angry, Heracles shoots him with his arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. Thinking of revenge, Nessus gives Deianira his blood-soaked tunic before he dies, telling her it will \"excite the love of her husband\".",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Several years later, rumor tells Deianira that she has a rival for the love of Heracles. Deianira, remembering Nessus' words, gives Heracles the bloodstained shirt. Lichas, the herald, delivers the shirt to Heracles. However, it is still covered in the Hydra's blood from Heracles' arrows, and this poisons him, tearing his skin and exposing his bones. Before he dies, Heracles throws Lichas into the sea, thinking he was the one who poisoned him (according to several versions, Lichas turns to stone, becoming a rock standing in the sea, named for him). Heracles then uproots several trees and builds a funeral pyre on Mount Oeta, which Poeas, father of Philoctetes, lights. As his body burns, only his immortal side is left. Through Zeus' apotheosis, Heracles rises to Olympus as he dies.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "No one but Heracles' friend Philoctetes (Poeas in some versions) would light his funeral pyre (in an alternative version, it is Iolaus who lights the pyre). For this action, Philoctetes or Poeas received Heracles' bow and arrows, which were later needed by the Greeks to defeat Troy in the Trojan War.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Philoctetes confronted Paris and shot a poisoned arrow at him. The Hydra poison subsequently led to the death of Paris. The Trojan War, however, continued until the Trojan Horse was used to defeat Troy.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "According to Herodotus, Heracles lived 900 years before Herodotus' own time (c. 1300 BCE).",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "After his death in the pyre, Heracles ascended to Olympus as a god, and having finally reconciled with Hera, he got her daughter Hebe as his fourth and final wife. They had two sons together, Alexiares and Anicetus.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "When Typhon attacked Olympus, all gods transformed into animals and ran terrified to Egypt; Heracles became a fawn.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In the Dialogues of the Gods, a satirical work by Lucian of Samosata, Heracles and another recently deified mortal, Asclepius, fight over which gets the most prestigious seat on the table of the gods, each arguing that they are the one who deserve it. Zeus intervenes, and rules in favour of Asclepius, reasoning that the best seat should go to the one who became a god first.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Heracles also appears to Philoctetes, stranded and abandoned by the other Greeks on Lemnos island, and through his deus ex machina intervention, Philoctetes is convinced to join the other Greeks at Troy, where he kills Paris with Heracles's arrows.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In Christian circles, a Euhemerist reading of the widespread Heracles cult was attributed to a historical figure who had been offered cult status after his death. Thus Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel (10.12), reported that Clement could offer historical dates for Heracles as a king in Argos: \"from the reign of Heracles in Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius there are comprised thirty-eight years, according to Apollodorus the chronicler: and from that point to the deification of Castor and Pollux fifty-three years: and somewhere about this time was the capture of Troy.\"",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Readers with a literalist bent, following Clement's reasoning, have asserted from this remark that, since Heracles ruled over Tiryns in Argos at the same time that Eurystheus ruled over Mycenae, and since at about this time Linus was Heracles' teacher, one can conclude, based on Jerome's date—in his universal history, his Chronicon—given to Linus' notoriety in teaching Heracles in 1264 BCE, that Heracles' death and deification occurred 38 years later, in approximately 1226 BCE.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "During the course of his life, Heracles married four times.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "An episode of his female affairs that stands out was his stay at the palace of Thespius, king of Thespiae, who wished him to kill the Lion of Cithaeron. As a reward, the king offered him the chance to perform sexual intercourse with all fifty of his daughters in one night. Heracles complied and they all became pregnant and all bore sons. This is sometimes referred to as his Thirteenth Labour. Many of the kings of ancient Greece traced their lines to one or another of these, notably the kings of Sparta and Macedon.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Yet another episode of his female affairs that stands out was when he carried away the oxen of Geryon, he also visited the country of the Scythians. Once there, while asleep, his horses suddenly disappeared. When he woke and wandered about in search of them, he came into the country of Hylaea. He then found the dracaena of Scythia (sometimes identified as Echidna) in a cave. When he asked whether she knew anything about his horses, she answered, that they were in her own possession, but that she would not give them up, unless he would consent to stay with her for a time. Heracles accepted the request, and became by her the father of Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. The last of them became king of the Scythians, according to his father's arrangement, because he was the only one among the three brothers that was able to manage the bow which Heracles had left behind and to use his father's girdle.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes that Heracles and Lavinia, daughter of Evander, had a son named Pallas.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "As a symbol of masculinity and warriorship, Heracles also had a number of male lovers. Plutarch, in his Eroticos, maintains that Heracles' male lovers were beyond counting. Of these, the one most closely linked to Heracles is the Theban Iolaus. According to a myth thought to be of ancient origins, Iolaus was Heracles' charioteer and squire. Heracles in the end helped Iolaus find a wife. Plutarch reports that down to his own time, male couples would go to Iolaus's tomb in Thebes to swear an oath of loyalty to the hero and to each other. He also mentions Admetus, known in myth for assisting the Calydonian boar hunt, as one of Heracles's male lovers.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "One of Heracles' male lovers, and one represented in ancient as well as modern art, is Hylas, who sailed with Heracles on the Argo.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Another reputed male lover of Heracles is Elacatas, who was honored in Sparta with a sanctuary and yearly games, Elacatea. The myth of their love is an ancient one.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Abdera's eponymous hero, Abderus, was another of Heracles' lovers. He was said to have been entrusted with—and slain by—the carnivorous mares of Thracian Diomedes. Heracles founded the city of Abdera in Thrace in his memory, where he was honored with athletic games.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Another myth is that of Iphitus.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Another story is the one of his love for Nireus, who was \"the most beautiful man who came beneath Ilion\" (Iliad, 673). But Ptolemy adds that certain authors made Nireus out to be a son of Heracles.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Pausanias makes mention of Sostratus, a youth of Dyme, Achaea, as a lover of Heracles. Sostratus was said to have died young and to have been buried by Heracles outside the city. The tomb was still there in historical times, and the inhabitants of Dyme honored Sostratus as a hero. The youth seems to have also been referred to as Polystratus.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "A series of lovers are only known in later literature. Among these are Eurystheus, Adonis, Corythus, Argus, and Nestor who was said to have been loved for his wisdom. In the account of Ptolemaeus Chennus, Nestor's role as lover explains why he was the only son of Neleus to be spared by the hero.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "A scholiast commenting on Apollonius' Argonautica lists the following male lovers of Heracles: \"Hylas, Philoctetes, Diomus, Perithoas, and Phrix, after whom a city in Libya was named\". Diomus is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium as the eponym of the deme Diomeia of the Attic phyle Aegeis: Heracles is said to have fallen in love with Diomus when he was received as guest by Diomus' father Collytus. Perithoas and Phrix are otherwise unknown, and so is the version that suggests a sexual relationship between Heracles and Philoctetes.",
"title": "Lovers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "All of Heracles' marriages and almost all of his heterosexual affairs resulted in births of a number of sons and at least four daughters. One of the most prominent is Hyllus, the son of Heracles and Deianeira or Melite. The term Heracleidae, although it could refer to all of Heracles' children and further descendants, is most commonly used to indicate the descendants of Hyllus, in the context of their lasting struggle for return to Peloponnesus, out of where Hyllus and his brothers—the children of Heracles by Deianeira—were thought to have been expelled by Eurystheus.",
"title": "Children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The children of Heracles by Megara are collectively well known because of their ill fate, but there is some disagreement among sources as to their number and individual names. Apollodorus lists three, Therimachus, Creontiades and Deicoon; to these Hyginus adds Ophitus and, probably by mistake, Archelaus, who is otherwise known to have belonged to the Heracleidae, but to have lived several generations later. A scholiast on Pindar' s odes provides a list of seven completely different names: Anicetus, Chersibius, Mecistophonus, Menebrontes, Patrocles, Polydorus, Toxocleitus.",
"title": "Children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Other well-known children of Heracles include Telephus, king of Mysia (by Auge), and Tlepolemus, one of the Greek commanders in the Trojan War (by Astyoche).",
"title": "Children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "According to Herodotus, a line of 22 Kings of Lydia descended from Heracles and Omphale. The line was called Tylonids after his Lydian name.",
"title": "Children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The divine sons of Heracles and Hebe are Alexiares and Anicetus.",
"title": "Children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In Rome, Heracles was honored as Hercules, and had a number of distinctively Roman myths and practices associated with him under that name.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Herodotus connected Heracles to the Egyptian god Shu. Also he was associated with Khonsu, another Egyptian god who was in some ways similar to Shu. As Khonsu, Heracles was worshipped at the now sunken city of Heracleion, where a large temple was constructed.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Most often the Egyptians identified Heracles with Heryshaf, transcribed in Greek as Arsaphes or Harsaphes (Ἁρσαφής). He was an ancient ram-god whose cult was centered in Herakleopolis Magna.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Via the Greco-Buddhist culture, Heraclean symbolism was transmitted to the Far East. An example remains to this day in the Nio guardian deities in front of Japanese Buddhist temples.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Herodotus also connected Heracles to Phoenician god Melqart.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Sallust mentions in his work on the Jugurthine War that the Africans believe Heracles to have died in Spain where, his multicultural army being left without a leader, the Medes, Persians, and Armenians who were once under his command split off and populated the Mediterranean coast of Africa.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Temples dedicated to Heracles abounded all along the Mediterranean coastal countries. For example, the temple of Heracles Monoikos (i.e. the lone dweller), built far from any nearby town upon a promontory in what is now the Côte d'Azur, gave its name to the area's more recent name, Monaco.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The gateway to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, where the southernmost tip of Spain and the northernmost of Morocco face each other is, classically speaking, referred to as the Pillars of Hercules/Heracles, owing to the story that he set up two massive spires of stone to stabilise the area and ensure the safety of ships sailing between the two landmasses.",
"title": "Heracles around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In various languages, variants of Heracles' name are used as a male given name, such as Hercule in French, Hércules in Spanish, Iraklis (Greek: Ηρακλής) in Modern Greek and Irakli (Georgian: ირაკლი, romanized: irak'li) in Georgian.",
"title": "Uses of Heracles as a name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "There are many teams around the world that have this name or have Heracles as their symbol. The most popular in Greece is G.S. Iraklis Thessaloniki.",
"title": "Uses of Heracles as a name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Heracleum is a genus of flowering plants in the carrot family Apiaceae. Some of the species in this genus are quite large. In particular, the giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is exceptionally large, growing up to 5 m tall.",
"title": "Uses of Heracles as a name"
}
]
| Heracles, born Alcaeus or Alcides, was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a descendant and half-brother of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. | 2001-10-17T12:14:47Z | 2023-12-25T05:14:07Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles |
13,820 | Henry Rollins | Henry Lawrence Garfield (born February 13, 1961), known professionally as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, writer, spoken word artist, actor, comedian, and presenter. After performing in the short-lived hardcore punk band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the California hardcore band Black Flag from 1981 to 1986. Following the band's breakup, he established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, and formed the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups from 1987 to 2003 and in 2006.
Rollins has hosted numerous radio shows, such as Harmony in My Head on Indie 103, and television shows such as The Henry Rollins Show and 120 Minutes. He had recurring dramatic roles in the second season of Sons of Anarchy as A.J. Weston, in the final 2 seasons of the animated series The Legend of Korra as Zaheer, and has also had roles in several films. He has campaigned for various political causes in the United States, including the promotion of Gay rights, World Hunger Relief, the West Memphis Three, and an end to all war. He currently hosts a weekly radio show on KCRW, is a regular columnist for Rolling Stone Australia, and was a regular columnist for LA Weekly.
Rollins was born Henry Lawrence Garfield in Washington, D.C., on February 13, 1961, the only child of Iris and Paul Garfield. His mother is of Irish descent, and his father was from a Jewish family. Rollins' paternal great-grandfather, Henach Luban, fled to the U.S. from Rēzekne, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) and changed his first name to Henry. When Rollins was three years old, his parents divorced and he was raised by his mother in the Washington neighborhood of Glover Park. As a child and teenager, Rollins was sexually assaulted, and he suffered from depression and low self-esteem. In fourth grade, he was diagnosed with hyperactivity and took Ritalin for several years to focus during school.
Rollins attended The Bullis School, then an all-male preparatory school in Potomac, Maryland. According to Rollins, the school helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic. It was at Bullis that he began writing. After high school, he attended American University in Washington for one semester, but dropped out in December 1979. He began working minimum-wage jobs, including a job as a courier for kidney samples at the National Institutes of Health. In 1987, he said that he had not seen his father since the age of 18, and, in 2019, wrote, "What my father thinks of me, or if he is still alive, I have no idea."
Initially into hard rock acts like Van Halen and Ted Nugent, Rollins soon developed an interest in punk with his friend Ian MacKaye.
"We wanted something that just kicked ass," he says. "Then one of us, probably Ian, got the Sex Pistols record. I remember hearing that and thinking 'Well, that's something. This guy is pissed off, those guitars are rude.' What a revelation!
From 1979 to 1980, Rollins was working as a roadie for D.C. bands, including Teen Idles. When the band's singer, Nathan Strejcek, failed to appear for practice sessions, Rollins convinced the Teen Idles to let him sing. Word of Rollins' ability spread around the punk rock scene in Washington D.C.; Bad Brains singer H.R. would sometimes have Rollins on stage to sing with him. In 1980, the Washington punk band the Extorts lost their frontman Lyle Preslar to Minor Threat. Rollins joined the other members of the band and formed State of Alert (S.O.A.) and became its frontman and vocalist. He put words to the band's five songs and wrote several more. S.O.A. recorded their sole EP, No Policy, and released it in 1981 on MacKaye's Dischord Records.
Around April 1981, drummer Simon Jacobsen was replaced by Ivor Hanson. At the time, Hanson's father was a top admiral in the U.S. Navy and his family shared living quarters with the U.S. vice president at the Naval Observatory. The band held their practices there and would have to be let in by Secret Service agents.
S.O.A. disbanded after a total of a dozen concerts and one EP. Rollins had enjoyed being the band's frontman, and had earned a reputation for fighting in shows. He later said, "I was like nineteen and a young man all full of steam and loved to get in the dust-ups." By this time, Rollins had become the assistant manager of the Georgetown Häagen-Dazs ice cream store; his steady employment had helped to finance the S.O.A. EP.
In 1980, a friend gave Rollins and MacKaye a copy of Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown EP. Rollins soon became a fan of the band, exchanging letters with bassist Chuck Dukowski and later inviting the band to stay in his parents' home when Black Flag toured the East Coast in December 1980. When Black Flag returned to the East Coast in 1981, Rollins attended as many of their concerts as he could. At an impromptu show in a New York bar, Black Flag's vocalist Dez Cadena allowed Rollins to sing "Clocked In", a song Rollins had asked the band to play in light of the fact that he had to drive back to Washington, D.C. to begin work.
Unbeknownst to Rollins, Cadena wanted to switch to guitar, and the band was looking for a new vocalist. The band was impressed with Rollins' singing and stage demeanor, and the next day, after a semi-formal audition at Tu Casa Studio in New York City, they asked him to become their permanent vocalist. Despite some doubts, he accepted, in part because of MacKaye's encouragement. His high level of energy and intense personality suited the band's style, but Rollins' diverse tastes in music were a key factor in his being selected as singer; Black Flag's founder Greg Ginn was growing restless creatively and wanted a singer who was willing to move beyond simple, three-chord punk.
After joining Black Flag in 1981, Rollins quit his job at Häagen-Dazs, sold his car, and moved to Los Angeles. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Rollins got the Black Flag logo tattooed on his left biceps and also on the back of his neck, chose the stage name of Rollins, a surname he and MacKaye had used as teenagers. Rollins played his first show with Black Flag on July 25, 1981, at Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa, California. Rollins was in a different environment in Los Angeles; the police soon realized he was a member of Black Flag, and he was hassled as a result. Rollins later said: "That really scared me. It freaked me out that an adult would do that. ... My little eyes were opened big time."
Before concerts, as the others of the band tuned up, Rollins would stride about the stage dressed only in a pair of black shorts, grinding his teeth; to focus before the show, he would squeeze a pool ball. His stage persona impressed several critics; after a 1982 show in Anacortes, Washington, Sub Pop critic Calvin Johnson wrote: "Henry was incredible. Pacing back and forth, lunging, lurching, growling; it was all real, the most intense emotional experiences I have ever seen."
By 1983, Rollins' stage persona was increasingly alienating him from the rest of Black Flag. During a show in England, Rollins assaulted a member of the audience who attacked Ginn; Ginn later scolded Rollins, calling him a "macho asshole". A legal dispute with Unicorn Records held up further Black Flag releases until 1984, and Ginn was slowing the band's tempo down so that they would remain innovative. In August 1983, guitarist Dez Cadena had left the band; a stalemate lingered between Dukowski and Ginn, who wanted Dukowski to leave, before Ginn fired Dukowski outright. 1984's heavy metal music-influenced My War featured Rollins screaming and wailing throughout many of the songs; the band's members also grew their hair to confuse the band's hardcore punk audience.
Black Flag's change in musical style and appearance alienated many of their original fans, who focused their displeasure on Rollins by punching him in the mouth, stabbing him with pens, or scratching him with their nails, among other things. He often fought back, dragging audience members on stage and assaulting them. During a Black Flag concert, Rollins repeatedly punched a fan in the face who had continuously reached for his microphone. Rollins became increasingly alienated from the audience; in his tour diary, Rollins wrote "When they spit at me, when they grab at me, they aren't hurting me. When I push out and mangle the flesh of another, it's falling so short of what I really want to do to them." During the Unicorn legal dispute, Rollins had started a weight-lifting program, and by their 1984 tours, he had become visibly well-built; journalist Michael Azerrad later commented that "his powerful physique was a metaphor for the impregnable emotional shield he was developing around himself." Rollins has since replied that "no, the training was just basically a way to push myself."
Before Black Flag disbanded in August 1986, Rollins had already toured as a solo spoken-word artist. He released two solo records in 1987, Hot Animal Machine, a collaboration with guitarist Chris Haskett, and Drive by Shooting, recorded as "Henrietta Collins and the Wifebeating Childhaters"; Rollins also released his second spoken word album, Big Ugly Mouth in the same year. Along with Haskett, Rollins soon added Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain, both former members of Ginn's side-project Gone, and called the new group Rollins Band. The band toured relentlessly, and their 1987 debut album, Life Time, was quickly followed by the outtakes and live collection Do It. The band continued to tour throughout 1988; in 1989 another Rollins Band album, Hard Volume was released. Another live album, Turned On, and another spoken word release, Live at McCabe's, followed in 1990.
In 1991, the Rollins Band signed a distribution deal with Imago Records and appeared at the Lollapalooza festival; both improved the band's presence. However, in December 1991, Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were accosted by two armed robbers outside Rollins' home. Cole was murdered by a gunshot to the head, Rollins escaped without injury but police suspected him in the murder and detained him for ten hours. Although traumatized by Cole's death, as chronicled in his book Now Watch Him Die, Rollins continued to release new material; the spoken-word album Human Butt appeared in 1992 on his own record label, 2.13.61. The Rollins Band released The End of Silence, Rollins' first charting album.
The following year, Rollins released a spoken-word double album, The Boxed Life. The Rollins Band embarked upon the End of Silence tour; bassist Weiss was fired toward its end, and replaced by funk and jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs. According to critic Steve Huey, 1994 was Rollins' "breakout year". The Rollins Band appeared at Woodstock 94 and released Weight, which ranked on the Billboard Top 40. Rollins released Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag, a double-disc set of him reading from his Black Flag tour diary of the same name; he won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording as a result. Rollins was named 1994's "Man of the Year" by the American men's magazine Details and became a contributing columnist to the magazine. With the increased exposure, Rollins made several appearances on American music channels MTV and VH1 around this time, and made his Hollywood film debut in 1994 in The Chase playing a police officer.
In 1995, the Rollins Band's record label, Imago Records, declared itself bankrupt. Rollins began focusing on his spoken word career. He released Everything, a recording of a chapter of his book Eye Scream with free jazz backing, in 1996. He continued to appear in various films, including Heat, Johnny Mnemonic and Lost Highway. The Rollins Band signed to Dreamworks Records in 1997 and soon released Come In and Burn, but it did not receive as much critical acclaim as their previous material. Rollins continued to release spoken-word book readings, releasing Black Coffee Blues in the same year. In 1998, Rollins released Think Tank, his first set of non-book-related spoken material in five years.
By 1998, Rollins felt that the relationship with his backing band had run its course, and the line-up disbanded. He had produced a Los Angeles hard rock band called Mother Superior, and invited them to form a new incarnation of the Rollins Band. Their first album, Get Some Go Again, was released two years later. The Rollins Band released several more albums, including 2001's Nice and 2003's Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. After 2003, the band became inactive as Rollins focused on radio and television work. During a 2006 appearance on Tom Green Live!, Rollins stated that he "may never do music again", a feeling which he reiterated in 2011 when talking to Trebuchet magazine. In an interview with Culture Brats, Rollins admitted he had sworn off music for good – "... and I must say that I miss it every day. I just don't know honestly what I could do with it that's different."
On the same topic, Rollins more recently said in 2016 "For me, music was a time and a place. I never really enjoyed being in a band. It was in me and it needed to come out, like a 25-year exorcism. One day, I woke up, and I didn't have any more lyrics. I just had nothing to contribute to the form, and I was done with band practice and traveling in groups."
Rollins is a guest star on Damian Cowell's 2017 album Get Yer Dag On!
As a vocalist, Rollins has adopted a number of styles through the years. He was noted in the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene for what journalist Michael Azerrad described as a "compelling, raspy howl". With State of Alert, Rollins "spat out the lyrics like a bellicose auctioneer." He adopted a similar style after joining Black Flag in 1981. By their album Damaged, however, Black Flag began to incorporate a swing beat into their style. Rollins then abandoned his State of Alert "bark" and adopted the band's swing. Rollins later explained: "What I was doing kind of matched the vibe of the music. The music was intense and, well, I was as intense as you needed."
In both incarnations of the Rollins Band, Rollins combined spoken word with his traditional vocal style in songs such as "Liar" (the song begins with a one-minute spoken diatribe by Rollins), barked his way through songs (such as "Tearing" and "Starve"), and employed the loud-quiet dynamic. Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis names Rollins a "screeching hate machine" and his "hallmark" as "the sheets-of-sound assault".
With the Rollins Band, his lyrics focused "almost exclusively on issues relating to personal integrity", according to critic Geoffrey Welchman.
In the 1980s, Rollins produced an album of acoustic songs for convict Charles Manson titled Completion. The record was supposed to be released by SST Records, but the project was canceled because the label received death threats for working with Manson. Only five test presses of Completion were pressed, two of which remain in Rollins' possession.
In 1995, Rollins produced Australian hard rock band the Mark of Cain's third full-length album Ill at Ease.
As Rollins rose to prominence with the Rollins Band, he began to present and appear on television. These included Alternative Nation and MTV Sports in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Rollins also co-starred in The Chase with Charlie Sheen. In 1995 Rollins appeared on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that explored the murder of his best friend Joe Cole and presented State of the Union Undressed on Comedy Central. Rollins began to present and narrate VH1 Legends in 1996. Rollins, busy with the Rollins Band, did not present more programs until 2001, but made appearances on a number of other television shows, including Welcome to Paradox in 1998 in the episode "All Our Sins Forgotten", as a therapist who develops a device that can erase the bad memories of his patients. Rollins also voiced Mad Stan in Batman Beyond in 1999 and 2000.
Rollins was a host of film review programme Henry's Film Corner on the Independent Film Channel, before presenting the weekly The Henry Rollins Show on the channel. The Henry Rollins Show is now being shown weekly on Film24 along with Henry Rollins Uncut. The show also lead to a promotional tour in Europe that led to Rollins being dubbed a "bad boy goodwill ambassador" by a NY reviewer. He also hosted Fox's short-lived 2001 horror anthology Night Visions.
In 2002, Rollins guest-starred on an episode of the sitcom The Drew Carey Show as a man Oswald found on eBay and paid to come to his house and "kick his ass". He co-hosted the British television show Full Metal Challenge, in which teams built vehicles to compete in various driving and racing contests, from 2002 to 2003 on Channel 4 and TLC. He has made a number of cameo appearances in television series such as MTV's Jackass and an episode of Californication, where he played himself hosting a radio show. In 2006, Rollins appeared in a documentary series by VH1 and The Sundance Channel called The Drug Years.
Rollins appears in FX's Sons of Anarchy's second season, which premiered in the fall of 2009 in the United States. Rollins plays A.J. Weston, a white supremacist gang leader and new antagonist in the show's fictional town of Charming, California, who poses a deadly threat to the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. In 2009, Rollins voiced "Trucker" in American Dad!'s fourth season (episode eight). Rollins voiced Benjamin Knox/Bonk in the 2000 animated film Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.
In 2010, Rollins appeared as a guest judge on season 2 episode 6 of RuPaul's Drag Race. In 2011, he was interviewed in the National Geographic Explorer episode "Born to Rage", regarding his possible link to the MAOA gene (warrior gene) and violent behavior. In 2012, he hosted the National Geographic Wild series "Animal Underworld", investigating where the real boundaries lie in human-animal relationships. Rollins also appeared in the Hawaii Five-0 episode "Hoʻopio" that aired on May 6, 2013.
In November 2013, Rollins started hosting the show 10 Things You Don't Know About on the History Channel's H2. In 2014, he voiced the antagonist Zaheer in the third season of the animated series The Legend of Korra.
Rollins played the part of Lt. Mueller in episodes 1-3 of the fourth season of the TV series Z Nation, which originally aired on Syfy in 2017.
In 2019, Rollins began appearing as a disillusioned poisons instructor in the TV series Deadly Class.
On May 19, 2004, Rollins began hosting a weekly radio show, Harmony in My Head, on Indie 103.1 radio in Los Angeles. The show aired every Monday evening, with Rollins playing music ranging from early rock and jump blues to hard rock, blues rock, folk rock, punk rock, heavy metal and rockabilly, and touching on hip hop, jazz, world music, reggae, classical music and more. Harmony in my Head often emphasizes B-sides, live bootlegs and other rarities, and nearly every episode has featured a song either by the Beastie Boys or British group The Fall.
Rollins put the show on a short hiatus from early to late 2005, to undertake a spoken-word tour. Upon resuming the show, Rollins kicked off his return by playing the show's namesake Buzzcocks song. In 2008, the show was continuing each week, despite Rollins' constant touring, with new pre-recorded shows between live broadcasts. The show ended when the station went off the air in 2009.
On February 18, 2009, KCRW announced that Rollins would be hosting a live show on Saturday nights starting March 7, 2009, which has since been moved to Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. As of Aug 2023, Rollins has hosted 748 episodes.
In 2011 Rollins was interviewed on Episode 121 of American Public Media's podcast, "The Dinner Party Download", posted on November 3, 2011.
On February 2015, Rollins began recording a semi-regular podcast with his longtime manager Heidi May, titled Henry & Heidi. In describing the show, Rollins stated, "One day Heidi mentioned that I've told her a lot of stories that never made it to the stage and we should do a podcast so I could tell them ... I thought it was a good idea and people seem to like how the two of us get along. We've been working together for over 20 years and are very good friends." The podcast has received positive reviews from Rolling Stone and The A.V. Club.
Rollins began his film career appearing in several independent films featuring the band Black Flag. His film debut was in 1982's The Slog Movie, about the West Coast punk scene. An appearance in 1985's Black Flag Live followed. Rollins' first film appearance without Black Flag was the short film The Right Side of My Brain with Lydia Lunch in 1985. Following the band's breakup, Rollins did not appear in any films until 1994's The Chase. Rollins appeared in the 2007 direct-to-DVD sequel to Wrong Turn (2003), Wrong Turn 2: Dead End as a retired Marine Corps officer who hosts his own show which tests the contestants' will to survive. Rollins has also appeared in Punk: Attitude, a documentary on the punk scene, and in American Hardcore (2006). In 2012, Rollins appeared in a short documentary entitled "Who Shot Rock and Roll" discussing the early punk scene in Los Angeles as well as photographs of himself in Black Flag taken by photographer Edward Colver. Rollins also inspired the characterization of Negan in The Walking Dead comic and auditioned to play the character in the television series, but eventually lost the role to Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Rollins has written a variety of books, including Black Coffee Blues, Do I Come Here Often?, The First Five (a compilation of High Adventure in the Great Outdoors, Pissing in the Gene Pool, Bang!, Art to Choke Hearts, and One From None), See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die, Smile, You're Traveling, Get in the Van, Eye Scream, Broken Summers, Roomanitarian, and Solipsist.
For the audiobook version of the 2006 novel World War Z, Rollins voiced the character of T. Sean Collins, a mercenary hired to protect celebrities during a mass panic caused by an onslaught of the undead. Rollins' other audiobook recordings include 3:10 to Yuma and his own autobiographical book, Get in the Van, for which he won a Grammy Award.
In early 2005, with his weekly show on hiatus, Rollins posted playlists and commentary on-line; these lists were expanded with more information and published in book form as Fanatic! in November 2005. In 2007 and 2008, Rollins published Fanatic! Vol. 2 and Fanatic! Vol. 3, respectively.
Rollins continued to take notes of the music featured on his show, and wanted to preserve them in book form along with scans of set lists, flyers and other music-related materials he had been collecting since the 70s. These volumes Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 2 and Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 3 were published in 2018, 2021 and 2022, respectively.
In September 2008, Rollins began contributing to the "Politics & Power" blog at the online version of Vanity Fair magazine. Since March 2009, his posts have appeared under their own sub-title, Straight Talk Espresso. His posts consistently criticize conservative politicians and pundits, although he does occasionally target those on the left. In August 2010, he began writing a music column for LA Weekly in Los Angeles. In 2012, Rollins began publishing articles with HuffPost and alternative news website WordswithMeaning! In the months leading up to the 2012 United States Presidential election, Rollins broadcast a YouTube series called "Capitalism 2012", in which he toured the capital cities of the US states, interviewing people about current issues.
Since the 1980s, Rollins has toured around the world doing spoken word performances and his shows frequently last for over three hours. His spoken word style encompasses stand-up comedy, accounts of experiences he has had in the world of music and during his extensive travels around the globe, self-deprecating stories about his own shortcomings, introspective recollections from his own life (such as the death of his friend, Joe Cole), commentaries on society and playful, sometimes vulgar, anecdotes. "The talking shows are more demanding, because it's only me on stage", Rollins explained in regards to his spoken word shows. "It's like comparing surgery with construction – one requires super concentration and the other is just physical."
Rollins was a playable character in both Def Jam: Fight for NY and Def Jam Fight for NY: The Takeover. Rollins is also the voice of Mace Griffin in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter.
Rollins has become an outspoken human rights activist, most vocally for gay rights. In high school, a gay classmate of Rollins' was bullied by classmates to the point of attempting suicide. Rollins has cited this as the main catalyst of his "anti-homophobia". Rollins frequently speaks out on justice on his spoken word tours and promotes equality, regardless of sexuality. He was the host of the WedRock benefit concert, which raised money for a pro-gay-marriage organization.
During the Iraq War, he started touring with the United Service Organizations to entertain troops overseas while remaining against the war, leading him to once cause a stir at a base in Kyrgyzstan when he told the crowd: "Your commander would never lie to you. That's the vice president's job." Rollins believes it is important that he performs for the troops so that they have multiple points of contact with other parts of the world, stating that "they can get really cut loose from planet earth." He has made eight tours, including visits to bases in Djibouti, Kuwait, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Honduras, Japan, Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
He has also been active in the campaign to free the "West Memphis Three", three young men who are believed by their supporters to have been wrongfully convicted of murder, and who have since been released from prison, but not exonerated. Rollins appears with Public Enemy frontman Chuck D on the Black Flag song "Rise Above" on the 2002 benefit album Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three, the first time Rollins had performed Black Flag's material since 1986.
Continuing his activism on behalf of US troops and veterans, Rollins joined Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) in 2008 to launch a public service advertisement campaign, CommunityofVeterans.org, which helps veterans coming home from war reintegrate into their communities. In April 2009, Rollins helped IAVA launch the second phase of the campaign which engages the friends and family of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at SupportYourVet.org.
On December 3, 2009, Rollins wrote of his support for the victims of the Bhopal disaster in India, in an article for Vanity Fair 25 years–to the day–after the methyl isocyanate gas leak from the Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide factory exposed more than half a million local people to poisonous gas and resulted in the deaths of 17,000 people. He spent time in Bhopal with the people, to listen to their stories. In a later radio interview in February 2010 Rollins summed up his approach to activism, "This is where my anger takes me, to places like this, not into abuse but into proactive, clean movement."
Rollins is an advocate for the legalization of cannabis. Rollins has stated he does not personally consume cannabis but views the issue as an important matter of civil rights, arguing that its illegality is based in "bigotry and racism and financing the prison–industrial complex". Rollins has shared his views on the subject as keynote speaker at the Oregon Marijuana Business Conference and the International Cannabis Business Conference.
In August 2015, Rollins discussed his support for Bernie Sanders as a candidate in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries.
Rollins has said that he does not have religious or spiritual beliefs, though he also does not consider himself an atheist. He has mostly avoided recreational drugs throughout his life, but experimented a few times with alcohol, cannabis, and LSD during his teens and early 20s.
Rollins is childless by choice, and says that he has not been in a romantic relationship since his 20s. Rollins said, "I am not that interested in having someone to account to and be romantic with on a regular basis. Every once in a while I think I want it, but it's like holding on to sand. It always slips away. Falling in love does not interest me." A lifelong bachelor, Rollins considers himself a solitary person, and maintains few deep relationships outside of his professional ones. One of his closest personal friends is musician Ian MacKaye, with whom he has been close since they met as children. He also enjoys a friendship with actor William Shatner, which developed after he performed on Shatner's album Has Been.
After nearly 40 years of living in Los Angeles Rollins mentioned during his "Good to see you" tour that he had relocated to Nashville.
In an interview with Jason Tanamor of Zoiks! Online, when asked about a longtime rumor of Rollins being homosexual, the singer said, "Perhaps wishful thinking. If I were gay, believe me, you would know."
In December 1991, Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were the victims of an armed robbery and shooting when they were assaulted by robbers outside their shared home in Venice Beach, California. Cole died after being shot in the face, but Rollins escaped. The murder remains unsolved. In an April 1992 Los Angeles Times interview, Rollins revealed he kept a plastic container full of soil soaked with Cole's blood: "I dug up all the earth where his head fell—he was shot in the face—and I've got all the dirt here, and so Cole's in the house. I say good morning to him every day. I got his phone, too, so I got a direct line to him. So that feels good."
In a 2001 interview with Howard Stern, Rollins was asked about rumors that he kept Cole's brain in his house. He stated that he has only the soil from the spot where Cole was killed. During the interview, he also speculated that the reason they were targeted may have been because, days prior to the incident, record producer Rick Rubin had requested to hear the newly recorded album The End of Silence and parked his Rolls-Royce outside their house while carrying a cell phone. Because of the notoriety of the neighborhood, Rollins suspected that this would bring trouble because of the implication that there was money in the home. He even wrote in his journal the night of Rubin's visit that his home "is going to get popped".
Rollins has included Cole's story in his spoken word performances. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Henry Lawrence Garfield (born February 13, 1961), known professionally as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, writer, spoken word artist, actor, comedian, and presenter. After performing in the short-lived hardcore punk band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the California hardcore band Black Flag from 1981 to 1986. Following the band's breakup, he established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, and formed the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups from 1987 to 2003 and in 2006.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Rollins has hosted numerous radio shows, such as Harmony in My Head on Indie 103, and television shows such as The Henry Rollins Show and 120 Minutes. He had recurring dramatic roles in the second season of Sons of Anarchy as A.J. Weston, in the final 2 seasons of the animated series The Legend of Korra as Zaheer, and has also had roles in several films. He has campaigned for various political causes in the United States, including the promotion of Gay rights, World Hunger Relief, the West Memphis Three, and an end to all war. He currently hosts a weekly radio show on KCRW, is a regular columnist for Rolling Stone Australia, and was a regular columnist for LA Weekly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Rollins was born Henry Lawrence Garfield in Washington, D.C., on February 13, 1961, the only child of Iris and Paul Garfield. His mother is of Irish descent, and his father was from a Jewish family. Rollins' paternal great-grandfather, Henach Luban, fled to the U.S. from Rēzekne, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) and changed his first name to Henry. When Rollins was three years old, his parents divorced and he was raised by his mother in the Washington neighborhood of Glover Park. As a child and teenager, Rollins was sexually assaulted, and he suffered from depression and low self-esteem. In fourth grade, he was diagnosed with hyperactivity and took Ritalin for several years to focus during school.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Rollins attended The Bullis School, then an all-male preparatory school in Potomac, Maryland. According to Rollins, the school helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic. It was at Bullis that he began writing. After high school, he attended American University in Washington for one semester, but dropped out in December 1979. He began working minimum-wage jobs, including a job as a courier for kidney samples at the National Institutes of Health. In 1987, he said that he had not seen his father since the age of 18, and, in 2019, wrote, \"What my father thinks of me, or if he is still alive, I have no idea.\"",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Initially into hard rock acts like Van Halen and Ted Nugent, Rollins soon developed an interest in punk with his friend Ian MacKaye.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "\"We wanted something that just kicked ass,\" he says. \"Then one of us, probably Ian, got the Sex Pistols record. I remember hearing that and thinking 'Well, that's something. This guy is pissed off, those guitars are rude.' What a revelation!",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "From 1979 to 1980, Rollins was working as a roadie for D.C. bands, including Teen Idles. When the band's singer, Nathan Strejcek, failed to appear for practice sessions, Rollins convinced the Teen Idles to let him sing. Word of Rollins' ability spread around the punk rock scene in Washington D.C.; Bad Brains singer H.R. would sometimes have Rollins on stage to sing with him. In 1980, the Washington punk band the Extorts lost their frontman Lyle Preslar to Minor Threat. Rollins joined the other members of the band and formed State of Alert (S.O.A.) and became its frontman and vocalist. He put words to the band's five songs and wrote several more. S.O.A. recorded their sole EP, No Policy, and released it in 1981 on MacKaye's Dischord Records.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Around April 1981, drummer Simon Jacobsen was replaced by Ivor Hanson. At the time, Hanson's father was a top admiral in the U.S. Navy and his family shared living quarters with the U.S. vice president at the Naval Observatory. The band held their practices there and would have to be let in by Secret Service agents.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "S.O.A. disbanded after a total of a dozen concerts and one EP. Rollins had enjoyed being the band's frontman, and had earned a reputation for fighting in shows. He later said, \"I was like nineteen and a young man all full of steam and loved to get in the dust-ups.\" By this time, Rollins had become the assistant manager of the Georgetown Häagen-Dazs ice cream store; his steady employment had helped to finance the S.O.A. EP.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1980, a friend gave Rollins and MacKaye a copy of Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown EP. Rollins soon became a fan of the band, exchanging letters with bassist Chuck Dukowski and later inviting the band to stay in his parents' home when Black Flag toured the East Coast in December 1980. When Black Flag returned to the East Coast in 1981, Rollins attended as many of their concerts as he could. At an impromptu show in a New York bar, Black Flag's vocalist Dez Cadena allowed Rollins to sing \"Clocked In\", a song Rollins had asked the band to play in light of the fact that he had to drive back to Washington, D.C. to begin work.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Unbeknownst to Rollins, Cadena wanted to switch to guitar, and the band was looking for a new vocalist. The band was impressed with Rollins' singing and stage demeanor, and the next day, after a semi-formal audition at Tu Casa Studio in New York City, they asked him to become their permanent vocalist. Despite some doubts, he accepted, in part because of MacKaye's encouragement. His high level of energy and intense personality suited the band's style, but Rollins' diverse tastes in music were a key factor in his being selected as singer; Black Flag's founder Greg Ginn was growing restless creatively and wanted a singer who was willing to move beyond simple, three-chord punk.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After joining Black Flag in 1981, Rollins quit his job at Häagen-Dazs, sold his car, and moved to Los Angeles. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Rollins got the Black Flag logo tattooed on his left biceps and also on the back of his neck, chose the stage name of Rollins, a surname he and MacKaye had used as teenagers. Rollins played his first show with Black Flag on July 25, 1981, at Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa, California. Rollins was in a different environment in Los Angeles; the police soon realized he was a member of Black Flag, and he was hassled as a result. Rollins later said: \"That really scared me. It freaked me out that an adult would do that. ... My little eyes were opened big time.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Before concerts, as the others of the band tuned up, Rollins would stride about the stage dressed only in a pair of black shorts, grinding his teeth; to focus before the show, he would squeeze a pool ball. His stage persona impressed several critics; after a 1982 show in Anacortes, Washington, Sub Pop critic Calvin Johnson wrote: \"Henry was incredible. Pacing back and forth, lunging, lurching, growling; it was all real, the most intense emotional experiences I have ever seen.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "By 1983, Rollins' stage persona was increasingly alienating him from the rest of Black Flag. During a show in England, Rollins assaulted a member of the audience who attacked Ginn; Ginn later scolded Rollins, calling him a \"macho asshole\". A legal dispute with Unicorn Records held up further Black Flag releases until 1984, and Ginn was slowing the band's tempo down so that they would remain innovative. In August 1983, guitarist Dez Cadena had left the band; a stalemate lingered between Dukowski and Ginn, who wanted Dukowski to leave, before Ginn fired Dukowski outright. 1984's heavy metal music-influenced My War featured Rollins screaming and wailing throughout many of the songs; the band's members also grew their hair to confuse the band's hardcore punk audience.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Black Flag's change in musical style and appearance alienated many of their original fans, who focused their displeasure on Rollins by punching him in the mouth, stabbing him with pens, or scratching him with their nails, among other things. He often fought back, dragging audience members on stage and assaulting them. During a Black Flag concert, Rollins repeatedly punched a fan in the face who had continuously reached for his microphone. Rollins became increasingly alienated from the audience; in his tour diary, Rollins wrote \"When they spit at me, when they grab at me, they aren't hurting me. When I push out and mangle the flesh of another, it's falling so short of what I really want to do to them.\" During the Unicorn legal dispute, Rollins had started a weight-lifting program, and by their 1984 tours, he had become visibly well-built; journalist Michael Azerrad later commented that \"his powerful physique was a metaphor for the impregnable emotional shield he was developing around himself.\" Rollins has since replied that \"no, the training was just basically a way to push myself.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Before Black Flag disbanded in August 1986, Rollins had already toured as a solo spoken-word artist. He released two solo records in 1987, Hot Animal Machine, a collaboration with guitarist Chris Haskett, and Drive by Shooting, recorded as \"Henrietta Collins and the Wifebeating Childhaters\"; Rollins also released his second spoken word album, Big Ugly Mouth in the same year. Along with Haskett, Rollins soon added Andrew Weiss and Sim Cain, both former members of Ginn's side-project Gone, and called the new group Rollins Band. The band toured relentlessly, and their 1987 debut album, Life Time, was quickly followed by the outtakes and live collection Do It. The band continued to tour throughout 1988; in 1989 another Rollins Band album, Hard Volume was released. Another live album, Turned On, and another spoken word release, Live at McCabe's, followed in 1990.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1991, the Rollins Band signed a distribution deal with Imago Records and appeared at the Lollapalooza festival; both improved the band's presence. However, in December 1991, Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were accosted by two armed robbers outside Rollins' home. Cole was murdered by a gunshot to the head, Rollins escaped without injury but police suspected him in the murder and detained him for ten hours. Although traumatized by Cole's death, as chronicled in his book Now Watch Him Die, Rollins continued to release new material; the spoken-word album Human Butt appeared in 1992 on his own record label, 2.13.61. The Rollins Band released The End of Silence, Rollins' first charting album.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The following year, Rollins released a spoken-word double album, The Boxed Life. The Rollins Band embarked upon the End of Silence tour; bassist Weiss was fired toward its end, and replaced by funk and jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs. According to critic Steve Huey, 1994 was Rollins' \"breakout year\". The Rollins Band appeared at Woodstock 94 and released Weight, which ranked on the Billboard Top 40. Rollins released Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag, a double-disc set of him reading from his Black Flag tour diary of the same name; he won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording as a result. Rollins was named 1994's \"Man of the Year\" by the American men's magazine Details and became a contributing columnist to the magazine. With the increased exposure, Rollins made several appearances on American music channels MTV and VH1 around this time, and made his Hollywood film debut in 1994 in The Chase playing a police officer.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1995, the Rollins Band's record label, Imago Records, declared itself bankrupt. Rollins began focusing on his spoken word career. He released Everything, a recording of a chapter of his book Eye Scream with free jazz backing, in 1996. He continued to appear in various films, including Heat, Johnny Mnemonic and Lost Highway. The Rollins Band signed to Dreamworks Records in 1997 and soon released Come In and Burn, but it did not receive as much critical acclaim as their previous material. Rollins continued to release spoken-word book readings, releasing Black Coffee Blues in the same year. In 1998, Rollins released Think Tank, his first set of non-book-related spoken material in five years.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "By 1998, Rollins felt that the relationship with his backing band had run its course, and the line-up disbanded. He had produced a Los Angeles hard rock band called Mother Superior, and invited them to form a new incarnation of the Rollins Band. Their first album, Get Some Go Again, was released two years later. The Rollins Band released several more albums, including 2001's Nice and 2003's Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. After 2003, the band became inactive as Rollins focused on radio and television work. During a 2006 appearance on Tom Green Live!, Rollins stated that he \"may never do music again\", a feeling which he reiterated in 2011 when talking to Trebuchet magazine. In an interview with Culture Brats, Rollins admitted he had sworn off music for good – \"... and I must say that I miss it every day. I just don't know honestly what I could do with it that's different.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On the same topic, Rollins more recently said in 2016 \"For me, music was a time and a place. I never really enjoyed being in a band. It was in me and it needed to come out, like a 25-year exorcism. One day, I woke up, and I didn't have any more lyrics. I just had nothing to contribute to the form, and I was done with band practice and traveling in groups.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Rollins is a guest star on Damian Cowell's 2017 album Get Yer Dag On!",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "As a vocalist, Rollins has adopted a number of styles through the years. He was noted in the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene for what journalist Michael Azerrad described as a \"compelling, raspy howl\". With State of Alert, Rollins \"spat out the lyrics like a bellicose auctioneer.\" He adopted a similar style after joining Black Flag in 1981. By their album Damaged, however, Black Flag began to incorporate a swing beat into their style. Rollins then abandoned his State of Alert \"bark\" and adopted the band's swing. Rollins later explained: \"What I was doing kind of matched the vibe of the music. The music was intense and, well, I was as intense as you needed.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In both incarnations of the Rollins Band, Rollins combined spoken word with his traditional vocal style in songs such as \"Liar\" (the song begins with a one-minute spoken diatribe by Rollins), barked his way through songs (such as \"Tearing\" and \"Starve\"), and employed the loud-quiet dynamic. Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis names Rollins a \"screeching hate machine\" and his \"hallmark\" as \"the sheets-of-sound assault\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "With the Rollins Band, his lyrics focused \"almost exclusively on issues relating to personal integrity\", according to critic Geoffrey Welchman.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the 1980s, Rollins produced an album of acoustic songs for convict Charles Manson titled Completion. The record was supposed to be released by SST Records, but the project was canceled because the label received death threats for working with Manson. Only five test presses of Completion were pressed, two of which remain in Rollins' possession.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1995, Rollins produced Australian hard rock band the Mark of Cain's third full-length album Ill at Ease.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "As Rollins rose to prominence with the Rollins Band, he began to present and appear on television. These included Alternative Nation and MTV Sports in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Rollins also co-starred in The Chase with Charlie Sheen. In 1995 Rollins appeared on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that explored the murder of his best friend Joe Cole and presented State of the Union Undressed on Comedy Central. Rollins began to present and narrate VH1 Legends in 1996. Rollins, busy with the Rollins Band, did not present more programs until 2001, but made appearances on a number of other television shows, including Welcome to Paradox in 1998 in the episode \"All Our Sins Forgotten\", as a therapist who develops a device that can erase the bad memories of his patients. Rollins also voiced Mad Stan in Batman Beyond in 1999 and 2000.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Rollins was a host of film review programme Henry's Film Corner on the Independent Film Channel, before presenting the weekly The Henry Rollins Show on the channel. The Henry Rollins Show is now being shown weekly on Film24 along with Henry Rollins Uncut. The show also lead to a promotional tour in Europe that led to Rollins being dubbed a \"bad boy goodwill ambassador\" by a NY reviewer. He also hosted Fox's short-lived 2001 horror anthology Night Visions.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 2002, Rollins guest-starred on an episode of the sitcom The Drew Carey Show as a man Oswald found on eBay and paid to come to his house and \"kick his ass\". He co-hosted the British television show Full Metal Challenge, in which teams built vehicles to compete in various driving and racing contests, from 2002 to 2003 on Channel 4 and TLC. He has made a number of cameo appearances in television series such as MTV's Jackass and an episode of Californication, where he played himself hosting a radio show. In 2006, Rollins appeared in a documentary series by VH1 and The Sundance Channel called The Drug Years.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Rollins appears in FX's Sons of Anarchy's second season, which premiered in the fall of 2009 in the United States. Rollins plays A.J. Weston, a white supremacist gang leader and new antagonist in the show's fictional town of Charming, California, who poses a deadly threat to the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. In 2009, Rollins voiced \"Trucker\" in American Dad!'s fourth season (episode eight). Rollins voiced Benjamin Knox/Bonk in the 2000 animated film Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 2010, Rollins appeared as a guest judge on season 2 episode 6 of RuPaul's Drag Race. In 2011, he was interviewed in the National Geographic Explorer episode \"Born to Rage\", regarding his possible link to the MAOA gene (warrior gene) and violent behavior. In 2012, he hosted the National Geographic Wild series \"Animal Underworld\", investigating where the real boundaries lie in human-animal relationships. Rollins also appeared in the Hawaii Five-0 episode \"Hoʻopio\" that aired on May 6, 2013.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In November 2013, Rollins started hosting the show 10 Things You Don't Know About on the History Channel's H2. In 2014, he voiced the antagonist Zaheer in the third season of the animated series The Legend of Korra.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Rollins played the part of Lt. Mueller in episodes 1-3 of the fourth season of the TV series Z Nation, which originally aired on Syfy in 2017.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 2019, Rollins began appearing as a disillusioned poisons instructor in the TV series Deadly Class.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On May 19, 2004, Rollins began hosting a weekly radio show, Harmony in My Head, on Indie 103.1 radio in Los Angeles. The show aired every Monday evening, with Rollins playing music ranging from early rock and jump blues to hard rock, blues rock, folk rock, punk rock, heavy metal and rockabilly, and touching on hip hop, jazz, world music, reggae, classical music and more. Harmony in my Head often emphasizes B-sides, live bootlegs and other rarities, and nearly every episode has featured a song either by the Beastie Boys or British group The Fall.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Rollins put the show on a short hiatus from early to late 2005, to undertake a spoken-word tour. Upon resuming the show, Rollins kicked off his return by playing the show's namesake Buzzcocks song. In 2008, the show was continuing each week, despite Rollins' constant touring, with new pre-recorded shows between live broadcasts. The show ended when the station went off the air in 2009.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "On February 18, 2009, KCRW announced that Rollins would be hosting a live show on Saturday nights starting March 7, 2009, which has since been moved to Sunday nights at 8:00 p.m. As of Aug 2023, Rollins has hosted 748 episodes.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2011 Rollins was interviewed on Episode 121 of American Public Media's podcast, \"The Dinner Party Download\", posted on November 3, 2011.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On February 2015, Rollins began recording a semi-regular podcast with his longtime manager Heidi May, titled Henry & Heidi. In describing the show, Rollins stated, \"One day Heidi mentioned that I've told her a lot of stories that never made it to the stage and we should do a podcast so I could tell them ... I thought it was a good idea and people seem to like how the two of us get along. We've been working together for over 20 years and are very good friends.\" The podcast has received positive reviews from Rolling Stone and The A.V. Club.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Rollins began his film career appearing in several independent films featuring the band Black Flag. His film debut was in 1982's The Slog Movie, about the West Coast punk scene. An appearance in 1985's Black Flag Live followed. Rollins' first film appearance without Black Flag was the short film The Right Side of My Brain with Lydia Lunch in 1985. Following the band's breakup, Rollins did not appear in any films until 1994's The Chase. Rollins appeared in the 2007 direct-to-DVD sequel to Wrong Turn (2003), Wrong Turn 2: Dead End as a retired Marine Corps officer who hosts his own show which tests the contestants' will to survive. Rollins has also appeared in Punk: Attitude, a documentary on the punk scene, and in American Hardcore (2006). In 2012, Rollins appeared in a short documentary entitled \"Who Shot Rock and Roll\" discussing the early punk scene in Los Angeles as well as photographs of himself in Black Flag taken by photographer Edward Colver. Rollins also inspired the characterization of Negan in The Walking Dead comic and auditioned to play the character in the television series, but eventually lost the role to Jeffrey Dean Morgan.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Rollins has written a variety of books, including Black Coffee Blues, Do I Come Here Often?, The First Five (a compilation of High Adventure in the Great Outdoors, Pissing in the Gene Pool, Bang!, Art to Choke Hearts, and One From None), See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die, Smile, You're Traveling, Get in the Van, Eye Scream, Broken Summers, Roomanitarian, and Solipsist.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "For the audiobook version of the 2006 novel World War Z, Rollins voiced the character of T. Sean Collins, a mercenary hired to protect celebrities during a mass panic caused by an onslaught of the undead. Rollins' other audiobook recordings include 3:10 to Yuma and his own autobiographical book, Get in the Van, for which he won a Grammy Award.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In early 2005, with his weekly show on hiatus, Rollins posted playlists and commentary on-line; these lists were expanded with more information and published in book form as Fanatic! in November 2005. In 2007 and 2008, Rollins published Fanatic! Vol. 2 and Fanatic! Vol. 3, respectively.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Rollins continued to take notes of the music featured on his show, and wanted to preserve them in book form along with scans of set lists, flyers and other music-related materials he had been collecting since the 70s. These volumes Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 1, Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 2 and Stay Fanatic!!! Vol. 3 were published in 2018, 2021 and 2022, respectively.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In September 2008, Rollins began contributing to the \"Politics & Power\" blog at the online version of Vanity Fair magazine. Since March 2009, his posts have appeared under their own sub-title, Straight Talk Espresso. His posts consistently criticize conservative politicians and pundits, although he does occasionally target those on the left. In August 2010, he began writing a music column for LA Weekly in Los Angeles. In 2012, Rollins began publishing articles with HuffPost and alternative news website WordswithMeaning! In the months leading up to the 2012 United States Presidential election, Rollins broadcast a YouTube series called \"Capitalism 2012\", in which he toured the capital cities of the US states, interviewing people about current issues.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Since the 1980s, Rollins has toured around the world doing spoken word performances and his shows frequently last for over three hours. His spoken word style encompasses stand-up comedy, accounts of experiences he has had in the world of music and during his extensive travels around the globe, self-deprecating stories about his own shortcomings, introspective recollections from his own life (such as the death of his friend, Joe Cole), commentaries on society and playful, sometimes vulgar, anecdotes. \"The talking shows are more demanding, because it's only me on stage\", Rollins explained in regards to his spoken word shows. \"It's like comparing surgery with construction – one requires super concentration and the other is just physical.\"",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Rollins was a playable character in both Def Jam: Fight for NY and Def Jam Fight for NY: The Takeover. Rollins is also the voice of Mace Griffin in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter.",
"title": "Media work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Rollins has become an outspoken human rights activist, most vocally for gay rights. In high school, a gay classmate of Rollins' was bullied by classmates to the point of attempting suicide. Rollins has cited this as the main catalyst of his \"anti-homophobia\". Rollins frequently speaks out on justice on his spoken word tours and promotes equality, regardless of sexuality. He was the host of the WedRock benefit concert, which raised money for a pro-gay-marriage organization.",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "During the Iraq War, he started touring with the United Service Organizations to entertain troops overseas while remaining against the war, leading him to once cause a stir at a base in Kyrgyzstan when he told the crowd: \"Your commander would never lie to you. That's the vice president's job.\" Rollins believes it is important that he performs for the troops so that they have multiple points of contact with other parts of the world, stating that \"they can get really cut loose from planet earth.\" He has made eight tours, including visits to bases in Djibouti, Kuwait, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Honduras, Japan, Korea and the United Arab Emirates.",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "He has also been active in the campaign to free the \"West Memphis Three\", three young men who are believed by their supporters to have been wrongfully convicted of murder, and who have since been released from prison, but not exonerated. Rollins appears with Public Enemy frontman Chuck D on the Black Flag song \"Rise Above\" on the 2002 benefit album Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three, the first time Rollins had performed Black Flag's material since 1986.",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Continuing his activism on behalf of US troops and veterans, Rollins joined Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) in 2008 to launch a public service advertisement campaign, CommunityofVeterans.org, which helps veterans coming home from war reintegrate into their communities. In April 2009, Rollins helped IAVA launch the second phase of the campaign which engages the friends and family of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at SupportYourVet.org.",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On December 3, 2009, Rollins wrote of his support for the victims of the Bhopal disaster in India, in an article for Vanity Fair 25 years–to the day–after the methyl isocyanate gas leak from the Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide factory exposed more than half a million local people to poisonous gas and resulted in the deaths of 17,000 people. He spent time in Bhopal with the people, to listen to their stories. In a later radio interview in February 2010 Rollins summed up his approach to activism, \"This is where my anger takes me, to places like this, not into abuse but into proactive, clean movement.\"",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Rollins is an advocate for the legalization of cannabis. Rollins has stated he does not personally consume cannabis but views the issue as an important matter of civil rights, arguing that its illegality is based in \"bigotry and racism and financing the prison–industrial complex\". Rollins has shared his views on the subject as keynote speaker at the Oregon Marijuana Business Conference and the International Cannabis Business Conference.",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In August 2015, Rollins discussed his support for Bernie Sanders as a candidate in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries.",
"title": "Campaigning and activism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Rollins has said that he does not have religious or spiritual beliefs, though he also does not consider himself an atheist. He has mostly avoided recreational drugs throughout his life, but experimented a few times with alcohol, cannabis, and LSD during his teens and early 20s.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Rollins is childless by choice, and says that he has not been in a romantic relationship since his 20s. Rollins said, \"I am not that interested in having someone to account to and be romantic with on a regular basis. Every once in a while I think I want it, but it's like holding on to sand. It always slips away. Falling in love does not interest me.\" A lifelong bachelor, Rollins considers himself a solitary person, and maintains few deep relationships outside of his professional ones. One of his closest personal friends is musician Ian MacKaye, with whom he has been close since they met as children. He also enjoys a friendship with actor William Shatner, which developed after he performed on Shatner's album Has Been.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "After nearly 40 years of living in Los Angeles Rollins mentioned during his \"Good to see you\" tour that he had relocated to Nashville.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In an interview with Jason Tanamor of Zoiks! Online, when asked about a longtime rumor of Rollins being homosexual, the singer said, \"Perhaps wishful thinking. If I were gay, believe me, you would know.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In December 1991, Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were the victims of an armed robbery and shooting when they were assaulted by robbers outside their shared home in Venice Beach, California. Cole died after being shot in the face, but Rollins escaped. The murder remains unsolved. In an April 1992 Los Angeles Times interview, Rollins revealed he kept a plastic container full of soil soaked with Cole's blood: \"I dug up all the earth where his head fell—he was shot in the face—and I've got all the dirt here, and so Cole's in the house. I say good morning to him every day. I got his phone, too, so I got a direct line to him. So that feels good.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In a 2001 interview with Howard Stern, Rollins was asked about rumors that he kept Cole's brain in his house. He stated that he has only the soil from the spot where Cole was killed. During the interview, he also speculated that the reason they were targeted may have been because, days prior to the incident, record producer Rick Rubin had requested to hear the newly recorded album The End of Silence and parked his Rolls-Royce outside their house while carrying a cell phone. Because of the notoriety of the neighborhood, Rollins suspected that this would bring trouble because of the implication that there was money in the home. He even wrote in his journal the night of Rubin's visit that his home \"is going to get popped\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Rollins has included Cole's story in his spoken word performances.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Henry Lawrence Garfield, known professionally as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, writer, spoken word artist, actor, comedian, and presenter. After performing in the short-lived hardcore punk band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the California hardcore band Black Flag from 1981 to 1986. Following the band's breakup, he established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, and formed the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups from 1987 to 2003 and in 2006. Rollins has hosted numerous radio shows, such as Harmony in My Head on Indie 103, and television shows such as The Henry Rollins Show and 120 Minutes. He had recurring dramatic roles in the second season of Sons of Anarchy as A.J. Weston, in the final 2 seasons of the animated series The Legend of Korra as Zaheer, and has also had roles in several films. He has campaigned for various political causes in the United States, including the promotion of Gay rights, World Hunger Relief, the West Memphis Three, and an end to all war. He currently hosts a weekly radio show on KCRW, is a regular columnist for Rolling Stone Australia, and was a regular columnist for LA Weekly. | 2001-09-25T16:04:57Z | 2023-12-10T23:51:54Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rollins |
13,821 | Hadron | In particle physics, a hadron (/ˈhædrɒn/ ; Ancient Greek: ἁδρός, romanized: hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the electric force. Most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from two hadrons: the proton and the neutron, while most of the mass of the protons and neutrons is in turn due to the binding energy of their constituent quarks, due to the strong force.
Hadrons are categorized into two broad families: baryons, made of an odd number of quarks (usually three quarks) and mesons, made of an even number of quarks (usually two quarks: one quark and one antiquark). Protons and neutrons (which make the majority of the mass of an atom) are examples of baryons; pions are an example of a meson. "Exotic" hadrons, containing more than three valence quarks, have been discovered in recent years. A tetraquark state (an exotic meson), named the Z(4430), was discovered in 2007 by the Belle Collaboration and confirmed as a resonance in 2014 by the LHCb collaboration. Two pentaquark states (exotic baryons), named Pc(4380) and Pc(4450), were discovered in 2015 by the LHCb collaboration. There are several more exotic hadron candidates and other colour-singlet quark combinations that may also exist.
Almost all "free" hadrons and antihadrons (meaning, in isolation and not bound within an atomic nucleus) are believed to be unstable and eventually decay into other particles. The only known possible exception is free protons, which appear to be stable, or at least, take immense amounts of time to decay (order of 10 years). By way of comparison, free neutrons are the longest-lived unstable particle, and decay with a half-life of about 879 seconds.
Hadron physics is studied by colliding hadrons, e.g. protons, with each other or the nuclei of dense, heavy elements, such as lead (Pb) or gold (Au), and detecting the debris in the produced particle showers. A similar process occurs in the natural environment, in the extreme upper-atmosphere, where muons and mesons such as pions are produced by the collisions of cosmic rays with rarefied gas particles in the outer atmosphere.
The term "hadron" is a new Greek word introduced by L.B. Okun and in a plenary talk at the 1962 International Conference on High Energy Physics at CERN. He opened his talk with the definition of a new category term:
Notwithstanding the fact that this report deals with weak interactions, we shall frequently have to speak of strongly interacting particles. These particles pose not only numerous scientific problems, but also a terminological problem. The point is that "strongly interacting particles" is a very clumsy term which does not yield itself to the formation of an adjective. For this reason, to take but one instance, decays into strongly interacting particles are called "non-leptonic". This definition is not exact because "non-leptonic" may also signify photonic. In this report I shall call strongly interacting particles "hadrons", and the corresponding decays "hadronic" (the Greek ἁδρός signifies "large", "massive", in contrast to λεπτός which means "small", "light"). I hope that this terminology will prove to be convenient. — L.B. Okun (1962)
According to the quark model, the properties of hadrons are primarily determined by their so-called valence quarks. For example, a proton is composed of two up quarks (each with electric charge ++2⁄3, for a total of +4⁄3 together) and one down quark (with electric charge −+1⁄3). Adding these together yields the proton charge of +1. Although quarks also carry color charge, hadrons must have zero total color charge because of a phenomenon called color confinement. That is, hadrons must be "colorless" or "white". The simplest ways for this to occur are with a quark of one color and an antiquark of the corresponding anticolor, or three quarks of different colors. Hadrons with the first arrangement are a type of meson, and those with the second arrangement are a type of baryon.
Massless virtual gluons compose the overwhelming majority of particles inside hadrons, as well as the major constituents of its mass (with the exception of the heavy charm and bottom quarks; the top quark vanishes before it has time to bind into a hadron). The strength of the strong force gluons which bind the quarks together has sufficient energy (E) to have resonances composed of massive (m) quarks (E ≥ mc). One outcome is that short-lived pairs of virtual quarks and antiquarks are continually forming and vanishing again inside a hadron. Because the virtual quarks are not stable wave packets (quanta), but an irregular and transient phenomenon, it is not meaningful to ask which quark is real and which virtual; only the small excess is apparent from the outside in the form of a hadron. Therefore, when a hadron or anti-hadron is stated to consist of (typically) 2 or 3 quarks, this technically refers to the constant excess of quarks vs. antiquarks.
Like all subatomic particles, hadrons are assigned quantum numbers corresponding to the representations of the Poincaré group: J (m), where J is the spin quantum number, P the intrinsic parity (or P-parity), C the charge conjugation (or C-parity), and m is the particle's mass. Note that the mass of a hadron has very little to do with the mass of its valence quarks; rather, due to mass–energy equivalence, most of the mass comes from the large amount of energy associated with the strong interaction. Hadrons may also carry flavor quantum numbers such as isospin (G parity), and strangeness. All quarks carry an additive, conserved quantum number called a baryon number (B), which is ++1⁄3 for quarks and −+1⁄3 for antiquarks. This means that baryons (composite particles made of three, five or a larger odd number of quarks) have B = 1 whereas mesons have B = 0.
Hadrons have excited states known as resonances. Each ground state hadron may have several excited states; several hundreds of resonances have been observed in experiments. Resonances decay extremely quickly (within about 10 seconds) via the strong nuclear force.
In other phases of matter the hadrons may disappear. For example, at very high temperature and high pressure, unless there are sufficiently many flavors of quarks, the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) predicts that quarks and gluons will no longer be confined within hadrons, "because the strength of the strong interaction diminishes with energy". This property, which is known as asymptotic freedom, has been experimentally confirmed in the energy range between 1 GeV (gigaelectronvolt) and 1 TeV (teraelectronvolt). All free hadrons except (possibly) the proton and antiproton are unstable.
Baryons are hadrons containing an odd number of valence quarks (at least 3). Most well known baryons such as the proton and neutron have three valence quarks, but pentaquarks with five quarks – three quarks of different colors, and also one extra quark-antiquark pair – have also been proven to exist. Because baryons have an odd number of quarks, they are also all fermions, i.e., they have half-integer spin. As quarks possess baryon number B = 1⁄3, baryons have baryon number B = 1. Pentaquarks also have B = 1, since the extra quark's and antiquark's baryon numbers cancel.
Each type of baryon has a corresponding antiparticle (antibaryon) in which quarks are replaced by their corresponding antiquarks. For example, just as a proton is made of two up-quarks and one down-quark, its corresponding antiparticle, the antiproton, is made of two up-antiquarks and one down-antiquark.
As of August 2015, there are two known pentaquarks, Pc(4380) and Pc(4450), both discovered in 2015 by the LHCb collaboration.
Mesons are hadrons containing an even number of valence quarks (at least 2). Most well known mesons are composed of a quark-antiquark pair, but possible tetraquarks (4 quarks) and hexaquarks (6 quarks, comprising either a dibaryon or three quark-antiquark pairs) may have been discovered and are being investigated to confirm their nature. Several other hypothetical types of exotic meson may exist which do not fall within the quark model of classification. These include glueballs and hybrid mesons (mesons bound by excited gluons).
Because mesons have an even number of quarks, they are also all bosons, with integer spin, i.e., 0, +1, or −1. They have baryon number B = 1/3 − 1/3 = 0 . Examples of mesons commonly produced in particle physics experiments include pions and kaons. Pions also play a role in holding atomic nuclei together via the residual strong force. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In particle physics, a hadron (/ˈhædrɒn/ ; Ancient Greek: ἁδρός, romanized: hadrós; \"stout, thick\") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the electric force. Most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from two hadrons: the proton and the neutron, while most of the mass of the protons and neutrons is in turn due to the binding energy of their constituent quarks, due to the strong force.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hadrons are categorized into two broad families: baryons, made of an odd number of quarks (usually three quarks) and mesons, made of an even number of quarks (usually two quarks: one quark and one antiquark). Protons and neutrons (which make the majority of the mass of an atom) are examples of baryons; pions are an example of a meson. \"Exotic\" hadrons, containing more than three valence quarks, have been discovered in recent years. A tetraquark state (an exotic meson), named the Z(4430), was discovered in 2007 by the Belle Collaboration and confirmed as a resonance in 2014 by the LHCb collaboration. Two pentaquark states (exotic baryons), named Pc(4380) and Pc(4450), were discovered in 2015 by the LHCb collaboration. There are several more exotic hadron candidates and other colour-singlet quark combinations that may also exist.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Almost all \"free\" hadrons and antihadrons (meaning, in isolation and not bound within an atomic nucleus) are believed to be unstable and eventually decay into other particles. The only known possible exception is free protons, which appear to be stable, or at least, take immense amounts of time to decay (order of 10 years). By way of comparison, free neutrons are the longest-lived unstable particle, and decay with a half-life of about 879 seconds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hadron physics is studied by colliding hadrons, e.g. protons, with each other or the nuclei of dense, heavy elements, such as lead (Pb) or gold (Au), and detecting the debris in the produced particle showers. A similar process occurs in the natural environment, in the extreme upper-atmosphere, where muons and mesons such as pions are produced by the collisions of cosmic rays with rarefied gas particles in the outer atmosphere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The term \"hadron\" is a new Greek word introduced by L.B. Okun and in a plenary talk at the 1962 International Conference on High Energy Physics at CERN. He opened his talk with the definition of a new category term:",
"title": "Terminology and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Notwithstanding the fact that this report deals with weak interactions, we shall frequently have to speak of strongly interacting particles. These particles pose not only numerous scientific problems, but also a terminological problem. The point is that \"strongly interacting particles\" is a very clumsy term which does not yield itself to the formation of an adjective. For this reason, to take but one instance, decays into strongly interacting particles are called \"non-leptonic\". This definition is not exact because \"non-leptonic\" may also signify photonic. In this report I shall call strongly interacting particles \"hadrons\", and the corresponding decays \"hadronic\" (the Greek ἁδρός signifies \"large\", \"massive\", in contrast to λεπτός which means \"small\", \"light\"). I hope that this terminology will prove to be convenient. — L.B. Okun (1962)",
"title": "Terminology and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "According to the quark model, the properties of hadrons are primarily determined by their so-called valence quarks. For example, a proton is composed of two up quarks (each with electric charge ++2⁄3, for a total of +4⁄3 together) and one down quark (with electric charge −+1⁄3). Adding these together yields the proton charge of +1. Although quarks also carry color charge, hadrons must have zero total color charge because of a phenomenon called color confinement. That is, hadrons must be \"colorless\" or \"white\". The simplest ways for this to occur are with a quark of one color and an antiquark of the corresponding anticolor, or three quarks of different colors. Hadrons with the first arrangement are a type of meson, and those with the second arrangement are a type of baryon.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Massless virtual gluons compose the overwhelming majority of particles inside hadrons, as well as the major constituents of its mass (with the exception of the heavy charm and bottom quarks; the top quark vanishes before it has time to bind into a hadron). The strength of the strong force gluons which bind the quarks together has sufficient energy (E) to have resonances composed of massive (m) quarks (E ≥ mc). One outcome is that short-lived pairs of virtual quarks and antiquarks are continually forming and vanishing again inside a hadron. Because the virtual quarks are not stable wave packets (quanta), but an irregular and transient phenomenon, it is not meaningful to ask which quark is real and which virtual; only the small excess is apparent from the outside in the form of a hadron. Therefore, when a hadron or anti-hadron is stated to consist of (typically) 2 or 3 quarks, this technically refers to the constant excess of quarks vs. antiquarks.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Like all subatomic particles, hadrons are assigned quantum numbers corresponding to the representations of the Poincaré group: J (m), where J is the spin quantum number, P the intrinsic parity (or P-parity), C the charge conjugation (or C-parity), and m is the particle's mass. Note that the mass of a hadron has very little to do with the mass of its valence quarks; rather, due to mass–energy equivalence, most of the mass comes from the large amount of energy associated with the strong interaction. Hadrons may also carry flavor quantum numbers such as isospin (G parity), and strangeness. All quarks carry an additive, conserved quantum number called a baryon number (B), which is ++1⁄3 for quarks and −+1⁄3 for antiquarks. This means that baryons (composite particles made of three, five or a larger odd number of quarks) have B = 1 whereas mesons have B = 0.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hadrons have excited states known as resonances. Each ground state hadron may have several excited states; several hundreds of resonances have been observed in experiments. Resonances decay extremely quickly (within about 10 seconds) via the strong nuclear force.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In other phases of matter the hadrons may disappear. For example, at very high temperature and high pressure, unless there are sufficiently many flavors of quarks, the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) predicts that quarks and gluons will no longer be confined within hadrons, \"because the strength of the strong interaction diminishes with energy\". This property, which is known as asymptotic freedom, has been experimentally confirmed in the energy range between 1 GeV (gigaelectronvolt) and 1 TeV (teraelectronvolt). All free hadrons except (possibly) the proton and antiproton are unstable.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Baryons are hadrons containing an odd number of valence quarks (at least 3). Most well known baryons such as the proton and neutron have three valence quarks, but pentaquarks with five quarks – three quarks of different colors, and also one extra quark-antiquark pair – have also been proven to exist. Because baryons have an odd number of quarks, they are also all fermions, i.e., they have half-integer spin. As quarks possess baryon number B = 1⁄3, baryons have baryon number B = 1. Pentaquarks also have B = 1, since the extra quark's and antiquark's baryon numbers cancel.",
"title": "Baryons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Each type of baryon has a corresponding antiparticle (antibaryon) in which quarks are replaced by their corresponding antiquarks. For example, just as a proton is made of two up-quarks and one down-quark, its corresponding antiparticle, the antiproton, is made of two up-antiquarks and one down-antiquark.",
"title": "Baryons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "As of August 2015, there are two known pentaquarks, Pc(4380) and Pc(4450), both discovered in 2015 by the LHCb collaboration.",
"title": "Baryons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Mesons are hadrons containing an even number of valence quarks (at least 2). Most well known mesons are composed of a quark-antiquark pair, but possible tetraquarks (4 quarks) and hexaquarks (6 quarks, comprising either a dibaryon or three quark-antiquark pairs) may have been discovered and are being investigated to confirm their nature. Several other hypothetical types of exotic meson may exist which do not fall within the quark model of classification. These include glueballs and hybrid mesons (mesons bound by excited gluons).",
"title": "Mesons"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Because mesons have an even number of quarks, they are also all bosons, with integer spin, i.e., 0, +1, or −1. They have baryon number B = 1/3 − 1/3 = 0 . Examples of mesons commonly produced in particle physics experiments include pions and kaons. Pions also play a role in holding atomic nuclei together via the residual strong force.",
"title": "Mesons"
}
]
| In particle physics, a hadron (; Ancient Greek: ἁδρός, romanized: hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the electric force. Most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from two hadrons: the proton and the neutron, while most of the mass of the protons and neutrons is in turn due to the binding energy of their constituent quarks, due to the strong force. Hadrons are categorized into two broad families: baryons, made of an odd number of quarks (usually three quarks) and mesons, made of an even number of quarks (usually two quarks: one quark and one antiquark). Protons and neutrons (which make the majority of the mass of an atom) are examples of baryons; pions are an example of a meson. "Exotic" hadrons, containing more than three valence quarks, have been discovered in recent years. A tetraquark state (an exotic meson), named the Z(4430)−, was discovered in 2007 by the Belle Collaboration and confirmed as a resonance in 2014 by the LHCb collaboration. Two pentaquark states (exotic baryons), named P+c(4380) and P+c(4450), were discovered in 2015 by the LHCb collaboration. There are several more exotic hadron candidates and other colour-singlet quark combinations that may also exist. Almost all "free" hadrons and antihadrons (meaning, in isolation and not bound within an atomic nucleus) are believed to be unstable and eventually decay into other particles. The only known possible exception is free protons, which appear to be stable, or at least, take immense amounts of time to decay (order of 1034+ years). By way of comparison, free neutrons are the longest-lived unstable particle, and decay with a half-life of about 879 seconds. Hadron physics is studied by colliding hadrons, e.g. protons, with each other or the nuclei of dense, heavy elements, such as lead (Pb) or gold (Au), and detecting the debris in the produced particle showers. A similar process occurs in the natural environment, in the extreme upper-atmosphere, where muons and mesons such as pions are produced by the collisions of cosmic rays with rarefied gas particles in the outer atmosphere. | 2001-09-26T00:23:43Z | 2023-09-27T19:54:48Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron |
13,822 | Heisuke Hironaka | Heisuke Hironaka (広中 平祐, Hironaka Heisuke, born April 9, 1931) is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry.
Hironaka was born on April 9, 1931 in Yamaguchi, Japan. He was inspired to study mathematics after a visiting Hiroshima University mathematics professor gave a lecture at his junior high school. Hironaka applied to the undergraduate program at Hiroshima University, but was unsuccessful. However, the following year, he was accepted into Kyoto University to study physics, entering in 1949 and receiving his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from the University in 1954 and 1956. Hironaka initially studied physics, chemistry, and biology, but his third year as an undergraduate, he chose to move to taking courses in mathematics.
The same year, Hironaka was invited to a seminar group led by Yasuo Akizuki, who would have a major influence on Hironaka's mathematical development. The group, informally known as the Akizuki School, discussed cutting edge research developments including the resolution of singularities problem for which Hironaka later received the Fields Medal. Hironaka has described his interest in this problem as having the logic and mystery of "a boy falling in love with a girl." In 1956, Akizuki invited then Harvard professor Oscar Zariski to Kyoto University. Hironaka took the opportunity to present his own research to Zariski, who suggested that Hironaka move to Harvard University to continue his studies.
In 1957, Hironaka moved to the United States to attend Harvard University as a doctoral student under the direction of Zariski. Hironaka's algebra background, developed under Akizuki, allowed him to bring fresh insights into mathematics discussions in Harvard, which placed a greater emphasis on geometric perspectives. In 1958-1959, Alexander Grothendieck visited Harvard University and was another important influence on Hironaka, inviting him to the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifique (IHES) in Paris.
Returning to Harvard in 1960, Hironaka received his PhD for his thesis On the Theory of Birational Blowing-up.
Hironaka was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Brandeis University from 1960-1963. He taught at Columbia University from 1964-1968 and became a professor of mathematics at Harvard University from 1968 until becoming emeritus in 1992.
Hironaka returned to Japan for a joint professorship at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Kyoto University from 1975-1983 and was the Institute Director from 1983-1985.
Hironaka was the president of Yamaguchi University from 1996-2002.
In 1960, Hironaka introduced Hironaka's example, showing that a deformation of Kähler manifolds need not be Kähler. The example is a 1-parameter family of smooth compact complex 3-folds such that most fibers are Kähler (and even projective), but one fiber is not Kähler. This can be used to show that several other plausible statements holding for smooth varieties of dimension at most 2 fail for smooth varieties of dimension at least 3.
In 1964, Hironaka proved that singularities of algebraic varieties admit resolutions in characteristic zero. Hironaka was able to give a general solution to this problem, proving that any algebraic variety can be replaced by (more precisely is birationally equivalent to) a similar variety which has no singularities.
Hironaka recalled that he felt very close to approaching the solution while studying in Harvard. Then, soon after getting his first teaching position at Brandeis, he realized that if he combined his commutative algebra experience from Kyoto, geometry of polynomials from Harvard, and globalization technique from IHES, he had everything he needed to solve the problem.
In 2017 he posted to his personal webpage a manuscript that claims to prove the existence of a resolution of singularities in positive characteristic.
Hironaka received a Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, at the International Congress at Nice in 1970 at 39, just under the 40 year age limit.
List of Awards:
Hironaka has been active in promoting mathematical education, particularly in Japan and South Korea. Hironaka wrote or co-authored 26 books on mathematics and other topics.
In 1980, he started a summer seminar for Japanese high school students, and later created a program for Japanese and Amerian college students. In 1984 he established the Japanese Association for Mathematical Sciences (JAMS) to fund these seminars, serving as executive director. Additional funding was received from corporations and the Japanese government. Harvard emeritus math professor Shing-Tung Yau noted that "In the 1980s there were few domestic grant opportunities for foreign travel or exchange [...] today, one can see the fruits of Hironaka’s efforts in the number of former JAMS fellows who have become professors of mathematics across the United States and Japan."
As visiting professor at Seoul National University in 2008-2009, Hironaka mentored undergraduate student June Huh, a former high school drop-out and aspiring poet, encouraging his interest in pursuing math for graduate school. Huh won a fields medal in 2022 for the linkages he found between algebraic geometry and combinatorics.
Hironaka married Wakako Kimoto in 1960, a Brandeis Wien International Scholar who entered Japanese politics through her election to the House of Councillors in 1986. They have a son Jo, and daughter Eriko, who is also a mathematician.
On his love for mathematics, Hironaka said "I accumulate anything to do with numbers. For instance, I have more than 10,000 photos of flowers and leaves. I like to just count the numbers and compare them. I am so pleased to be a mathematician, because I can see the mathematical interest in things." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Heisuke Hironaka (広中 平祐, Hironaka Heisuke, born April 9, 1931) is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hironaka was born on April 9, 1931 in Yamaguchi, Japan. He was inspired to study mathematics after a visiting Hiroshima University mathematics professor gave a lecture at his junior high school. Hironaka applied to the undergraduate program at Hiroshima University, but was unsuccessful. However, the following year, he was accepted into Kyoto University to study physics, entering in 1949 and receiving his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from the University in 1954 and 1956. Hironaka initially studied physics, chemistry, and biology, but his third year as an undergraduate, he chose to move to taking courses in mathematics.",
"title": "Early Life and Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The same year, Hironaka was invited to a seminar group led by Yasuo Akizuki, who would have a major influence on Hironaka's mathematical development. The group, informally known as the Akizuki School, discussed cutting edge research developments including the resolution of singularities problem for which Hironaka later received the Fields Medal. Hironaka has described his interest in this problem as having the logic and mystery of \"a boy falling in love with a girl.\" In 1956, Akizuki invited then Harvard professor Oscar Zariski to Kyoto University. Hironaka took the opportunity to present his own research to Zariski, who suggested that Hironaka move to Harvard University to continue his studies.",
"title": "Early Life and Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1957, Hironaka moved to the United States to attend Harvard University as a doctoral student under the direction of Zariski. Hironaka's algebra background, developed under Akizuki, allowed him to bring fresh insights into mathematics discussions in Harvard, which placed a greater emphasis on geometric perspectives. In 1958-1959, Alexander Grothendieck visited Harvard University and was another important influence on Hironaka, inviting him to the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifique (IHES) in Paris.",
"title": "Early Life and Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Returning to Harvard in 1960, Hironaka received his PhD for his thesis On the Theory of Birational Blowing-up.",
"title": "Early Life and Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hironaka was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Brandeis University from 1960-1963. He taught at Columbia University from 1964-1968 and became a professor of mathematics at Harvard University from 1968 until becoming emeritus in 1992.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Hironaka returned to Japan for a joint professorship at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Kyoto University from 1975-1983 and was the Institute Director from 1983-1985.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Hironaka was the president of Yamaguchi University from 1996-2002.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1960, Hironaka introduced Hironaka's example, showing that a deformation of Kähler manifolds need not be Kähler. The example is a 1-parameter family of smooth compact complex 3-folds such that most fibers are Kähler (and even projective), but one fiber is not Kähler. This can be used to show that several other plausible statements holding for smooth varieties of dimension at most 2 fail for smooth varieties of dimension at least 3.",
"title": "Research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1964, Hironaka proved that singularities of algebraic varieties admit resolutions in characteristic zero. Hironaka was able to give a general solution to this problem, proving that any algebraic variety can be replaced by (more precisely is birationally equivalent to) a similar variety which has no singularities.",
"title": "Research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Hironaka recalled that he felt very close to approaching the solution while studying in Harvard. Then, soon after getting his first teaching position at Brandeis, he realized that if he combined his commutative algebra experience from Kyoto, geometry of polynomials from Harvard, and globalization technique from IHES, he had everything he needed to solve the problem.",
"title": "Research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2017 he posted to his personal webpage a manuscript that claims to prove the existence of a resolution of singularities in positive characteristic.",
"title": "Research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Hironaka received a Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, at the International Congress at Nice in 1970 at 39, just under the 40 year age limit.",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "List of Awards:",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hironaka has been active in promoting mathematical education, particularly in Japan and South Korea. Hironaka wrote or co-authored 26 books on mathematics and other topics.",
"title": "Influence on Asian Mathematics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1980, he started a summer seminar for Japanese high school students, and later created a program for Japanese and Amerian college students. In 1984 he established the Japanese Association for Mathematical Sciences (JAMS) to fund these seminars, serving as executive director. Additional funding was received from corporations and the Japanese government. Harvard emeritus math professor Shing-Tung Yau noted that \"In the 1980s there were few domestic grant opportunities for foreign travel or exchange [...] today, one can see the fruits of Hironaka’s efforts in the number of former JAMS fellows who have become professors of mathematics across the United States and Japan.\"",
"title": "Influence on Asian Mathematics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "As visiting professor at Seoul National University in 2008-2009, Hironaka mentored undergraduate student June Huh, a former high school drop-out and aspiring poet, encouraging his interest in pursuing math for graduate school. Huh won a fields medal in 2022 for the linkages he found between algebraic geometry and combinatorics.",
"title": "Influence on Asian Mathematics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Hironaka married Wakako Kimoto in 1960, a Brandeis Wien International Scholar who entered Japanese politics through her election to the House of Councillors in 1986. They have a son Jo, and daughter Eriko, who is also a mathematician.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On his love for mathematics, Hironaka said \"I accumulate anything to do with numbers. For instance, I have more than 10,000 photos of flowers and leaves. I like to just count the numbers and compare them. I am so pleased to be a mathematician, because I can see the mathematical interest in things.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Heisuke Hironaka is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry. | 2001-12-04T03:45:40Z | 2023-12-15T19:08:48Z | [
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13,824 | House of Habsburg | The House of Habsburg (/ˈhæpsbɜːrɡ/, German: Haus Habsburg, pronounced [haʊ̯s ˈhaːpsˌbʊʁk] ), also known as the House of Austria, is one of the most prominent and important dynasties in European history.
The house takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built in the 1020s in present-day Switzerland by Radbot of Klettgau, who named his fortress Habsburg. His grandson Otto II was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding "Count of Habsburg" to his title. In 1273, Count Radbot's seventh-generation descendant, Rudolph of Habsburg, was elected King of the Romans. Taking advantage of the extinction of the Babenbergs and of his victory over Ottokar II of Bohemia at the battle on the Marchfeld in 1278, he appointed his sons as Dukes of Austria and moved the family's power base to Vienna, where the Habsburg dynasty gained the name of "House of Austria" and ruled until 1918.
The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs from 1440 until their extinction in the male line in 1740, and, as the Habsburg-Lorraines, from 1765 until its dissolution in 1806. The house also produced kings of Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal and Galicia-Lodomeria, with their respective colonies; rulers of several principalities in the Low Countries and Italy; and in the 19th century, emperors of Austria and of Austria-Hungary as well as one emperor of Mexico. The family split several times into parallel branches, most consequentially in the mid-16th century between its Spanish and Austrian branches following the abdication of Emperor Charles V in 1556. Although they ruled distinct territories, the different branches nevertheless maintained close relations and frequently intermarried.
Members of the Habsburg family oversee the Austrian branch of the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Imperial and Royal Order of Saint George. The current head of the family is Karl von Habsburg.
The origins of Habsburg Castle's name are uncertain. There is disagreement on whether the name is derived from the High German Habichtsburg (hawk castle), or from the Middle High German word hab/hap meaning ford, as there is a river with a ford nearby. The first documented use of the name by the dynasty itself has been traced to the year 1108.
The Habsburg name was not continuously used by the family members, since they often emphasized their more prestigious princely titles. The dynasty was thus long known as the "House of Austria". Complementarily, in some circumstances the family members were identified by their place of birth. Charles V was known in his youth after his birthplace as Charles of Ghent. When he became king of Spain he was known as Charles of Spain, and after he was elected emperor, as Charles V (in French, Charles Quint).
In Spain, the dynasty was known as the Casa de Austria, including illegitimate sons such as John of Austria and John Joseph of Austria. The arms displayed in their simplest form were those of Austria, which the Habsburgs had made their own, at times impaled with the arms of the Duchy of Burgundy (ancient).
After Maria Theresa married Duke Francis Stephen of Lorraine, the idea of "Habsburg" as associated with ancestral Austrian rulership was used to show that the old dynasty continued as did all its inherited rights. Some younger sons who had no prospects of the throne were given the personal title of "count of Habsburg".
The surname of more recent members of the family such as Otto von Habsburg and Karl von Habsburg is taken to be "von Habsburg" or more completely "von Habsburg-Lothringen". Princes and members of the house use the tripartite arms adopted in the 18th century by Francis Stephen.
The name of the dynasty is sometimes spelled in English publications as Hapsburg.
The progenitor of the House of Habsburg may have been Guntram the Rich, a count in the Breisgau who lived in the 10th century, and forthwith farther back as the medieval Adalrich, Duke of Alsace, from the Etichonids from which Habsburg derives. His grandson Radbot of Klettgau founded the Habsburg Castle. That castle was the family seat during most of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. Giovanni Thomas Marnavich in his book "Regiae Sanctitatis Illyricanae Faecunditas" dedicated to Ferdinand III, wrote that the House of Habsburg is descended from the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
In the 12th century, the Habsburgs became increasingly associated with the Staufer Emperors, participating in the imperial court and the Emperor's military expeditions; Werner II, Count of Habsburg died fighting for Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in Italy. This association helped them to inherit many domains as the Staufers caused the extinction of many dynasties, some of which the Habsburgs were heirs to. In 1198, Rudolf II, Count of Habsburg fully dedicated the dynasty to the Staufer cause by joining the Ghibellines and funded the Staufer emperor Frederick II's war for the throne in 1211. The emperor was made godfather to his newly born grandson, the future king Rudolf.
The Habsburgs expanded their influence through arranged marriages and by gaining political privileges, especially countship rights in Zürichgau, Aargau and Thurgau. In the 13th century, the house aimed its marriage policy at families in Upper Alsace and Swabia. They were also able to gain high positions in the church hierarchy for their members. Territorially, they often profited from the extinction of other noble families such as the House of Kyburg.
By the second half of the 13th century, Count Rudolph I (1218–1291) had become an influential territorial lord in the area between the Vosges Mountains and Lake Constance. On 1 October 1273, he was elected as a compromise candidate as King of the Romans and received the name Rudolph I of Germany. He then led a coalition against king Ottokar II of Bohemia who had taken advantage of the Great Interregnum in order to expand southwards, taking over the respective inheritances of the Babenberg (Austria, Styria, Savinja) and of the Spanheim (Carinthia and Carniola). In 1278, Rudolph and his allies defeated and killed Ottokar at the Battle of Marchfeld, and the lands he had acquired reverted to the German crown. With the Georgenberg Pact of 1286, Rudolph secured for his family the duchies of Austria and Styria. The southern portions of Ottokar's former realm, Carinthia, Carniola, and Savinja, went to Rudolph's allies from the House of Gorizia.
Following Rudolph's death in 1291, Albert I's assassination in 1308, and Frederick the Fair's failure to secure the German/Imperial crown for himself, the Habsburgs temporarily lost their supremacy in the Empire. In the early 14th century, they also focused on the Kingdom of Bohemia. After Václav III's death on 4 August 1306, there were no male heirs remaining in the Přemyslid dynasty. Habsburg scion Rudolph I was then elected but only lasted a year. The Bohemian kingship was an elected position, and the Habsburgs were only able to secure it on a hereditary basis much later in 1626, following their submission of the Czech lands during the Thirty Years' War. After 1307, subsequent Habsburg attempts to gain the Bohemian crown were frustrated first by Henry of Bohemia (a member of the House of Gorizia) and then by the House of Luxembourg.
Instead, they were able to expand southwards: in 1311, they took over Savinja; after the death of Henry in 1335, they assumed power in Carniola and Carinthia; and in 1369, they succeeded his daughter Margaret in Tyrol. After the death of Albert III of Gorizia in 1374, they gained a foothold at Pazin in central Istria, followed by Trieste in 1382. Meanwhile, the original home territories of the Habsburgs in what is now Switzerland, including the Aargau with Habsburg Castle, were lost in the 14th century to the expanding Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1386). Habsburg Castle itself was finally lost to the Swiss in 1415.
Rudolf IV's brothers Albert III and Leopold III ignored his efforts to preserve the integrity of the family domains and enacted the separation of the so-called Albertinian and Leopoldian family lines on 25 September 1379 by the Treaty of Neuberg. The former would maintain Austria proper (then called Niederösterreich but comprising modern Lower Austria and most of Upper Austria), while the latter would rule over lands then labeled Oberösterreich, namely Inner Austria (Innerösterreich) comprising Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and Further Austria (Vorderösterreich) consisting of Tyrol and the western Habsburg lands in Alsace and Swabia.
By marrying Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the daughter of Emperor Sigismund in 1437, Duke Albert V of the Albertine line (1397–1439) became the ruler of Bohemia and Hungary, again expanding the family's political horizons. The next year, Albert was crowned as King of the Romans, known as such as Albert II. Following his early death in a battle against the Ottomans in 1439 and that of his son Ladislaus Postumus in 1457, the Habsburgs lost Bohemia once more as well as Hungary, for several decades. However, with the extinction of the House of Celje in 1456 and the House of Wallsee-Enns in 1466/1483, they managed to absorb significant secular enclaves within their territories and create a contiguous domain stretching from the border with Bohemia to the Adriatic Sea.
After the death of Leopold's eldest son William in 1406, the Leopoldian line was further split among his brothers into the Inner Austrian territory under Ernest the Iron and a Tyrolean/Further Austrian line under Frederick of the Empty Pockets. In 1440, Ernest's son Frederick III was chosen by the electoral college to succeed Albert II as the king. Several Habsburg kings had attempted to gain the imperial dignity over the years, but success finally arrived on 19 March 1452, when Pope Nicholas V crowned Frederick III as the Holy Roman Emperor in a grand ceremony held in Rome. In Frederick III, the Pope found an important political ally with whose help he was able to counter the conciliar movement.
While in Rome, Frederick III married Eleanor of Portugal, enabling him to build a network of connections with dynasties in the west and southeast of Europe. Frederick was rather distant to his family; Eleanor, by contrast, had a great influence on the raising and education of Frederick's children and therefore played an important role in the family's rise to prominence. After Frederick III's coronation, the Habsburgs were able to hold the imperial throne almost continuously until 1806.
Through the forged document called privilegium maius (1358/59), Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365) introduced the title of Archduke to place the Habsburgs on a par with the Prince-electors of the Empire, since Emperor Charles IV had omitted to give them the electoral dignity in his Golden Bull of 1356. Charles, however, refused to recognize the title, as did his immediate successors.
Duke Ernest the Iron and his descendants unilaterally assumed the title "archduke". That title was only officially recognized in 1453 by Emperor Frederick III, himself a Habsburg. Frederick himself used just "Duke of Austria", never Archduke, until his death in 1493. The title was first granted to Frederick's younger brother, Albert VI of Austria (died 1463), who used it at least from 1458. In 1477, Frederick granted the title archduke to his first cousin Sigismund of Austria, ruler of Further Austria. Frederick's son and heir, the future Emperor Maximilian I, apparently only started to use the title after the death of his wife Mary of Burgundy in 1482, as Archduke never appears in documents issued jointly by Maximilian and Mary as rulers in the Low Countries (where Maximilian is still titled "Duke of Austria"). The title appears first in documents issued under the joint rule of Maximilian and Philip (his under-age son) in the Low Countries.
Archduke was initially borne by those dynasts who ruled a Habsburg territory, i.e., only by males and their consorts, appanages being commonly distributed to Cadets . These "junior" archdukes did not thereby become independent hereditary rulers, since all territories remained vested in the Austrian crown. Occasionally a territory might be combined with a separate gubernatorial mandate ruled by an archducal cadet. From the 16th century onward, archduke and its female form, archduchess, came to be used by all the members of the House of Habsburg (e.g., Queen Marie Antoinette of France was born Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria).
In 1457 Duke Frederick V of Inner Austria also gained the Austrian archduchy after his Albertine cousin Ladislaus the Posthumous had died without issue. 1490 saw the reunification of all Habsburg lines when Archduke Sigismund of Further Austria and Tyrol resigned in favor of Frederick's son Maximilian I.
As emperor, Frederick III took a leading role inside the family and positioned himself as the judge over the family's internal conflicts, often making use of the privilegium maius. He was able to restore the unity of the house's Austrian lands, as the Albertinian line was now extinct. Territorial integrity was also strengthened by the extinction of the Tyrolean branch of the Leopoldian line. Frederick's aim was to make Austria a united country, stretching from the Rhine to the Mur and Leitha.
On the external front, one of Frederick's main achievements was the Siege of Neuss (1474–75), in which he coerced Charles the Bold of Burgundy to give his daughter Mary of Burgundy as wife to Frederick's son Maximilian. The wedding took place on the evening of 16 August 1477 and ultimately resulted in the Habsburgs acquiring control of the Low Countries. After Mary's early death in 1482, Maximilian attempted to secure the Burgundian heritance to one of his and Mary's children Philip the Handsome. Charles VIII of France contested this, using both military and dynastic means, but the Burgundian succession was finally ruled in favor of Philip in the Treaty of Senlis in 1493.
After the death of his father in 1493, Maximilian was proclaimed the new King of the Romans, receiving the name Maximilian I. Maximilian was initially unable to travel to Rome to receive the Imperial title from the Pope, due to opposition from Venice and from the French who were occupying Milan, as well a refusal from the Pope due to enemy forces being present on his territory. In 1508, Maximilian proclaimed himself as the "chosen Emperor," and this was also recognized by the Pope due to changes in political alliances. This had a historical consequence in that, in the future, the Roman King would also automatically become Emperor, without needing the Pope's consent. Emperor Charles V would be the last to be crowned by the Pope himself, at Bologna in 1530.
Maximilian's rule (1493–1519) was a time of dramatic expansion for the Habsburgs. In 1497, Maximilian's son Philip, known as the Handsome or the Fair, married Joanna of Castile, also known as Joanna the Mad, heiress of the Castile. Phillip and Joan had six children, the eldest of whom became Emperor Charles V and ruled the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (including their colonies in the New World), Southern Italy, Austria, and the Low Countries in 1516, with his mother and nominal co-ruler Joanna, who was kept under confinement.
The foundations for the later empire of Austria-Hungary were laid in 1515 by the means of a double wedding between Louis, only son of Vladislaus II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, and Maximilian's granddaughter Mary; and between her brother Archduke Ferdinand and Louis's sister Anna. The wedding was celebrated in grand style on 22 July 1515. All these children were still minors, so the wedding was formally completed in 1521. Vladislaus died on 13 March 1516, and Maximilian died on 12 January 1519, but the latter's designs were ultimately successful: upon Louis's death in battle in 1526, Ferdinand became king of Bohemia and Hungary.
The Habsburg dynasty achieved its highest position when Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Much of Charles's reign was dedicated to the fight against Protestantism, which led to its eradication throughout vast areas under Habsburg control.
Charles formally became the sole monarch of Spain upon the death of his imprisoned mother Queen Joan in 1555.
After the abdication of Charles V in 1556, the Habsburg dynasty split into the branch of the Austrian (or German) Habsburgs, led by Ferdinand, and the branch of the Spanish Habsburgs, initially led by Charles's son Philip. Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia, Hungary, and archduke of Austria in the name of his brother Charles V became suo jure monarch as well as the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor (designated as successor already in 1531). Philip became King of Spain and its colonial empire as Philip II, and ruler of the Habsburg domains in Italy and the Low Countries. The Spanish Habsburgs also ruled Portugal for a time, known there as the Philippine dynasty (1580–1640).
The Seventeen Provinces and the Duchy of Milan were in personal union under the King of Spain but remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, the Spanish king had claims on Hungary and Bohemia. In the secret Oñate treaty of 29 July 1617, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs settled their mutual claims.
The Habsburgs sought to consolidate their power by frequent consanguineous marriages, resulting in a cumulatively deleterious effect on their gene pool. Health impairments due to inbreeding included epilepsy, insanity, and early death. A study of 3,000 family members over 16 generations by the University of Santiago de Compostela suggests inbreeding may have played a role in their extinction. Numerous members of the family showed specific facial deformities: an enlarged lower jaw with an extended chin known as mandibular prognathism or "Habsburg jaw", a large nose with hump and hanging tip ("Habsburg nose"), and an everted lower lip ("Habsburg lip"). The latter two are signs of maxillary deficiency. A 2019 study found that the degree of mandibular prognathism in the Habsburg family shows a statistically significant correlation with the degree of inbreeding. A correlation between maxillary deficiency and degree of inbreeding was also present but was not statistically significant. Other scientific studies, however, dispute the ideas of any linkage between fertility and consanguinity.
The gene pool eventually became so small that the last of the Spanish line, Charles II, who was severely disabled from birth (perhaps by genetic disorders) possessed a genome comparable to that of a child born to a brother and sister, as did his father, probably because of "remote inbreeding".
The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 led to the War of the Spanish Succession, and that of Emperor Charles VI in 1740 led to the War of the Austrian Succession. In the former, the House of Bourbon won the conflict and put a final end to the Habsburg rule in Spain. The latter, however, was won by Maria Theresa and led to the succession of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Haus Habsburg-Lothringen) becoming the new main branch of the dynasty, in the person of Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II. This new House was created by the marriage between Maria Theresa of Habsburg and Francis Stephan, Duke of Lorraine (both of them were great-grandchildren of Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III, but from different empresses) this new House being a cadet branch of the female line of the House of Habsburg and the male line of the House of Lorraine. It is thought that extensive intra-family marriages within Spanish and Austrian lines contributed to the extinction of the main line.
On 6 August 1806, Emperor Francis I dissolved the Holy Roman Empire under pressure from Napoleon's reorganization of Germany. In anticipation of the loss of his title of Holy Roman Emperor, Francis had declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria (as Francis I) on 11 August 1804, three months after Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of the French on 18 May 1804.
Emperor Francis I of Austria used the official full list of titles: "We, Francis the First, by the grace of God, Emperor of Austria; King of Jerusalem, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; Archduke of Austria; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Würzburg, Franconia, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; Grand Duke of Cracow; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Sandomir, Masovia, Lublin, Upper and Lower Silesia, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen, and Friule; Prince of Berchtesgaden and Mergentheim; Princely Count of Habsburg, Gorizia, and Gradisca and of the Tyrol; and Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria".
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 created a real union, whereby the Kingdom of Hungary was granted co-equality with the Empire of Austria, that henceforth didn't include the Kingdom of Hungary as a crownland anymore. The Austrian and the Hungarian lands became independent entities enjoying equal status. Under this arrangement, the Hungarians referred to their ruler as king and never emperor (see k. u. k.). This prevailed until the Habsburgs' deposition from both Austria and Hungary in 1918 following defeat in World War I.
On 11 November 1918, with his empire collapsing around him, the last Habsburg ruler, Charles I of Austria (who also reigned as Charles IV of Hungary) issued a proclamation recognizing Austria's right to determine the future of the state and renouncing any role in state affairs. Two days later, he issued a separate proclamation for Hungary. Even though he did not officially abdicate, this is considered the end of the Habsburg dynasty.
In 1919, the new republican Austrian government subsequently passed a law banishing the Habsburgs from Austrian territory until they renounced all intentions of regaining the throne and accepted the status of private citizens. Charles made several attempts to regain the throne of Hungary, and in 1921 the Hungarian government passed a law that revoked Charles' rights and dethroned the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs did not formally abandon all hope of returning to power until Otto von Habsburg, the eldest son of Charles I, on 31 May 1961 renounced all claims to the throne.
In the interwar period, the House of Habsburg was a vehement opponent of Nazism and Communism. In Germany, Adolf Hitler diametrically opposed the centuries-old Habsburg principles of largely allowing local communities under their rule to maintain traditional ethnic, religious and language practices, and he bristled with hatred against the Habsburg family. During the Second World War there was a strong Habsburg resistance movement in Central Europe, which was radically persecuted by the Nazis and the Gestapo. The unofficial leader of these groups was Otto von Habsburg, who campaigned against the Nazis and for a free Central Europe in France and the United States. Most of the resistance fighters, such as Heinrich Maier, who successfully passed on production sites and plans for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks and aircraft to the Allies, were executed. The Habsburg family played a leading role in the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Communist Eastern Bloc.
As they accumulated crowns and titles, the Habsburgs developed a family tradition of multilingualism that evolved over the centuries. The Holy Roman Empire had been multilingual from the start, even though most of its emperors were native German speakers. The language issue within the Empire became gradually more salient as the non-religious use of Latin declined and that of national languages gained prominence during the High Middle Ages. Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg was known to be fluent in Czech, French, German, Italian and Latin.
The last section of his Golden Bull of 1356 specifies that the Empire's secular prince-electors "should be instructed in the varieties of the different dialects and languages" and that "since they are expected in all likelihood to have naturally acquired the German language, and to have been taught it from their infancy, [they] shall be instructed in the grammar of the Italian and Slavic tongues, beginning with the seventh year of their age so that, before the fourteenth year of their age, they may be learned in the same". In the early 15th century, Strasbourg-based chronicler Jakob Twinger von Königshofen asserted that Charlemagne had mastered six languages, even though he had a preference for German.
In the early years of the family's ascendancy, neither Rudolf I nor Albert I appear to have spoken French. By contrast, Charles V of Habsburg is well known some having been fluent in several languages. He was native in French and also knew Dutch from his youth in Flanders. He later added some Castilian Spanish, which he was required to learn by the Castilian Cortes Generales. He could also speak some Basque, acquired by the influence of the Basque secretaries serving in the royal court. He gained a decent command of German following the Imperial election of 1519, though he never spoke it as well as French. A witticism sometimes attributed to Charles was: "I speak Spanish/Latin [depending on the source] to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse."
Latin was the administrative language of the Empire until the aggressive promotion of German by Joseph II in the late 18th century, which was partly reversed by his successors. From the 16th century, most if not all Habsburgs spoke French as well as German, and many also spoke Italian. Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II addressed the Bohemian Assembly in Czech, even though it is not clear that they were fluent. By contrast, there is little evidence that later Habsburgs in the 17th and 18th centuries spoke Czech, with the probable exception of Ferdinand III who made several stays in Bohemia and appears to have spoken Czech while there. In the 19th century, Francis I had notions of Czech, and Ferdinand I spoke it decently.
Franz Joseph received a bilingual early education in French and German, then added Czech and Hungarian and later Italian and Polish. He also learned Latin and Greek. After the end of the Habsburg Monarchy, Otto von Habsburg was fluent in English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
The Habsburgs' monarchical positions included:
Before Rudolph rose to German king, the Habsburgs were Counts of Baden in what is today southwestern Germany and Switzerland.
After the death of Rudolph IV, his brothers Albert III and Leopold III ruled the Habsburg possessions together from 1365 until 1379, when they split the territories in the Treaty of Neuberg, Albert keeping the Duchy of Austria and Leopold ruling over Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Windic March, Tirol, and Further Austria.
Sigismund had no children and adopted Maximilian I, son of Emperor Frederick III. Under Maximilian, the possessions of the Habsburgs would be united again under one ruler, after he had re-conquered the Duchy of Austria after the death of Matthias Corvinus, who resided in Vienna and styled himself duke of Austria from 1485 to 1490.
The abdications of Charles V in 1556 ended his formal authority over Ferdinand and made him suo jure ruler in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, as well as Holy Roman Emperor.
Ferdinand's inheritance had been split in 1564 among his children, with Maximilian taking the Imperial crown and his younger brother Archduke Charles II ruling over Inner Austria (i.e. the Duchy of Styria, the Duchy of Carniola with March of Istria, the Duchy of Carinthia, the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, and the Imperial City of Trieste, ruled from Graz). Charles's son and successor Ferdinand II in 1619 became Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor as well as King of Bohemia and Hungary in 1620. The Further Austrian/Tyrolean line of Ferdinand's brother Archduke Leopold V survived until the death of his son Sigismund Francis in 1665, whereafter their territories ultimately returned to common control with the other Austrian Habsburg lands. Inner Austrian stadtholders went on to rule until the days of Empress Maria Theresa in the 18th century.
Habsburg Spain was a personal union between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon; Aragon was itself divided into the Kingdoms of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, Naples, Sicily, Malta and Sardinia. From 1581, they were kings of Portugal until they renounced this title in the 1668 Treaty of Lisbon. They were also Dukes of Milan, Lord of the Americas, and holder of multiple titles from territories within the Habsburg Netherlands. A full listing can be seen here.
The War of the Spanish Succession took place after the extinction of the Spanish Habsburg line, to determine the inheritance of Charles II.
Charles the Bold controlled not only Burgundy (both dukedom and county) but also Flanders and the broader Burgundian Netherlands. Frederick III managed to secure the marriage of Charles's only daughter, Mary of Burgundy, to his son Maximilian. The wedding took place on the evening of 16 August 1477, after the death of Charles. Mary and the Habsburgs lost the Duchy of Burgundy to France, but managed to defend and hold onto the rest what became the 17 provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands. After Mary's death in 1482, Maximilian acted as regent for his son Philip the Handsome.
The Netherlands was frequently governed directly by a regent or governor-general, who was a collateral member of the Habsburgs. By the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 Charles V combined the Netherlands into one administrative unit, to be inherited by his son Philip II. Charles effectively united the Netherlands as one entity. The Habsburgs controlled the 17 Provinces of the Netherlands until the Dutch Revolt in the second half of the 16th century, when they lost the seven northern Protestant provinces. They held onto the southern Catholic part (roughly modern Belgium and Luxembourg) as the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands until they were conquered by French Revolutionary armies in 1795. The one exception to this was the period of (1601–1621), when shortly before Philip II died on 13 September 1598, he renounced his rights to the Netherlands in favor of his daughter Isabella and her fiancé, Archduke Albert of Austria, a younger son of Emperor Maximilian II. The territories reverted to Spain on the death of Albert in 1621, as the couple had no surviving offspring, and Isabella acted as regent-governor until her death in 1633:
The War of the Austrian Succession took place after the extinction of the male line of the Austrian Habsburg line upon the death of Charles VI. The direct Habsburg line itself became totally extinct with the death of Maria Theresa of Austria, when it was followed by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.
Queen Maria Christina of Austria of Spain, great-granddaughter of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor above. Wife of Alfonso XII of Spain and mother of Alfonso XIII of the House of Bourbon. Alfonso XIII's wife Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was descended from King George I of Great Britain from the Habsburg Leopold Line {above}.
The House of Habsburg-Lorraine retained Austria and attached possessions after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire; see below.
A son of Leopold II was Archduke Rainer of Austria whose wife was from the House of Savoy; a daughter Adelaide, Queen of Sardina was the wife of King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy, and Sardinia and King of Italy. Their Children married into the Royal Houses of Bonaparte; Saxe-Coburg and Gotha {Bragança} {Portugal}; Savoy {Spain}; and the Dukedoms of Montferrat and Chablis.
(→Family Tree)
Francis Stephen assigned the grand duchy of Tuscany to his second son Peter Leopold, who in turn assigned it to his second son upon his accession as Holy Roman Emperor. Tuscany remained the domain of this cadet branch of the family until Italian unification.
The duchy of Modena was assigned to a minor branch of the family by the Congress of Vienna. It was lost to Italian unification. The Dukes named their line the House of Austria-Este, as they were descended from the daughter of the last D'Este Duke of Modena.
The duchy of Parma was likewise assigned to a Habsburg but did not stay in the House long before succumbing to Italian unification. It was granted to the second wife of Napoleon I of France, Maria Luisa Duchess of Parma, a daughter of the Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was the mother of Napoleon II of France. Napoleon had divorced his wife Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie (better known to history as Josephine de Beauharnais) in her favor.
Dona Maria Leopoldina of Austria (22 January 1797 – 11 December 1826) was an archduchess of Austria, Empress consort of Brazil and Queen consort of Portugal.
Maximilian, the adventurous second son of Archduke Franz Karl, was invited as part of Napoleon III's manipulations to take the throne of Mexico, becoming Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. The conservative Mexican nobility, as well as the clergy, supported this Second Mexican Empire. His consort, Charlotte of Belgium, a daughter of King Leopold I of Belgium and a princess of the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, encouraged her husband's acceptance of the Mexican crown and accompanied him as Empress Carlota of Mexico. The adventure did not end well. Maximilian was shot in Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro, in 1867 by the republican forces of Benito Juárez.
Charles I was expelled from his domains after World War I and the empire was abolished. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The House of Habsburg (/ˈhæpsbɜːrɡ/, German: Haus Habsburg, pronounced [haʊ̯s ˈhaːpsˌbʊʁk] ), also known as the House of Austria, is one of the most prominent and important dynasties in European history.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The house takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built in the 1020s in present-day Switzerland by Radbot of Klettgau, who named his fortress Habsburg. His grandson Otto II was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding \"Count of Habsburg\" to his title. In 1273, Count Radbot's seventh-generation descendant, Rudolph of Habsburg, was elected King of the Romans. Taking advantage of the extinction of the Babenbergs and of his victory over Ottokar II of Bohemia at the battle on the Marchfeld in 1278, he appointed his sons as Dukes of Austria and moved the family's power base to Vienna, where the Habsburg dynasty gained the name of \"House of Austria\" and ruled until 1918.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs from 1440 until their extinction in the male line in 1740, and, as the Habsburg-Lorraines, from 1765 until its dissolution in 1806. The house also produced kings of Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal and Galicia-Lodomeria, with their respective colonies; rulers of several principalities in the Low Countries and Italy; and in the 19th century, emperors of Austria and of Austria-Hungary as well as one emperor of Mexico. The family split several times into parallel branches, most consequentially in the mid-16th century between its Spanish and Austrian branches following the abdication of Emperor Charles V in 1556. Although they ruled distinct territories, the different branches nevertheless maintained close relations and frequently intermarried.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Members of the Habsburg family oversee the Austrian branch of the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Imperial and Royal Order of Saint George. The current head of the family is Karl von Habsburg.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The origins of Habsburg Castle's name are uncertain. There is disagreement on whether the name is derived from the High German Habichtsburg (hawk castle), or from the Middle High German word hab/hap meaning ford, as there is a river with a ford nearby. The first documented use of the name by the dynasty itself has been traced to the year 1108.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Habsburg name was not continuously used by the family members, since they often emphasized their more prestigious princely titles. The dynasty was thus long known as the \"House of Austria\". Complementarily, in some circumstances the family members were identified by their place of birth. Charles V was known in his youth after his birthplace as Charles of Ghent. When he became king of Spain he was known as Charles of Spain, and after he was elected emperor, as Charles V (in French, Charles Quint).",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In Spain, the dynasty was known as the Casa de Austria, including illegitimate sons such as John of Austria and John Joseph of Austria. The arms displayed in their simplest form were those of Austria, which the Habsburgs had made their own, at times impaled with the arms of the Duchy of Burgundy (ancient).",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "After Maria Theresa married Duke Francis Stephen of Lorraine, the idea of \"Habsburg\" as associated with ancestral Austrian rulership was used to show that the old dynasty continued as did all its inherited rights. Some younger sons who had no prospects of the throne were given the personal title of \"count of Habsburg\".",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The surname of more recent members of the family such as Otto von Habsburg and Karl von Habsburg is taken to be \"von Habsburg\" or more completely \"von Habsburg-Lothringen\". Princes and members of the house use the tripartite arms adopted in the 18th century by Francis Stephen.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The name of the dynasty is sometimes spelled in English publications as Hapsburg.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The progenitor of the House of Habsburg may have been Guntram the Rich, a count in the Breisgau who lived in the 10th century, and forthwith farther back as the medieval Adalrich, Duke of Alsace, from the Etichonids from which Habsburg derives. His grandson Radbot of Klettgau founded the Habsburg Castle. That castle was the family seat during most of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. Giovanni Thomas Marnavich in his book \"Regiae Sanctitatis Illyricanae Faecunditas\" dedicated to Ferdinand III, wrote that the House of Habsburg is descended from the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the 12th century, the Habsburgs became increasingly associated with the Staufer Emperors, participating in the imperial court and the Emperor's military expeditions; Werner II, Count of Habsburg died fighting for Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in Italy. This association helped them to inherit many domains as the Staufers caused the extinction of many dynasties, some of which the Habsburgs were heirs to. In 1198, Rudolf II, Count of Habsburg fully dedicated the dynasty to the Staufer cause by joining the Ghibellines and funded the Staufer emperor Frederick II's war for the throne in 1211. The emperor was made godfather to his newly born grandson, the future king Rudolf.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Habsburgs expanded their influence through arranged marriages and by gaining political privileges, especially countship rights in Zürichgau, Aargau and Thurgau. In the 13th century, the house aimed its marriage policy at families in Upper Alsace and Swabia. They were also able to gain high positions in the church hierarchy for their members. Territorially, they often profited from the extinction of other noble families such as the House of Kyburg.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "By the second half of the 13th century, Count Rudolph I (1218–1291) had become an influential territorial lord in the area between the Vosges Mountains and Lake Constance. On 1 October 1273, he was elected as a compromise candidate as King of the Romans and received the name Rudolph I of Germany. He then led a coalition against king Ottokar II of Bohemia who had taken advantage of the Great Interregnum in order to expand southwards, taking over the respective inheritances of the Babenberg (Austria, Styria, Savinja) and of the Spanheim (Carinthia and Carniola). In 1278, Rudolph and his allies defeated and killed Ottokar at the Battle of Marchfeld, and the lands he had acquired reverted to the German crown. With the Georgenberg Pact of 1286, Rudolph secured for his family the duchies of Austria and Styria. The southern portions of Ottokar's former realm, Carinthia, Carniola, and Savinja, went to Rudolph's allies from the House of Gorizia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Following Rudolph's death in 1291, Albert I's assassination in 1308, and Frederick the Fair's failure to secure the German/Imperial crown for himself, the Habsburgs temporarily lost their supremacy in the Empire. In the early 14th century, they also focused on the Kingdom of Bohemia. After Václav III's death on 4 August 1306, there were no male heirs remaining in the Přemyslid dynasty. Habsburg scion Rudolph I was then elected but only lasted a year. The Bohemian kingship was an elected position, and the Habsburgs were only able to secure it on a hereditary basis much later in 1626, following their submission of the Czech lands during the Thirty Years' War. After 1307, subsequent Habsburg attempts to gain the Bohemian crown were frustrated first by Henry of Bohemia (a member of the House of Gorizia) and then by the House of Luxembourg.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Instead, they were able to expand southwards: in 1311, they took over Savinja; after the death of Henry in 1335, they assumed power in Carniola and Carinthia; and in 1369, they succeeded his daughter Margaret in Tyrol. After the death of Albert III of Gorizia in 1374, they gained a foothold at Pazin in central Istria, followed by Trieste in 1382. Meanwhile, the original home territories of the Habsburgs in what is now Switzerland, including the Aargau with Habsburg Castle, were lost in the 14th century to the expanding Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1386). Habsburg Castle itself was finally lost to the Swiss in 1415.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Rudolf IV's brothers Albert III and Leopold III ignored his efforts to preserve the integrity of the family domains and enacted the separation of the so-called Albertinian and Leopoldian family lines on 25 September 1379 by the Treaty of Neuberg. The former would maintain Austria proper (then called Niederösterreich but comprising modern Lower Austria and most of Upper Austria), while the latter would rule over lands then labeled Oberösterreich, namely Inner Austria (Innerösterreich) comprising Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and Further Austria (Vorderösterreich) consisting of Tyrol and the western Habsburg lands in Alsace and Swabia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "By marrying Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the daughter of Emperor Sigismund in 1437, Duke Albert V of the Albertine line (1397–1439) became the ruler of Bohemia and Hungary, again expanding the family's political horizons. The next year, Albert was crowned as King of the Romans, known as such as Albert II. Following his early death in a battle against the Ottomans in 1439 and that of his son Ladislaus Postumus in 1457, the Habsburgs lost Bohemia once more as well as Hungary, for several decades. However, with the extinction of the House of Celje in 1456 and the House of Wallsee-Enns in 1466/1483, they managed to absorb significant secular enclaves within their territories and create a contiguous domain stretching from the border with Bohemia to the Adriatic Sea.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After the death of Leopold's eldest son William in 1406, the Leopoldian line was further split among his brothers into the Inner Austrian territory under Ernest the Iron and a Tyrolean/Further Austrian line under Frederick of the Empty Pockets. In 1440, Ernest's son Frederick III was chosen by the electoral college to succeed Albert II as the king. Several Habsburg kings had attempted to gain the imperial dignity over the years, but success finally arrived on 19 March 1452, when Pope Nicholas V crowned Frederick III as the Holy Roman Emperor in a grand ceremony held in Rome. In Frederick III, the Pope found an important political ally with whose help he was able to counter the conciliar movement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "While in Rome, Frederick III married Eleanor of Portugal, enabling him to build a network of connections with dynasties in the west and southeast of Europe. Frederick was rather distant to his family; Eleanor, by contrast, had a great influence on the raising and education of Frederick's children and therefore played an important role in the family's rise to prominence. After Frederick III's coronation, the Habsburgs were able to hold the imperial throne almost continuously until 1806.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Through the forged document called privilegium maius (1358/59), Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365) introduced the title of Archduke to place the Habsburgs on a par with the Prince-electors of the Empire, since Emperor Charles IV had omitted to give them the electoral dignity in his Golden Bull of 1356. Charles, however, refused to recognize the title, as did his immediate successors.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Duke Ernest the Iron and his descendants unilaterally assumed the title \"archduke\". That title was only officially recognized in 1453 by Emperor Frederick III, himself a Habsburg. Frederick himself used just \"Duke of Austria\", never Archduke, until his death in 1493. The title was first granted to Frederick's younger brother, Albert VI of Austria (died 1463), who used it at least from 1458. In 1477, Frederick granted the title archduke to his first cousin Sigismund of Austria, ruler of Further Austria. Frederick's son and heir, the future Emperor Maximilian I, apparently only started to use the title after the death of his wife Mary of Burgundy in 1482, as Archduke never appears in documents issued jointly by Maximilian and Mary as rulers in the Low Countries (where Maximilian is still titled \"Duke of Austria\"). The title appears first in documents issued under the joint rule of Maximilian and Philip (his under-age son) in the Low Countries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Archduke was initially borne by those dynasts who ruled a Habsburg territory, i.e., only by males and their consorts, appanages being commonly distributed to Cadets . These \"junior\" archdukes did not thereby become independent hereditary rulers, since all territories remained vested in the Austrian crown. Occasionally a territory might be combined with a separate gubernatorial mandate ruled by an archducal cadet. From the 16th century onward, archduke and its female form, archduchess, came to be used by all the members of the House of Habsburg (e.g., Queen Marie Antoinette of France was born Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1457 Duke Frederick V of Inner Austria also gained the Austrian archduchy after his Albertine cousin Ladislaus the Posthumous had died without issue. 1490 saw the reunification of all Habsburg lines when Archduke Sigismund of Further Austria and Tyrol resigned in favor of Frederick's son Maximilian I.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "As emperor, Frederick III took a leading role inside the family and positioned himself as the judge over the family's internal conflicts, often making use of the privilegium maius. He was able to restore the unity of the house's Austrian lands, as the Albertinian line was now extinct. Territorial integrity was also strengthened by the extinction of the Tyrolean branch of the Leopoldian line. Frederick's aim was to make Austria a united country, stretching from the Rhine to the Mur and Leitha.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On the external front, one of Frederick's main achievements was the Siege of Neuss (1474–75), in which he coerced Charles the Bold of Burgundy to give his daughter Mary of Burgundy as wife to Frederick's son Maximilian. The wedding took place on the evening of 16 August 1477 and ultimately resulted in the Habsburgs acquiring control of the Low Countries. After Mary's early death in 1482, Maximilian attempted to secure the Burgundian heritance to one of his and Mary's children Philip the Handsome. Charles VIII of France contested this, using both military and dynastic means, but the Burgundian succession was finally ruled in favor of Philip in the Treaty of Senlis in 1493.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "After the death of his father in 1493, Maximilian was proclaimed the new King of the Romans, receiving the name Maximilian I. Maximilian was initially unable to travel to Rome to receive the Imperial title from the Pope, due to opposition from Venice and from the French who were occupying Milan, as well a refusal from the Pope due to enemy forces being present on his territory. In 1508, Maximilian proclaimed himself as the \"chosen Emperor,\" and this was also recognized by the Pope due to changes in political alliances. This had a historical consequence in that, in the future, the Roman King would also automatically become Emperor, without needing the Pope's consent. Emperor Charles V would be the last to be crowned by the Pope himself, at Bologna in 1530.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Maximilian's rule (1493–1519) was a time of dramatic expansion for the Habsburgs. In 1497, Maximilian's son Philip, known as the Handsome or the Fair, married Joanna of Castile, also known as Joanna the Mad, heiress of the Castile. Phillip and Joan had six children, the eldest of whom became Emperor Charles V and ruled the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (including their colonies in the New World), Southern Italy, Austria, and the Low Countries in 1516, with his mother and nominal co-ruler Joanna, who was kept under confinement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The foundations for the later empire of Austria-Hungary were laid in 1515 by the means of a double wedding between Louis, only son of Vladislaus II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, and Maximilian's granddaughter Mary; and between her brother Archduke Ferdinand and Louis's sister Anna. The wedding was celebrated in grand style on 22 July 1515. All these children were still minors, so the wedding was formally completed in 1521. Vladislaus died on 13 March 1516, and Maximilian died on 12 January 1519, but the latter's designs were ultimately successful: upon Louis's death in battle in 1526, Ferdinand became king of Bohemia and Hungary.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Habsburg dynasty achieved its highest position when Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Much of Charles's reign was dedicated to the fight against Protestantism, which led to its eradication throughout vast areas under Habsburg control.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Charles formally became the sole monarch of Spain upon the death of his imprisoned mother Queen Joan in 1555.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "After the abdication of Charles V in 1556, the Habsburg dynasty split into the branch of the Austrian (or German) Habsburgs, led by Ferdinand, and the branch of the Spanish Habsburgs, initially led by Charles's son Philip. Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia, Hungary, and archduke of Austria in the name of his brother Charles V became suo jure monarch as well as the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor (designated as successor already in 1531). Philip became King of Spain and its colonial empire as Philip II, and ruler of the Habsburg domains in Italy and the Low Countries. The Spanish Habsburgs also ruled Portugal for a time, known there as the Philippine dynasty (1580–1640).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Seventeen Provinces and the Duchy of Milan were in personal union under the King of Spain but remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. Furthermore, the Spanish king had claims on Hungary and Bohemia. In the secret Oñate treaty of 29 July 1617, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs settled their mutual claims.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Habsburgs sought to consolidate their power by frequent consanguineous marriages, resulting in a cumulatively deleterious effect on their gene pool. Health impairments due to inbreeding included epilepsy, insanity, and early death. A study of 3,000 family members over 16 generations by the University of Santiago de Compostela suggests inbreeding may have played a role in their extinction. Numerous members of the family showed specific facial deformities: an enlarged lower jaw with an extended chin known as mandibular prognathism or \"Habsburg jaw\", a large nose with hump and hanging tip (\"Habsburg nose\"), and an everted lower lip (\"Habsburg lip\"). The latter two are signs of maxillary deficiency. A 2019 study found that the degree of mandibular prognathism in the Habsburg family shows a statistically significant correlation with the degree of inbreeding. A correlation between maxillary deficiency and degree of inbreeding was also present but was not statistically significant. Other scientific studies, however, dispute the ideas of any linkage between fertility and consanguinity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The gene pool eventually became so small that the last of the Spanish line, Charles II, who was severely disabled from birth (perhaps by genetic disorders) possessed a genome comparable to that of a child born to a brother and sister, as did his father, probably because of \"remote inbreeding\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 led to the War of the Spanish Succession, and that of Emperor Charles VI in 1740 led to the War of the Austrian Succession. In the former, the House of Bourbon won the conflict and put a final end to the Habsburg rule in Spain. The latter, however, was won by Maria Theresa and led to the succession of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Haus Habsburg-Lothringen) becoming the new main branch of the dynasty, in the person of Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II. This new House was created by the marriage between Maria Theresa of Habsburg and Francis Stephan, Duke of Lorraine (both of them were great-grandchildren of Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III, but from different empresses) this new House being a cadet branch of the female line of the House of Habsburg and the male line of the House of Lorraine. It is thought that extensive intra-family marriages within Spanish and Austrian lines contributed to the extinction of the main line.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On 6 August 1806, Emperor Francis I dissolved the Holy Roman Empire under pressure from Napoleon's reorganization of Germany. In anticipation of the loss of his title of Holy Roman Emperor, Francis had declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria (as Francis I) on 11 August 1804, three months after Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of the French on 18 May 1804.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Emperor Francis I of Austria used the official full list of titles: \"We, Francis the First, by the grace of God, Emperor of Austria; King of Jerusalem, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; Archduke of Austria; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Würzburg, Franconia, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; Grand Duke of Cracow; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Sandomir, Masovia, Lublin, Upper and Lower Silesia, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen, and Friule; Prince of Berchtesgaden and Mergentheim; Princely Count of Habsburg, Gorizia, and Gradisca and of the Tyrol; and Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 created a real union, whereby the Kingdom of Hungary was granted co-equality with the Empire of Austria, that henceforth didn't include the Kingdom of Hungary as a crownland anymore. The Austrian and the Hungarian lands became independent entities enjoying equal status. Under this arrangement, the Hungarians referred to their ruler as king and never emperor (see k. u. k.). This prevailed until the Habsburgs' deposition from both Austria and Hungary in 1918 following defeat in World War I.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On 11 November 1918, with his empire collapsing around him, the last Habsburg ruler, Charles I of Austria (who also reigned as Charles IV of Hungary) issued a proclamation recognizing Austria's right to determine the future of the state and renouncing any role in state affairs. Two days later, he issued a separate proclamation for Hungary. Even though he did not officially abdicate, this is considered the end of the Habsburg dynasty.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1919, the new republican Austrian government subsequently passed a law banishing the Habsburgs from Austrian territory until they renounced all intentions of regaining the throne and accepted the status of private citizens. Charles made several attempts to regain the throne of Hungary, and in 1921 the Hungarian government passed a law that revoked Charles' rights and dethroned the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs did not formally abandon all hope of returning to power until Otto von Habsburg, the eldest son of Charles I, on 31 May 1961 renounced all claims to the throne.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the interwar period, the House of Habsburg was a vehement opponent of Nazism and Communism. In Germany, Adolf Hitler diametrically opposed the centuries-old Habsburg principles of largely allowing local communities under their rule to maintain traditional ethnic, religious and language practices, and he bristled with hatred against the Habsburg family. During the Second World War there was a strong Habsburg resistance movement in Central Europe, which was radically persecuted by the Nazis and the Gestapo. The unofficial leader of these groups was Otto von Habsburg, who campaigned against the Nazis and for a free Central Europe in France and the United States. Most of the resistance fighters, such as Heinrich Maier, who successfully passed on production sites and plans for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks and aircraft to the Allies, were executed. The Habsburg family played a leading role in the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Communist Eastern Bloc.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "As they accumulated crowns and titles, the Habsburgs developed a family tradition of multilingualism that evolved over the centuries. The Holy Roman Empire had been multilingual from the start, even though most of its emperors were native German speakers. The language issue within the Empire became gradually more salient as the non-religious use of Latin declined and that of national languages gained prominence during the High Middle Ages. Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg was known to be fluent in Czech, French, German, Italian and Latin.",
"title": "Multilingualism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The last section of his Golden Bull of 1356 specifies that the Empire's secular prince-electors \"should be instructed in the varieties of the different dialects and languages\" and that \"since they are expected in all likelihood to have naturally acquired the German language, and to have been taught it from their infancy, [they] shall be instructed in the grammar of the Italian and Slavic tongues, beginning with the seventh year of their age so that, before the fourteenth year of their age, they may be learned in the same\". In the early 15th century, Strasbourg-based chronicler Jakob Twinger von Königshofen asserted that Charlemagne had mastered six languages, even though he had a preference for German.",
"title": "Multilingualism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In the early years of the family's ascendancy, neither Rudolf I nor Albert I appear to have spoken French. By contrast, Charles V of Habsburg is well known some having been fluent in several languages. He was native in French and also knew Dutch from his youth in Flanders. He later added some Castilian Spanish, which he was required to learn by the Castilian Cortes Generales. He could also speak some Basque, acquired by the influence of the Basque secretaries serving in the royal court. He gained a decent command of German following the Imperial election of 1519, though he never spoke it as well as French. A witticism sometimes attributed to Charles was: \"I speak Spanish/Latin [depending on the source] to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.\"",
"title": "Multilingualism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Latin was the administrative language of the Empire until the aggressive promotion of German by Joseph II in the late 18th century, which was partly reversed by his successors. From the 16th century, most if not all Habsburgs spoke French as well as German, and many also spoke Italian. Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II addressed the Bohemian Assembly in Czech, even though it is not clear that they were fluent. By contrast, there is little evidence that later Habsburgs in the 17th and 18th centuries spoke Czech, with the probable exception of Ferdinand III who made several stays in Bohemia and appears to have spoken Czech while there. In the 19th century, Francis I had notions of Czech, and Ferdinand I spoke it decently.",
"title": "Multilingualism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Franz Joseph received a bilingual early education in French and German, then added Czech and Hungarian and later Italian and Polish. He also learned Latin and Greek. After the end of the Habsburg Monarchy, Otto von Habsburg was fluent in English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.",
"title": "Multilingualism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Habsburgs' monarchical positions included:",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Before Rudolph rose to German king, the Habsburgs were Counts of Baden in what is today southwestern Germany and Switzerland.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "After the death of Rudolph IV, his brothers Albert III and Leopold III ruled the Habsburg possessions together from 1365 until 1379, when they split the territories in the Treaty of Neuberg, Albert keeping the Duchy of Austria and Leopold ruling over Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Windic March, Tirol, and Further Austria.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Sigismund had no children and adopted Maximilian I, son of Emperor Frederick III. Under Maximilian, the possessions of the Habsburgs would be united again under one ruler, after he had re-conquered the Duchy of Austria after the death of Matthias Corvinus, who resided in Vienna and styled himself duke of Austria from 1485 to 1490.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The abdications of Charles V in 1556 ended his formal authority over Ferdinand and made him suo jure ruler in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, as well as Holy Roman Emperor.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Ferdinand's inheritance had been split in 1564 among his children, with Maximilian taking the Imperial crown and his younger brother Archduke Charles II ruling over Inner Austria (i.e. the Duchy of Styria, the Duchy of Carniola with March of Istria, the Duchy of Carinthia, the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, and the Imperial City of Trieste, ruled from Graz). Charles's son and successor Ferdinand II in 1619 became Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor as well as King of Bohemia and Hungary in 1620. The Further Austrian/Tyrolean line of Ferdinand's brother Archduke Leopold V survived until the death of his son Sigismund Francis in 1665, whereafter their territories ultimately returned to common control with the other Austrian Habsburg lands. Inner Austrian stadtholders went on to rule until the days of Empress Maria Theresa in the 18th century.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Habsburg Spain was a personal union between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon; Aragon was itself divided into the Kingdoms of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca, Naples, Sicily, Malta and Sardinia. From 1581, they were kings of Portugal until they renounced this title in the 1668 Treaty of Lisbon. They were also Dukes of Milan, Lord of the Americas, and holder of multiple titles from territories within the Habsburg Netherlands. A full listing can be seen here.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The War of the Spanish Succession took place after the extinction of the Spanish Habsburg line, to determine the inheritance of Charles II.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Charles the Bold controlled not only Burgundy (both dukedom and county) but also Flanders and the broader Burgundian Netherlands. Frederick III managed to secure the marriage of Charles's only daughter, Mary of Burgundy, to his son Maximilian. The wedding took place on the evening of 16 August 1477, after the death of Charles. Mary and the Habsburgs lost the Duchy of Burgundy to France, but managed to defend and hold onto the rest what became the 17 provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands. After Mary's death in 1482, Maximilian acted as regent for his son Philip the Handsome.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Netherlands was frequently governed directly by a regent or governor-general, who was a collateral member of the Habsburgs. By the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 Charles V combined the Netherlands into one administrative unit, to be inherited by his son Philip II. Charles effectively united the Netherlands as one entity. The Habsburgs controlled the 17 Provinces of the Netherlands until the Dutch Revolt in the second half of the 16th century, when they lost the seven northern Protestant provinces. They held onto the southern Catholic part (roughly modern Belgium and Luxembourg) as the Spanish and Austrian Netherlands until they were conquered by French Revolutionary armies in 1795. The one exception to this was the period of (1601–1621), when shortly before Philip II died on 13 September 1598, he renounced his rights to the Netherlands in favor of his daughter Isabella and her fiancé, Archduke Albert of Austria, a younger son of Emperor Maximilian II. The territories reverted to Spain on the death of Albert in 1621, as the couple had no surviving offspring, and Isabella acted as regent-governor until her death in 1633:",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The War of the Austrian Succession took place after the extinction of the male line of the Austrian Habsburg line upon the death of Charles VI. The direct Habsburg line itself became totally extinct with the death of Maria Theresa of Austria, when it was followed by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Queen Maria Christina of Austria of Spain, great-granddaughter of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor above. Wife of Alfonso XII of Spain and mother of Alfonso XIII of the House of Bourbon. Alfonso XIII's wife Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg was descended from King George I of Great Britain from the Habsburg Leopold Line {above}.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The House of Habsburg-Lorraine retained Austria and attached possessions after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire; see below.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "A son of Leopold II was Archduke Rainer of Austria whose wife was from the House of Savoy; a daughter Adelaide, Queen of Sardina was the wife of King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy, and Sardinia and King of Italy. Their Children married into the Royal Houses of Bonaparte; Saxe-Coburg and Gotha {Bragança} {Portugal}; Savoy {Spain}; and the Dukedoms of Montferrat and Chablis.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "(→Family Tree)",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Francis Stephen assigned the grand duchy of Tuscany to his second son Peter Leopold, who in turn assigned it to his second son upon his accession as Holy Roman Emperor. Tuscany remained the domain of this cadet branch of the family until Italian unification.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The duchy of Modena was assigned to a minor branch of the family by the Congress of Vienna. It was lost to Italian unification. The Dukes named their line the House of Austria-Este, as they were descended from the daughter of the last D'Este Duke of Modena.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The duchy of Parma was likewise assigned to a Habsburg but did not stay in the House long before succumbing to Italian unification. It was granted to the second wife of Napoleon I of France, Maria Luisa Duchess of Parma, a daughter of the Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was the mother of Napoleon II of France. Napoleon had divorced his wife Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie (better known to history as Josephine de Beauharnais) in her favor.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Dona Maria Leopoldina of Austria (22 January 1797 – 11 December 1826) was an archduchess of Austria, Empress consort of Brazil and Queen consort of Portugal.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Maximilian, the adventurous second son of Archduke Franz Karl, was invited as part of Napoleon III's manipulations to take the throne of Mexico, becoming Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. The conservative Mexican nobility, as well as the clergy, supported this Second Mexican Empire. His consort, Charlotte of Belgium, a daughter of King Leopold I of Belgium and a princess of the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, encouraged her husband's acceptance of the Mexican crown and accompanied him as Empress Carlota of Mexico. The adventure did not end well. Maximilian was shot in Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro, in 1867 by the republican forces of Benito Juárez.",
"title": "List of Habsburg rulers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Charles I was expelled from his domains after World War I and the empire was abolished.",
"title": "List of post-monarchical Habsburgs"
}
]
| The House of Habsburg, also known as the House of Austria, is one of the most prominent and important dynasties in European history. The house takes its name from Habsburg Castle, a fortress built in the 1020s in present-day Switzerland by Radbot of Klettgau, who named his fortress Habsburg. His grandson Otto II was the first to take the fortress name as his own, adding "Count of Habsburg" to his title. In 1273, Count Radbot's seventh-generation descendant, Rudolph of Habsburg, was elected King of the Romans. Taking advantage of the extinction of the Babenbergs and of his victory over Ottokar II of Bohemia at the battle on the Marchfeld in 1278, he appointed his sons as Dukes of Austria and moved the family's power base to Vienna, where the Habsburg dynasty gained the name of "House of Austria" and ruled until 1918. The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs from 1440 until their extinction in the male line in 1740, and, as the Habsburg-Lorraines, from 1765 until its dissolution in 1806. The house also produced kings of Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal and Galicia-Lodomeria, with their respective colonies; rulers of several principalities in the Low Countries and Italy; and in the 19th century, emperors of Austria and of Austria-Hungary as well as one emperor of Mexico. The family split several times into parallel branches, most consequentially in the mid-16th century between its Spanish and Austrian branches following the abdication of Emperor Charles V in 1556. Although they ruled distinct territories, the different branches nevertheless maintained close relations and frequently intermarried. Members of the Habsburg family oversee the Austrian branch of the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Imperial and Royal Order of Saint George. The current head of the family is Karl von Habsburg. | 2001-11-07T20:03:59Z | 2023-12-08T08:04:04Z | [
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13,826 | Hub | A hub is the central part of a wheel that connects the axle to the wheel itself.
Hub, HUB, The Hub, or hubs may refer to: | [
{
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"text": "A hub is the central part of a wheel that connects the axle to the wheel itself.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hub, HUB, The Hub, or hubs may refer to:",
"title": ""
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| A hub is the central part of a wheel that connects the axle to the wheel itself. Hub, HUB, The Hub, or hubs may refer to: | 2001-09-26T20:08:35Z | 2023-12-28T17:24:46Z | [
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13,828 | House of Commons of the United Kingdom | The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved.
The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The government is solely responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as they retain the confidence of a majority of the Commons.
Although the House of Commons does not formally elect the prime minister, by convention and in practice, the prime minister is answerable to the House, and therefore must maintain its support. In this way, the position of the parties in the House is an overriding importance. Thus, whenever the office of prime minister falls vacant, the monarch appoints the person who has the support of the house, or who is most likely to command the support of the house—normally the leader of the largest party in the house—while the leader of the second-largest party becomes the leader of the Opposition. Since 1963, by convention, the prime minister has always been a member of the House of Commons, rather than the House of Lords.
The Commons may indicate its lack of support for the government by rejecting a motion of confidence or by passing a motion of no confidence. Confidence and no confidence motions are phrased explicitly: for instance, "That this House has no confidence in His Majesty's Government." Many other motions were until recent decades considered confidence issues, even though not explicitly phrased as such: in particular, important bills that were part of the government's agenda. The annual Budget is still considered a matter of confidence. When a government has lost the confidence of the House of Commons, the prime minister is obliged either to resign, making way for another MP who can command confidence, or request the monarch to dissolve Parliament, thereby precipitating a general election.
Since the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 Parliament sits for anything up to five years. This is a maximum: the prime minister can, and often has, choose an earlier time to dissolve parliament, with the permission of the monarch. This was a return to the historic system that had been replaced by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which fixed the term at five years. As of 25 October 2022, four of the eleven last prime ministers have attained office as the immediate result of a general election; the others have gained office upon the resignation of a prime minister of their own party.
A prime minister will resign after party defeat at an election if unable to form a coalition, or obtain a confidence and supply arrangement, and may resign after a motion of no confidence in the prime minister or for personal reasons. In such cases, the premiership goes to whoever can command a majority in the House, unless there is a hung parliament and a coalition is formed; the new prime minister will by convention be the new leader of the resigner's party. It has become the practice to write the constitutions of major UK political parties to provide a set way to appoint a new party leader.
By convention, ministers are members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. A handful have been appointed from outside Parliament, but in most cases they then entered Parliament in a by-election or by receiving a peerage (being made a peer). Since 1902, all but one prime ministers have been members of the Commons at time of appointment; the sole exception was during the long summer recess in 1963: Alec Douglas-Home, then the 14th Earl of Home, disclaimed his peerage (under a new mechanism which remains in force) three days after becoming prime minister. The new session of Parliament was delayed to await the outcome of his by-election, which happened to be already under way due to a recent death. As anticipated, he won that election, which was for the highest-majority seat in Scotland among his party; otherwise he would have been constitutionally obliged to resign.
Since 1990, almost all cabinet ministers, save for three whose offices are an intrinsic part of the House of Lords, have belonged to the Commons.
Few major cabinet positions (except Lord Privy Seal, Lord Chancellor and Leader of the House of Lords) have been filled by a peer in recent times. Notable exceptions are Sir Alec Douglas-Home; who served as Foreign Secretary from 1960 to 1963; Peter Carington, 6th Lord Carrington, who also served as Foreign Secretary from 1979 to 1982; David Cameron, former Prime Minister who has served as Foreign Secretary since 2023; David Young, Lord Young of Graffham, who was appointed Employment Secretary in 1985; Lord Mandelson, who served as Business Secretary; Lord Adonis, who served as Transport Secretary; Baroness Amos, who served as International Development Secretary; Baroness Morgan of Cotes, who served as Culture Secretary; and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who served as Minister of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Minister of State for International Development. The elected status of members of the Commons (as opposed to the unelected Lords) and their direct accountability to that House, together with empowerment and transparency, ensures ministerial accountability. Responsible government is an international constitutional paradigm. The prime minister chooses the ministers, and may decide to remove them at any time, although the appointments and dismissals are formally made by the Sovereign.
The House of Commons formally scrutinises the Government through its Committees and Prime Minister's Questions, when members ask questions of the prime minister; the house gives other opportunities to question other cabinet ministers. Prime Minister's Questions occur weekly, normally for half an hour each Wednesday. Questions must relate to the responding minister's official government activities, not to his or her activities as a party leader or as a private Member of Parliament. Customarily, members of the Government party/coalition and members of the Opposition alternate when asking questions. Members may also make inquiries in writing.
In practice, this scrutiny can be fairly weak. Since the first-past-the-post electoral system is employed, the governing party often enjoys a large majority in the Commons, and ministers and departments practise defensive government, outsourcing key work to third parties. If the government has a large majority, it has no need or incentive to compromise with other parties.
Major modern British political parties tend to be so tightly orchestrated that their MPs often have little scope for free action. A large minority of ruling party MPs are paid members of the Government. Since 1900 the Government has lost confidence motions thrice—twice in 1924, and once in 1979. However, the threat of rebellions by their own party's backbench MPs often forces governments to make concessions (under the Cameron–Clegg coalition, over foundation hospitals and under Labour over top-up fees and compensation for failed company pension schemes). Occasionally Government bills are defeated by backbench rebellions (Terrorism Act 2006). However, the scrutiny provided by the Select committees is more serious.
The House of Commons technically retains the power to impeach Ministers of the Crown (or any other subject, even if not a public officer) for their crimes. Impeachments are tried by the House of Lords, where a simple majority is necessary to convict. This power has fallen into disuse, however; the House of Commons exercises its checks on the government through other means, such as no confidence motions; the last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville in 1806.
Bills may be introduced in either house, though bills of importance generally originate in the House of Commons. The supremacy of the Commons in legislative matters is assured by the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, under which certain types of bills may be presented to the sovereign for royal assent without the consent of the House of Lords. The Lords may not delay a money bill (a bill that, in the view of the Speaker of the House of Commons, solely concerns national taxation or public funds) for more than one month. Moreover, the Lords may not delay most other public bills for more than two parliamentary sessions, or one calendar year. These provisions, however, only apply to public bills that originate in the House of Commons. Moreover, a bill that seeks to extend a parliamentary term beyond five years requires the consent of the House of Lords.
By a custom that prevailed even before the Parliament Acts, only the House of Commons may originate bills concerning taxation or supply. Furthermore, supply bills passed by the House of Commons are immune to amendments in the House of Lords. In addition, the House of Lords is barred from amending a bill so as to insert a taxation or supply-related provision, but the House of Commons often waives its privileges and allows the Lords to make amendments with financial implications. Under a separate convention, known as the Salisbury Convention, the House of Lords does not seek to oppose legislation promised in the government's election manifesto. Hence, as the power of the House of Lords has been severely curtailed by statute and by practice, the House of Commons is clearly the more powerful chamber of Parliament.
The British parliament of today largely descends, in practice, from the Parliament of England, although the 1706 Treaty of Union, and the Acts of Union that ratified the Treaty, created a new Parliament of Great Britain to replace the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, with the addition of 45 MPs and sixteen Peers to represent Scotland. Later still the Acts of Union 1800 brought about the abolition of the Parliament of Ireland and enlarged the Commons at Westminster with 100 Irish members, creating the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Middle English word common or commune, which is derived from the Anglo-Norman commune, meant "of general, public, or non-private nature" as an adjective and, as a substantive, "the common body of the people of any place; the community or commonalty" in the singular; "the common people, the commonalty; the lower order, as distinguished from those of noble or knight or gentle rank", or "the burgers of a town; the body of free citizens, bearing common burdens, and exercising common rights; (hence) the third estate in the English constitution; the body of people, not ennobled, and represented by the Lower House of Parliament" in the plural. The word has survived to this day in the original Anglo-Norman phrase soit baillé aux communes, with which a bill is transmitted from the House of Lords to the House of Commons.
The historian Albert Pollard held a somewhat different view on the word's origins in 1920. He agreed that commons could be derived from Anglo-Norman communes, but that it referred to "civil associations" or "the counties". However, the Oxford English Dictionary, the historical dictionary of the English language, can only attest to the word meaning advocated by Pollard from the 19th and 20th centuries onwards, whereas sources for the meaning given in the previous section date from the late Middle Ages, i.e. the time of the establishment of the House of Commons.
The current Commons' layout is influenced by the use of the original St. Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster.
The rectangular shape is derived from the shape of the chapel. Benches were arranged using the configuration of the chapel's choir stalls whereby they were facing across from one another. This arrangement facilitated an adversarial atmosphere representative of the British parliamentary approach.
The distance across the floor of the house between the government and opposition benches is 13 feet (3.96 m), said to be equivalent to two swords' length, though this is likely to be purely symbolic given weapons have been banned in the chamber for hundreds of years.
The House of Commons underwent an important period of reform during the 19th century. Over the years, several anomalies had developed in borough representation. The constituency boundaries had not been changed since 1660, so many towns whose importance had declined by the 19th century still retained their ancient right of electing two members, in addition to other boroughs that had never been important, such as Gatton.
Among the most notorious of these "rotten boroughs" were Old Sarum, which had only six voters for two MPs, and Dunwich, which had largely collapsed into the sea from coastal erosion. At the same time, large cities such as Manchester received no separate representation (although their eligible residents were entitled to vote in the corresponding county seat). Also notable were the pocket boroughs, small constituencies controlled by wealthy landowners and aristocrats, whose "nominees" were invariably elected.
The Commons attempted to address these anomalies by passing a Reform Bill in 1831. At first, the House of Lords proved unwilling to pass the bill, but it was forced to relent when the prime minister, Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, advised King William IV to flood the House of Lords by creating pro-Reform peers. To avoid this, the Lords relented and passed the bill in 1832. The Reform Act 1832, also known as the "Great Reform Act", abolished the rotten boroughs, established uniform voting requirements for the boroughs, and granted representation to populous cities, but still retained some anomalies.
In the ensuing years, the Commons grew more assertive, the influence of the House of Lords having been reduced by the Reform Bill crisis, and the power of the patrons reduced. The Lords became more reluctant to reject bills that the Commons had passed with large majorities, and it became an accepted political principle that the confidence of the House of Commons alone was necessary for a government to remain in office.
Many more reforms were introduced in the latter half of the 19th century. The Reform Act 1867 lowered property requirements for voting in the boroughs, reduced the representation of the less populous boroughs, and granted parliamentary seats to several growing industrial towns. The electorate was further expanded by the Representation of the People Act 1884, under which property qualifications in the counties were lowered. The Redistribution of Seats Act of the following year replaced almost all multi-member constituencies with single-member constituencies.
In 1908, the Liberal Government under H. H. Asquith introduced a number of social welfare programmes, which, together with an expensive arms race, forced the Government to seek higher taxes. In 1909, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, introduced the "People's Budget", which proposed a new tax targeting wealthy landowners. This measure failed in the heavily Conservative House of Lords, and the government resigned.
The resulting general election returned a hung parliament, but Asquith remained prime minister with the support of the smaller parties. Asquith then proposed that the powers of the Lords be severely curtailed. Following a further election in December 1910, the Asquith Government secured the passage of a bill to curtail the powers of the House of Lords after threatening to flood the house with 500 new Liberal peers to ensure the passage of the bill.
Thus the Parliament Act 1911 came into effect, destroying the legislative equality of the two Houses of Parliament. The House of Lords was permitted only to delay most legislation, for a maximum of three parliamentary sessions or two calendar years (reduced to two sessions or one year by the Parliament Act 1949). Since the passage of these Acts, the House of Commons has become the dominant branch of Parliament.
Since the 17th century, government ministers were paid, while other MPs were not. Most of the men elected to the Commons had private incomes, while a few relied on financial support from a wealthy patron. Early Labour MPs were often provided with a salary by a trade union, but this was declared illegal by a House of Lords judgement of 1909. Consequently, a resolution was passed in the House of Commons in 1911 introducing salaries for MPs.
In 1918, women over 30 who owned property were given the right to vote, as were men over 21 who did not own property, quickly followed by the passage of a law enabling women to be eligible for election as members of parliament at the younger age of 21. The only woman to be elected that year was an Irish Sinn Féin candidate, Constance Markievicz, who therefore became the first woman to be an MP. However, owing to Sinn Féin's policy of abstention from Westminster, she never took her seat.
Women were given equal voting status as men in 1928, and with effect from the General Election in 1950, various forms of plural voting (i.e. some individuals had the right to vote in more than one constituency in the same election), including University constituencies, were abolished.
In May and June 2009 revelations of MPs' expenses claims caused a major scandal and loss of confidence by the public in the integrity of MPs, as well as causing the first forced resignation of the Speaker in 300 years.
In 2011, a referendum was held, asking whether to replace the present "first-past-the-post" system with the "alternative vote" (AV) method. The proposal to introduce AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was passed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, transferring the power to call an early election from the Prime Minister to Parliament, and setting out the procedure for this. Under the act, calling an early election required a two-thirds supermajority of the house. These provisions were first used by Theresa May to trigger the 2017 snap election.
The Recall of MPs Act 2015 created a mechanism for recalling Members of Parliament. Under the act, proceedings are initiated only if an MP is found guilty of wrongdoing fulfilling certain criteria. A petition is successful if at least one in ten voters in the constituency sign. Successful petitions result in the MP vacating the seat, triggering a by-election.
In 2019, MPs used "standing order 24" (a parliamentary procedure that triggers emergency debates) as a means of gaining control of the parliamentary order paper for the following day, and passing legislation without the incumbent government's consent. This unusual process was achieved through tabling amendments to the "motion in neutral terms", a non-binding statement released by parliament after the debate. This new technique was used to pass the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019 in March, as well as the No. 2 Act in September, both relating to Brexit. 2019 was the year Labour and Co-operative MPs became the fourth-largest political group in the House of Commons.
In 2020, new procedures for hybrid proceedings were introduced from 22 April. These mitigated the coronavirus pandemic with measures including a limit of 50 MPs in the chamber, physical distancing and remote participation using video conferencing. Hybrid proceedings were abolished in August 2021.
Later in December 2020, the Conservative government published a draft Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Repeal) Bill, later retitled the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill when it was introduced to the Commons in May 2021, which would repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in its entirety, restore the monarch's prerogative powers to dissolve Parliament at the prime minister's request, and ensure that a parliamentary term automatically ends five years after Parliament's first meeting and polling day being 25 working days later. The bill was given royal assent on 24 March 2022, becoming the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act.
Since 1950, every constituency has been represented by a single Member of Parliament. There remains a technical distinction between county and borough constituencies; its only effects are on the amount of money candidates are allowed to spend during campaigns and the rank of the local authority co-opted Returning Officer who presides over the count. Geographic boundaries are determined by four permanent and independent Boundary Commissions, one each for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The commissions conduct general reviews of electoral boundaries once every 8 to 12 years, and interim reviews. In drawing boundaries, they are required to prefer local government boundaries, but may deviate from these to prevent great disparities in electorate; such disparities are given the formal term malapportionment. The proposals of the Boundary Commissions are subject to parliamentary approval, but may not be amended. After their next Periodic Reviews, the Boundary Commissions will be absorbed into the Electoral Commission, which was established in 2000. As of 2019, the UK is divided into 650 constituencies, with 533 in England, 40 in Wales, 59 in Scotland, and 18 in Northern Ireland.
General elections occur whenever Parliament is dissolved. The timing of the dissolution was normally chosen by the Prime Minister (see relationship with the Government above); however, because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, parliamentary terms were fixed at five years, except when the House of Commons sustains a vote of no confidence or passes an "early election" motion, the latter having to be passed by a two-thirds vote; or, as in 2019, by an Enabling act which overrides the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The first use of this procedure was in April 2017, when MPs voted in favour of Theresa May's call for a snap election to be held that June.
Even when the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was repealed in March 2022, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act retained Parliament's dissolution on the fifth year after its first day.
All general elections in the UK since 1935 have been held on a Thursday. The origins of this convention are unknown but there are a number of theories, including the suggestion that it was to coincide with market day; this would ease voting for those who had to travel into the towns to cast their ballot.
A candidate for a seat must submit nomination papers signed by ten registered voters from that area, and pay £500, which is refunded if the candidate wins at least five per cent of the vote. Such a deposit seeks to discourage frivolity and very long ballot papers which would cause vote splitting (and arguably voter confusion). Each constituency is also called a seat (as it was in 1885), as it returns one member, using the first-past-the-post electoral system, under which the candidate with a plurality of votes wins, that is greatest number of votes. Minors (that is, anyone under the age of 18), members of the House of Lords, and prisoners are not qualified to become members of the House of Commons. To vote, one must be a UK resident and a citizen of either Britain, a British overseas territory, Ireland, or a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. British citizens living abroad are allowed to vote for 15 years after leaving. It is a criminal offence for a person to vote in the ballot of more than one seat which is vacant at any election. This has not always been the case: before 1948 plural voting was permitted as voters qualified by home ownership or residence and could vote under both entitlements simultaneously, as well as for a university constituency if a university graduate.
Once elected, Members of Parliament normally continue to serve until the next dissolution of Parliament. But if a member dies or ceases to be qualified (see qualifications below), his or her seat falls vacant. It is also possible for the House of Commons to expel a member, a power exercised only in cases of serious misconduct or criminal activity. In each case, the vacancy is filled by a by-election in the constituency, with the same electoral system as in general elections.
The term "Member of Parliament" by modern convention means a member of the House of Commons. These members may, and almost invariably do, use the post-nominal letters "MP". The annual salary of each member is £86,584 effective from 1 April 2023. Members may also receive additional salaries for other offices they hold (for instance, the Speakership). Most members also claim for various office expenses (staff costs, postage, travelling, etc.) and, in the case of members for seats outside London, for the costs of maintaining a home in the capital.
There are numerous qualifications that apply to Members of Parliament. One must be aged at least 18 (the minimum age was 21 until s.17 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 came into force), and must be a citizen of the United Kingdom, of a British overseas territory, of the Republic of Ireland, or of a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations. These restrictions were introduced by the British Nationality Act 1981, but were previously far more stringent: under the Act of Settlement 1701, only natural-born subjects were qualified. Members of the House of Lords may not serve in the House of Commons, or even vote in parliamentary elections; however, they are permitted to sit in the chamber during debates (unlike the King, who cannot enter the chamber).
A person may not sit in the Commons if he or she is the subject of a Bankruptcy Restrictions Order (applicable in England and Wales only), or if she or he is adjudged bankrupt (in Northern Ireland), or if his or her estate is sequestered (in Scotland). Previously, MPs detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 for six months or more would have their seat vacated if two specialists reported to the Speaker that the member was suffering from a mental disorder. However, this disqualification was removed by the Mental Health (Discrimination) Act 2013. There also exists a common law precedent from the 18th century that the deaf-mute are ineligible to sit in the Lower House; this precedent, however, has not been tested in recent years.
Anyone found guilty of high treason may not sit in Parliament until she or he has either completed the term of imprisonment or received a full pardon from the Crown. Moreover, anyone serving a prison sentence of one year or more is ineligible, per Representation of the People Act 1981. Finally, members of the Senedd, formerly the National Assembly for Wales until May 2020, and Northern Ireland Assembly are disqualified since 2014. Article 159, Section 2 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 formerly disqualified for ten years those found guilty of certain election-related offences, until this section was repealed in 2001. Several other disqualifications are codified in the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975: holders of high judicial offices, civil servants, members of the regular armed forces, members of foreign legislatures (excluding the Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth countries), and holders of several Crown offices. Ministers, even though they are paid officers of the Crown, are not disqualified.
The rule that precludes certain Crown officers from serving in the House of Commons is used to circumvent a resolution adopted by the House of Commons in 1623, under which members are not permitted to resign their seats. In practice, however, they always can. Should a member wish to resign from the Commons, she or he may request appointment to one of two ceremonial Crown offices: that of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, or that of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. These offices are sinecures (that is, they involve no actual duties); they exist solely to permit the "resignation" of members of the House of Commons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is responsible for making the appointment, and, by convention, never refuses to do so when asked by a member who desires to leave the House of Commons.
At the beginning of each new parliamentary term, the House of Commons elects one of its members as a presiding officer, known as the Speaker. If the incumbent Speaker seeks a new term, then the house may re-elect him or her merely by passing a motion; otherwise, a secret ballot is held. A Speaker-elect cannot take office until she or he has been approved by the Sovereign; the granting of the royal approbation, however, is a formality. The Speaker is assisted by three Deputy Speakers, the most senior of whom holds the title of Chairman of Ways and Means. The two other Deputy Speakers are known as the First and Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means. These titles derive from the Committee of Ways and Means, a body over which the chairman once used to preside; even though the committee was abolished in 1967, the traditional titles of the Deputy Speakers are still retained. The Speaker and the Deputy Speakers are always members of the House of Commons.
Whilst presiding, the Speaker or Deputy Speaker traditionally wears ceremonial dress. The presiding officer may also wear a wig, but this tradition was abandoned by Speaker Betty Boothroyd. Her successor, Michael Martin, also did not wear a wig while in the chamber. His successor, John Bercow, chose to wear a gown over a lounge suit, a decision that sparked much debate and opposition; he also did not wear a wig.
The Speaker or deputy presides from a chair at the front of the house. This chair was designed by Augustus Pugin, who initially built a prototype of the chair at King Edward's School, Birmingham: that chair is called Sapientia (Latin for "wisdom") and is where the chief master sits. The Speaker is also chairman of the House of Commons Commission, which oversees the running of the house, and controls debates by calling on members to speak. A member who believes that a rule (or Standing Order) has been breached may raise a "point of order", on which the Speaker makes a ruling not subject to any appeal. The Speaker may discipline members who fail to observe the rules of the house. The Speaker also decides which proposed amendments to a motion are to be debated. Thus, the Speaker is far more powerful than his or her Lords counterpart, the Lord Speaker, who has no disciplinary powers. Customarily, the Speaker and the deputies are non-partisan; they do not vote (with the notable exception of tied votes, where the Speaker votes in accordance with Denison's rule), or participate in the affairs of any political party. By convention, a Speaker seeking re-election to parliament is not opposed in his or her constituency by any of the major parties. The lack of partisanship continues even after the Speaker leaves the House of Commons.
The Clerk of the House of Commons is both the house's chief adviser on matters of procedure and chief executive of the House of Commons. She or he is a permanent official, not a member of the house itself. The Clerk advises the Speaker on the rules and procedure of the house, signs orders and official communications, and signs and endorses bills. The Clerk also chairs the Board of Management, which consists of the heads of the six departments of the house. The Clerk's deputy is known as the Clerk Assistant. Another officer of the house is the Serjeant-at-arms, whose duties include the maintenance of law, order, and security on the house's premises. The Serjeant-at-Arms carries the ceremonial mace, a symbol of the authority of the Crown and of the House of Commons, into the house each day before the Speaker, and the mace is laid upon the table of the house during sittings. The Librarian is head of the House of Commons Library, the house's research and information arm.
Like the Lords, the Commons meets in the Palace of Westminster in London. The Commons chamber is small and modestly decorated in green, unlike the large, lavishly furnished red Lords chamber. Benches sit on both sides of the chamber and are divided by a centre aisle. This arrangement reflects the design of St Stephen's Chapel, which served as the home of the House of Commons until destroyed by fire in 1834. The Speaker's chair is at one end of the chamber; in front of it, is the table of the house, on which the mace rests. The clerks sit at one end of the table, close to the Speaker so that they may advise him or her on procedure when necessary.
Members of the Government occupy the benches on the Speaker's right, whilst members of the Opposition occupy the benches on the Speaker's left. In front of each set of benches a red line is drawn, which members are traditionally not allowed to cross during debates. The Prime Minister and the government ministers, as well as the leader of the Opposition and the Shadow cabinet sit on the front rows, and are known as frontbenchers. Other members of parliament, in contrast, are known as backbenchers. Not all Members of Parliament can fit into the chamber at the same time, as it only has space to seat approximately two thirds of the Members. According to Robert Rogers, former Clerk of the House of Commons and Chief Executive, a figure of 427 seats is an average or a finger-in-the-wind estimate. Members who arrive late must stand near the entrance of the house if they wish to listen to debates. Sittings in the chamber are held each day from Monday to Thursday, and also on some Fridays. During times of national emergency, the house may also sit at weekends.
Sittings of the house are open to the public, but the house may at any time vote to sit in private, which has occurred only twice since 1950. Traditionally, a Member who desired that the house sit privately could shout "I spy strangers!" and a vote would automatically follow. In the past, when relations between the Commons and the Crown were less than cordial, this procedure was used whenever the house wanted to keep its debate private. More often, however, this device was used to delay and disrupt proceedings; as a result, it was abolished in 1998. Now, members seeking that the house sit in private must make a formal motion to that effect.
Public debates are recorded and archived in Hansard. The post war redesign of the house in 1950 included microphones, and debates were allowed to be broadcast by radio in 1975. Since 1989, they have also been broadcast on television, which is now handled by BBC Parliament.
Sessions of the House of Commons have sometimes been disrupted by angry protesters throwing objects into the chamber from the galleries—items thrown include leaflets, manure, flour, and a canister of chlorobenzylidene malonitrile (tear gas). Even members have been known to disturb proceedings of the house. For instance, in 1976, Conservative MP Michael Heseltine seized and brandished the mace of the house during a heated debate. However, perhaps the most famous disruption of the House of Commons was caused by Charles I, who entered the Commons Chamber in 1642 with an armed force to arrest five members for high treason. This action was deemed a breach of the privilege of the house, and has given rise to the tradition that the monarch does not set foot in the House of Commons.
Each year, the parliamentary session begins with the State Opening of Parliament, a ceremony in the Lords Chamber during which the Sovereign, in the presence of Members of both Houses, delivers an address outlining the Government's legislative agenda. The Gentleman or Lady Usher of the Black Rod (a Lords official) is responsible for summoning the Commons to the Lords Chamber. When he arrives to deliver his summons, the doors of the Commons Chamber are traditionally slammed shut in his face, symbolising the right of the Lower House to debate without interference. He then knocks on the door three times with his Black Rod, and only then is granted admittance, where he informs the MPs that the Monarch awaits them, after which they proceed to the House of Lords for the King's Speech.
During debates, Members may speak only if called upon by the Speaker (or a Deputy Speaker, if the Speaker is not presiding). Traditionally, the presiding officer alternates between calling Members from the Government and Opposition. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and other leaders from both sides are normally given priority. All Privy Counsellors used to be granted priority; however, the modernisation of Commons procedure in 1998 led to the abolition of this tradition.
Speeches are addressed to the presiding officer, using the words "Mr Speaker", "Madam Speaker", "Mr Deputy Speaker", or "Madam Deputy Speaker". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in debate; other members must be referred to in the third person. Traditionally, members do not refer to each other by name, but by constituency, using forms such as "the Honourable Member for [constituency]", or, in the case of Privy Counsellors, "the Right Honourable Member for [constituency]". Members of the same party (or allied parties or groups) refer to each other as "my (Right) Honourable friend". A currently serving, or ex-member of the Armed Forces is referred to as "the Honourable and Gallant Member" (a barrister used to be called "the Honourable and Learned Member", and a woman "the Honourable Lady the Member".) This may not always be the case during the actual oral delivery, when it might be difficult for a member to remember another member's exact constituency, but it is invariably followed in the transcript entered in the Hansard. The Speaker enforces the rules of the house and may warn and punish members who deviate from them. Disregarding the Speaker's instructions is considered a breach of the rules of the House and may result in the suspension of the offender from the house. In the case of grave disorder, the Speaker may adjourn the house without taking a vote.
The Standing Orders of the House of Commons do not establish any formal time limits for debates. The Speaker may, however, order a member who persists in making a tediously repetitive or irrelevant speech to stop speaking. The time set aside for debate on a particular motion is, however, often limited by informal agreements between the parties. Debate may also be restricted by the passage of "allocation of time motions", which are more commonly known as "guillotine motions". Alternatively, the house may put an immediate end to debate by passing a motion to invoke closure. The Speaker is allowed to deny the motion if she or he believes that it infringes upon the rights of the minority. Today, bills are scheduled according to a timetable motion, which the whole house agrees in advance, negating the use of a guillotine.
When the debate concludes, or when the closure is invoked, the motion is put to a vote. The house first votes by voice vote; the Speaker or Deputy Speaker puts the question, and Members respond either "Aye!" (in favour of the motion) or "No!" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote, but if his or her assessment is challenged by any member or the voice vote is unclear, a recorded vote known as a division follows. The presiding officer, if she or he believes that the result of the voice vote is clear, may reject the challenge. When a division occurs, members enter one of two lobbies (the "Aye" lobby or the "No" lobby) on either side of the chamber, where their names are recorded by clerks. A member who wishes to pointedly abstain from a vote may do so by entering both lobbies, casting one vote for and one against. At each lobby are two tellers (themselves members of the house) who count the votes of the members.
Once the division concludes, the tellers provide the results to the presiding officer, who then announces them to the house. If the votes are tied, the Speaker or Deputy Speaker has a casting vote. Traditionally, this casting vote is exercised to allow further debate, if this is possible, or otherwise to avoid a decision without a majority (e.g. voting 'No' to a motion or the third reading of a bill). Ties rarely occur: more than 25 years passed between the last two ones in July 1993 and April 2019. The quorum of the House of Commons is 40 members for any vote, including the Speaker and four tellers. If fewer than 40 members have participated, the division is invalid.
Formerly, if a member sought to raise a point of order during a division, suggesting that some of the rules governing parliamentary procedure are violated, he was required to wear a hat, thereby signalling that he was not engaging in debate. Collapsible top hats were kept in the chamber just for this purpose. This custom was discontinued in 1998.
The outcome of most votes is largely known beforehand, since political parties normally instruct members on how to vote. A party normally entrusts some members of parliament, known as whips, with the task of ensuring that all party members vote as desired. Members of Parliament do not tend to vote against such instructions, since those who do so jeopardise promotion, or may be deselected as party candidates for future elections. Ministers, junior ministers and parliamentary private secretaries who vote against the whips' instructions usually resign. Thus, the independence of Members of Parliament tends to be low, although "backbench rebellions" by members discontent with their party's policies do occur. A member is also traditionally allowed some leeway if the particular interests of his constituency are adversely affected. In some circumstances, however, parties announce "free votes", allowing members to vote as they please. Votes relating to issues of conscience such as abortion and capital punishment are typically free votes.
Pairing is an arrangement where a member from one party agrees with a member of another party not to vote in a particular division, allowing both MPs the opportunity not to attend.
A bisque is permission from the Whips given to a member to miss a vote or debate in the house to attend to constituency business or other matters.
The British Parliament uses committees for a variety of purposes, e.g., for the review of bills. Committees consider bills in detail, and may make amendments. Bills of great constitutional importance, as well as some important financial measures, are usually sent to the "Committee of the Whole House", a body that includes all members of the Commons. Instead of the Speaker, the chairman or a Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means presides. The committee meets in the House of Commons Chamber.
Most bills were until 2006 considered by standing committees, which consisted of between 16 and 50 members. The membership of each standing committee roughly reflected the strength of the parties in the House. The membership of standing committees changed constantly; new Members were assigned each time the committee considered a new bill. The number of standing committees was not limited, but usually only ten existed. Rarely, a bill was committed to a Special Standing Committee, which investigated and held hearings on the issues raised. In November 2006, standing committees were replaced by public bill committees.
The House of Commons also has several departmental select committees. The membership of these bodies, like that of the standing committees, reflects the strength of the parties. The chairman of each committee is voted on in a secret ballot of the whole house during the first session of a parliamentary term, or when a vacancy occurs. The number of select committee chairmanships allocated to each party reflects the strength of the parties, and the parties allocate the positions through agreement. The primary function of a departmental select committee is to scrutinise and investigate the activities of a particular government department. To fulfil these aims, it is permitted to hold hearings and collect evidence. Bills may be referred to Departmental Select Committees, but such a procedure is seldom used.
A separate type of select committee is the Domestic Committee. Domestic Committees oversee the administration of the House and the services provided to Members. Other committees of the House of Commons include Joint Committees (which also include members of the House of Lords), the Committee on Standards and Privileges (which considers questions of parliamentary privilege, as well as matters relating to the conduct of the members), and the Committee of Selection (which determines the membership of other committees).
The symbol used by the Commons consists of a portcullis topped by St Edward's Crown. The portcullis has been one of the Royal badges of England since the accession of the Tudors in the 15th century, and was a favourite symbol of King Henry VII. It was originally the badge of Beaufort, his mother's family; and a pun on the name Tudor, as in tu-door. The original badge was of gold, but nowadays is shown in various colours, predominantly green or black.
In 1986, the British television production company Granada Television created a near-full size replica of the post-1950 House of Commons debating chamber at its studios in Manchester for use in its adaptation of the Jeffrey Archer novel First Among Equals. The set was highly convincing, and was retained after the production—since then, it has been used in nearly every British film and television production that has featured scenes set in the chamber. From 1988 until 1999 it was also one of the prominent attractions on the Granada Studios Tour, where visitors could watch actors performing mock political debates on the set. The major difference between the studio set and the real House of Commons Chamber is that the studio set has just four rows of seats on either side whereas the real Chamber has five.
In 2002, the set was purchased by the scriptwriter Paul Abbott so that it could be used in his BBC drama serial State of Play. Abbott, a former Granada Television staff writer, bought it because the set would otherwise have been destroyed and he feared it would take too long to get the necessary money from the BBC. Abbott kept the set in storage in Oxford.
The pre-1941 Chamber was recreated in Shepperton Studios for the Ridley Scott/Richard Loncraine 2002 biographical film on Churchill, The Gathering Storm.
51°29′59.6″N 0°07′28.8″W / 51.499889°N 0.124667°W / 51.499889; -0.124667 | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The government is solely responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as they retain the confidence of a majority of the Commons.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Although the House of Commons does not formally elect the prime minister, by convention and in practice, the prime minister is answerable to the House, and therefore must maintain its support. In this way, the position of the parties in the House is an overriding importance. Thus, whenever the office of prime minister falls vacant, the monarch appoints the person who has the support of the house, or who is most likely to command the support of the house—normally the leader of the largest party in the house—while the leader of the second-largest party becomes the leader of the Opposition. Since 1963, by convention, the prime minister has always been a member of the House of Commons, rather than the House of Lords.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Commons may indicate its lack of support for the government by rejecting a motion of confidence or by passing a motion of no confidence. Confidence and no confidence motions are phrased explicitly: for instance, \"That this House has no confidence in His Majesty's Government.\" Many other motions were until recent decades considered confidence issues, even though not explicitly phrased as such: in particular, important bills that were part of the government's agenda. The annual Budget is still considered a matter of confidence. When a government has lost the confidence of the House of Commons, the prime minister is obliged either to resign, making way for another MP who can command confidence, or request the monarch to dissolve Parliament, thereby precipitating a general election.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Since the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 Parliament sits for anything up to five years. This is a maximum: the prime minister can, and often has, choose an earlier time to dissolve parliament, with the permission of the monarch. This was a return to the historic system that had been replaced by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which fixed the term at five years. As of 25 October 2022, four of the eleven last prime ministers have attained office as the immediate result of a general election; the others have gained office upon the resignation of a prime minister of their own party.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A prime minister will resign after party defeat at an election if unable to form a coalition, or obtain a confidence and supply arrangement, and may resign after a motion of no confidence in the prime minister or for personal reasons. In such cases, the premiership goes to whoever can command a majority in the House, unless there is a hung parliament and a coalition is formed; the new prime minister will by convention be the new leader of the resigner's party. It has become the practice to write the constitutions of major UK political parties to provide a set way to appoint a new party leader.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "By convention, ministers are members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. A handful have been appointed from outside Parliament, but in most cases they then entered Parliament in a by-election or by receiving a peerage (being made a peer). Since 1902, all but one prime ministers have been members of the Commons at time of appointment; the sole exception was during the long summer recess in 1963: Alec Douglas-Home, then the 14th Earl of Home, disclaimed his peerage (under a new mechanism which remains in force) three days after becoming prime minister. The new session of Parliament was delayed to await the outcome of his by-election, which happened to be already under way due to a recent death. As anticipated, he won that election, which was for the highest-majority seat in Scotland among his party; otherwise he would have been constitutionally obliged to resign.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Since 1990, almost all cabinet ministers, save for three whose offices are an intrinsic part of the House of Lords, have belonged to the Commons.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Few major cabinet positions (except Lord Privy Seal, Lord Chancellor and Leader of the House of Lords) have been filled by a peer in recent times. Notable exceptions are Sir Alec Douglas-Home; who served as Foreign Secretary from 1960 to 1963; Peter Carington, 6th Lord Carrington, who also served as Foreign Secretary from 1979 to 1982; David Cameron, former Prime Minister who has served as Foreign Secretary since 2023; David Young, Lord Young of Graffham, who was appointed Employment Secretary in 1985; Lord Mandelson, who served as Business Secretary; Lord Adonis, who served as Transport Secretary; Baroness Amos, who served as International Development Secretary; Baroness Morgan of Cotes, who served as Culture Secretary; and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who served as Minister of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Minister of State for International Development. The elected status of members of the Commons (as opposed to the unelected Lords) and their direct accountability to that House, together with empowerment and transparency, ensures ministerial accountability. Responsible government is an international constitutional paradigm. The prime minister chooses the ministers, and may decide to remove them at any time, although the appointments and dismissals are formally made by the Sovereign.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The House of Commons formally scrutinises the Government through its Committees and Prime Minister's Questions, when members ask questions of the prime minister; the house gives other opportunities to question other cabinet ministers. Prime Minister's Questions occur weekly, normally for half an hour each Wednesday. Questions must relate to the responding minister's official government activities, not to his or her activities as a party leader or as a private Member of Parliament. Customarily, members of the Government party/coalition and members of the Opposition alternate when asking questions. Members may also make inquiries in writing.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In practice, this scrutiny can be fairly weak. Since the first-past-the-post electoral system is employed, the governing party often enjoys a large majority in the Commons, and ministers and departments practise defensive government, outsourcing key work to third parties. If the government has a large majority, it has no need or incentive to compromise with other parties.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Major modern British political parties tend to be so tightly orchestrated that their MPs often have little scope for free action. A large minority of ruling party MPs are paid members of the Government. Since 1900 the Government has lost confidence motions thrice—twice in 1924, and once in 1979. However, the threat of rebellions by their own party's backbench MPs often forces governments to make concessions (under the Cameron–Clegg coalition, over foundation hospitals and under Labour over top-up fees and compensation for failed company pension schemes). Occasionally Government bills are defeated by backbench rebellions (Terrorism Act 2006). However, the scrutiny provided by the Select committees is more serious.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The House of Commons technically retains the power to impeach Ministers of the Crown (or any other subject, even if not a public officer) for their crimes. Impeachments are tried by the House of Lords, where a simple majority is necessary to convict. This power has fallen into disuse, however; the House of Commons exercises its checks on the government through other means, such as no confidence motions; the last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville in 1806.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Bills may be introduced in either house, though bills of importance generally originate in the House of Commons. The supremacy of the Commons in legislative matters is assured by the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, under which certain types of bills may be presented to the sovereign for royal assent without the consent of the House of Lords. The Lords may not delay a money bill (a bill that, in the view of the Speaker of the House of Commons, solely concerns national taxation or public funds) for more than one month. Moreover, the Lords may not delay most other public bills for more than two parliamentary sessions, or one calendar year. These provisions, however, only apply to public bills that originate in the House of Commons. Moreover, a bill that seeks to extend a parliamentary term beyond five years requires the consent of the House of Lords.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "By a custom that prevailed even before the Parliament Acts, only the House of Commons may originate bills concerning taxation or supply. Furthermore, supply bills passed by the House of Commons are immune to amendments in the House of Lords. In addition, the House of Lords is barred from amending a bill so as to insert a taxation or supply-related provision, but the House of Commons often waives its privileges and allows the Lords to make amendments with financial implications. Under a separate convention, known as the Salisbury Convention, the House of Lords does not seek to oppose legislation promised in the government's election manifesto. Hence, as the power of the House of Lords has been severely curtailed by statute and by practice, the House of Commons is clearly the more powerful chamber of Parliament.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The British parliament of today largely descends, in practice, from the Parliament of England, although the 1706 Treaty of Union, and the Acts of Union that ratified the Treaty, created a new Parliament of Great Britain to replace the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, with the addition of 45 MPs and sixteen Peers to represent Scotland. Later still the Acts of Union 1800 brought about the abolition of the Parliament of Ireland and enlarged the Commons at Westminster with 100 Irish members, creating the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Middle English word common or commune, which is derived from the Anglo-Norman commune, meant \"of general, public, or non-private nature\" as an adjective and, as a substantive, \"the common body of the people of any place; the community or commonalty\" in the singular; \"the common people, the commonalty; the lower order, as distinguished from those of noble or knight or gentle rank\", or \"the burgers of a town; the body of free citizens, bearing common burdens, and exercising common rights; (hence) the third estate in the English constitution; the body of people, not ennobled, and represented by the Lower House of Parliament\" in the plural. The word has survived to this day in the original Anglo-Norman phrase soit baillé aux communes, with which a bill is transmitted from the House of Lords to the House of Commons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The historian Albert Pollard held a somewhat different view on the word's origins in 1920. He agreed that commons could be derived from Anglo-Norman communes, but that it referred to \"civil associations\" or \"the counties\". However, the Oxford English Dictionary, the historical dictionary of the English language, can only attest to the word meaning advocated by Pollard from the 19th and 20th centuries onwards, whereas sources for the meaning given in the previous section date from the late Middle Ages, i.e. the time of the establishment of the House of Commons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The current Commons' layout is influenced by the use of the original St. Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The rectangular shape is derived from the shape of the chapel. Benches were arranged using the configuration of the chapel's choir stalls whereby they were facing across from one another. This arrangement facilitated an adversarial atmosphere representative of the British parliamentary approach.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The distance across the floor of the house between the government and opposition benches is 13 feet (3.96 m), said to be equivalent to two swords' length, though this is likely to be purely symbolic given weapons have been banned in the chamber for hundreds of years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The House of Commons underwent an important period of reform during the 19th century. Over the years, several anomalies had developed in borough representation. The constituency boundaries had not been changed since 1660, so many towns whose importance had declined by the 19th century still retained their ancient right of electing two members, in addition to other boroughs that had never been important, such as Gatton.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Among the most notorious of these \"rotten boroughs\" were Old Sarum, which had only six voters for two MPs, and Dunwich, which had largely collapsed into the sea from coastal erosion. At the same time, large cities such as Manchester received no separate representation (although their eligible residents were entitled to vote in the corresponding county seat). Also notable were the pocket boroughs, small constituencies controlled by wealthy landowners and aristocrats, whose \"nominees\" were invariably elected.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Commons attempted to address these anomalies by passing a Reform Bill in 1831. At first, the House of Lords proved unwilling to pass the bill, but it was forced to relent when the prime minister, Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, advised King William IV to flood the House of Lords by creating pro-Reform peers. To avoid this, the Lords relented and passed the bill in 1832. The Reform Act 1832, also known as the \"Great Reform Act\", abolished the rotten boroughs, established uniform voting requirements for the boroughs, and granted representation to populous cities, but still retained some anomalies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the ensuing years, the Commons grew more assertive, the influence of the House of Lords having been reduced by the Reform Bill crisis, and the power of the patrons reduced. The Lords became more reluctant to reject bills that the Commons had passed with large majorities, and it became an accepted political principle that the confidence of the House of Commons alone was necessary for a government to remain in office.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Many more reforms were introduced in the latter half of the 19th century. The Reform Act 1867 lowered property requirements for voting in the boroughs, reduced the representation of the less populous boroughs, and granted parliamentary seats to several growing industrial towns. The electorate was further expanded by the Representation of the People Act 1884, under which property qualifications in the counties were lowered. The Redistribution of Seats Act of the following year replaced almost all multi-member constituencies with single-member constituencies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1908, the Liberal Government under H. H. Asquith introduced a number of social welfare programmes, which, together with an expensive arms race, forced the Government to seek higher taxes. In 1909, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, introduced the \"People's Budget\", which proposed a new tax targeting wealthy landowners. This measure failed in the heavily Conservative House of Lords, and the government resigned.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The resulting general election returned a hung parliament, but Asquith remained prime minister with the support of the smaller parties. Asquith then proposed that the powers of the Lords be severely curtailed. Following a further election in December 1910, the Asquith Government secured the passage of a bill to curtail the powers of the House of Lords after threatening to flood the house with 500 new Liberal peers to ensure the passage of the bill.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Thus the Parliament Act 1911 came into effect, destroying the legislative equality of the two Houses of Parliament. The House of Lords was permitted only to delay most legislation, for a maximum of three parliamentary sessions or two calendar years (reduced to two sessions or one year by the Parliament Act 1949). Since the passage of these Acts, the House of Commons has become the dominant branch of Parliament.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Since the 17th century, government ministers were paid, while other MPs were not. Most of the men elected to the Commons had private incomes, while a few relied on financial support from a wealthy patron. Early Labour MPs were often provided with a salary by a trade union, but this was declared illegal by a House of Lords judgement of 1909. Consequently, a resolution was passed in the House of Commons in 1911 introducing salaries for MPs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1918, women over 30 who owned property were given the right to vote, as were men over 21 who did not own property, quickly followed by the passage of a law enabling women to be eligible for election as members of parliament at the younger age of 21. The only woman to be elected that year was an Irish Sinn Féin candidate, Constance Markievicz, who therefore became the first woman to be an MP. However, owing to Sinn Féin's policy of abstention from Westminster, she never took her seat.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Women were given equal voting status as men in 1928, and with effect from the General Election in 1950, various forms of plural voting (i.e. some individuals had the right to vote in more than one constituency in the same election), including University constituencies, were abolished.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In May and June 2009 revelations of MPs' expenses claims caused a major scandal and loss of confidence by the public in the integrity of MPs, as well as causing the first forced resignation of the Speaker in 300 years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2011, a referendum was held, asking whether to replace the present \"first-past-the-post\" system with the \"alternative vote\" (AV) method. The proposal to introduce AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was passed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, transferring the power to call an early election from the Prime Minister to Parliament, and setting out the procedure for this. Under the act, calling an early election required a two-thirds supermajority of the house. These provisions were first used by Theresa May to trigger the 2017 snap election.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Recall of MPs Act 2015 created a mechanism for recalling Members of Parliament. Under the act, proceedings are initiated only if an MP is found guilty of wrongdoing fulfilling certain criteria. A petition is successful if at least one in ten voters in the constituency sign. Successful petitions result in the MP vacating the seat, triggering a by-election.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 2019, MPs used \"standing order 24\" (a parliamentary procedure that triggers emergency debates) as a means of gaining control of the parliamentary order paper for the following day, and passing legislation without the incumbent government's consent. This unusual process was achieved through tabling amendments to the \"motion in neutral terms\", a non-binding statement released by parliament after the debate. This new technique was used to pass the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019 in March, as well as the No. 2 Act in September, both relating to Brexit. 2019 was the year Labour and Co-operative MPs became the fourth-largest political group in the House of Commons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2020, new procedures for hybrid proceedings were introduced from 22 April. These mitigated the coronavirus pandemic with measures including a limit of 50 MPs in the chamber, physical distancing and remote participation using video conferencing. Hybrid proceedings were abolished in August 2021.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Later in December 2020, the Conservative government published a draft Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Repeal) Bill, later retitled the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill when it was introduced to the Commons in May 2021, which would repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in its entirety, restore the monarch's prerogative powers to dissolve Parliament at the prime minister's request, and ensure that a parliamentary term automatically ends five years after Parliament's first meeting and polling day being 25 working days later. The bill was given royal assent on 24 March 2022, becoming the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Since 1950, every constituency has been represented by a single Member of Parliament. There remains a technical distinction between county and borough constituencies; its only effects are on the amount of money candidates are allowed to spend during campaigns and the rank of the local authority co-opted Returning Officer who presides over the count. Geographic boundaries are determined by four permanent and independent Boundary Commissions, one each for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The commissions conduct general reviews of electoral boundaries once every 8 to 12 years, and interim reviews. In drawing boundaries, they are required to prefer local government boundaries, but may deviate from these to prevent great disparities in electorate; such disparities are given the formal term malapportionment. The proposals of the Boundary Commissions are subject to parliamentary approval, but may not be amended. After their next Periodic Reviews, the Boundary Commissions will be absorbed into the Electoral Commission, which was established in 2000. As of 2019, the UK is divided into 650 constituencies, with 533 in England, 40 in Wales, 59 in Scotland, and 18 in Northern Ireland.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "General elections occur whenever Parliament is dissolved. The timing of the dissolution was normally chosen by the Prime Minister (see relationship with the Government above); however, because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, parliamentary terms were fixed at five years, except when the House of Commons sustains a vote of no confidence or passes an \"early election\" motion, the latter having to be passed by a two-thirds vote; or, as in 2019, by an Enabling act which overrides the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The first use of this procedure was in April 2017, when MPs voted in favour of Theresa May's call for a snap election to be held that June.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Even when the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was repealed in March 2022, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act retained Parliament's dissolution on the fifth year after its first day.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "All general elections in the UK since 1935 have been held on a Thursday. The origins of this convention are unknown but there are a number of theories, including the suggestion that it was to coincide with market day; this would ease voting for those who had to travel into the towns to cast their ballot.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "A candidate for a seat must submit nomination papers signed by ten registered voters from that area, and pay £500, which is refunded if the candidate wins at least five per cent of the vote. Such a deposit seeks to discourage frivolity and very long ballot papers which would cause vote splitting (and arguably voter confusion). Each constituency is also called a seat (as it was in 1885), as it returns one member, using the first-past-the-post electoral system, under which the candidate with a plurality of votes wins, that is greatest number of votes. Minors (that is, anyone under the age of 18), members of the House of Lords, and prisoners are not qualified to become members of the House of Commons. To vote, one must be a UK resident and a citizen of either Britain, a British overseas territory, Ireland, or a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. British citizens living abroad are allowed to vote for 15 years after leaving. It is a criminal offence for a person to vote in the ballot of more than one seat which is vacant at any election. This has not always been the case: before 1948 plural voting was permitted as voters qualified by home ownership or residence and could vote under both entitlements simultaneously, as well as for a university constituency if a university graduate.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Once elected, Members of Parliament normally continue to serve until the next dissolution of Parliament. But if a member dies or ceases to be qualified (see qualifications below), his or her seat falls vacant. It is also possible for the House of Commons to expel a member, a power exercised only in cases of serious misconduct or criminal activity. In each case, the vacancy is filled by a by-election in the constituency, with the same electoral system as in general elections.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The term \"Member of Parliament\" by modern convention means a member of the House of Commons. These members may, and almost invariably do, use the post-nominal letters \"MP\". The annual salary of each member is £86,584 effective from 1 April 2023. Members may also receive additional salaries for other offices they hold (for instance, the Speakership). Most members also claim for various office expenses (staff costs, postage, travelling, etc.) and, in the case of members for seats outside London, for the costs of maintaining a home in the capital.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "There are numerous qualifications that apply to Members of Parliament. One must be aged at least 18 (the minimum age was 21 until s.17 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 came into force), and must be a citizen of the United Kingdom, of a British overseas territory, of the Republic of Ireland, or of a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations. These restrictions were introduced by the British Nationality Act 1981, but were previously far more stringent: under the Act of Settlement 1701, only natural-born subjects were qualified. Members of the House of Lords may not serve in the House of Commons, or even vote in parliamentary elections; however, they are permitted to sit in the chamber during debates (unlike the King, who cannot enter the chamber).",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "A person may not sit in the Commons if he or she is the subject of a Bankruptcy Restrictions Order (applicable in England and Wales only), or if she or he is adjudged bankrupt (in Northern Ireland), or if his or her estate is sequestered (in Scotland). Previously, MPs detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 for six months or more would have their seat vacated if two specialists reported to the Speaker that the member was suffering from a mental disorder. However, this disqualification was removed by the Mental Health (Discrimination) Act 2013. There also exists a common law precedent from the 18th century that the deaf-mute are ineligible to sit in the Lower House; this precedent, however, has not been tested in recent years.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Anyone found guilty of high treason may not sit in Parliament until she or he has either completed the term of imprisonment or received a full pardon from the Crown. Moreover, anyone serving a prison sentence of one year or more is ineligible, per Representation of the People Act 1981. Finally, members of the Senedd, formerly the National Assembly for Wales until May 2020, and Northern Ireland Assembly are disqualified since 2014. Article 159, Section 2 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 formerly disqualified for ten years those found guilty of certain election-related offences, until this section was repealed in 2001. Several other disqualifications are codified in the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975: holders of high judicial offices, civil servants, members of the regular armed forces, members of foreign legislatures (excluding the Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth countries), and holders of several Crown offices. Ministers, even though they are paid officers of the Crown, are not disqualified.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The rule that precludes certain Crown officers from serving in the House of Commons is used to circumvent a resolution adopted by the House of Commons in 1623, under which members are not permitted to resign their seats. In practice, however, they always can. Should a member wish to resign from the Commons, she or he may request appointment to one of two ceremonial Crown offices: that of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, or that of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. These offices are sinecures (that is, they involve no actual duties); they exist solely to permit the \"resignation\" of members of the House of Commons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is responsible for making the appointment, and, by convention, never refuses to do so when asked by a member who desires to leave the House of Commons.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "At the beginning of each new parliamentary term, the House of Commons elects one of its members as a presiding officer, known as the Speaker. If the incumbent Speaker seeks a new term, then the house may re-elect him or her merely by passing a motion; otherwise, a secret ballot is held. A Speaker-elect cannot take office until she or he has been approved by the Sovereign; the granting of the royal approbation, however, is a formality. The Speaker is assisted by three Deputy Speakers, the most senior of whom holds the title of Chairman of Ways and Means. The two other Deputy Speakers are known as the First and Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means. These titles derive from the Committee of Ways and Means, a body over which the chairman once used to preside; even though the committee was abolished in 1967, the traditional titles of the Deputy Speakers are still retained. The Speaker and the Deputy Speakers are always members of the House of Commons.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Whilst presiding, the Speaker or Deputy Speaker traditionally wears ceremonial dress. The presiding officer may also wear a wig, but this tradition was abandoned by Speaker Betty Boothroyd. Her successor, Michael Martin, also did not wear a wig while in the chamber. His successor, John Bercow, chose to wear a gown over a lounge suit, a decision that sparked much debate and opposition; he also did not wear a wig.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Speaker or deputy presides from a chair at the front of the house. This chair was designed by Augustus Pugin, who initially built a prototype of the chair at King Edward's School, Birmingham: that chair is called Sapientia (Latin for \"wisdom\") and is where the chief master sits. The Speaker is also chairman of the House of Commons Commission, which oversees the running of the house, and controls debates by calling on members to speak. A member who believes that a rule (or Standing Order) has been breached may raise a \"point of order\", on which the Speaker makes a ruling not subject to any appeal. The Speaker may discipline members who fail to observe the rules of the house. The Speaker also decides which proposed amendments to a motion are to be debated. Thus, the Speaker is far more powerful than his or her Lords counterpart, the Lord Speaker, who has no disciplinary powers. Customarily, the Speaker and the deputies are non-partisan; they do not vote (with the notable exception of tied votes, where the Speaker votes in accordance with Denison's rule), or participate in the affairs of any political party. By convention, a Speaker seeking re-election to parliament is not opposed in his or her constituency by any of the major parties. The lack of partisanship continues even after the Speaker leaves the House of Commons.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Clerk of the House of Commons is both the house's chief adviser on matters of procedure and chief executive of the House of Commons. She or he is a permanent official, not a member of the house itself. The Clerk advises the Speaker on the rules and procedure of the house, signs orders and official communications, and signs and endorses bills. The Clerk also chairs the Board of Management, which consists of the heads of the six departments of the house. The Clerk's deputy is known as the Clerk Assistant. Another officer of the house is the Serjeant-at-arms, whose duties include the maintenance of law, order, and security on the house's premises. The Serjeant-at-Arms carries the ceremonial mace, a symbol of the authority of the Crown and of the House of Commons, into the house each day before the Speaker, and the mace is laid upon the table of the house during sittings. The Librarian is head of the House of Commons Library, the house's research and information arm.",
"title": "Members and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Like the Lords, the Commons meets in the Palace of Westminster in London. The Commons chamber is small and modestly decorated in green, unlike the large, lavishly furnished red Lords chamber. Benches sit on both sides of the chamber and are divided by a centre aisle. This arrangement reflects the design of St Stephen's Chapel, which served as the home of the House of Commons until destroyed by fire in 1834. The Speaker's chair is at one end of the chamber; in front of it, is the table of the house, on which the mace rests. The clerks sit at one end of the table, close to the Speaker so that they may advise him or her on procedure when necessary.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Members of the Government occupy the benches on the Speaker's right, whilst members of the Opposition occupy the benches on the Speaker's left. In front of each set of benches a red line is drawn, which members are traditionally not allowed to cross during debates. The Prime Minister and the government ministers, as well as the leader of the Opposition and the Shadow cabinet sit on the front rows, and are known as frontbenchers. Other members of parliament, in contrast, are known as backbenchers. Not all Members of Parliament can fit into the chamber at the same time, as it only has space to seat approximately two thirds of the Members. According to Robert Rogers, former Clerk of the House of Commons and Chief Executive, a figure of 427 seats is an average or a finger-in-the-wind estimate. Members who arrive late must stand near the entrance of the house if they wish to listen to debates. Sittings in the chamber are held each day from Monday to Thursday, and also on some Fridays. During times of national emergency, the house may also sit at weekends.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Sittings of the house are open to the public, but the house may at any time vote to sit in private, which has occurred only twice since 1950. Traditionally, a Member who desired that the house sit privately could shout \"I spy strangers!\" and a vote would automatically follow. In the past, when relations between the Commons and the Crown were less than cordial, this procedure was used whenever the house wanted to keep its debate private. More often, however, this device was used to delay and disrupt proceedings; as a result, it was abolished in 1998. Now, members seeking that the house sit in private must make a formal motion to that effect.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Public debates are recorded and archived in Hansard. The post war redesign of the house in 1950 included microphones, and debates were allowed to be broadcast by radio in 1975. Since 1989, they have also been broadcast on television, which is now handled by BBC Parliament.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Sessions of the House of Commons have sometimes been disrupted by angry protesters throwing objects into the chamber from the galleries—items thrown include leaflets, manure, flour, and a canister of chlorobenzylidene malonitrile (tear gas). Even members have been known to disturb proceedings of the house. For instance, in 1976, Conservative MP Michael Heseltine seized and brandished the mace of the house during a heated debate. However, perhaps the most famous disruption of the House of Commons was caused by Charles I, who entered the Commons Chamber in 1642 with an armed force to arrest five members for high treason. This action was deemed a breach of the privilege of the house, and has given rise to the tradition that the monarch does not set foot in the House of Commons.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Each year, the parliamentary session begins with the State Opening of Parliament, a ceremony in the Lords Chamber during which the Sovereign, in the presence of Members of both Houses, delivers an address outlining the Government's legislative agenda. The Gentleman or Lady Usher of the Black Rod (a Lords official) is responsible for summoning the Commons to the Lords Chamber. When he arrives to deliver his summons, the doors of the Commons Chamber are traditionally slammed shut in his face, symbolising the right of the Lower House to debate without interference. He then knocks on the door three times with his Black Rod, and only then is granted admittance, where he informs the MPs that the Monarch awaits them, after which they proceed to the House of Lords for the King's Speech.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "During debates, Members may speak only if called upon by the Speaker (or a Deputy Speaker, if the Speaker is not presiding). Traditionally, the presiding officer alternates between calling Members from the Government and Opposition. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and other leaders from both sides are normally given priority. All Privy Counsellors used to be granted priority; however, the modernisation of Commons procedure in 1998 led to the abolition of this tradition.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Speeches are addressed to the presiding officer, using the words \"Mr Speaker\", \"Madam Speaker\", \"Mr Deputy Speaker\", or \"Madam Deputy Speaker\". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in debate; other members must be referred to in the third person. Traditionally, members do not refer to each other by name, but by constituency, using forms such as \"the Honourable Member for [constituency]\", or, in the case of Privy Counsellors, \"the Right Honourable Member for [constituency]\". Members of the same party (or allied parties or groups) refer to each other as \"my (Right) Honourable friend\". A currently serving, or ex-member of the Armed Forces is referred to as \"the Honourable and Gallant Member\" (a barrister used to be called \"the Honourable and Learned Member\", and a woman \"the Honourable Lady the Member\".) This may not always be the case during the actual oral delivery, when it might be difficult for a member to remember another member's exact constituency, but it is invariably followed in the transcript entered in the Hansard. The Speaker enforces the rules of the house and may warn and punish members who deviate from them. Disregarding the Speaker's instructions is considered a breach of the rules of the House and may result in the suspension of the offender from the house. In the case of grave disorder, the Speaker may adjourn the house without taking a vote.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Standing Orders of the House of Commons do not establish any formal time limits for debates. The Speaker may, however, order a member who persists in making a tediously repetitive or irrelevant speech to stop speaking. The time set aside for debate on a particular motion is, however, often limited by informal agreements between the parties. Debate may also be restricted by the passage of \"allocation of time motions\", which are more commonly known as \"guillotine motions\". Alternatively, the house may put an immediate end to debate by passing a motion to invoke closure. The Speaker is allowed to deny the motion if she or he believes that it infringes upon the rights of the minority. Today, bills are scheduled according to a timetable motion, which the whole house agrees in advance, negating the use of a guillotine.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "When the debate concludes, or when the closure is invoked, the motion is put to a vote. The house first votes by voice vote; the Speaker or Deputy Speaker puts the question, and Members respond either \"Aye!\" (in favour of the motion) or \"No!\" (against the motion). The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote, but if his or her assessment is challenged by any member or the voice vote is unclear, a recorded vote known as a division follows. The presiding officer, if she or he believes that the result of the voice vote is clear, may reject the challenge. When a division occurs, members enter one of two lobbies (the \"Aye\" lobby or the \"No\" lobby) on either side of the chamber, where their names are recorded by clerks. A member who wishes to pointedly abstain from a vote may do so by entering both lobbies, casting one vote for and one against. At each lobby are two tellers (themselves members of the house) who count the votes of the members.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Once the division concludes, the tellers provide the results to the presiding officer, who then announces them to the house. If the votes are tied, the Speaker or Deputy Speaker has a casting vote. Traditionally, this casting vote is exercised to allow further debate, if this is possible, or otherwise to avoid a decision without a majority (e.g. voting 'No' to a motion or the third reading of a bill). Ties rarely occur: more than 25 years passed between the last two ones in July 1993 and April 2019. The quorum of the House of Commons is 40 members for any vote, including the Speaker and four tellers. If fewer than 40 members have participated, the division is invalid.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Formerly, if a member sought to raise a point of order during a division, suggesting that some of the rules governing parliamentary procedure are violated, he was required to wear a hat, thereby signalling that he was not engaging in debate. Collapsible top hats were kept in the chamber just for this purpose. This custom was discontinued in 1998.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The outcome of most votes is largely known beforehand, since political parties normally instruct members on how to vote. A party normally entrusts some members of parliament, known as whips, with the task of ensuring that all party members vote as desired. Members of Parliament do not tend to vote against such instructions, since those who do so jeopardise promotion, or may be deselected as party candidates for future elections. Ministers, junior ministers and parliamentary private secretaries who vote against the whips' instructions usually resign. Thus, the independence of Members of Parliament tends to be low, although \"backbench rebellions\" by members discontent with their party's policies do occur. A member is also traditionally allowed some leeway if the particular interests of his constituency are adversely affected. In some circumstances, however, parties announce \"free votes\", allowing members to vote as they please. Votes relating to issues of conscience such as abortion and capital punishment are typically free votes.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Pairing is an arrangement where a member from one party agrees with a member of another party not to vote in a particular division, allowing both MPs the opportunity not to attend.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "A bisque is permission from the Whips given to a member to miss a vote or debate in the house to attend to constituency business or other matters.",
"title": "Procedure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The British Parliament uses committees for a variety of purposes, e.g., for the review of bills. Committees consider bills in detail, and may make amendments. Bills of great constitutional importance, as well as some important financial measures, are usually sent to the \"Committee of the Whole House\", a body that includes all members of the Commons. Instead of the Speaker, the chairman or a Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means presides. The committee meets in the House of Commons Chamber.",
"title": "Committees"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Most bills were until 2006 considered by standing committees, which consisted of between 16 and 50 members. The membership of each standing committee roughly reflected the strength of the parties in the House. The membership of standing committees changed constantly; new Members were assigned each time the committee considered a new bill. The number of standing committees was not limited, but usually only ten existed. Rarely, a bill was committed to a Special Standing Committee, which investigated and held hearings on the issues raised. In November 2006, standing committees were replaced by public bill committees.",
"title": "Committees"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The House of Commons also has several departmental select committees. The membership of these bodies, like that of the standing committees, reflects the strength of the parties. The chairman of each committee is voted on in a secret ballot of the whole house during the first session of a parliamentary term, or when a vacancy occurs. The number of select committee chairmanships allocated to each party reflects the strength of the parties, and the parties allocate the positions through agreement. The primary function of a departmental select committee is to scrutinise and investigate the activities of a particular government department. To fulfil these aims, it is permitted to hold hearings and collect evidence. Bills may be referred to Departmental Select Committees, but such a procedure is seldom used.",
"title": "Committees"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "A separate type of select committee is the Domestic Committee. Domestic Committees oversee the administration of the House and the services provided to Members. Other committees of the House of Commons include Joint Committees (which also include members of the House of Lords), the Committee on Standards and Privileges (which considers questions of parliamentary privilege, as well as matters relating to the conduct of the members), and the Committee of Selection (which determines the membership of other committees).",
"title": "Committees"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The symbol used by the Commons consists of a portcullis topped by St Edward's Crown. The portcullis has been one of the Royal badges of England since the accession of the Tudors in the 15th century, and was a favourite symbol of King Henry VII. It was originally the badge of Beaufort, his mother's family; and a pun on the name Tudor, as in tu-door. The original badge was of gold, but nowadays is shown in various colours, predominantly green or black.",
"title": "Commons symbol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 1986, the British television production company Granada Television created a near-full size replica of the post-1950 House of Commons debating chamber at its studios in Manchester for use in its adaptation of the Jeffrey Archer novel First Among Equals. The set was highly convincing, and was retained after the production—since then, it has been used in nearly every British film and television production that has featured scenes set in the chamber. From 1988 until 1999 it was also one of the prominent attractions on the Granada Studios Tour, where visitors could watch actors performing mock political debates on the set. The major difference between the studio set and the real House of Commons Chamber is that the studio set has just four rows of seats on either side whereas the real Chamber has five.",
"title": "In film and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In 2002, the set was purchased by the scriptwriter Paul Abbott so that it could be used in his BBC drama serial State of Play. Abbott, a former Granada Television staff writer, bought it because the set would otherwise have been destroyed and he feared it would take too long to get the necessary money from the BBC. Abbott kept the set in storage in Oxford.",
"title": "In film and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The pre-1941 Chamber was recreated in Shepperton Studios for the Ridley Scott/Richard Loncraine 2002 biographical film on Churchill, The Gathering Storm.",
"title": "In film and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "51°29′59.6″N 0°07′28.8″W / 51.499889°N 0.124667°W / 51.499889; -0.124667",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England began to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1801 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The government is solely responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as they retain the confidence of a majority of the Commons. | 2001-11-02T13:30:49Z | 2023-12-31T07:41:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_the_United_Kingdom |
13,829 | Hearts (card game) | Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although most variations can accommodate between three and six players. It was first recorded in America in the 1880s and has many variants, some of which are also referred to as "Hearts", especially the games of Black Lady and Black Maria. The game is a member of the Whist group of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but is unusual among Whist variants in that it is a trick-avoidance game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether. The original game of Hearts is still current but has been overtaken in popularity by Black Lady in the United States and Black Maria in Great Britain.
The game of Hearts probably originated with Reversis, which became popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was awarded for each trick won, plus additional points for taking J♥ or Q♥ in tricks. A similar game called "Four Jacks" centred around avoiding any trick containing a Jack, which were worth one penalty point, and J♠ worth two.
Hearts itself emerged in the United States during the 1880s, The Standard Hoyle of 1887 reporting that it had only been played there for "the last five years" and was "probably of German origin". It described Hearts as "a most pleasant game, highly provocative of laughter". It was a no-trump, trick-taking game for four players using a full pack of cards, the aim being to avoid taking any hearts in tricks. The basic format has changed little since. Two scoring variants were mentioned under the name 'Double or Eagle Game'. The first was the precursor to Spot Hearts whereby the cards of the heart suit cost the following in chips: Ace 14, King 13, Queen 12, Jack 11 and pip cards their face value. The second scoring scheme was: Ace 5, King 4, Queen 3, Jack 2 and all pips 1 chip each.
In 1909, the Q♠ was added as the highest penalty card in a variant called either Discard Hearts, after the new feature of passing unwanted cards to other players after the deal, or Black Lady, after the nickname for the Q♠. This new variant has since become the standard game of the Hearts group in America where it is often, somewhat confusingly, also called "Hearts". To begin with, Black Lady did not have the option of "shooting the moon"; that came later.
In the 1920s, the J♦ variation (ten positive points) was introduced, and sometime later the scoring was reversed so that penalty points were expressed as positive instead of negative.
The slam is known as "shooting the moon" and first appeared in Britain in 1939 in a variant of Hearts called Hitting the Moon. Today this feature is a common element of modern Black Lady.
Meanwhile, in Britain the game of Black Maria, with its additional penalty cards in the suit of spades, emerged in 1939 and, both it and another offshoot, Omnibus Hearts, are "sufficiently different and popular to justify descriptions as separate games."
The game has increased in popularity through Internet gaming sites which, however, usually offer the Black Lady variant while still calling it Hearts, whereas most books maintain the distinction between the two games. Microsoft Windows included Hearts (in fact Black Lady) in its operating system from Windows 3.1 to Windows 7 making it one of the earliest digital renditions.
The following rules are based on those published in The Standard Hoyle of 1887.
The game is usually played by four players, but three to six can be accommodated (see below). The aim is to avoid taking any cards of the heart suit in tricks. A standard 52-card pack of English pattern cards is used, cards ranking from ace (high) down to the two. Players draw a fixed number of chips, typically 25 or 50, which may or may not have a monetary value. The deck is shuffled by the dealer, cut by the player to the right, and then dealt clockwise beginning with eldest hand, the player left of the dealer, until each player has thirteen cards. There are no trumps. If cards are misdealt, the deal passes to the left. If cards are faced in the pack, the dealer reshuffles, offers it for the cut and re-deals.
Eldest hand leads to the first trick. Players must follow suit if able; otherwise may discard any card. The trick is won by the highest card of the led suit and the trick winner leads to the next trick. If a player revokes, they lose the trick and pay the pre-agreed penalty in chips.
A player taking all 13 hearts pays 13 chips: four to each opponent and one to the table. Otherwise, the player with the lowest number of hearts wins and the others pay that player in chips the number of hearts they took. So if A has one heart, B two, C four and D six, A will receive 2 chips from B, 4 from C and six from D making 12 in toto. If two or more players have the lowest number of hearts, they divide the spoils, any remainder staying on the table for the next round. So if A and B have two hearts, C has three and D has six, C pays 3 chips, D pays 6 and A and B claim 4 each, leaving the remaining chip on the table. A player who revokes in order to avoid taking 13 chips, pays 8 to each opponent.
There are two scoring variants known as the Double Game of Hearts (or Eagle Game of Hearts):
The following rules are based on Arnold (2011).
Three to six may play, but four is best. A standard pack is used. For three players, the 2♣ is removed; for five players the 2♣ and 2♦ are removed, for six players the 3♣, 2♣, 2♦ and 2♠ are left out. Players draw cards to determine the first dealer; lowest deals. Deal and play are clockwise. Dealer shuffles and youngest hand (right of dealer) cuts. The dealer then deals all the cards, individually and face down, beginning with the eldest hand (to the left of the dealer).
Eldest hand leads to the first trick. Players must follow suit if able; otherwise, they may play any card. The trick is won by the highest card of the suit led, and the winning player captures the cards played in the trick. The winner also leads the following trick.
Each heart captured in tricks incurs a penalty point, there being thirteen penalty points in total. The winner is the player with the lowest score after an agreed number of deals. Alternatively, a target score may be agreed (such as 80 for four players) and when the first player reaches the target, the game ends. The player with the lowest score wins.
If Hearts is played for stakes, the average score is worked out and those above it pay the difference into a pool, while those below it draw the difference.
The variant of Auction Hearts appears for the first time in the 1897 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle. It is a game for four players, although five or six may "form a table". Its novel feature is that, after the deal, players may bid in sequence to declare the penalty suit. Eldest hand begins the bidding by stating the number of chips he or she is willing to pay for the privilege of naming the suit; the succeeding players may pass or bid higher. The dealer goes last and there is only one round of bidding. The player who wins the auction pays the winning bid into the pool and leads to the first trick.
Black Jack appeared at the same time as Black Lady, both as alternative names for the more general name of Discard Hearts. Discard Hearts, as the name suggests, introduced the concept of discarding (also called passing or exchanging) for the first time into Hearts. It is identical with the basic Black Lady game, but with the J♠ as the penalty card, worth 10 "hearts" (i.e. points). It is last mentioned by Gibson in 1974, only this time with the same penalty as Black Lady of 13 points.
Black Lady appeared in 1909, at which time it was also called Discard Hearts, and has since become the most popular variant in the United States, overtaking Hearts itself to become a game in its own right. It is frequently, and confusingly, also called Hearts, not least in computer gaming versions. However, its distinguishing feature is that the Q♠, the Black Lady, is an additional penalty card worth 13 points. The first description of the game already included the feature of discarding cards to one's neighbour after the deal. Over time, the game has developed elaborations such as 'shooting the moon' and passing cards in different directions with each deal.
Black Maria is the British variant of Hearts and features three additional penalty cards – the A♠ worth 10 points, the K♠ worth 7 points and the Black Maria or Q♠ worth 13 points. It was first described by Hubert Phillips in the mid-20th century. It usually includes passing to the right (not left as in other variants) which is considered more challenging because you don't know any of the next player's cards. Hitting the moon is an optional rule. Confusingly, sometimes the name Black Lady is given to this game and sometimes Black Lady is called Black Maria.
Cancellation Hearts is first described in 1950 by Culbertson and is a variant designed for larger numbers of players, typically 6 to 11 players, using two packs shuffled together. If exactly the same card is played twice in one trick, the cards cancel each other out, and neither can win the trick. If two such pairs appear in the same trick, the whole trick is cancelled and the cards are rolled over to the winner of the next trick.
A French variant of the second half of the 19th century both in France and Belgium in which the aim is to avoid taking all four Queens as well all hearts. Three to six may play, but the game is best for four. Queens are worth 13 penalty points each, the hearts (except the ♥Q) 1 penalty point each. A player may declare a Générale and seek to win all the penalty cards; if successful the opponents score 64 penalty points each; if unsuccessful the declarer scores 64. A silent (unannounced) Générale incurs 54 penalty points for each opponent.
Another variant first noted by Foster in 1909, the key feature of which is that it is played with a stock. Each player receives six cards and the remainder are placed face down on the table as stock. A player unable to follow suit, has to draw cards, one at a time, from the stock until able to can follow suit. The last player holding cards must pick up any remaining cards in the stock and count them with their tricks. Every heart taken scores one penalty point. As soon as any player reaches or exceeds thirty-one points, the game is over and the winner is the player with the fewest hearts scored.
Greek Hearts is a name given to at least three different variants. In the earliest version, which Phillips and Westall (1939) say is widely played in Greece hence why they call it "Greek Hearts", the Q♠ scores 50 penalty points, the A♥ scores 15, the courts score 10 and the remaining pip cards of the Hearts suit score their face value. A player taking all the penalty cards scores 150, that is, gets paid 150 points by each opponent. There is "a great deal more in the game than there is in 'Slippery Anne'" (Black Lady). Meanwhile, Culbertson (1950) describes it as the game of Black Lady with three changes: three cards are always passed to the right, the J♦ counts as 10 plus points and a heart card may not be led to the first trick of the game. Maguire's version (1990) is essentially Spot Hearts with passing to the left and Parlett (2008) has a similar scoring system to the original, with the Q♠ valued at 50 penalty points, the A♥ at 15, courts 10 each, but the remaining hearts as only 1 each.
Heartsette is another very early variant that is still played. Its distinguishing feature is a widow. When four play, the 2♠ is removed, twelve cards are dealt to each player and the remaining three cards are placed face down in the centre of the table to form the widow. For other numbers of players, the full pack is used, the widow comprising three cards when three play, two when five play and four when six play. The player winning the first trick takes in the widow and any hearts it contains. That player may look at these cards but may not show them to anyone. Otherwise, the game is played as normal. The key difference from basic Hearts is that the first winner is the only one who knows how many and which hearts are still to be played.
Joker Hearts is recorded as early as 1897. One or more Jokers are added, which can be played at any time (regardless if following suit is possible). They cannot win tricks or score any penalty points.
In 1950, Culbertson reported that Omnibus Hearts was "rapidly becoming the most popular of Hearts games" and was so called because it included all the features found in different members of the Hearts family and Arnold states that it is "sufficiently different and popular" to justify being described as a separate game." In effect, Omnibus Hearts is really a variant of Black Lady to which has been added the bonus card of the 10♦ which earns 10 plus points for the player who takes it in a trick. A player who takes all fifteen counters (10♦, Q♠ and thirteen hearts), scores 26 plus points for the deal and the rest score zero (noting that in Culbertson's Black Lady rules, what is now called shooting the moon results in no player scoring for that deal). Arnold (2011) states that Omnibus Hearts is considered the best version of Hearts by many players. He refers to the capture of all counting cards as "hitting the moon, take-all or slam". The game ends when a player reaches or exceeds 100 penalty points, whereupon the player with the lowest score wins.
A recent variant to enable players to play in partnership. There are three versions of Partnership Hearts. In the first, partners sit opposite one another and combine their scores, a team that successfully shoots the moon causing the other to earn 52 penalty points. In the second, partners also face each other at the table, but keep individual scores. A player shooting the moon must do this alone. When any player reaches 100 or more, the partners combine their scores and the team with the lower score wins. The third is really a variant of Omnibus Hearts with a slam bid. After the deal, players bid to shoot the moon by taking all tricks. The player holding the 10♦ becomes the silent partner of the winning bidder and they combine their scores. If no one bids, the game is played as in Omnibus Hearts with no partnerships.
Spot Hearts appears as a variant in the very first description of Hearts in 1887, albeit referred to as the Double Game of Hearts or the Eagle Game of Hearts, being first named as Spot Hearts by Foster in 1897. Both names continue to be used until the 1920s when Spot Hearts becomes the standard name of the game. The key difference is that the hearts are now worth values ranging from 2 to 14, rather than being worth 1 chip (or penalty point) each. The actual values are: A♥ at 14, K♥ at 13, Q♥ at 12, J♥ at 11 and pips score their face value. Foster remarks that "this adds nothing to the interest or skill of the game; but rather tends to create confusion and delay, owing to the numerous disputes as to the correctness of the count." Nevertheless, the game has been regularly listed right up to the present day with the Little Giant Encyclopedia (2009) giving an alternative name of Chip Hearts. Modern rules, however, tend to score the A♥ as 1 penalty point rather than the original 14.
Although it appears wise to play low hearts first, it is usually better to hold onto them until it is clearer, from the fall of the cards, to whom you are giving them. Low hearts are especially handy for passing the lead over in the dangerous final few tricks. The exception to this is when one's plain suit cards are high or dangerous, but hearts are relatively low. In this case, it may be better to ditch the hearts earlier on.
To have a void is to have no cards of one suit. Generally, this is a highly advantageous situation, because it prevents the player from winning any points in that suit, and provides a means to dispose of poor cards. These can be intentionally created with good passing strategy, or appear by themselves. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hearts is an \"evasion-type\" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although most variations can accommodate between three and six players. It was first recorded in America in the 1880s and has many variants, some of which are also referred to as \"Hearts\", especially the games of Black Lady and Black Maria. The game is a member of the Whist group of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but is unusual among Whist variants in that it is a trick-avoidance game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether. The original game of Hearts is still current but has been overtaken in popularity by Black Lady in the United States and Black Maria in Great Britain.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The game of Hearts probably originated with Reversis, which became popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was awarded for each trick won, plus additional points for taking J♥ or Q♥ in tricks. A similar game called \"Four Jacks\" centred around avoiding any trick containing a Jack, which were worth one penalty point, and J♠ worth two.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hearts itself emerged in the United States during the 1880s, The Standard Hoyle of 1887 reporting that it had only been played there for \"the last five years\" and was \"probably of German origin\". It described Hearts as \"a most pleasant game, highly provocative of laughter\". It was a no-trump, trick-taking game for four players using a full pack of cards, the aim being to avoid taking any hearts in tricks. The basic format has changed little since. Two scoring variants were mentioned under the name 'Double or Eagle Game'. The first was the precursor to Spot Hearts whereby the cards of the heart suit cost the following in chips: Ace 14, King 13, Queen 12, Jack 11 and pip cards their face value. The second scoring scheme was: Ace 5, King 4, Queen 3, Jack 2 and all pips 1 chip each.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1909, the Q♠ was added as the highest penalty card in a variant called either Discard Hearts, after the new feature of passing unwanted cards to other players after the deal, or Black Lady, after the nickname for the Q♠. This new variant has since become the standard game of the Hearts group in America where it is often, somewhat confusingly, also called \"Hearts\". To begin with, Black Lady did not have the option of \"shooting the moon\"; that came later.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the 1920s, the J♦ variation (ten positive points) was introduced, and sometime later the scoring was reversed so that penalty points were expressed as positive instead of negative.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The slam is known as \"shooting the moon\" and first appeared in Britain in 1939 in a variant of Hearts called Hitting the Moon. Today this feature is a common element of modern Black Lady.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Meanwhile, in Britain the game of Black Maria, with its additional penalty cards in the suit of spades, emerged in 1939 and, both it and another offshoot, Omnibus Hearts, are \"sufficiently different and popular to justify descriptions as separate games.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The game has increased in popularity through Internet gaming sites which, however, usually offer the Black Lady variant while still calling it Hearts, whereas most books maintain the distinction between the two games. Microsoft Windows included Hearts (in fact Black Lady) in its operating system from Windows 3.1 to Windows 7 making it one of the earliest digital renditions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The following rules are based on those published in The Standard Hoyle of 1887.",
"title": "Earliest rules (1887)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The game is usually played by four players, but three to six can be accommodated (see below). The aim is to avoid taking any cards of the heart suit in tricks. A standard 52-card pack of English pattern cards is used, cards ranking from ace (high) down to the two. Players draw a fixed number of chips, typically 25 or 50, which may or may not have a monetary value. The deck is shuffled by the dealer, cut by the player to the right, and then dealt clockwise beginning with eldest hand, the player left of the dealer, until each player has thirteen cards. There are no trumps. If cards are misdealt, the deal passes to the left. If cards are faced in the pack, the dealer reshuffles, offers it for the cut and re-deals.",
"title": "Earliest rules (1887)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Eldest hand leads to the first trick. Players must follow suit if able; otherwise may discard any card. The trick is won by the highest card of the led suit and the trick winner leads to the next trick. If a player revokes, they lose the trick and pay the pre-agreed penalty in chips.",
"title": "Earliest rules (1887)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "A player taking all 13 hearts pays 13 chips: four to each opponent and one to the table. Otherwise, the player with the lowest number of hearts wins and the others pay that player in chips the number of hearts they took. So if A has one heart, B two, C four and D six, A will receive 2 chips from B, 4 from C and six from D making 12 in toto. If two or more players have the lowest number of hearts, they divide the spoils, any remainder staying on the table for the next round. So if A and B have two hearts, C has three and D has six, C pays 3 chips, D pays 6 and A and B claim 4 each, leaving the remaining chip on the table. A player who revokes in order to avoid taking 13 chips, pays 8 to each opponent.",
"title": "Earliest rules (1887)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There are two scoring variants known as the Double Game of Hearts (or Eagle Game of Hearts):",
"title": "Earliest rules (1887)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The following rules are based on Arnold (2011).",
"title": "Modern rules (2011)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Three to six may play, but four is best. A standard pack is used. For three players, the 2♣ is removed; for five players the 2♣ and 2♦ are removed, for six players the 3♣, 2♣, 2♦ and 2♠ are left out. Players draw cards to determine the first dealer; lowest deals. Deal and play are clockwise. Dealer shuffles and youngest hand (right of dealer) cuts. The dealer then deals all the cards, individually and face down, beginning with the eldest hand (to the left of the dealer).",
"title": "Modern rules (2011)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Eldest hand leads to the first trick. Players must follow suit if able; otherwise, they may play any card. The trick is won by the highest card of the suit led, and the winning player captures the cards played in the trick. The winner also leads the following trick.",
"title": "Modern rules (2011)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Each heart captured in tricks incurs a penalty point, there being thirteen penalty points in total. The winner is the player with the lowest score after an agreed number of deals. Alternatively, a target score may be agreed (such as 80 for four players) and when the first player reaches the target, the game ends. The player with the lowest score wins.",
"title": "Modern rules (2011)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "If Hearts is played for stakes, the average score is worked out and those above it pay the difference into a pool, while those below it draw the difference.",
"title": "Modern rules (2011)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The variant of Auction Hearts appears for the first time in the 1897 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle. It is a game for four players, although five or six may \"form a table\". Its novel feature is that, after the deal, players may bid in sequence to declare the penalty suit. Eldest hand begins the bidding by stating the number of chips he or she is willing to pay for the privilege of naming the suit; the succeeding players may pass or bid higher. The dealer goes last and there is only one round of bidding. The player who wins the auction pays the winning bid into the pool and leads to the first trick.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Black Jack appeared at the same time as Black Lady, both as alternative names for the more general name of Discard Hearts. Discard Hearts, as the name suggests, introduced the concept of discarding (also called passing or exchanging) for the first time into Hearts. It is identical with the basic Black Lady game, but with the J♠ as the penalty card, worth 10 \"hearts\" (i.e. points). It is last mentioned by Gibson in 1974, only this time with the same penalty as Black Lady of 13 points.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Black Lady appeared in 1909, at which time it was also called Discard Hearts, and has since become the most popular variant in the United States, overtaking Hearts itself to become a game in its own right. It is frequently, and confusingly, also called Hearts, not least in computer gaming versions. However, its distinguishing feature is that the Q♠, the Black Lady, is an additional penalty card worth 13 points. The first description of the game already included the feature of discarding cards to one's neighbour after the deal. Over time, the game has developed elaborations such as 'shooting the moon' and passing cards in different directions with each deal.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Black Maria is the British variant of Hearts and features three additional penalty cards – the A♠ worth 10 points, the K♠ worth 7 points and the Black Maria or Q♠ worth 13 points. It was first described by Hubert Phillips in the mid-20th century. It usually includes passing to the right (not left as in other variants) which is considered more challenging because you don't know any of the next player's cards. Hitting the moon is an optional rule. Confusingly, sometimes the name Black Lady is given to this game and sometimes Black Lady is called Black Maria.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Cancellation Hearts is first described in 1950 by Culbertson and is a variant designed for larger numbers of players, typically 6 to 11 players, using two packs shuffled together. If exactly the same card is played twice in one trick, the cards cancel each other out, and neither can win the trick. If two such pairs appear in the same trick, the whole trick is cancelled and the cards are rolled over to the winner of the next trick.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A French variant of the second half of the 19th century both in France and Belgium in which the aim is to avoid taking all four Queens as well all hearts. Three to six may play, but the game is best for four. Queens are worth 13 penalty points each, the hearts (except the ♥Q) 1 penalty point each. A player may declare a Générale and seek to win all the penalty cards; if successful the opponents score 64 penalty points each; if unsuccessful the declarer scores 64. A silent (unannounced) Générale incurs 54 penalty points for each opponent.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Another variant first noted by Foster in 1909, the key feature of which is that it is played with a stock. Each player receives six cards and the remainder are placed face down on the table as stock. A player unable to follow suit, has to draw cards, one at a time, from the stock until able to can follow suit. The last player holding cards must pick up any remaining cards in the stock and count them with their tricks. Every heart taken scores one penalty point. As soon as any player reaches or exceeds thirty-one points, the game is over and the winner is the player with the fewest hearts scored.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Greek Hearts is a name given to at least three different variants. In the earliest version, which Phillips and Westall (1939) say is widely played in Greece hence why they call it \"Greek Hearts\", the Q♠ scores 50 penalty points, the A♥ scores 15, the courts score 10 and the remaining pip cards of the Hearts suit score their face value. A player taking all the penalty cards scores 150, that is, gets paid 150 points by each opponent. There is \"a great deal more in the game than there is in 'Slippery Anne'\" (Black Lady). Meanwhile, Culbertson (1950) describes it as the game of Black Lady with three changes: three cards are always passed to the right, the J♦ counts as 10 plus points and a heart card may not be led to the first trick of the game. Maguire's version (1990) is essentially Spot Hearts with passing to the left and Parlett (2008) has a similar scoring system to the original, with the Q♠ valued at 50 penalty points, the A♥ at 15, courts 10 each, but the remaining hearts as only 1 each.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Heartsette is another very early variant that is still played. Its distinguishing feature is a widow. When four play, the 2♠ is removed, twelve cards are dealt to each player and the remaining three cards are placed face down in the centre of the table to form the widow. For other numbers of players, the full pack is used, the widow comprising three cards when three play, two when five play and four when six play. The player winning the first trick takes in the widow and any hearts it contains. That player may look at these cards but may not show them to anyone. Otherwise, the game is played as normal. The key difference from basic Hearts is that the first winner is the only one who knows how many and which hearts are still to be played.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Joker Hearts is recorded as early as 1897. One or more Jokers are added, which can be played at any time (regardless if following suit is possible). They cannot win tricks or score any penalty points.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1950, Culbertson reported that Omnibus Hearts was \"rapidly becoming the most popular of Hearts games\" and was so called because it included all the features found in different members of the Hearts family and Arnold states that it is \"sufficiently different and popular\" to justify being described as a separate game.\" In effect, Omnibus Hearts is really a variant of Black Lady to which has been added the bonus card of the 10♦ which earns 10 plus points for the player who takes it in a trick. A player who takes all fifteen counters (10♦, Q♠ and thirteen hearts), scores 26 plus points for the deal and the rest score zero (noting that in Culbertson's Black Lady rules, what is now called shooting the moon results in no player scoring for that deal). Arnold (2011) states that Omnibus Hearts is considered the best version of Hearts by many players. He refers to the capture of all counting cards as \"hitting the moon, take-all or slam\". The game ends when a player reaches or exceeds 100 penalty points, whereupon the player with the lowest score wins.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A recent variant to enable players to play in partnership. There are three versions of Partnership Hearts. In the first, partners sit opposite one another and combine their scores, a team that successfully shoots the moon causing the other to earn 52 penalty points. In the second, partners also face each other at the table, but keep individual scores. A player shooting the moon must do this alone. When any player reaches 100 or more, the partners combine their scores and the team with the lower score wins. The third is really a variant of Omnibus Hearts with a slam bid. After the deal, players bid to shoot the moon by taking all tricks. The player holding the 10♦ becomes the silent partner of the winning bidder and they combine their scores. If no one bids, the game is played as in Omnibus Hearts with no partnerships.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Spot Hearts appears as a variant in the very first description of Hearts in 1887, albeit referred to as the Double Game of Hearts or the Eagle Game of Hearts, being first named as Spot Hearts by Foster in 1897. Both names continue to be used until the 1920s when Spot Hearts becomes the standard name of the game. The key difference is that the hearts are now worth values ranging from 2 to 14, rather than being worth 1 chip (or penalty point) each. The actual values are: A♥ at 14, K♥ at 13, Q♥ at 12, J♥ at 11 and pips score their face value. Foster remarks that \"this adds nothing to the interest or skill of the game; but rather tends to create confusion and delay, owing to the numerous disputes as to the correctness of the count.\" Nevertheless, the game has been regularly listed right up to the present day with the Little Giant Encyclopedia (2009) giving an alternative name of Chip Hearts. Modern rules, however, tend to score the A♥ as 1 penalty point rather than the original 14.",
"title": "Variants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Although it appears wise to play low hearts first, it is usually better to hold onto them until it is clearer, from the fall of the cards, to whom you are giving them. Low hearts are especially handy for passing the lead over in the dangerous final few tricks. The exception to this is when one's plain suit cards are high or dangerous, but hearts are relatively low. In this case, it may be better to ditch the hearts earlier on.",
"title": "Strategy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "To have a void is to have no cards of one suit. Generally, this is a highly advantageous situation, because it prevents the player from winning any points in that suit, and provides a means to dispose of poor cards. These can be intentionally created with good passing strategy, or appear by themselves.",
"title": "Strategy"
}
]
| Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although most variations can accommodate between three and six players. It was first recorded in America in the 1880s and has many variants, some of which are also referred to as "Hearts", especially the games of Black Lady and Black Maria. The game is a member of the Whist group of trick-taking games, but is unusual among Whist variants in that it is a trick-avoidance game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether. The original game of Hearts is still current but has been overtaken in popularity by Black Lady in the United States and Black Maria in Great Britain. | 2001-09-26T21:31:19Z | 2023-12-22T08:29:27Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_(card_game) |
13,830 | Hastings | Hastings (/ˈheɪstɪŋs/ HAY-stings) is a seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, 24 mi (39 km) east of Lewes and 53 mi (85 km) south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place 8 mi (13 km) to the north-west at Senlac Hill in 1066. It later became one of the medieval Cinque Ports. In the 19th century, it was a popular seaside resort, as the railway allowed tourists and visitors to reach the town. Today, Hastings is a fishing port with the UK's largest beach-based fishing fleet. It has an estimated population of 91,100 as of 2021.
The first mention of Hastings is found in the late 8th century in the form Hastingas. This is derived from the Old English tribal name Hæstingas, meaning 'the constituency (followers) of Hæsta'. Symeon of Durham records the victory of Offa in 771 over the Hestingorum gens, that is, "the people of the Hastings tribe." Hastingleigh in Kent was named after that tribe. The place name Hæstingaceaster is found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1050, and may be an alternative name for Hastings. However, the absence of any archaeological remains of or documentary evidence for a Roman fort at Hastings suggest that Hæstingaceaster may refer to a different settlement, most likely that based on the Roman remains at Pevensey.
Evidence of prehistoric settlements have been found at the town site: flint arrowheads and Bronze Age artefacts have been found. Iron Age forts have been excavated on both the East and West Hills. This suggests that the inhabitants moved early to the safety of the valley in between the forts. The settlement was already based on the port when the Romans arrived in Britain for the first time in 55 BC. At this time, they began to exploit the iron (Wealden rocks provide a plentiful supply of the ore), and shipped it out by boat. Iron was worked locally at Beauport Park, to the north of the town. It employed up to one thousand men and is considered to have been the third-largest mine in the Roman Empire. There was also a possible iron-working site near Blacklands Church in the town – the old name of 'Ponbay Bridge' for a bridge that used to exist in the area is a corruption of 'Pond Bay' as suggested by Thomas Ross (Mayor of Hastings and author of an 1835 guide book)
With the departure of the Romans, the town suffered setbacks. The Beauport site was abandoned, and the town suffered from problems from nature and man-made attacks. The Sussex coast has always suffered from occasional violent storms; with the additional hazard of longshore drift (the eastward movement of shingle along the coast), the coastline has been frequently changing. The original Roman port is likely now under the sea.
Bulverhythe was probably a harbour used by Danish invaders, which suggests that -hythe or hithe means a port or small haven.
From the 6th century AD until 771, the people of the area around modern-day Hastings, identified the territory as that of the Haestingas tribe and a kingdom separate from the surrounding kingdoms of Suth Saxe ("South Saxons", i.e. Sussex) and Kent. It worked to retain its separate cultural identity until the 11th century. The kingdom was probably a sub-kingdom, the object of a disputed overlordship by the two powerful neighbouring kingdoms: when King Wihtred of Kent settled a dispute with King Ine of Sussex & Wessex in 694, it is probable that he ceded the overlordship of Haestingas to Ine as part of the treaty.
In 771 King Offa of Mercia invaded Southern England, and over the next decade gradually seized control of Sussex and Kent. Symeon of Durham records a battle fought at an unidentified location near Hastings in 771, at which Offa defeated the Haestingas tribe, effectively ending its existence as a separate kingdom. By 790, Offa controlled Hastings effectively enough to confirm grants of land in Hastings to the Abbey of St Denis, in Paris. But, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1011 relates that Vikings overran "all Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Haestingas", indicating the town was still considered a separate 'county' or province to its neighbours 240 years after Offa's conquest.
During the reign of Athelstan, he established a royal mint in Hastings in AD 928.
The start of the Norman Conquest was the Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066, although the battle itself took place 8 mi (13 km) to the north at Senlac Hill, and William had landed on the coast between Hastings and Eastbourne at Pevensey. It is thought that the Norman encampment was on the town's outskirts, where there was open ground; a new town was already being built in the valley to the east. That "New Burgh" was founded in 1069 and is mentioned in the Domesday Book as such. William defeated and killed Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon King of England, and destroyed his army, thus opening England to the Norman conquest.
William caused a castle to be built at Hastings probably using the earthworks of the existing Saxon castle.
Hastings was shown as a borough by the time of the Domesday Book (1086); it had also given its name to the Rape of Hastings, one of the six administrative divisions of Sussex. As a borough, Hastings had a corporation consisting of a "bailiff, jurats, and commonalty". By a Charter of Elizabeth I in 1589, the bailiff was replaced by a mayor.
Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi, writing c.1153, described Hastings as "a town of large extent and many inhabitants, flourishing and handsome, having markets, workpeople and rich merchants".
By the end of the Saxon period, the port of Hastings had moved eastward near the present town centre in the Priory Stream valley, whose entrance was protected by the White Rock headland (since demolished). It was to be a short stay: Danish attacks and huge floods in 1011 and 1014 motivated the townspeople to relocate to the New Burgh.
In the Middle Ages Hastings became one of the Cinque Ports; Sandwich, Dover and New Romney being the first, Hastings and Hythe followed, all finally being joined by Rye and Winchelsea, at one point 42 towns were directly or indirectly affiliated with the group.
In the 13th century, much of the town and half of Hastings Castle was washed away in the South England flood of February 1287. During a naval campaign of 1339, and again in 1377, the town was raided and burnt by the French, and seems then to have gone into a decline. As a port, Hastings' days were finished.
Hastings had suffered over the years from the lack of a natural harbour, and there have been attempts to create a sheltered harbour. Attempts were made to build a stone harbour during the reign of Elizabeth I, but the foundations were destroyed by the sea in terrible storms. The fishing boats are still stored on and launched from the beach.
Hastings was then just a small fishing settlement, but it was soon discovered that the new taxes on luxury goods could be made profitable by smuggling; the town was ideally located for that purpose. Near the castle ruins, on the West Hill, are "St Clement's Caves", partly natural, but mainly excavated by hand by smugglers from the soft sandstone. Their trade was to come to an end with the period following the Napoleonic Wars, for the town became one of the most fashionable resorts in Britain, brought about by the so-called health-giving properties of seawater, as well as the local springs and Roman baths. Once this came about the expansion of the town took place, to the west, since there was little space left in the valley.
It was at this time that the elegant Pelham Crescent and Wellington Square were built: other building followed. In the Crescent (designed by architect Joseph Kay) is the classical style church of St Mary in the Castle (its name recalling the old chapel in the castle above) now in use as an arts centre. The building of the crescent and the church necessitated further cutting away of the castle hill cliffs. Once that move away from the old town had begun, it led to the further expansion along the coast, eventually linking up with the new St Leonards.
The extensive development meant that a large transient work-force was required. Many of the people coming in to Hastings at this time, settled on some waste-ground to the west of the main town called the America Ground. This land, originally a shingle spit created by the great storm of 1287, was declared to be Crown Property after an inquiry held at Battle during 1827 and the land was cleared in preparation for the development of this area of land by Patrick Francis Robertson.
Like many coastal towns, the population of Hastings grew significantly as a result of the construction of railway links and the fashionable growth of seaside holidays during the Victorian era. In 1801, its population was a mere 3,175; by 1831, it had reached over ten thousand; by 1891, it was almost sixty thousand.
The last harbour project began in 1896, but this also failed when structural problems and rising costs exhausted all the available funds. Today a fractured seawall is all that remains of what might have become a magnificent harbour. In 1897, the foundation stone was laid on a large concrete structure, but there was insufficient money to complete the work and the "Harbour arm" remains uncompleted. It was later partially blown up to discourage possible use by German invasion forces during World War II.
Between 1903 and 1919 Fred Judge FRPS photographed many of the towns events and disasters. These included storms, the first tram, visit of the Lord Mayor of London, Hastings Marathon Race and the pier fire of 1917. Many of these images were produced as picture postcards by the British Postcard manufacturer he founded now known as Judges Postcards.
In the 1930s, the town underwent some rejuvenation. Seaside resorts were starting to go out of fashion, Hastings perhaps more than most. The town council set about a huge rebuilding project, among which the promenade was rebuilt, and an Olympic-size bathing pool was erected. The latter, regarded in its day as one of the best open-air swimming and diving complexes in Europe, later became a holiday camp before closing in 1986. It was demolished, but the area is still known by locals as "The Old Bathing Pool".
The 2001 census reported over 85,000 inhabitants.
Hastings returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) from the 14th century until 1885, since when it has returned one. Since 1983, it has been part of the parliamentary constituency of Hastings and Rye; the current MP, since December 2019, is Sally-Ann Hart of the Conservative Party. Prior to 1983, the town formed the Hastings parliamentary constituency by itself.
Hastings, it is thought, was a Saxon town before the arrival of the Normans: the Domesday Book refers to a new Borough: as a borough, Hastings had a corporation consisting of a "bailiff, jurats, and commonalty". Its importance was such that it also gave its name to one of the six Rapes or administrative districts of Sussex.
By a Charter of Elizabeth I in 1589 the bailiff was replaced by a mayor, by which time the town's importance was dwindling. In the Georgian era, patronage of such seaside places (such as nearby Brighton) gave it a new lease of life so that, when the time came with the reform of English local government in 1888, Hastings became a County Borough, responsible for all its local services, independent of the surrounding county, then Sussex (East); less than one hundred years later, in 1974, that status was abolished.
Hastings Borough Council is now in the second tier of local government, below East Sussex County Council.
Hastings is situated where the sandstone beds, at the heart of the Weald, known geologically as the Hastings Sands, meet the English Channel, forming tall cliffs to the east of the town. Hastings Old Town is in a sheltered valley between the East Hill and West Hill (on which the remains of the Castle stand). In Victorian times and later the town has spread westwards and northwards, and now forms a single urban centre with the more suburban area of St Leonards-on-Sea to the west. Roads from the Old Town valley lead towards the Victorian area of Clive Vale and the former village of Ore, from which "The Ridge", marking the effective boundary of Hastings, extends north-westwards towards Battle. Beyond Bulverhythe, the western end of Hastings is marked by low-lying land known as Glyne Gap, separating it from Bexhill-on-Sea.
The sandstone cliffs have been the subject of considerable erosion in relatively recent times: much of the Castle was lost to the sea before the present sea defences and promenade were built, and a number of cliff-top houses are in danger of disappearing around the nearby village of Fairlight.
The beach is mainly shingle, although wide areas of sand are uncovered at low tide. The town is generally built upon a series of low hills rising to 500 ft (150 m) above sea level at "The Ridge" before falling back in the river valley further to the north.
There are three Sites of Special Scientific Interest within the borough; Marline Valley Woods, Combe Haven and Hastings Cliffs To Pett Beach. Marline Valley Woods lies within the Ashdown ward of Hastings. It is an ancient woodland of Pedunculate oak—hornbeam which is uncommon nationally. Sussex Wildlife Trust own part of the site. Combe Haven is another site of biological interest, with alluvial meadows, and the largest reed bed in the county, providing habitat for breeding birds. It is in the West St Leonards ward, stretching into the parish of Crowhurst. The final SSSI, Hastings Cliffs to Pett Beach, is within the Ore ward of Hastings, extending into the neighbouring Fairlight and Pett parishes. The site runs along the coast and is of both biological and geological interest. The cliffs hold many fossils and the site has many habitats, including ancient woodland and shingle beaches.
As with the rest of the British Isles and Southern England, Hastings experiences a maritime climate with mild summers and mild winters. In terms of the local climate, Hastings is on the eastern edge of what is, on average, the sunniest part of the UK, the stretch of coast from the Isle of Wight southeastern coast Sandown Bay to the Hastings area. Hastings, tied with Eastbourne, recorded the highest duration of sunshine of any month anywhere in the United Kingdom – 384 hours – in July 1911. Temperature extremes since 1960 at Hastings have ranged from 34.2 °C (93.6 °F) in July 2019, down to −9.8 °C (14.4 °F) in January 1987. A new record temperature of 34.7 °C (94.5 °F) was recorded on 19 July 2022 The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).
Some of the areas and suburbs of Hastings are Ore, St Leonards, Silverhill, West St Leonards, and Hollington. Ore, Silverhill and Hollington were once villages that have since become part of the Hastings conurbation area during rapid growth. The original part of St Leonards was bought by James Burton and laid out by his son, the architect Decimus Burton, in the early 19th century as a new town: a place of elegant houses designed for the well-off. It also included a central public garden, a hotel, an archery, assembly rooms and a church. Today's St Leonards has extended well beyond that original design, although the original town still exists within it.
The population of the town in 2001 was 85,029, by 2009 the estimated population was 86,900. Hastings suffers at a disadvantage insofar as growth is concerned because of its restricted situation, lying as it does with the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to the north. Redevelopment of the area is partly hampered by the split administration of the combined Hastings and Bexhill economic region between Hastings and Rother district councils. There is little space for further large-scale housing and employment growth within the designated boundaries of Hastings, and development on the outskirts is resisted by Rother council whose administrative area surrounds Hastings. Rother has a policy of urban expansion in the area immediately north of Bexhill, but this requires infrastructure improvements by central Governments which have been under discussion for decades. This situation has now become the subject of parliamentary consideration.
Ethnicity in 2001
Until the development of tourism, fishing was Hastings' major industry. The fishing fleet, based at the Stade, remains Europe's largest beach-launched fishing fleet and has recently won accreditation for its sustainable methods. The fleet has been based on the same beach, below the cliffs at Hastings, for at least 400, possibly 600, years. Its longevity is attributed to the prolific fishing ground of Rye Bay nearby. Hastings fishing vessels are registered at Rye, and thus bear the letters "RX" (Rye, SusseX).
There are now various industrial estates that lie around the town, mostly on the outskirts, which include engineering, catering, motoring and construction; however, most of the jobs within the Borough are concentrated on health, public services, retail and education. 85% of the firms (in 2005) employed fewer than 10 people; as a consequence the unemployment rate was 3.3% (cf. East Sussex 1.7%). However, qualification levels are similar to the national average: 8.2% of the working-age population have no qualifications while 28% hold degree-level qualifications or higher, compared with 11% and 31% respectively across England.
Hastings main shopping centre is Priory Meadow Shopping Centre, which was built on the site of the old Central Recreation Ground which played host to some Sussex CCC first-class fixtures, and cricketing royalty such as Dr. W. G. Grace and Sir Don Bradman. The centre houses 56 stores and covers around 420,000 ft. Further retail areas in the town centre include Queens Road, Wellington Place and Robertson Street.
There are plans to expand the retail area in Hastings, which includes expanding Priory Meadow and creating more retail space as part of the Priory Quarter development. Priory was intended to have a second floor added to part of the retail area, which has not happened yet and so far only office space has been created as part of the Priory Quarter.
In 2002 the Hastings and Bexhill task force, set up by the South East England Development Agency, was founded to regenerate the local economy, a 10-year programme being set up to tackle the local reliance on public sector employment. The regeneration scheme saw the construction of the University Centre Hastings, (now known as the University of Brighton in Hastings) the new Sussex Coast College campus and construction of the Priory Quarter, which still remains unfinished but now houses Saga offices, bringing 800 new jobs to the area.
Hastings has an Army Cadet Force (ACF) detachment which is part of Sussex ACF. This detachment is based in the old Territorial Army Unit Building on Cinque Ports Way, and is affiliated to PWRR. Hastings also has a Royal Air Force Air Cadet Squadron, 304 (Hastings) Squadron of Sussex Wing RAFAC, based in the same building. The town also has a Sea Cadet squadron, T.S. Hastings. This sits adjacent to the Army and Air Cadet building on the seafront. The site features a climbing wall and other training facilities.
Throughout the year many annual events take place in Hastings, the largest of which being the May Day bank holiday weekend, which features a Jack-in-the-Green festival (revived since 1983) and usually falls around 1-3 May, and the culmination of the Maydayrun—tens of thousands of motorcyclists having ridden the A21 to Hastings. The yearly carnival during Old Town Week takes place every August, which includes a week of events around Hastings Old Town, including a Seaboot race, bike race, street party and pram race. In September, there is a month-long arts festival 'Coastal Currents' and a Seafood and Wine Festival. During Hastings Week held each year around 14 October the Hastings Bonfire Society stages a traditional Sussex Bonfire which includes a torchlight procession through the streets, a beach bonfire and firework display. Hastings Pirate Day takes place in July every year. Hastings, as of November 2017, still holds the Guinness World Record for the most pirates in one place.
Other events include the Hastings Beer and Music Festival, held every July on the Oval (Previously Alexandra Park), the Hastings Musical Festival held every March in the White Rock Theatre, the International Composers Festival split between Hastings and Bexhill during August and the Hastings International Chess Congress. There is also a small Wildman event in late January.
There are two main theatres in the town, the White Rock Theatre and the Stables Theatre. The White Rock theatre is the venue of the yearly pantomime and throughout the year hosts comedy, dance and music acts. The Stables stages more local productions and acts as an arts exhibition centre. An additional theatre is located in Cambridge Road, the Opus Theatre in a space shared with the His Place church in what used to be the Robertson Street United Reformed Church.
There is a small four screen Odeon cinema in the town, located opposite the town hall; however, there are plans to build a new multiplex cinema as part of the Priory Quarter development in the town centre. The town has an independent cinema called the Electric Palace located in the Old Town and a restored cinema in St Leonards called the Kino Teatr. The new luxury 'Sussex Exchange' Cinema, bar and conference venue is situated in St. Leonards.
The Regal cinema and the Cinema de Luxe in Hastings, and the Elite Cinema in St. Leonards, featured in a 1942 legal case, Regal (Hastings) Ltd v Gulliver, a leading case heard in the High Court and the Appeal Court, and ultimately resolved in the House of Lords, on the issue of company directors' duty of loyalty to the company they direct.
There are three museums in Hastings; the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, the Hastings Fishermen's Museum and the Shipwreck Museum. The former two mentioned are open for the whole year while the Shipwreck Museum is open only weekends during the winter, but daily for the rest of the year.
The Hastings Museum and Art gallery concentrates mostly on local history and contains exhibits on Grey Owl and John Logie Baird. It also features a Durbar Hall, donated by Lord Brassey; the hall contains displays focusing on the Indian subcontinent and the Brassey Family. The Fishermen's Museum, housed in the former fishermen's church, is dedicated to the fishing industry and maritime history of Hastings. The Shipwreck Museum displays artifacts from wrecks around the area.
The Hastings Contemporary (formerly Jerwood Gallery until 02 July 2019) located in the Stade area of Hastings Old Town is the home for the Jerwood Collection of 20th and 21st century art and a changing contemporary exhibition programme. The project was opposed by many locals who felt that a new art gallery would have been better located elsewhere in the town.
In 2019, following a funding dispute with its sponsor the Jerwood Foundation, the gallery was renamed the Hastings Contemporary.
There are many parks and open spaces located throughout the town, one of the most popular and largest being Alexandra Park opened in 1882 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The park contains gardens, open spaces, woods, a bandstand, tennis courts and a cafe. Other open spaces include White Rock Gardens, West Marina Gardens, St Leonards Gardens, Gensing Gardens, Markwick Gardens, Summerfields Woods, Linton Gardens, Hollington woods, Filsham Valley, Warrior Square, Castle Hill, St Helens Woods and Hastings Country Park.
Local news and television programmes is provided by BBC South East and ITV Meridian. Television signals are received from the local TV transmitter.
Hastings’s local radio stations are BBC Radio Sussex on 104.5 FM, Heart South on 102.0 FM and More Radio Hastings on 107.8 FM.
Local newspapers are the Hastings Observer and Hastings Independent Press.
Hastings Castle was built in 1070 by the Normans, four years after the Norman invasion. It is located on the West Hill, overlooking the town centre and is a Grade I listed building. Little remains of the castle apart from the arch left from the chapel, part of the walls and dungeons. The nearby St. Clements Caves are home to the Smugglers Adventure, which features interactive displays relating to the history of smuggling on the south coast of England.
Hastings Pier can be seen from any part of the seafront in the town. The old pier was opened in 1872, but closed in 2006 following safety concerns from the council. In October 2010, a serious fire burned down most of the buildings on the pier and caused further damage to the structure. However, the pier reopened on 27 April 2016 in modern architectural forms after a £14.2m refurbishment. It won the Stirling Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)in 2017.
Many church buildings throughout the town are Grade II listed including; Church in the Wood, Blacklands Parish Church, Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel, Fishermen's Museum and St Mary Magdalene's Church.
On the seafront at St Leonards is Marine Court, a 1938 block of flats in the Art Deco style that was originally called 'The Ship' due to its style being based on the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary. This block of flats can be seen up to 20 mi (32 km) away on a clear day, from Holywell, in the Meads area of Eastbourne.
An important former landmark was "the Memorial", a clock tower commemorating Albert the Prince Consort which stood for many years at the traffic junction at the town centre, but was demolished following an arson attack in the 1970s.
Hastings urban area (2011 census: includes Bexhill) is by a sizeable margin the most populous area in Britain to have no direct dual-carriageway link to the national motorway network. There are two major roads in Hastings: the A21 trunk road to London; and the A259 coastal road. Both are beset with traffic problems: although the London road, which has to contend with difficult terrain, has had several sections of widening over the past decades there are still many delays. Long-term plans for a much improved A259 east–west route (including a Hastings bypass) were abandoned in the 1990s. A new Hastings-Bexhill Link Road opened in April 2016 known as the A2690 with the hope of reducing traffic congestion along the A259 Bexhill Road. The new link road travels from Queensway in the North of Hastings and joins up to the A259 in Bexhill. Hastings is also linked to Battle via the A2100, the original London road.
The town is served by Stagecoach South East buses on routes that serve the town, and also extend to Bexhill, Eastbourne and Dover as part of The Wave route. Stagecoach also run long distance buses up to Northiam, Hawkhurst, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Ashford and Canterbury.
National Express run service 023 to London.
Hastings has four rail links: two to London, one to Brighton and one to Ashford. Of the London lines, the shorter is the Hastings Line, the former South Eastern Railway (SER) route to Charing Cross via Battle and Tunbridge Wells, which opened in 1852; and the longer is the East Coastway Line, the former London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LBSCR) route to Victoria via Bexhill, Eastbourne and Lewes. Trains to Brighton also use the East Coastway Line. The Marshlink Line runs via Rye to Ashford where a connection can be made with Eurostar services, and is unelectrified except for the Hastings to Ore segment.
A historic British Rail Class 201 "Thumper" can sometimes be seen on historic runs to and from Hastings.
Hastings is served by two rail companies: Southeastern and Southern. Southeastern services run along the Hastings Line, generally terminating at Hastings, with some peak services extending to Ore; the other lines are served by Southern, with services terminating at Ore or Ashford.
The town currently has four railway stations: from west to east they are West St Leonards, St Leonards Warrior Square, Hastings and Ore; this latter has been proposed to be renamed to Ore Valley. There is also one closed station and one proposed station in the area. West Marina station (on the LBSCR line) was very near West St Leonards (on the SER line) and was closed in 1967. A new station has been proposed at Glyne Gap in Bexhill, which would also serve residents from western Hastings.
There are two funicular railways, known locally as the West Hill and East Hill Lifts respectively.
The Hastings Miniature Railway operates along the beach from Rock-a-Nore to Marine Parade, and has provided tourist transport since 1948. The railway was considerably restored and re-opened in 2010.
The Saxon Shore Way, (a long distance footpath, 163 mi (262 km) in length from Gravesend, Kent traces the Kent and Sussex coast "as it was in Roman times" to Hastings. The National Cycle Network route NCR2 links Dover to St Austell along the south coast, and passes through Hastings.
In 1753 many prominent Hastings figures – including the major landowners Edward Milward and John Collier – obtained an Act that allowed them to take control of the existing Hastings-London trackway via Battle and Whatlington, as far north as Flimwell, however the first properly recognised turnpike developed in St. Leonards in 1837 when builder James Burton was building his new town of St Leonards. The route of the road is that taken by the A21 today.
Hastings had a network of trams from 1905 to 1929. The trams ran as far as Bexhill, and were worked by overhead electric wires, except for the stretch along the seafront from Bo-Peep to the Memorial, which was initially worked by the Dolter stud contact system. The Dolter system was replaced by petrol electric trams in 1914 due to safety concerns, but overhead electrification was extended to this section in 1921. Trolleybuses rather than trams were used in the section that included the very narrow High Street, and the entire tram network was replaced by the Hastings trolleybus system in 1928–1929.
Maidstone & District bought the Hastings Tramway Company in 1935, but the trolleybuses still carried the "Hastings Tramways" logo until shortly before they were replaced by diesel buses in 1959, following the failure of the "Save our trolleys" campaign.
Hastings has 18 primary schools, four secondary schools, one further education college and one higher education institution.
The University of Brighton in Hastings offers higher education courses in a range of subjects and currently attracts over 800 students. The university's Hastings campus doubled in size in 2012, with the addition of the new Priory Square building designed by Proctor and Matthews Architects. This is located in the town centre a short distance from the railway station.
Sussex Coast College, formerly called Hastings College, is the town's further education college; it is located at Station Plaza, next to the railway station.
The secondary schools in the town include Ark Alexandra Academy, Hastings Academy and The St Leonards Academy. East Sussex County Council closed three mixed comprehensive schools: Filsham Valley, The Grove and Hillcrest, replacing them with two academy schools; The St Leonards Academy, and The Hastings Academy. The sponsors for the academies are University of Brighton (lead sponsor), British Telecom and East Sussex County Council itself.
The most important buildings from the late medieval period are the two churches in the Old Town, St Clement's (probably built after 1377) and All Saints (early 15th century). There is also a mosque, formerly "Mercatoria School" until purchased by the East Sussex Islamic Association. The former Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel in the Old Town dates from 1817 and is listed at Grade II. Christ Church, Blacklands (1876) has a complete decorative scheme of Mural, Stained Glass, Mosaic and Wrought Iron from the firm of Hardman's which gives it a ll* listing. When St. Andrew's was demolished in 1970 to make way for a supermarket, a fragment of the decorative scheme there, painted by Robert Noonan (also known as Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists) was rescued and features in the Hastings Museum. The Parish and title were added to Blacklands Church.
Every year the Hastings Half Marathon is held in the town although due to Covid-19 restrictions there was no half marathon that took place in 2020 or 2021. The 13.1 mi (21.1 km) race first took place in 1984 and attracts entrants from all over the country, taking runners on a route encircling the town, starting and finishing by the West Marina Gardens in St Leonards.
Hastings United is the town's most senior football team, playing in the Premier Division of the Isthmian League. It was founded in 1894 and plays its home games at The Pilot Field, which ground used to be home to two other senior clubs; St Leonards and the original Hastings United which folded in 1985. There are football clubs in Hastings that compete in the East Sussex League, such as Hollington United, St Leonards Social and Rock-a-Nore, playing at local parks and recreation grounds about the town. United attracted sports media headlines, when in 2013 they made it to the third round of the FA Cup for the first time in their history, being the lowest ranked team left in the contest before going out – losing 4–1 to Middlesbrough.
The Central Recreation Ground was one of England's oldest, most scenic and most famous cricket grounds. The first match was played there in 1864 and the last in 1989, after which the site was redeveloped into a shopping centre which opened in 1996. It was particularly popular with touring Australian sides who played 18 matches there. Hastings Priory is the town's largest cricket club, having 4 teams playing competitive, as well as a large junior section. The club's home is at Horntye Park, though it also makes use of the facilities at Ark Alexander Academy.
ARK Alexander Academy sees clubs using the school as their base, such as Hastings & Bexhill Rugby Football Club, Hastings Athletic Club and Hastings Priory Cricket Club 3rd and 4th teams.
Founded in 1895 South Saxons Hockey Club is one of the largest sports clubs in Hastings and is the towns only field hockey club. Locally known as 'Saxons' their home ground is the astroturf pitch at Horntye Park Sports Complex. Saxons field nine Saturday teams (4 Mens, 2 Ladies, 2 Boys development and a Girls development team). Saxons also have a thriving junior section who train on a Sunday and play in county 7's tournaments. Saxons Mens 1st XI play in Kent and Sussex Regional Division One and Saxons Ladies 1st XI play in Sussex Ladies League Premier Division.
Hastings Conquerors is the town's only American Football Club. The club was founded in March 2013 by local resident Chris Chillingworth and currently trains at William Parker Sports College. The club made history in June 2013 when it became the UK's first Co-Operative run not-for-profit American Football club.
There are many bowling greens in the parks and gardens located about the town; the Hastings Open Bowls Tournament has been held annually in June since 1911 and attracts many entrants country-wide.
Since 1920 Hastings has hosted the Hastings International Chess Congress. The annual event is held over the Christmas period at Horntye Park Sports Complex. A testament to its importance is that every World Champion before Garry Kasparov except Bobby Fischer played at Hastings including Emanuel Lasker (1895), José Raúl Capablanca (1919, 1929/30, 1930/1 and 1934/5), Alexander Alekhine (1922, 1925/6, 1933/4 and 1936/7), Max Euwe (1923/4, 1930/1, 1931/2, 1934/5, 1945/6 and 1949/50), Mikhail Botvinnik (1934/5, 1961/2 and 1966/7), Vasily Smyslov (1954/5, 1962/3 and 1968/9), Mikhail Tal (1963/4), Tigran Petrosian (1977/8), Boris Spassky (1965/6), and Anatoly Karpov (1971/2).
Hastings & St Leonards/Hastings Downs Golf Club (now defunct) was founded in 1893. The club disappeared in the 1950s.
Hastings has hosted the World Crazy Golf Championships since 2003.
John Logie Baird lived in Hastings in the 1920s where he carried out experiments that led to the transmission of the first television image. Robert Tressell wrote The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists in Hastings between 1906 and 1910. Many notable figures were born, raised, or lived in Hastings, including computer scientist Alan Turing, poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley, actress Gwen Watford, comedian Jo Brand, Madness singer Suggs and Thomas H. Jukes, biologist. Gareth Barry, who holds the record number of appearances in the Premier League, was born in Hastings. The author who worked as Grey Owl was born In Hastings and lived here for several years.
Harry H Corbett, an actor best known for his role as Harold Steptoe in the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, lived in Hastings up until his death in 1982.
Mark Edwards, a best-selling British fiction writer, grew up in Hastings.
Anna Brassey, a collector and feminist pioneer of early photography, was based in Hastings until her death in 1887 (she was buried at sea).
Tom Chaplin, best known as the lead singer of the English pop rock band Keane, was born in Hastings.
Hastings is twinned with: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hastings (/ˈheɪstɪŋs/ HAY-stings) is a seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, 24 mi (39 km) east of Lewes and 53 mi (85 km) south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place 8 mi (13 km) to the north-west at Senlac Hill in 1066. It later became one of the medieval Cinque Ports. In the 19th century, it was a popular seaside resort, as the railway allowed tourists and visitors to reach the town. Today, Hastings is a fishing port with the UK's largest beach-based fishing fleet. It has an estimated population of 91,100 as of 2021.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first mention of Hastings is found in the late 8th century in the form Hastingas. This is derived from the Old English tribal name Hæstingas, meaning 'the constituency (followers) of Hæsta'. Symeon of Durham records the victory of Offa in 771 over the Hestingorum gens, that is, \"the people of the Hastings tribe.\" Hastingleigh in Kent was named after that tribe. The place name Hæstingaceaster is found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1050, and may be an alternative name for Hastings. However, the absence of any archaeological remains of or documentary evidence for a Roman fort at Hastings suggest that Hæstingaceaster may refer to a different settlement, most likely that based on the Roman remains at Pevensey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Evidence of prehistoric settlements have been found at the town site: flint arrowheads and Bronze Age artefacts have been found. Iron Age forts have been excavated on both the East and West Hills. This suggests that the inhabitants moved early to the safety of the valley in between the forts. The settlement was already based on the port when the Romans arrived in Britain for the first time in 55 BC. At this time, they began to exploit the iron (Wealden rocks provide a plentiful supply of the ore), and shipped it out by boat. Iron was worked locally at Beauport Park, to the north of the town. It employed up to one thousand men and is considered to have been the third-largest mine in the Roman Empire. There was also a possible iron-working site near Blacklands Church in the town – the old name of 'Ponbay Bridge' for a bridge that used to exist in the area is a corruption of 'Pond Bay' as suggested by Thomas Ross (Mayor of Hastings and author of an 1835 guide book)",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "With the departure of the Romans, the town suffered setbacks. The Beauport site was abandoned, and the town suffered from problems from nature and man-made attacks. The Sussex coast has always suffered from occasional violent storms; with the additional hazard of longshore drift (the eastward movement of shingle along the coast), the coastline has been frequently changing. The original Roman port is likely now under the sea.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Bulverhythe was probably a harbour used by Danish invaders, which suggests that -hythe or hithe means a port or small haven.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "From the 6th century AD until 771, the people of the area around modern-day Hastings, identified the territory as that of the Haestingas tribe and a kingdom separate from the surrounding kingdoms of Suth Saxe (\"South Saxons\", i.e. Sussex) and Kent. It worked to retain its separate cultural identity until the 11th century. The kingdom was probably a sub-kingdom, the object of a disputed overlordship by the two powerful neighbouring kingdoms: when King Wihtred of Kent settled a dispute with King Ine of Sussex & Wessex in 694, it is probable that he ceded the overlordship of Haestingas to Ine as part of the treaty.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 771 King Offa of Mercia invaded Southern England, and over the next decade gradually seized control of Sussex and Kent. Symeon of Durham records a battle fought at an unidentified location near Hastings in 771, at which Offa defeated the Haestingas tribe, effectively ending its existence as a separate kingdom. By 790, Offa controlled Hastings effectively enough to confirm grants of land in Hastings to the Abbey of St Denis, in Paris. But, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1011 relates that Vikings overran \"all Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Haestingas\", indicating the town was still considered a separate 'county' or province to its neighbours 240 years after Offa's conquest.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "During the reign of Athelstan, he established a royal mint in Hastings in AD 928.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The start of the Norman Conquest was the Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066, although the battle itself took place 8 mi (13 km) to the north at Senlac Hill, and William had landed on the coast between Hastings and Eastbourne at Pevensey. It is thought that the Norman encampment was on the town's outskirts, where there was open ground; a new town was already being built in the valley to the east. That \"New Burgh\" was founded in 1069 and is mentioned in the Domesday Book as such. William defeated and killed Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon King of England, and destroyed his army, thus opening England to the Norman conquest.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "William caused a castle to be built at Hastings probably using the earthworks of the existing Saxon castle.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Hastings was shown as a borough by the time of the Domesday Book (1086); it had also given its name to the Rape of Hastings, one of the six administrative divisions of Sussex. As a borough, Hastings had a corporation consisting of a \"bailiff, jurats, and commonalty\". By a Charter of Elizabeth I in 1589, the bailiff was replaced by a mayor.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi, writing c.1153, described Hastings as \"a town of large extent and many inhabitants, flourishing and handsome, having markets, workpeople and rich merchants\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By the end of the Saxon period, the port of Hastings had moved eastward near the present town centre in the Priory Stream valley, whose entrance was protected by the White Rock headland (since demolished). It was to be a short stay: Danish attacks and huge floods in 1011 and 1014 motivated the townspeople to relocate to the New Burgh.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the Middle Ages Hastings became one of the Cinque Ports; Sandwich, Dover and New Romney being the first, Hastings and Hythe followed, all finally being joined by Rye and Winchelsea, at one point 42 towns were directly or indirectly affiliated with the group.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the 13th century, much of the town and half of Hastings Castle was washed away in the South England flood of February 1287. During a naval campaign of 1339, and again in 1377, the town was raided and burnt by the French, and seems then to have gone into a decline. As a port, Hastings' days were finished.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Hastings had suffered over the years from the lack of a natural harbour, and there have been attempts to create a sheltered harbour. Attempts were made to build a stone harbour during the reign of Elizabeth I, but the foundations were destroyed by the sea in terrible storms. The fishing boats are still stored on and launched from the beach.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Hastings was then just a small fishing settlement, but it was soon discovered that the new taxes on luxury goods could be made profitable by smuggling; the town was ideally located for that purpose. Near the castle ruins, on the West Hill, are \"St Clement's Caves\", partly natural, but mainly excavated by hand by smugglers from the soft sandstone. Their trade was to come to an end with the period following the Napoleonic Wars, for the town became one of the most fashionable resorts in Britain, brought about by the so-called health-giving properties of seawater, as well as the local springs and Roman baths. Once this came about the expansion of the town took place, to the west, since there was little space left in the valley.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "It was at this time that the elegant Pelham Crescent and Wellington Square were built: other building followed. In the Crescent (designed by architect Joseph Kay) is the classical style church of St Mary in the Castle (its name recalling the old chapel in the castle above) now in use as an arts centre. The building of the crescent and the church necessitated further cutting away of the castle hill cliffs. Once that move away from the old town had begun, it led to the further expansion along the coast, eventually linking up with the new St Leonards.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The extensive development meant that a large transient work-force was required. Many of the people coming in to Hastings at this time, settled on some waste-ground to the west of the main town called the America Ground. This land, originally a shingle spit created by the great storm of 1287, was declared to be Crown Property after an inquiry held at Battle during 1827 and the land was cleared in preparation for the development of this area of land by Patrick Francis Robertson.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Like many coastal towns, the population of Hastings grew significantly as a result of the construction of railway links and the fashionable growth of seaside holidays during the Victorian era. In 1801, its population was a mere 3,175; by 1831, it had reached over ten thousand; by 1891, it was almost sixty thousand.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The last harbour project began in 1896, but this also failed when structural problems and rising costs exhausted all the available funds. Today a fractured seawall is all that remains of what might have become a magnificent harbour. In 1897, the foundation stone was laid on a large concrete structure, but there was insufficient money to complete the work and the \"Harbour arm\" remains uncompleted. It was later partially blown up to discourage possible use by German invasion forces during World War II.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Between 1903 and 1919 Fred Judge FRPS photographed many of the towns events and disasters. These included storms, the first tram, visit of the Lord Mayor of London, Hastings Marathon Race and the pier fire of 1917. Many of these images were produced as picture postcards by the British Postcard manufacturer he founded now known as Judges Postcards.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the 1930s, the town underwent some rejuvenation. Seaside resorts were starting to go out of fashion, Hastings perhaps more than most. The town council set about a huge rebuilding project, among which the promenade was rebuilt, and an Olympic-size bathing pool was erected. The latter, regarded in its day as one of the best open-air swimming and diving complexes in Europe, later became a holiday camp before closing in 1986. It was demolished, but the area is still known by locals as \"The Old Bathing Pool\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The 2001 census reported over 85,000 inhabitants.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Hastings returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) from the 14th century until 1885, since when it has returned one. Since 1983, it has been part of the parliamentary constituency of Hastings and Rye; the current MP, since December 2019, is Sally-Ann Hart of the Conservative Party. Prior to 1983, the town formed the Hastings parliamentary constituency by itself.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Hastings, it is thought, was a Saxon town before the arrival of the Normans: the Domesday Book refers to a new Borough: as a borough, Hastings had a corporation consisting of a \"bailiff, jurats, and commonalty\". Its importance was such that it also gave its name to one of the six Rapes or administrative districts of Sussex.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "By a Charter of Elizabeth I in 1589 the bailiff was replaced by a mayor, by which time the town's importance was dwindling. In the Georgian era, patronage of such seaside places (such as nearby Brighton) gave it a new lease of life so that, when the time came with the reform of English local government in 1888, Hastings became a County Borough, responsible for all its local services, independent of the surrounding county, then Sussex (East); less than one hundred years later, in 1974, that status was abolished.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hastings Borough Council is now in the second tier of local government, below East Sussex County Council.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Hastings is situated where the sandstone beds, at the heart of the Weald, known geologically as the Hastings Sands, meet the English Channel, forming tall cliffs to the east of the town. Hastings Old Town is in a sheltered valley between the East Hill and West Hill (on which the remains of the Castle stand). In Victorian times and later the town has spread westwards and northwards, and now forms a single urban centre with the more suburban area of St Leonards-on-Sea to the west. Roads from the Old Town valley lead towards the Victorian area of Clive Vale and the former village of Ore, from which \"The Ridge\", marking the effective boundary of Hastings, extends north-westwards towards Battle. Beyond Bulverhythe, the western end of Hastings is marked by low-lying land known as Glyne Gap, separating it from Bexhill-on-Sea.",
"title": "Geography and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The sandstone cliffs have been the subject of considerable erosion in relatively recent times: much of the Castle was lost to the sea before the present sea defences and promenade were built, and a number of cliff-top houses are in danger of disappearing around the nearby village of Fairlight.",
"title": "Geography and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The beach is mainly shingle, although wide areas of sand are uncovered at low tide. The town is generally built upon a series of low hills rising to 500 ft (150 m) above sea level at \"The Ridge\" before falling back in the river valley further to the north.",
"title": "Geography and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "There are three Sites of Special Scientific Interest within the borough; Marline Valley Woods, Combe Haven and Hastings Cliffs To Pett Beach. Marline Valley Woods lies within the Ashdown ward of Hastings. It is an ancient woodland of Pedunculate oak—hornbeam which is uncommon nationally. Sussex Wildlife Trust own part of the site. Combe Haven is another site of biological interest, with alluvial meadows, and the largest reed bed in the county, providing habitat for breeding birds. It is in the West St Leonards ward, stretching into the parish of Crowhurst. The final SSSI, Hastings Cliffs to Pett Beach, is within the Ore ward of Hastings, extending into the neighbouring Fairlight and Pett parishes. The site runs along the coast and is of both biological and geological interest. The cliffs hold many fossils and the site has many habitats, including ancient woodland and shingle beaches.",
"title": "Geography and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "As with the rest of the British Isles and Southern England, Hastings experiences a maritime climate with mild summers and mild winters. In terms of the local climate, Hastings is on the eastern edge of what is, on average, the sunniest part of the UK, the stretch of coast from the Isle of Wight southeastern coast Sandown Bay to the Hastings area. Hastings, tied with Eastbourne, recorded the highest duration of sunshine of any month anywhere in the United Kingdom – 384 hours – in July 1911. Temperature extremes since 1960 at Hastings have ranged from 34.2 °C (93.6 °F) in July 2019, down to −9.8 °C (14.4 °F) in January 1987. A new record temperature of 34.7 °C (94.5 °F) was recorded on 19 July 2022 The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is \"Cfb\" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).",
"title": "Geography and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Some of the areas and suburbs of Hastings are Ore, St Leonards, Silverhill, West St Leonards, and Hollington. Ore, Silverhill and Hollington were once villages that have since become part of the Hastings conurbation area during rapid growth. The original part of St Leonards was bought by James Burton and laid out by his son, the architect Decimus Burton, in the early 19th century as a new town: a place of elegant houses designed for the well-off. It also included a central public garden, a hotel, an archery, assembly rooms and a church. Today's St Leonards has extended well beyond that original design, although the original town still exists within it.",
"title": "Geography and climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The population of the town in 2001 was 85,029, by 2009 the estimated population was 86,900. Hastings suffers at a disadvantage insofar as growth is concerned because of its restricted situation, lying as it does with the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty to the north. Redevelopment of the area is partly hampered by the split administration of the combined Hastings and Bexhill economic region between Hastings and Rother district councils. There is little space for further large-scale housing and employment growth within the designated boundaries of Hastings, and development on the outskirts is resisted by Rother council whose administrative area surrounds Hastings. Rother has a policy of urban expansion in the area immediately north of Bexhill, but this requires infrastructure improvements by central Governments which have been under discussion for decades. This situation has now become the subject of parliamentary consideration.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Ethnicity in 2001",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Until the development of tourism, fishing was Hastings' major industry. The fishing fleet, based at the Stade, remains Europe's largest beach-launched fishing fleet and has recently won accreditation for its sustainable methods. The fleet has been based on the same beach, below the cliffs at Hastings, for at least 400, possibly 600, years. Its longevity is attributed to the prolific fishing ground of Rye Bay nearby. Hastings fishing vessels are registered at Rye, and thus bear the letters \"RX\" (Rye, SusseX).",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "There are now various industrial estates that lie around the town, mostly on the outskirts, which include engineering, catering, motoring and construction; however, most of the jobs within the Borough are concentrated on health, public services, retail and education. 85% of the firms (in 2005) employed fewer than 10 people; as a consequence the unemployment rate was 3.3% (cf. East Sussex 1.7%). However, qualification levels are similar to the national average: 8.2% of the working-age population have no qualifications while 28% hold degree-level qualifications or higher, compared with 11% and 31% respectively across England.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Hastings main shopping centre is Priory Meadow Shopping Centre, which was built on the site of the old Central Recreation Ground which played host to some Sussex CCC first-class fixtures, and cricketing royalty such as Dr. W. G. Grace and Sir Don Bradman. The centre houses 56 stores and covers around 420,000 ft. Further retail areas in the town centre include Queens Road, Wellington Place and Robertson Street.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "There are plans to expand the retail area in Hastings, which includes expanding Priory Meadow and creating more retail space as part of the Priory Quarter development. Priory was intended to have a second floor added to part of the retail area, which has not happened yet and so far only office space has been created as part of the Priory Quarter.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 2002 the Hastings and Bexhill task force, set up by the South East England Development Agency, was founded to regenerate the local economy, a 10-year programme being set up to tackle the local reliance on public sector employment. The regeneration scheme saw the construction of the University Centre Hastings, (now known as the University of Brighton in Hastings) the new Sussex Coast College campus and construction of the Priory Quarter, which still remains unfinished but now houses Saga offices, bringing 800 new jobs to the area.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Hastings has an Army Cadet Force (ACF) detachment which is part of Sussex ACF. This detachment is based in the old Territorial Army Unit Building on Cinque Ports Way, and is affiliated to PWRR. Hastings also has a Royal Air Force Air Cadet Squadron, 304 (Hastings) Squadron of Sussex Wing RAFAC, based in the same building. The town also has a Sea Cadet squadron, T.S. Hastings. This sits adjacent to the Army and Air Cadet building on the seafront. The site features a climbing wall and other training facilities.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Throughout the year many annual events take place in Hastings, the largest of which being the May Day bank holiday weekend, which features a Jack-in-the-Green festival (revived since 1983) and usually falls around 1-3 May, and the culmination of the Maydayrun—tens of thousands of motorcyclists having ridden the A21 to Hastings. The yearly carnival during Old Town Week takes place every August, which includes a week of events around Hastings Old Town, including a Seaboot race, bike race, street party and pram race. In September, there is a month-long arts festival 'Coastal Currents' and a Seafood and Wine Festival. During Hastings Week held each year around 14 October the Hastings Bonfire Society stages a traditional Sussex Bonfire which includes a torchlight procession through the streets, a beach bonfire and firework display. Hastings Pirate Day takes place in July every year. Hastings, as of November 2017, still holds the Guinness World Record for the most pirates in one place.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Other events include the Hastings Beer and Music Festival, held every July on the Oval (Previously Alexandra Park), the Hastings Musical Festival held every March in the White Rock Theatre, the International Composers Festival split between Hastings and Bexhill during August and the Hastings International Chess Congress. There is also a small Wildman event in late January.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "There are two main theatres in the town, the White Rock Theatre and the Stables Theatre. The White Rock theatre is the venue of the yearly pantomime and throughout the year hosts comedy, dance and music acts. The Stables stages more local productions and acts as an arts exhibition centre. An additional theatre is located in Cambridge Road, the Opus Theatre in a space shared with the His Place church in what used to be the Robertson Street United Reformed Church.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "There is a small four screen Odeon cinema in the town, located opposite the town hall; however, there are plans to build a new multiplex cinema as part of the Priory Quarter development in the town centre. The town has an independent cinema called the Electric Palace located in the Old Town and a restored cinema in St Leonards called the Kino Teatr. The new luxury 'Sussex Exchange' Cinema, bar and conference venue is situated in St. Leonards.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Regal cinema and the Cinema de Luxe in Hastings, and the Elite Cinema in St. Leonards, featured in a 1942 legal case, Regal (Hastings) Ltd v Gulliver, a leading case heard in the High Court and the Appeal Court, and ultimately resolved in the House of Lords, on the issue of company directors' duty of loyalty to the company they direct.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "There are three museums in Hastings; the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, the Hastings Fishermen's Museum and the Shipwreck Museum. The former two mentioned are open for the whole year while the Shipwreck Museum is open only weekends during the winter, but daily for the rest of the year.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The Hastings Museum and Art gallery concentrates mostly on local history and contains exhibits on Grey Owl and John Logie Baird. It also features a Durbar Hall, donated by Lord Brassey; the hall contains displays focusing on the Indian subcontinent and the Brassey Family. The Fishermen's Museum, housed in the former fishermen's church, is dedicated to the fishing industry and maritime history of Hastings. The Shipwreck Museum displays artifacts from wrecks around the area.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Hastings Contemporary (formerly Jerwood Gallery until 02 July 2019) located in the Stade area of Hastings Old Town is the home for the Jerwood Collection of 20th and 21st century art and a changing contemporary exhibition programme. The project was opposed by many locals who felt that a new art gallery would have been better located elsewhere in the town.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In 2019, following a funding dispute with its sponsor the Jerwood Foundation, the gallery was renamed the Hastings Contemporary.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "There are many parks and open spaces located throughout the town, one of the most popular and largest being Alexandra Park opened in 1882 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The park contains gardens, open spaces, woods, a bandstand, tennis courts and a cafe. Other open spaces include White Rock Gardens, West Marina Gardens, St Leonards Gardens, Gensing Gardens, Markwick Gardens, Summerfields Woods, Linton Gardens, Hollington woods, Filsham Valley, Warrior Square, Castle Hill, St Helens Woods and Hastings Country Park.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Local news and television programmes is provided by BBC South East and ITV Meridian. Television signals are received from the local TV transmitter.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Hastings’s local radio stations are BBC Radio Sussex on 104.5 FM, Heart South on 102.0 FM and More Radio Hastings on 107.8 FM.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Local newspapers are the Hastings Observer and Hastings Independent Press.",
"title": "Culture and community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Hastings Castle was built in 1070 by the Normans, four years after the Norman invasion. It is located on the West Hill, overlooking the town centre and is a Grade I listed building. Little remains of the castle apart from the arch left from the chapel, part of the walls and dungeons. The nearby St. Clements Caves are home to the Smugglers Adventure, which features interactive displays relating to the history of smuggling on the south coast of England.",
"title": "Landmarks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Hastings Pier can be seen from any part of the seafront in the town. The old pier was opened in 1872, but closed in 2006 following safety concerns from the council. In October 2010, a serious fire burned down most of the buildings on the pier and caused further damage to the structure. However, the pier reopened on 27 April 2016 in modern architectural forms after a £14.2m refurbishment. It won the Stirling Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)in 2017.",
"title": "Landmarks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Many church buildings throughout the town are Grade II listed including; Church in the Wood, Blacklands Parish Church, Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel, Fishermen's Museum and St Mary Magdalene's Church.",
"title": "Landmarks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On the seafront at St Leonards is Marine Court, a 1938 block of flats in the Art Deco style that was originally called 'The Ship' due to its style being based on the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary. This block of flats can be seen up to 20 mi (32 km) away on a clear day, from Holywell, in the Meads area of Eastbourne.",
"title": "Landmarks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "An important former landmark was \"the Memorial\", a clock tower commemorating Albert the Prince Consort which stood for many years at the traffic junction at the town centre, but was demolished following an arson attack in the 1970s.",
"title": "Landmarks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Hastings urban area (2011 census: includes Bexhill) is by a sizeable margin the most populous area in Britain to have no direct dual-carriageway link to the national motorway network. There are two major roads in Hastings: the A21 trunk road to London; and the A259 coastal road. Both are beset with traffic problems: although the London road, which has to contend with difficult terrain, has had several sections of widening over the past decades there are still many delays. Long-term plans for a much improved A259 east–west route (including a Hastings bypass) were abandoned in the 1990s. A new Hastings-Bexhill Link Road opened in April 2016 known as the A2690 with the hope of reducing traffic congestion along the A259 Bexhill Road. The new link road travels from Queensway in the North of Hastings and joins up to the A259 in Bexhill. Hastings is also linked to Battle via the A2100, the original London road.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The town is served by Stagecoach South East buses on routes that serve the town, and also extend to Bexhill, Eastbourne and Dover as part of The Wave route. Stagecoach also run long distance buses up to Northiam, Hawkhurst, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Ashford and Canterbury.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "National Express run service 023 to London.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Hastings has four rail links: two to London, one to Brighton and one to Ashford. Of the London lines, the shorter is the Hastings Line, the former South Eastern Railway (SER) route to Charing Cross via Battle and Tunbridge Wells, which opened in 1852; and the longer is the East Coastway Line, the former London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LBSCR) route to Victoria via Bexhill, Eastbourne and Lewes. Trains to Brighton also use the East Coastway Line. The Marshlink Line runs via Rye to Ashford where a connection can be made with Eurostar services, and is unelectrified except for the Hastings to Ore segment.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "A historic British Rail Class 201 \"Thumper\" can sometimes be seen on historic runs to and from Hastings.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Hastings is served by two rail companies: Southeastern and Southern. Southeastern services run along the Hastings Line, generally terminating at Hastings, with some peak services extending to Ore; the other lines are served by Southern, with services terminating at Ore or Ashford.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The town currently has four railway stations: from west to east they are West St Leonards, St Leonards Warrior Square, Hastings and Ore; this latter has been proposed to be renamed to Ore Valley. There is also one closed station and one proposed station in the area. West Marina station (on the LBSCR line) was very near West St Leonards (on the SER line) and was closed in 1967. A new station has been proposed at Glyne Gap in Bexhill, which would also serve residents from western Hastings.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "There are two funicular railways, known locally as the West Hill and East Hill Lifts respectively.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The Hastings Miniature Railway operates along the beach from Rock-a-Nore to Marine Parade, and has provided tourist transport since 1948. The railway was considerably restored and re-opened in 2010.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The Saxon Shore Way, (a long distance footpath, 163 mi (262 km) in length from Gravesend, Kent traces the Kent and Sussex coast \"as it was in Roman times\" to Hastings. The National Cycle Network route NCR2 links Dover to St Austell along the south coast, and passes through Hastings.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In 1753 many prominent Hastings figures – including the major landowners Edward Milward and John Collier – obtained an Act that allowed them to take control of the existing Hastings-London trackway via Battle and Whatlington, as far north as Flimwell, however the first properly recognised turnpike developed in St. Leonards in 1837 when builder James Burton was building his new town of St Leonards. The route of the road is that taken by the A21 today.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Hastings had a network of trams from 1905 to 1929. The trams ran as far as Bexhill, and were worked by overhead electric wires, except for the stretch along the seafront from Bo-Peep to the Memorial, which was initially worked by the Dolter stud contact system. The Dolter system was replaced by petrol electric trams in 1914 due to safety concerns, but overhead electrification was extended to this section in 1921. Trolleybuses rather than trams were used in the section that included the very narrow High Street, and the entire tram network was replaced by the Hastings trolleybus system in 1928–1929.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Maidstone & District bought the Hastings Tramway Company in 1935, but the trolleybuses still carried the \"Hastings Tramways\" logo until shortly before they were replaced by diesel buses in 1959, following the failure of the \"Save our trolleys\" campaign.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Hastings has 18 primary schools, four secondary schools, one further education college and one higher education institution.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The University of Brighton in Hastings offers higher education courses in a range of subjects and currently attracts over 800 students. The university's Hastings campus doubled in size in 2012, with the addition of the new Priory Square building designed by Proctor and Matthews Architects. This is located in the town centre a short distance from the railway station.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Sussex Coast College, formerly called Hastings College, is the town's further education college; it is located at Station Plaza, next to the railway station.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The secondary schools in the town include Ark Alexandra Academy, Hastings Academy and The St Leonards Academy. East Sussex County Council closed three mixed comprehensive schools: Filsham Valley, The Grove and Hillcrest, replacing them with two academy schools; The St Leonards Academy, and The Hastings Academy. The sponsors for the academies are University of Brighton (lead sponsor), British Telecom and East Sussex County Council itself.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The most important buildings from the late medieval period are the two churches in the Old Town, St Clement's (probably built after 1377) and All Saints (early 15th century). There is also a mosque, formerly \"Mercatoria School\" until purchased by the East Sussex Islamic Association. The former Ebenezer Particular Baptist Chapel in the Old Town dates from 1817 and is listed at Grade II. Christ Church, Blacklands (1876) has a complete decorative scheme of Mural, Stained Glass, Mosaic and Wrought Iron from the firm of Hardman's which gives it a ll* listing. When St. Andrew's was demolished in 1970 to make way for a supermarket, a fragment of the decorative scheme there, painted by Robert Noonan (also known as Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists) was rescued and features in the Hastings Museum. The Parish and title were added to Blacklands Church.",
"title": "Religious buildings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Every year the Hastings Half Marathon is held in the town although due to Covid-19 restrictions there was no half marathon that took place in 2020 or 2021. The 13.1 mi (21.1 km) race first took place in 1984 and attracts entrants from all over the country, taking runners on a route encircling the town, starting and finishing by the West Marina Gardens in St Leonards.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Hastings United is the town's most senior football team, playing in the Premier Division of the Isthmian League. It was founded in 1894 and plays its home games at The Pilot Field, which ground used to be home to two other senior clubs; St Leonards and the original Hastings United which folded in 1985. There are football clubs in Hastings that compete in the East Sussex League, such as Hollington United, St Leonards Social and Rock-a-Nore, playing at local parks and recreation grounds about the town. United attracted sports media headlines, when in 2013 they made it to the third round of the FA Cup for the first time in their history, being the lowest ranked team left in the contest before going out – losing 4–1 to Middlesbrough.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Central Recreation Ground was one of England's oldest, most scenic and most famous cricket grounds. The first match was played there in 1864 and the last in 1989, after which the site was redeveloped into a shopping centre which opened in 1996. It was particularly popular with touring Australian sides who played 18 matches there. Hastings Priory is the town's largest cricket club, having 4 teams playing competitive, as well as a large junior section. The club's home is at Horntye Park, though it also makes use of the facilities at Ark Alexander Academy.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "ARK Alexander Academy sees clubs using the school as their base, such as Hastings & Bexhill Rugby Football Club, Hastings Athletic Club and Hastings Priory Cricket Club 3rd and 4th teams.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Founded in 1895 South Saxons Hockey Club is one of the largest sports clubs in Hastings and is the towns only field hockey club. Locally known as 'Saxons' their home ground is the astroturf pitch at Horntye Park Sports Complex. Saxons field nine Saturday teams (4 Mens, 2 Ladies, 2 Boys development and a Girls development team). Saxons also have a thriving junior section who train on a Sunday and play in county 7's tournaments. Saxons Mens 1st XI play in Kent and Sussex Regional Division One and Saxons Ladies 1st XI play in Sussex Ladies League Premier Division.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Hastings Conquerors is the town's only American Football Club. The club was founded in March 2013 by local resident Chris Chillingworth and currently trains at William Parker Sports College. The club made history in June 2013 when it became the UK's first Co-Operative run not-for-profit American Football club.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "There are many bowling greens in the parks and gardens located about the town; the Hastings Open Bowls Tournament has been held annually in June since 1911 and attracts many entrants country-wide.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Since 1920 Hastings has hosted the Hastings International Chess Congress. The annual event is held over the Christmas period at Horntye Park Sports Complex. A testament to its importance is that every World Champion before Garry Kasparov except Bobby Fischer played at Hastings including Emanuel Lasker (1895), José Raúl Capablanca (1919, 1929/30, 1930/1 and 1934/5), Alexander Alekhine (1922, 1925/6, 1933/4 and 1936/7), Max Euwe (1923/4, 1930/1, 1931/2, 1934/5, 1945/6 and 1949/50), Mikhail Botvinnik (1934/5, 1961/2 and 1966/7), Vasily Smyslov (1954/5, 1962/3 and 1968/9), Mikhail Tal (1963/4), Tigran Petrosian (1977/8), Boris Spassky (1965/6), and Anatoly Karpov (1971/2).",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Hastings & St Leonards/Hastings Downs Golf Club (now defunct) was founded in 1893. The club disappeared in the 1950s.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Hastings has hosted the World Crazy Golf Championships since 2003.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "John Logie Baird lived in Hastings in the 1920s where he carried out experiments that led to the transmission of the first television image. Robert Tressell wrote The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists in Hastings between 1906 and 1910. Many notable figures were born, raised, or lived in Hastings, including computer scientist Alan Turing, poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley, actress Gwen Watford, comedian Jo Brand, Madness singer Suggs and Thomas H. Jukes, biologist. Gareth Barry, who holds the record number of appearances in the Premier League, was born in Hastings. The author who worked as Grey Owl was born In Hastings and lived here for several years.",
"title": "Notable people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Harry H Corbett, an actor best known for his role as Harold Steptoe in the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, lived in Hastings up until his death in 1982.",
"title": "Notable people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Mark Edwards, a best-selling British fiction writer, grew up in Hastings.",
"title": "Notable people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Anna Brassey, a collector and feminist pioneer of early photography, was based in Hastings until her death in 1887 (she was buried at sea).",
"title": "Notable people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Tom Chaplin, best known as the lead singer of the English pop rock band Keane, was born in Hastings.",
"title": "Notable people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Hastings is twinned with:",
"title": "Twin towns"
}
]
| Hastings is a seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
24 mi (39 km) east of Lewes and 53 mi (85 km) south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place 8 mi (13 km) to the north-west at Senlac Hill in 1066. It later became one of the medieval Cinque Ports. In the 19th century, it was a popular seaside resort, as the railway allowed tourists and visitors to reach the town. Today, Hastings is a fishing port with the UK's largest beach-based fishing fleet. It has an estimated population of 91,100 as of 2021. | 2001-09-26T22:08:29Z | 2023-12-29T20:08:25Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings |
13,831 | Human rights | Human rights are moral principles or norms for certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable, fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being" and which are "inherent in all human beings", regardless of their age, ethnic origin, location, language, religion, ethnicity, or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone. They are regarded as requiring empathy and the rule of law and imposing an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others, and it is generally considered that they should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on specific circumstances.
The doctrine of human rights has been highly influential within international law and global and regional institutions. Actions by states and non-governmental organisations form a basis of public policy worldwide. The idea of human rights suggests that "if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights". The strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable scepticism and debates about the content, nature and justifications of human rights to this day. The precise meaning of the term right is controversial and is the subject of continued philosophical debate; while there is consensus that human rights encompass a wide variety of rights such as the right to a fair trial, protection against enslavement, prohibition of genocide, free speech or a right to education, there is disagreement about which of these particular rights should be included within the general framework of human rights; some thinkers suggest that human rights should be a minimum requirement to avoid the worst-case abuses, while others see it as a higher standard. It has also been argued that human rights are "God-given", although this notion has been criticized.
Many of the basic ideas that animated the human rights movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the events of the Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Ancient peoples did not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights. The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became prominent during the European Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui and which featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century, possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide and war crimes, as a realization of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the possibility of a just society. Human rights advocacy has continued into the early 21st century, centered around achieving greater economic and political freedom.
The concept of human rights has, in some sense, existed for centuries, although peoples have not always thought of universal human rights in the same way humans do today.
Among the oldest evidence of human rights is the Cyrus Cylinder dated from 6th Century BCE, it had rights like no slavery, worship of your own religion, and racial equality.
The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition. This tradition was heavily influenced by the writings of St Paul's early Christian thinkers such as St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose, and St Augustine. Augustine was among the earliest to examine the legitimacy of the laws of man, and attempt to define the boundaries of what laws and rights occur naturally based on wisdom and conscience, instead of being arbitrarily imposed by mortals, and if people are obligated to obey laws that are unjust.
This medieval tradition became prominent during the European Enlightenment. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century.
Magna Carta is an English charter originally issued in 1215 which influenced the development of the common law and many later constitutional documents related to human rights, such as the 1689 English Bill of Rights, the 1789 United States Constitution, and the 1791 United States Bill of Rights.
17th century English philosopher John Locke discussed natural rights in his work, identifying them as being "life, liberty, and estate (property)", and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract. In Britain in 1689, the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right each made a range of oppressive governmental actions, illegal. Two major revolutions occurred during the 18th century, in the United States (1776) and in France (1789), leading to the United States Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen respectively, both of which articulated certain human rights. Additionally, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 encoded into law a number of fundamental civil rights and civil freedoms.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Hegel expanded on the theme of universality during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in a newspaper called The Liberator that he was trying to enlist his readers in "the great cause of human rights", so the term human rights probably came into use sometime between Paine's The Rights of Man and Garrison's publication. In 1849 a contemporary, Henry David Thoreau, wrote about human rights in his treatise On the Duty of Civil Disobedience which was later influential on human rights and civil rights thinkers. United States Supreme Court Justice David Davis, in his 1867 opinion for Ex Parte Milligan, wrote "By the protection of the law, human rights are secured; withdraw that protection and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers or the clamor of an excited people."
Many groups and movements have managed to achieve profound social changes over the course of the 20th century in the name of human rights. In Western Europe and North America, labour unions brought about laws granting workers the right to strike, establishing minimum work conditions and forbidding or regulating child labour. The women's rights movement succeeded in gaining for many women the right to vote. National liberation movements in many countries succeeded in driving out colonial powers. One of the most influential was Mahatma Gandhi's leadership of the Indian independence movement. Movements by long-oppressed racial and religious minorities succeeded in many parts of the world, among them the civil rights movement, and more recent diverse identity politics movements, on behalf of women and minorities in the United States.
The foundation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the 1864 Lieber Code and the first of the Geneva Conventions in 1864 laid the foundations of International humanitarian law, to be further developed following the two World Wars.
The League of Nations was established in 1919 at the negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles following the end of World War I. The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global welfare. Enshrined in its Charter was a mandate to promote many of the rights which were later included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The League of Nations had mandates to support many of the former colonies of the Western European colonial powers during their transition from colony to independent state.
Established as an agency of the League of Nations, and now part of United Nations, the International Labour Organization also had a mandate to promote and safeguard certain of the rights later included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):
the primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a non-binding declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, partly in response to the events of World War II. The UDHR urges member states to promote a number of human, civil, economic and social rights, asserting these rights are part of the "foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world". The declaration was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and make sure they did their duties to their citizens following the model of the rights-duty duality.
... recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world
The UDHR was framed by members of the Human Rights Commission, with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair, who began to discuss an International Bill of Rights in 1947. The members of the Commission did not immediately agree on the form of such a bill of rights, and whether, or how, it should be enforced. The Commission proceeded to frame the UDHR and accompanying treaties, but the UDHR quickly became the priority. Canadian law professor John Humprey and French lawyer René Cassin were responsible for much of the cross-national research and the structure of the document respectively, where the articles of the declaration were interpretative of the general principle of the preamble. The document was structured by Cassin to include the basic principles of dignity, liberty, equality and brotherhood in the first two articles, followed successively by rights pertaining to individuals; rights of individuals in relation to each other and to groups; spiritual, public and political rights; and economic, social and cultural rights. The final three articles place, according to Cassin, rights in the context of limits, duties and the social and political order in which they are to be realized. Humphrey and Cassin intended the rights in the UDHR to be legally enforceable through some means, as is reflected in the third clause of the preamble:
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.
Some of the UDHR was researched and written by a committee of international experts on human rights, including representatives from all continents and all major religions, and drawing on consultation with leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi. The inclusion of both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights was predicated on the assumption that basic human rights are indivisible and that the different types of rights listed are inextricably linked. Though this principle was not opposed by any member states at the time of adoption (the declaration was adopted unanimously, with the abstention of the Soviet bloc, Apartheid South Africa and Saudi Arabia), this principle was later subject to significant challenges.
On the issue of "universal", the declarations did not apply to domestic discrimination or racism. Henry J. Richardson III has argued:
The onset of the Cold War soon after the UDHR was conceived brought to the fore divisions over the inclusion of both economic and social rights and civil and political rights in the declaration. Capitalist states tended to place strong emphasis on civil and political rights (such as freedom of association and expression), and were reluctant to include economic and social rights (such as the right to work and the right to join a union). Socialist states placed much greater importance on economic and social rights and argued strongly for their inclusion.
Because of the divisions over which rights to include, and because some states declined to ratify any treaties including certain specific interpretations of human rights, and despite the Soviet bloc and a number of developing countries arguing strongly for the inclusion of all rights in a so-called Unity Resolution, the rights enshrined in the UDHR were split into two separate covenants, allowing states to adopt some rights and derogate others. Though this allowed the covenants to be created, it denied the proposed principle that all rights are linked which was central to some interpretations of the UDHR.
Although the UDHR is a non-binding resolution, it is now considered to be a central component of international customary law which may be invoked under appropriate circumstances by state judiciaries and other judiciaries.
In 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were adopted by the United Nations, between them making the rights contained in the UDHR binding on all states. However, they came into force only in 1976, when they were ratified by a sufficient number of countries (despite achieving the ICCPR, a covenant including no economic or social rights, the US only ratified the ICCPR in 1992). The ICESCR commits 155 state parties to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) to individuals.
Numerous other treaties (pieces of legislation) have been offered at the international level. They are generally known as human rights instruments. Some of the most significant are:
In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution declaring that everyone on the planet has a right to a healthy environment, including clean air, clean water, and a stable climate.
Responsibility to protect refers to a doctrine for United Nations member states to intervene to protect populations from atrocities. It has been cited as justification in the use of recent military interventions. An example of an intervention that is often criticized is the 2011 military intervention in the First Libyan Civil War by NATO and Qatar where the goal of preventing atrocities is alleged to have taken upon itself the broader mandate of removing the target government.
Economic sanctions are often levied upon individuals or states who commit human rights violations. Sanctions are often criticized for its feature of collective punishment in hurting a country's population economically in order dampen that population's view of its government. It is also argued that, counterproductively, sanctions on offending authoritarian governments strengthen that government's position domestically as governments would still have more mechanisms to find funding than their critics and opposition, who become further weakened.
The risk of human rights violations increases with the increase in financially vulnerable populations. Girls from poor families in non-industrialized economies are often viewed as a financial burden on the family and marriage of young girls is often driven in the hope that daughters will be fed and protected by wealthier families. Female genital mutilation and force-feeding of daughters is argued to be similarly driven in large part to increase their marriage prospects and thus their financial security by achieving certain idealized standards of beauty. In certain areas, girls requiring the experience of sexual initiation rites with men and passing sex training tests on girls are designed to make them more appealing as marriage prospects. Measures to help the economic status of vulnerable groups in order to reduce human rights violations include girls' education and guaranteed minimum incomes and conditional cash transfers, such as Bolsa familia which subsidize parents who keep children in school rather than contributing to family income, has successfully reduced child labor.
Human rights abuses are monitored by United Nations committees, national institutions and governments and by many independent non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, World Organisation Against Torture, Freedom House, International Freedom of Expression Exchange and Anti-Slavery International. These organisations collect evidence and documentation of human rights abuses and apply pressure to promote human rights.
Educating people on the concept of human rights has been argued as a strategy to prevent human rights abuses.
Many examples of legal instruments at the international, regional and national level described below are designed to enforce laws securing human rights.
The United Nations (UN) is the only multilateral governmental agency with universally accepted international jurisdiction for universal human rights legislation. All UN organs have advisory roles to the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council, and there are numerous committees within the UN with responsibilities for safeguarding different human rights treaties. The most senior body of the UN with regard to human rights is the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The United Nations has an international mandate to:
... achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.
The UN Human Rights Council, created in 2005, has a mandate to investigate alleged human rights violations. 47 of the 193 UN member states sit on the council, elected by simple majority in a secret ballot of the United Nations General Assembly. Members serve a maximum of six years and may have their membership suspended for gross human rights abuses. The council is based in Geneva, and meets three times a year; with additional meetings to respond to urgent situations.
Independent experts (rapporteurs) are retained by the council to investigate alleged human rights abuses and to report to the council.
The Human Rights Council may request that the Security Council refer cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC) even if the issue being referred is outside the normal jurisdiction of the ICC.
In addition to the political bodies whose mandate flows from the UN charter, the UN has set up a number of treaty-based bodies, comprising committees of independent experts who monitor compliance with human rights standards and norms flowing from the core international human rights treaties. They are supported by and are created by the treaty that they monitor, With the exception of the CESCR, which was established under a resolution of the Economic and Social Council to carry out the monitoring functions originally assigned to that body under the Covenant, they are technically autonomous bodies, established by the treaties that they monitor and accountable to the state parties of those treaties – rather than subsidiary to the United Nations, though in practice they are closely intertwined with the United Nations system and are supported by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) and the UN Centre for Human Rights.
Each treaty body receives secretariat support from the Human Rights Council and Treaties Division of Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva except CEDAW, which is supported by the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW). CEDAW formerly held all its sessions at United Nations headquarters in New York but now frequently meets at the United Nations Office in Geneva; the other treaty bodies meet in Geneva. The Human Rights Committee usually holds its March session in New York City.
The human rights enshrined in the UDHR, the Geneva Conventions and the various enforced treaties of the United Nations are enforceable in law. In practice, many rights are very difficult to legally enforce due to the absence of consensus on the application of certain rights, the lack of relevant national legislation or of bodies empowered to take legal action to enforce them.
There exist a number of internationally recognized organisations with worldwide mandate or jurisdiction over certain aspects of human rights:
The ICC and other international courts (see Regional human rights below) exist to take action where the national legal system of a state is unable to try the case itself. If national law is able to safeguard human rights and punish those who breach human rights legislation, it has primary jurisdiction by complementarity. Only when all local remedies have been exhausted does international law take effect.
In over 110 countries, national human rights institutions (NHRIs) have been set up to protect, promote or monitor human rights with jurisdiction in a given country. Although not all NHRIs are compliant with the Paris Principles, the number and effect of these institutions is increasing. The Paris Principles were defined at the first International Workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Paris on 7–9 October 1991, and adopted by United Nations Human Rights Commission Resolution 1992/54 of 1992 and the General Assembly Resolution 48/134 of 1993. The Paris Principles list a number of responsibilities for national institutions.
The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of fifty-five African states. Established in 2001, the AU's purpose is to help secure Africa's democracy, human rights, and a sustainable economy, especially by bringing an end to intra-African conflict and creating an effective common market.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is a quasi-judicial organ of the African Union tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective (peoples') rights throughout the African continent as well as interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and considering individual complaints of violations of the Charter. The commission has three broad areas of responsibility:
In pursuit of these goals, the commission is mandated to "collect documents, undertake studies and researches on African problems in the field of human and peoples, rights, organise seminars, symposia and conferences, disseminate information, encourage national and local institutions concerned with human and peoples' rights and, should the case arise, give its views or make recommendations to governments" (Charter, Art. 45).
With the creation of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (under a protocol to the Charter which was adopted in 1998 and entered into force in January 2004), the commission will have the additional task of preparing cases for submission to the Court's jurisdiction. In a July 2004 decision, the AU Assembly resolved that the future Court on Human and Peoples' Rights would be integrated with the African Court of Justice.
The Court of Justice of the African Union is intended to be the "principal judicial organ of the Union" (Protocol of the Court of Justice of the African Union, Article 2.2). Although it has not yet been established, it is intended to take over the duties of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, as well as act as the supreme court of the African Union, interpreting all necessary laws and treaties. The Protocol establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights entered into force in January 2004 but its merging with the Court of Justice has delayed its establishment. The Protocol establishing the Court of Justice will come into force when ratified by 15 countries.
There are many countries in Africa accused of human rights violations by the international community and NGOs.
The Organization of American States (OAS) is an international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the Americas. Over the course of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, the return to democracy in Latin America, and the thrust toward globalization, the OAS made major efforts to reinvent itself to fit the new context. Its stated priorities now include the following:
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the IACHR) is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States, also based in Washington, D.C. Along with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica, it is one of the bodies that comprise the inter-American system for the promotion and protection of human rights. The IACHR is a permanent body which meets in regular and special sessions several times a year to examine allegations of human rights violations in the hemisphere. Its human rights duties stem from three documents:
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was established in 1979 with the purpose of enforcing and interpreting the provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights. Its two main functions are thus adjudicatory and advisory. Under the former, it hears and rules on the specific cases of human rights violations referred to it. Under the latter, it issues opinions on matters of legal interpretation brought to its attention by other OAS bodies or member states.
There are no Asia-wide organisations or conventions to promote or protect human rights. Countries vary widely in their approach to human rights and their record of human rights protection.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a geo-political and economic organization of 10 countries located in Southeast Asia, which was formed in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The organisation now also includes Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. In October 2009, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights was inaugurated, and subsequently, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration was adopted unanimously by ASEAN members on 18 November 2012.
The Arab Charter on Human Rights (ACHR) was adopted by the Council of the League of Arab States on 22 May 2004.
The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is the oldest organisation working for European integration. It is an international organisation with legal personality recognised under public international law and has observer status with the United Nations. The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg in France. The Council of Europe is responsible for both the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. These institutions bind the council's members to a code of human rights which, though strict, are more lenient than those of the United Nations charter on human rights. The council also promotes the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the European Social Charter. Membership is open to all European states which seek European integration, accept the principle of the rule of law and are able and willing to guarantee democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms.
The Council of Europe is an organisation that is not part of the European Union, but the latter is expected to accede to the European Convention and potentially the Council itself. The EU has its own human rights document; the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The European Convention on Human Rights defines and guarantees since 1950 human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. All 47 member states of the Council of Europe have signed this convention and are therefore under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In order to prevent torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3 of the convention), the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture was established.
Several theoretical approaches have been advanced to explain how and why human rights become part of social expectations.
One of the oldest Western philosophies on human rights is that they are a product of a natural law, stemming from different philosophical or religious grounds.
Other theories hold that human rights codify moral behavior which is a human social product developed by a process of biological and social evolution (associated with Hume). Human rights are also described as a sociological pattern of rule setting (as in the sociological theory of law and the work of Weber). These approaches include the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in Rawls) – a social contract.
Natural law theories base human rights on a "natural" moral, religious or even biological order which is independent of transitory human laws or traditions.
Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, δικαιον φυσικον, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law, although evidence for this is due largely to the interpretations of his work by Thomas Aquinas.
The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics.
Some of the early Church fathers sought to incorporate the until then pagan concept of natural law into Christianity. Natural law theories have featured greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, and John Locke.
In the Seventeenth Century, Thomas Hobbes founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent death at the hands of another). The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act. It was discovered by considering humankind's natural rights, whereas previously it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law. In Hobbes' opinion, the only way natural law could prevail was for men to submit to the commands of the sovereign. In this lay the foundations of the theory of a social contract between the governed and the governor.
Hugo Grotius based his philosophy of international law on natural law. He wrote that "even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate" natural law, which "would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs." (De iure belli ac pacis, Prolegomeni XI). This is the famous argument etiamsi daremus (non-esse Deum), that made natural law no longer dependent on theology.
John Locke incorporated natural law into many of his theories and philosophy, especially in Two Treatises of Government. Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect "life, liberty, and property," people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.
The Belgian philosopher of law Frank van Dun is one among those who are elaborating a secular conception of natural law in the liberal tradition. There are also emerging and secular forms of natural law theory that define human rights as derivative of the notion of universal human dignity.
The term "human rights" has replaced the term "natural rights" in popularity, because the rights are less and less frequently seen as requiring natural law for their existence.
The philosopher John Finnis argues that human rights are justifiable on the grounds of their instrumental value in creating the necessary conditions for human well-being. Interest theories highlight the duty to respect the rights of other individuals on grounds of self-interest:
Human rights law, applied to a State's own citizens serves the interest of states, by, for example, minimizing the risk of violent resistance and protest and by keeping the level of dissatisfaction with the government manageable
The biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection.
The philosopher Zhao Tingyang argues that the traditional human rights framework fails to be universal, because it arose from contingent aspects of Western culture, and that the concept of inalienable and unconditional human rights is in tension with the principle of justice. He proposes an alternative framework called "credit human rights", in which rights are tied to responsibilities.
The most common categorization of human rights is to split them into civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights.
Civil and political rights are enshrined in articles 3 to 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the ICCPR. Economic, social and cultural rights are enshrined in articles 22 to 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the ICESCR. The UDHR included both economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights because it was based on the principle that the different rights could only successfully exist in combination:
The ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and political rights, as well as his social, economic and cultural rights
This is held to be true because without civil and political rights the public cannot assert their economic, social and cultural rights. Similarly, without livelihoods and a working society, the public cannot assert or make use of civil or political rights (known as the full belly thesis).
Although accepted by the signatories to the UDHR, most of them do not in practice give equal weight to the different types of rights. Western cultures have often given priority to civil and political rights, sometimes at the expense of economic and social rights such as the right to work, to education, health and housing. For example, in the United States there is no universal access to healthcare free at the point of use. That is not to say that Western cultures have overlooked these rights entirely (the welfare states that exist in Western Europe are evidence of this). Similarly the ex Soviet bloc countries and Asian countries have tended to give priority to economic, social and cultural rights, but have often failed to provide civil and political rights.
Another categorization, offered by Karel Vasak, is that there are three generations of human rights: first-generation civil and political rights (right to life and political participation), second-generation economic, social and cultural rights (right to subsistence) and third-generation solidarity rights (right to peace, right to clean environment). Out of these generations, the third generation is the most debated and lacks both legal and political recognition. This categorisation is at odds with the indivisibility of rights, as it implicitly states that some rights can exist without others. Prioritisation of rights for pragmatic reasons is however a widely accepted necessity. Human rights expert Philip Alston argues:
If every possible human rights element is deemed to be essential or necessary, then nothing will be treated as though it is truly important.
He, and others, urge caution with prioritisation of rights:
... the call for prioritizing is not to suggest that any obvious violations of rights can be ignored.
Priorities, where necessary, should adhere to core concepts (such as reasonable attempts at progressive realization) and principles (such as non-discrimination, equality and participation.
Some human rights are said to be "inalienable rights". The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to "a set of human rights that are fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered".
The adherence to the principle of indivisibility by the international community was reaffirmed in 1995:
All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and related. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.
This statement was again endorsed at the 2005 World Summit in New York (paragraph 121).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines, by definition, rights that apply to all humans equally, whichever geographical location, state, race or culture they belong to.
Proponents of cultural relativism suggest that human rights are not all universal, and indeed conflict with some cultures and threaten their survival.
Rights which are most often contested with relativistic arguments are the rights of women. For example, female genital mutilation occurs in different cultures in Africa, Asia and South America. It is not mandated by any religion, but has become a tradition in many cultures. It is considered a violation of women's and girl's rights by much of the international community, and is outlawed in some countries.
Universalism has been described by some as cultural, economic or political imperialism. In particular, the concept of human rights is often claimed to be fundamentally rooted in a politically liberal outlook which, although generally accepted in Europe, Japan or North America, is not necessarily taken as standard elsewhere.
For example, in 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the UDHR by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. The former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad both claimed in the 1990s that Asian values were significantly different from western values and included a sense of loyalty and foregoing personal freedoms for the sake of social stability and prosperity, and therefore authoritarian government is more appropriate in Asia than democracy. This view is countered by Mahathir's former deputy:
To say that freedom is Western or unAsian is to offend our traditions as well as our forefathers, who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices.
Singapore's opposition leader Chee Soon Juan also states that it is racist to assert that Asians do not want human rights.
An appeal is often made to the fact that influential human rights thinkers, such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, have all been Western and indeed that some were involved in the running of Empires themselves.
Relativistic arguments tend to neglect the fact that modern human rights are new to all cultures, dating back no further than the UDHR in 1948. They also do not account for the fact that the UDHR was drafted by people from many different cultures and traditions, including a US Roman Catholic, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, a French Zionist and a representative from the Arab League, amongst others, and drew upon advice from thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi.
Michael Ignatieff has argued that cultural relativism is almost exclusively an argument used by those who wield power in cultures which commit human rights abuses, and that those whose human rights are compromised are the powerless. This reflects the fact that the difficulty in judging universalism versus relativism lies in who is claiming to represent a particular culture.
Although the argument between universalism and relativism is far from complete, it is an academic discussion in that all international human rights instruments adhere to the principle that human rights are universally applicable. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the international community's adherence to this principle:
The universal nature of human rights and freedoms is beyond question.
Universal jurisdiction is a controversial principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country. The state backs its claim on the grounds that the crime committed is considered a crime against all, which any state is authorized to punish. The concept of universal jurisdiction is therefore closely linked to the idea that certain international norms are erga omnes, or owed to the entire world community, as well as the concept of jus cogens. In 1993, Belgium passed a law of universal jurisdiction to give its courts jurisdiction over crimes against humanity in other countries, and in 1998 Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London following an indictment by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón under the universal jurisdiction principle. The principle is supported by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations as they believe certain crimes pose a threat to the international community as a whole and the community has a moral duty to act, but others, including Henry Kissinger, argue that state sovereignty is paramount, because breaches of rights committed in other countries are outside states' sovereign interest and because states could use the principle for political reasons.
Companies, NGOs, political parties, informal groups, and individuals are known as non-State actors. Non-State actors can also commit human rights abuses, but are not subject to human rights law other than International Humanitarian Law, which applies to individuals.
Multinational companies play an increasingly large role in the world, and are responsible for a large number of human rights abuses. Although the legal and moral environment surrounding the actions of governments is reasonably well developed, that surrounding multinational companies is both controversial and ill-defined. Multinational companies often view their primary responsibility as being to their shareholders, not to those affected by their actions. Such companies are often larger than the economies of the states in which they operate, and can wield significant economic and political power. No international treaties exist to specifically cover the behavior of companies with regard to human rights, and national legislation is very variable. Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the right to food stated in a report in 2003:
the growing power of transnational corporations and their extension of power through privatization, deregulation and the rolling back of the State also mean that it is now time to develop binding legal norms that hold corporations to human rights standards and circumscribe potential abuses of their position of power.
In August 2003, the Human Rights Commission's Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights produced draft Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights. These were considered by the Human Rights Commission in 2004, but have no binding status on corporations and are not monitored. Additionally, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 aims to substantially reduce inequality by 2030 through the promotion of appropriate legislation.
With the exception of non-derogable human rights (international conventions class the right to life, the right to be free from slavery, the right to be free from torture and the right to be free from retroactive application of penal laws as non-derogable), the UN recognises that human rights can be limited or even pushed aside during times of national emergency – although:
the emergency must be actual, affect the whole population and the threat must be to the very existence of the nation. The declaration of emergency must also be a last resort and a temporary measure
Rights that cannot be derogated for reasons of national security in any circumstances are known as peremptory norms or jus cogens. Such International law obligations are binding on all states and cannot be modified by treaty.
Critics of the view that human rights are universal argue that human rights are a western concept that "emanate from a European, Judeo-Christian, and/or Enlightenment heritage (typically labeled Western) and cannot be enjoyed by other cultures that don't emulate the conditions and values of 'Western' societies."
Right-wing critics of human rights argue that they are "unrealistic and unenforceable norms and inappropriate intrusions on state sovereignty", while left-wing critics of human rights argue that they fail "to achieve – or prevents better approaches to achieving – progressive goals". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Human rights are moral principles or norms for certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable, fundamental rights \"to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being\" and which are \"inherent in all human beings\", regardless of their age, ethnic origin, location, language, religion, ethnicity, or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone. They are regarded as requiring empathy and the rule of law and imposing an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others, and it is generally considered that they should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on specific circumstances.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The doctrine of human rights has been highly influential within international law and global and regional institutions. Actions by states and non-governmental organisations form a basis of public policy worldwide. The idea of human rights suggests that \"if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights\". The strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable scepticism and debates about the content, nature and justifications of human rights to this day. The precise meaning of the term right is controversial and is the subject of continued philosophical debate; while there is consensus that human rights encompass a wide variety of rights such as the right to a fair trial, protection against enslavement, prohibition of genocide, free speech or a right to education, there is disagreement about which of these particular rights should be included within the general framework of human rights; some thinkers suggest that human rights should be a minimum requirement to avoid the worst-case abuses, while others see it as a higher standard. It has also been argued that human rights are \"God-given\", although this notion has been criticized.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Many of the basic ideas that animated the human rights movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the events of the Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Ancient peoples did not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights. The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became prominent during the European Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui and which featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century, possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide and war crimes, as a realization of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the possibility of a just society. Human rights advocacy has continued into the early 21st century, centered around achieving greater economic and political freedom.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The concept of human rights has, in some sense, existed for centuries, although peoples have not always thought of universal human rights in the same way humans do today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Among the oldest evidence of human rights is the Cyrus Cylinder dated from 6th Century BCE, it had rights like no slavery, worship of your own religion, and racial equality.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition. This tradition was heavily influenced by the writings of St Paul's early Christian thinkers such as St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose, and St Augustine. Augustine was among the earliest to examine the legitimacy of the laws of man, and attempt to define the boundaries of what laws and rights occur naturally based on wisdom and conscience, instead of being arbitrarily imposed by mortals, and if people are obligated to obey laws that are unjust.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "This medieval tradition became prominent during the European Enlightenment. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Magna Carta is an English charter originally issued in 1215 which influenced the development of the common law and many later constitutional documents related to human rights, such as the 1689 English Bill of Rights, the 1789 United States Constitution, and the 1791 United States Bill of Rights.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "17th century English philosopher John Locke discussed natural rights in his work, identifying them as being \"life, liberty, and estate (property)\", and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract. In Britain in 1689, the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right each made a range of oppressive governmental actions, illegal. Two major revolutions occurred during the 18th century, in the United States (1776) and in France (1789), leading to the United States Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen respectively, both of which articulated certain human rights. Additionally, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 encoded into law a number of fundamental civil rights and civil freedoms.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Hegel expanded on the theme of universality during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in a newspaper called The Liberator that he was trying to enlist his readers in \"the great cause of human rights\", so the term human rights probably came into use sometime between Paine's The Rights of Man and Garrison's publication. In 1849 a contemporary, Henry David Thoreau, wrote about human rights in his treatise On the Duty of Civil Disobedience which was later influential on human rights and civil rights thinkers. United States Supreme Court Justice David Davis, in his 1867 opinion for Ex Parte Milligan, wrote \"By the protection of the law, human rights are secured; withdraw that protection and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers or the clamor of an excited people.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Many groups and movements have managed to achieve profound social changes over the course of the 20th century in the name of human rights. In Western Europe and North America, labour unions brought about laws granting workers the right to strike, establishing minimum work conditions and forbidding or regulating child labour. The women's rights movement succeeded in gaining for many women the right to vote. National liberation movements in many countries succeeded in driving out colonial powers. One of the most influential was Mahatma Gandhi's leadership of the Indian independence movement. Movements by long-oppressed racial and religious minorities succeeded in many parts of the world, among them the civil rights movement, and more recent diverse identity politics movements, on behalf of women and minorities in the United States.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The foundation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the 1864 Lieber Code and the first of the Geneva Conventions in 1864 laid the foundations of International humanitarian law, to be further developed following the two World Wars.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The League of Nations was established in 1919 at the negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles following the end of World War I. The League's goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global welfare. Enshrined in its Charter was a mandate to promote many of the rights which were later included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The League of Nations had mandates to support many of the former colonies of the Western European colonial powers during their transition from colony to independent state.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Established as an agency of the League of Nations, and now part of United Nations, the International Labour Organization also had a mandate to promote and safeguard certain of the rights later included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "the primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a non-binding declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, partly in response to the events of World War II. The UDHR urges member states to promote a number of human, civil, economic and social rights, asserting these rights are part of the \"foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world\". The declaration was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and make sure they did their duties to their citizens following the model of the rights-duty duality.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "... recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The UDHR was framed by members of the Human Rights Commission, with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair, who began to discuss an International Bill of Rights in 1947. The members of the Commission did not immediately agree on the form of such a bill of rights, and whether, or how, it should be enforced. The Commission proceeded to frame the UDHR and accompanying treaties, but the UDHR quickly became the priority. Canadian law professor John Humprey and French lawyer René Cassin were responsible for much of the cross-national research and the structure of the document respectively, where the articles of the declaration were interpretative of the general principle of the preamble. The document was structured by Cassin to include the basic principles of dignity, liberty, equality and brotherhood in the first two articles, followed successively by rights pertaining to individuals; rights of individuals in relation to each other and to groups; spiritual, public and political rights; and economic, social and cultural rights. The final three articles place, according to Cassin, rights in the context of limits, duties and the social and political order in which they are to be realized. Humphrey and Cassin intended the rights in the UDHR to be legally enforceable through some means, as is reflected in the third clause of the preamble:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Some of the UDHR was researched and written by a committee of international experts on human rights, including representatives from all continents and all major religions, and drawing on consultation with leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi. The inclusion of both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights was predicated on the assumption that basic human rights are indivisible and that the different types of rights listed are inextricably linked. Though this principle was not opposed by any member states at the time of adoption (the declaration was adopted unanimously, with the abstention of the Soviet bloc, Apartheid South Africa and Saudi Arabia), this principle was later subject to significant challenges.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "On the issue of \"universal\", the declarations did not apply to domestic discrimination or racism. Henry J. Richardson III has argued:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The onset of the Cold War soon after the UDHR was conceived brought to the fore divisions over the inclusion of both economic and social rights and civil and political rights in the declaration. Capitalist states tended to place strong emphasis on civil and political rights (such as freedom of association and expression), and were reluctant to include economic and social rights (such as the right to work and the right to join a union). Socialist states placed much greater importance on economic and social rights and argued strongly for their inclusion.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Because of the divisions over which rights to include, and because some states declined to ratify any treaties including certain specific interpretations of human rights, and despite the Soviet bloc and a number of developing countries arguing strongly for the inclusion of all rights in a so-called Unity Resolution, the rights enshrined in the UDHR were split into two separate covenants, allowing states to adopt some rights and derogate others. Though this allowed the covenants to be created, it denied the proposed principle that all rights are linked which was central to some interpretations of the UDHR.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Although the UDHR is a non-binding resolution, it is now considered to be a central component of international customary law which may be invoked under appropriate circumstances by state judiciaries and other judiciaries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were adopted by the United Nations, between them making the rights contained in the UDHR binding on all states. However, they came into force only in 1976, when they were ratified by a sufficient number of countries (despite achieving the ICCPR, a covenant including no economic or social rights, the US only ratified the ICCPR in 1992). The ICESCR commits 155 state parties to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) to individuals.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Numerous other treaties (pieces of legislation) have been offered at the international level. They are generally known as human rights instruments. Some of the most significant are:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution declaring that everyone on the planet has a right to a healthy environment, including clean air, clean water, and a stable climate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Responsibility to protect refers to a doctrine for United Nations member states to intervene to protect populations from atrocities. It has been cited as justification in the use of recent military interventions. An example of an intervention that is often criticized is the 2011 military intervention in the First Libyan Civil War by NATO and Qatar where the goal of preventing atrocities is alleged to have taken upon itself the broader mandate of removing the target government.",
"title": "Promotion strategies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Economic sanctions are often levied upon individuals or states who commit human rights violations. Sanctions are often criticized for its feature of collective punishment in hurting a country's population economically in order dampen that population's view of its government. It is also argued that, counterproductively, sanctions on offending authoritarian governments strengthen that government's position domestically as governments would still have more mechanisms to find funding than their critics and opposition, who become further weakened.",
"title": "Promotion strategies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The risk of human rights violations increases with the increase in financially vulnerable populations. Girls from poor families in non-industrialized economies are often viewed as a financial burden on the family and marriage of young girls is often driven in the hope that daughters will be fed and protected by wealthier families. Female genital mutilation and force-feeding of daughters is argued to be similarly driven in large part to increase their marriage prospects and thus their financial security by achieving certain idealized standards of beauty. In certain areas, girls requiring the experience of sexual initiation rites with men and passing sex training tests on girls are designed to make them more appealing as marriage prospects. Measures to help the economic status of vulnerable groups in order to reduce human rights violations include girls' education and guaranteed minimum incomes and conditional cash transfers, such as Bolsa familia which subsidize parents who keep children in school rather than contributing to family income, has successfully reduced child labor.",
"title": "Promotion strategies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Human rights abuses are monitored by United Nations committees, national institutions and governments and by many independent non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, World Organisation Against Torture, Freedom House, International Freedom of Expression Exchange and Anti-Slavery International. These organisations collect evidence and documentation of human rights abuses and apply pressure to promote human rights.",
"title": "Promotion strategies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Educating people on the concept of human rights has been argued as a strategy to prevent human rights abuses.",
"title": "Promotion strategies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Many examples of legal instruments at the international, regional and national level described below are designed to enforce laws securing human rights.",
"title": "Promotion strategies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The United Nations (UN) is the only multilateral governmental agency with universally accepted international jurisdiction for universal human rights legislation. All UN organs have advisory roles to the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council, and there are numerous committees within the UN with responsibilities for safeguarding different human rights treaties. The most senior body of the UN with regard to human rights is the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The United Nations has an international mandate to:",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "... achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The UN Human Rights Council, created in 2005, has a mandate to investigate alleged human rights violations. 47 of the 193 UN member states sit on the council, elected by simple majority in a secret ballot of the United Nations General Assembly. Members serve a maximum of six years and may have their membership suspended for gross human rights abuses. The council is based in Geneva, and meets three times a year; with additional meetings to respond to urgent situations.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Independent experts (rapporteurs) are retained by the council to investigate alleged human rights abuses and to report to the council.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Human Rights Council may request that the Security Council refer cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC) even if the issue being referred is outside the normal jurisdiction of the ICC.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In addition to the political bodies whose mandate flows from the UN charter, the UN has set up a number of treaty-based bodies, comprising committees of independent experts who monitor compliance with human rights standards and norms flowing from the core international human rights treaties. They are supported by and are created by the treaty that they monitor, With the exception of the CESCR, which was established under a resolution of the Economic and Social Council to carry out the monitoring functions originally assigned to that body under the Covenant, they are technically autonomous bodies, established by the treaties that they monitor and accountable to the state parties of those treaties – rather than subsidiary to the United Nations, though in practice they are closely intertwined with the United Nations system and are supported by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) and the UN Centre for Human Rights.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Each treaty body receives secretariat support from the Human Rights Council and Treaties Division of Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva except CEDAW, which is supported by the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW). CEDAW formerly held all its sessions at United Nations headquarters in New York but now frequently meets at the United Nations Office in Geneva; the other treaty bodies meet in Geneva. The Human Rights Committee usually holds its March session in New York City.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The human rights enshrined in the UDHR, the Geneva Conventions and the various enforced treaties of the United Nations are enforceable in law. In practice, many rights are very difficult to legally enforce due to the absence of consensus on the application of certain rights, the lack of relevant national legislation or of bodies empowered to take legal action to enforce them.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "There exist a number of internationally recognized organisations with worldwide mandate or jurisdiction over certain aspects of human rights:",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The ICC and other international courts (see Regional human rights below) exist to take action where the national legal system of a state is unable to try the case itself. If national law is able to safeguard human rights and punish those who breach human rights legislation, it has primary jurisdiction by complementarity. Only when all local remedies have been exhausted does international law take effect.",
"title": "Protection at the international level"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In over 110 countries, national human rights institutions (NHRIs) have been set up to protect, promote or monitor human rights with jurisdiction in a given country. Although not all NHRIs are compliant with the Paris Principles, the number and effect of these institutions is increasing. The Paris Principles were defined at the first International Workshop on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Paris on 7–9 October 1991, and adopted by United Nations Human Rights Commission Resolution 1992/54 of 1992 and the General Assembly Resolution 48/134 of 1993. The Paris Principles list a number of responsibilities for national institutions.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of fifty-five African states. Established in 2001, the AU's purpose is to help secure Africa's democracy, human rights, and a sustainable economy, especially by bringing an end to intra-African conflict and creating an effective common market.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is a quasi-judicial organ of the African Union tasked with promoting and protecting human rights and collective (peoples') rights throughout the African continent as well as interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and considering individual complaints of violations of the Charter. The commission has three broad areas of responsibility:",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In pursuit of these goals, the commission is mandated to \"collect documents, undertake studies and researches on African problems in the field of human and peoples, rights, organise seminars, symposia and conferences, disseminate information, encourage national and local institutions concerned with human and peoples' rights and, should the case arise, give its views or make recommendations to governments\" (Charter, Art. 45).",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "With the creation of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (under a protocol to the Charter which was adopted in 1998 and entered into force in January 2004), the commission will have the additional task of preparing cases for submission to the Court's jurisdiction. In a July 2004 decision, the AU Assembly resolved that the future Court on Human and Peoples' Rights would be integrated with the African Court of Justice.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Court of Justice of the African Union is intended to be the \"principal judicial organ of the Union\" (Protocol of the Court of Justice of the African Union, Article 2.2). Although it has not yet been established, it is intended to take over the duties of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, as well as act as the supreme court of the African Union, interpreting all necessary laws and treaties. The Protocol establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights entered into force in January 2004 but its merging with the Court of Justice has delayed its establishment. The Protocol establishing the Court of Justice will come into force when ratified by 15 countries.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "There are many countries in Africa accused of human rights violations by the international community and NGOs.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Organization of American States (OAS) is an international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the Americas. Over the course of the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, the return to democracy in Latin America, and the thrust toward globalization, the OAS made major efforts to reinvent itself to fit the new context. Its stated priorities now include the following:",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the IACHR) is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States, also based in Washington, D.C. Along with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica, it is one of the bodies that comprise the inter-American system for the promotion and protection of human rights. The IACHR is a permanent body which meets in regular and special sessions several times a year to examine allegations of human rights violations in the hemisphere. Its human rights duties stem from three documents:",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was established in 1979 with the purpose of enforcing and interpreting the provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights. Its two main functions are thus adjudicatory and advisory. Under the former, it hears and rules on the specific cases of human rights violations referred to it. Under the latter, it issues opinions on matters of legal interpretation brought to its attention by other OAS bodies or member states.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "There are no Asia-wide organisations or conventions to promote or protect human rights. Countries vary widely in their approach to human rights and their record of human rights protection.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a geo-political and economic organization of 10 countries located in Southeast Asia, which was formed in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The organisation now also includes Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. In October 2009, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights was inaugurated, and subsequently, the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration was adopted unanimously by ASEAN members on 18 November 2012.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Arab Charter on Human Rights (ACHR) was adopted by the Council of the League of Arab States on 22 May 2004.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, is the oldest organisation working for European integration. It is an international organisation with legal personality recognised under public international law and has observer status with the United Nations. The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg in France. The Council of Europe is responsible for both the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. These institutions bind the council's members to a code of human rights which, though strict, are more lenient than those of the United Nations charter on human rights. The council also promotes the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the European Social Charter. Membership is open to all European states which seek European integration, accept the principle of the rule of law and are able and willing to guarantee democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Council of Europe is an organisation that is not part of the European Union, but the latter is expected to accede to the European Convention and potentially the Council itself. The EU has its own human rights document; the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The European Convention on Human Rights defines and guarantees since 1950 human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. All 47 member states of the Council of Europe have signed this convention and are therefore under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In order to prevent torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3 of the convention), the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture was established.",
"title": "Regional human rights regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Several theoretical approaches have been advanced to explain how and why human rights become part of social expectations.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "One of the oldest Western philosophies on human rights is that they are a product of a natural law, stemming from different philosophical or religious grounds.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Other theories hold that human rights codify moral behavior which is a human social product developed by a process of biological and social evolution (associated with Hume). Human rights are also described as a sociological pattern of rule setting (as in the sociological theory of law and the work of Weber). These approaches include the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in Rawls) – a social contract.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Natural law theories base human rights on a \"natural\" moral, religious or even biological order which is independent of transitory human laws or traditions.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, δικαιον φυσικον, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law, although evidence for this is due largely to the interpretations of his work by Thomas Aquinas.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Some of the early Church fathers sought to incorporate the until then pagan concept of natural law into Christianity. Natural law theories have featured greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, and John Locke.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In the Seventeenth Century, Thomas Hobbes founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent death at the hands of another). The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act. It was discovered by considering humankind's natural rights, whereas previously it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law. In Hobbes' opinion, the only way natural law could prevail was for men to submit to the commands of the sovereign. In this lay the foundations of the theory of a social contract between the governed and the governor.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Hugo Grotius based his philosophy of international law on natural law. He wrote that \"even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate\" natural law, which \"would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs.\" (De iure belli ac pacis, Prolegomeni XI). This is the famous argument etiamsi daremus (non-esse Deum), that made natural law no longer dependent on theology.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "John Locke incorporated natural law into many of his theories and philosophy, especially in Two Treatises of Government. Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect \"life, liberty, and property,\" people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Belgian philosopher of law Frank van Dun is one among those who are elaborating a secular conception of natural law in the liberal tradition. There are also emerging and secular forms of natural law theory that define human rights as derivative of the notion of universal human dignity.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The term \"human rights\" has replaced the term \"natural rights\" in popularity, because the rights are less and less frequently seen as requiring natural law for their existence.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The philosopher John Finnis argues that human rights are justifiable on the grounds of their instrumental value in creating the necessary conditions for human well-being. Interest theories highlight the duty to respect the rights of other individuals on grounds of self-interest:",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Human rights law, applied to a State's own citizens serves the interest of states, by, for example, minimizing the risk of violent resistance and protest and by keeping the level of dissatisfaction with the government manageable",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The philosopher Zhao Tingyang argues that the traditional human rights framework fails to be universal, because it arose from contingent aspects of Western culture, and that the concept of inalienable and unconditional human rights is in tension with the principle of justice. He proposes an alternative framework called \"credit human rights\", in which rights are tied to responsibilities.",
"title": "Philosophies of human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The most common categorization of human rights is to split them into civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Civil and political rights are enshrined in articles 3 to 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the ICCPR. Economic, social and cultural rights are enshrined in articles 22 to 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the ICESCR. The UDHR included both economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights because it was based on the principle that the different rights could only successfully exist in combination:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and political rights, as well as his social, economic and cultural rights",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "This is held to be true because without civil and political rights the public cannot assert their economic, social and cultural rights. Similarly, without livelihoods and a working society, the public cannot assert or make use of civil or political rights (known as the full belly thesis).",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Although accepted by the signatories to the UDHR, most of them do not in practice give equal weight to the different types of rights. Western cultures have often given priority to civil and political rights, sometimes at the expense of economic and social rights such as the right to work, to education, health and housing. For example, in the United States there is no universal access to healthcare free at the point of use. That is not to say that Western cultures have overlooked these rights entirely (the welfare states that exist in Western Europe are evidence of this). Similarly the ex Soviet bloc countries and Asian countries have tended to give priority to economic, social and cultural rights, but have often failed to provide civil and political rights.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Another categorization, offered by Karel Vasak, is that there are three generations of human rights: first-generation civil and political rights (right to life and political participation), second-generation economic, social and cultural rights (right to subsistence) and third-generation solidarity rights (right to peace, right to clean environment). Out of these generations, the third generation is the most debated and lacks both legal and political recognition. This categorisation is at odds with the indivisibility of rights, as it implicitly states that some rights can exist without others. Prioritisation of rights for pragmatic reasons is however a widely accepted necessity. Human rights expert Philip Alston argues:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "If every possible human rights element is deemed to be essential or necessary, then nothing will be treated as though it is truly important.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "He, and others, urge caution with prioritisation of rights:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "... the call for prioritizing is not to suggest that any obvious violations of rights can be ignored.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Priorities, where necessary, should adhere to core concepts (such as reasonable attempts at progressive realization) and principles (such as non-discrimination, equality and participation.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Some human rights are said to be \"inalienable rights\". The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to \"a set of human rights that are fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered\".",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The adherence to the principle of indivisibility by the international community was reaffirmed in 1995:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and related. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "This statement was again endorsed at the 2005 World Summit in New York (paragraph 121).",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines, by definition, rights that apply to all humans equally, whichever geographical location, state, race or culture they belong to.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Proponents of cultural relativism suggest that human rights are not all universal, and indeed conflict with some cultures and threaten their survival.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Rights which are most often contested with relativistic arguments are the rights of women. For example, female genital mutilation occurs in different cultures in Africa, Asia and South America. It is not mandated by any religion, but has become a tradition in many cultures. It is considered a violation of women's and girl's rights by much of the international community, and is outlawed in some countries.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Universalism has been described by some as cultural, economic or political imperialism. In particular, the concept of human rights is often claimed to be fundamentally rooted in a politically liberal outlook which, although generally accepted in Europe, Japan or North America, is not necessarily taken as standard elsewhere.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "For example, in 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the UDHR by saying that the UDHR was \"a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition\", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. The former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad both claimed in the 1990s that Asian values were significantly different from western values and included a sense of loyalty and foregoing personal freedoms for the sake of social stability and prosperity, and therefore authoritarian government is more appropriate in Asia than democracy. This view is countered by Mahathir's former deputy:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "To say that freedom is Western or unAsian is to offend our traditions as well as our forefathers, who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Singapore's opposition leader Chee Soon Juan also states that it is racist to assert that Asians do not want human rights.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "An appeal is often made to the fact that influential human rights thinkers, such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, have all been Western and indeed that some were involved in the running of Empires themselves.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Relativistic arguments tend to neglect the fact that modern human rights are new to all cultures, dating back no further than the UDHR in 1948. They also do not account for the fact that the UDHR was drafted by people from many different cultures and traditions, including a US Roman Catholic, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, a French Zionist and a representative from the Arab League, amongst others, and drew upon advice from thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Michael Ignatieff has argued that cultural relativism is almost exclusively an argument used by those who wield power in cultures which commit human rights abuses, and that those whose human rights are compromised are the powerless. This reflects the fact that the difficulty in judging universalism versus relativism lies in who is claiming to represent a particular culture.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Although the argument between universalism and relativism is far from complete, it is an academic discussion in that all international human rights instruments adhere to the principle that human rights are universally applicable. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the international community's adherence to this principle:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The universal nature of human rights and freedoms is beyond question.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Universal jurisdiction is a controversial principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country. The state backs its claim on the grounds that the crime committed is considered a crime against all, which any state is authorized to punish. The concept of universal jurisdiction is therefore closely linked to the idea that certain international norms are erga omnes, or owed to the entire world community, as well as the concept of jus cogens. In 1993, Belgium passed a law of universal jurisdiction to give its courts jurisdiction over crimes against humanity in other countries, and in 1998 Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London following an indictment by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón under the universal jurisdiction principle. The principle is supported by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations as they believe certain crimes pose a threat to the international community as a whole and the community has a moral duty to act, but others, including Henry Kissinger, argue that state sovereignty is paramount, because breaches of rights committed in other countries are outside states' sovereign interest and because states could use the principle for political reasons.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Companies, NGOs, political parties, informal groups, and individuals are known as non-State actors. Non-State actors can also commit human rights abuses, but are not subject to human rights law other than International Humanitarian Law, which applies to individuals.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Multinational companies play an increasingly large role in the world, and are responsible for a large number of human rights abuses. Although the legal and moral environment surrounding the actions of governments is reasonably well developed, that surrounding multinational companies is both controversial and ill-defined. Multinational companies often view their primary responsibility as being to their shareholders, not to those affected by their actions. Such companies are often larger than the economies of the states in which they operate, and can wield significant economic and political power. No international treaties exist to specifically cover the behavior of companies with regard to human rights, and national legislation is very variable. Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the right to food stated in a report in 2003:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "the growing power of transnational corporations and their extension of power through privatization, deregulation and the rolling back of the State also mean that it is now time to develop binding legal norms that hold corporations to human rights standards and circumscribe potential abuses of their position of power.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In August 2003, the Human Rights Commission's Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights produced draft Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights. These were considered by the Human Rights Commission in 2004, but have no binding status on corporations and are not monitored. Additionally, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 aims to substantially reduce inequality by 2030 through the promotion of appropriate legislation.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "With the exception of non-derogable human rights (international conventions class the right to life, the right to be free from slavery, the right to be free from torture and the right to be free from retroactive application of penal laws as non-derogable), the UN recognises that human rights can be limited or even pushed aside during times of national emergency – although:",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "the emergency must be actual, affect the whole population and the threat must be to the very existence of the nation. The declaration of emergency must also be a last resort and a temporary measure",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Rights that cannot be derogated for reasons of national security in any circumstances are known as peremptory norms or jus cogens. Such International law obligations are binding on all states and cannot be modified by treaty.",
"title": "Concepts in human rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Critics of the view that human rights are universal argue that human rights are a western concept that \"emanate from a European, Judeo-Christian, and/or Enlightenment heritage (typically labeled Western) and cannot be enjoyed by other cultures that don't emulate the conditions and values of 'Western' societies.\"",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Right-wing critics of human rights argue that they are \"unrealistic and unenforceable norms and inappropriate intrusions on state sovereignty\", while left-wing critics of human rights argue that they fail \"to achieve – or prevents better approaches to achieving – progressive goals\".",
"title": "Criticism"
}
]
| Human rights are moral principles or norms for certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable, fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being" and which are "inherent in all human beings", regardless of their age, ethnic origin, location, language, religion, ethnicity, or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone. They are regarded as requiring empathy and the rule of law and imposing an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others, and it is generally considered that they should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on specific circumstances. The doctrine of human rights has been highly influential within international law and global and regional institutions. Actions by states and non-governmental organisations form a basis of public policy worldwide. The idea of human rights suggests that "if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights". The strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable scepticism and debates about the content, nature and justifications of human rights to this day. The precise meaning of the term right is controversial and is the subject of continued philosophical debate; while there is consensus that human rights encompass a wide variety of rights such as the right to a fair trial, protection against enslavement, prohibition of genocide, free speech or a right to education, there is disagreement about which of these particular rights should be included within the general framework of human rights; some thinkers suggest that human rights should be a minimum requirement to avoid the worst-case abuses, while others see it as a higher standard. It has also been argued that human rights are "God-given", although this notion has been criticized. Many of the basic ideas that animated the human rights movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the events of the Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Ancient peoples did not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights. The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became prominent during the European Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui and which featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century, possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide and war crimes, as a realization of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the possibility of a just society. Human rights advocacy has continued into the early 21st century, centered around achieving greater economic and political freedom. | 2001-09-27T00:15:40Z | 2023-12-23T11:13:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights |
13,833 | Hash table | In computing, a hash table, also known as a hash map, is a data structure that implements an associative array, also called a dictionary, which is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an index, also called a hash code, into an array of buckets or slots, from which the desired value can be found. During lookup, the key is hashed and the resulting hash indicates where the corresponding value is stored.
Ideally, the hash function will assign each key to a unique bucket, but most hash table designs employ an imperfect hash function, which might cause hash collisions where the hash function generates the same index for more than one key. Such collisions are typically accommodated in some way.
In a well-dimensioned hash table, the average time complexity for each lookup is independent of the number of elements stored in the table. Many hash table designs also allow arbitrary insertions and deletions of key–value pairs, at amortized constant average cost per operation.
Hashing is an example of a space-time tradeoff. If memory is infinite, the entire key can be used directly as an index to locate its value with a single memory access. On the other hand, if infinite time is available, values can be stored without regard for their keys, and a binary search or linear search can be used to retrieve the element.
In many situations, hash tables turn out to be on average more efficient than search trees or any other table lookup structure. For this reason, they are widely used in many kinds of computer software, particularly for associative arrays, database indexing, caches, and sets.
The idea of hashing arose independently in different places. In January 1953, Hans Peter Luhn wrote an internal IBM memorandum that used hashing with chaining. The first example of open addressing was proposed by A. D. Linh, building on Luhn's memorandum. Around the same time, Gene Amdahl, Elaine M. McGraw, Nathaniel Rochester, and Arthur Samuel of IBM Research implemented hashing for the IBM 701 assembler. Open addressing with linear probing is credited to Amdahl, although Andrey Ershov independently had the same idea. The term "open addressing" was coined by W. Wesley Peterson on his article which discusses the problem of search in large files.
The first published work on hashing with chaining is credited to Arnold Dumey, who discussed the idea of using remainder modulo a prime as a hash function. The word "hashing" was first published in an article by Robert Morris. A theoretical analysis of linear probing was submitted originally by Konheim and Weiss.
An associative array stores a set of (key, value) pairs and allows insertion, deletion, and lookup (search), with the constraint of unique keys. In the hash table implementation of associative arrays, an array A {\displaystyle A} of length m {\displaystyle m} is partially filled with n {\displaystyle n} elements, where m ≥ n {\displaystyle m\geq n} . A value x {\displaystyle x} gets stored at an index location A [ h ( x ) ] {\displaystyle A[h(x)]} , where h {\displaystyle h} is a hash function, and h ( x ) < m {\displaystyle h(x)<m} . Under reasonable assumptions, hash tables have better time complexity bounds on search, delete, and insert operations in comparison to self-balancing binary search trees.
Hash tables are also commonly used to implement sets, by omitting the stored value for each key and merely tracking whether the key is present.
A load factor α {\displaystyle \alpha } is a critical statistic of a hash table, and is defined as follows:
where
The performance of the hash table deteriorates in relation to the load factor α {\displaystyle \alpha } .
To maintain good performance, the software makes sure the load factor α {\displaystyle \alpha } never exceeds some constant α max {\displaystyle \alpha _{\max }} .
Therefore a hash table is resized or rehashed whenever the load factor α {\displaystyle \alpha } reaches α max {\displaystyle \alpha _{\max }} .
A table is also resized if the load factor drops below α max / 4 {\displaystyle \alpha _{\max }/4} .
With separate chaining hash tables, each slot of the bucket array stores a pointer to a list or array of data.
Separate chaining hash tables suffer gradually declining performance as the load factor grows, and no fixed point beyond which resizing is absolutely needed.
With separate chaining, the value of α max {\displaystyle \alpha _{\max }} that gives best performance is typically between 1 and 3.
With open addressing, each slot of the bucket array holds exactly one item. Therefore an open-addressed hash table cannot have a load factor greater than 1.
The performance of open addressing becomes very bad when the load factor approaches 1.
Therefore a hash table that uses open addressing must be resized or rehashed if the load factor α {\displaystyle \alpha } approaches 1.
With open addressing, Acceptable figures of max load factor α max {\displaystyle \alpha _{\max }} should range around 0.6 to 0.75.
A hash function h {\displaystyle h} maps the universe U {\displaystyle U} of keys h : U → { 0 , . . . , m − 1 } {\displaystyle h:U\rightarrow \{0,...,m-1\}} to array indices or slots within the table for each h ( x ) ∈ 0 , . . . , m − 1 {\displaystyle h(x)\in {0,...,m-1}} where x ∈ S {\displaystyle x\in S} and m < n {\displaystyle m<n} . The conventional implementations of hash functions are based on the integer universe assumption that all elements of the table stem from the universe U = { 0 , . . . , u − 1 } {\displaystyle U=\{0,...,u-1\}} , where the bit length of u {\displaystyle u} is confined within the word size of a computer architecture.
A perfect hash function h {\displaystyle h} is defined as an injective function such that each element x {\displaystyle x} in S {\displaystyle S} maps to a unique value in 0 , . . . , m − 1 {\displaystyle {0,...,m-1}} . A perfect hash function can be created if all the keys are known ahead of time.
The schemes of hashing used in integer universe assumption include hashing by division, hashing by multiplication, universal hashing, dynamic perfect hashing, and static perfect hashing. However, hashing by division is the commonly used scheme.
The scheme in hashing by division is as follows:
Where M {\displaystyle M} is the hash digest of x ∈ S {\displaystyle x\in S} and m {\displaystyle m} is the size of the table.
The scheme in hashing by multiplication is as follows:
Where A {\displaystyle A} is a real-valued constant and m {\displaystyle m} is the size of the table. An advantage of the hashing by multiplication is that the m {\displaystyle m} is not critical. Although any value A {\displaystyle A} produces a hash function, Donald Knuth suggests using the golden ratio.
Uniform distribution of the hash values is a fundamental requirement of a hash function. A non-uniform distribution increases the number of collisions and the cost of resolving them. Uniformity is sometimes difficult to ensure by design, but may be evaluated empirically using statistical tests, e.g., a Pearson's chi-squared test for discrete uniform distributions.
The distribution needs to be uniform only for table sizes that occur in the application. In particular, if one uses dynamic resizing with exact doubling and halving of the table size, then the hash function needs to be uniform only when the size is a power of two. Here the index can be computed as some range of bits of the hash function. On the other hand, some hashing algorithms prefer to have the size be a prime number.
For open addressing schemes, the hash function should also avoid clustering, the mapping of two or more keys to consecutive slots. Such clustering may cause the lookup cost to skyrocket, even if the load factor is low and collisions are infrequent. The popular multiplicative hash is claimed to have particularly poor clustering behavior.
K-independent hashing offers a way to prove a certain hash function does not have bad keysets for a given type of hashtable. A number of K-independence results are known for collision resolution schemes such as linear probing and cuckoo hashing. Since K-independence can prove a hash function works, one can then focus on finding the fastest possible such hash function.
A search algorithm that uses hashing consists of two parts. The first part is computing a hash function which transforms the search key into an array index. The ideal case is such that no two search keys hashes to the same array index. However, this is not always the case and is impossible to guarantee for unseen given data. Hence the second part of the algorithm is collision resolution. The two common methods for collision resolution are separate chaining and open addressing.
In separate chaining, the process involves building a linked list with key–value pair for each search array index. The collided items are chained together through a single linked list, which can be traversed to access the item with a unique search key. Collision resolution through chaining with linked list is a common method of implementation of hash tables. Let T {\displaystyle T} and x {\displaystyle x} be the hash table and the node respectively, the operation involves as follows:
If the element is comparable either numerically or lexically, and inserted into the list by maintaining the total order, it results in faster termination of the unsuccessful searches.
If the keys are ordered, it could be efficient to use "self-organizing" concepts such as using a self-balancing binary search tree, through which the theoretical worst case could be brought down to O ( log n ) {\displaystyle O(\log {n})} , although it introduces additional complexities.
In dynamic perfect hashing, two-level hash tables are used to reduce the look-up complexity to be a guaranteed O ( 1 ) {\displaystyle O(1)} in the worst case. In this technique, the buckets of k {\displaystyle k} entries are organized as perfect hash tables with k 2 {\displaystyle k^{2}} slots providing constant worst-case lookup time, and low amortized time for insertion. A study shows array-based separate chaining to be 97% more performant when compared to the standard linked list method under heavy load.
Techniques such as using fusion tree for each buckets also result in constant time for all operations with high probability.
The linked list of separate chaining implementation may not be cache-conscious due to spatial locality—locality of reference—when the nodes of the linked list are scattered across memory, thus the list traversal during insert and search may entail CPU cache inefficiencies.
In cache-conscious variants, a dynamic array found to be more cache-friendly is used in the place where a linked list or self-balancing binary search trees is usually deployed for collision resolution through separate chaining, since the contiguous allocation pattern of the array could be exploited by hardware-cache prefetchers—such as translation lookaside buffer—resulting in reduced access time and memory consumption.
Open addressing is another collision resolution technique in which every entry record is stored in the bucket array itself, and the hash resolution is performed through probing. When a new entry has to be inserted, the buckets are examined, starting with the hashed-to slot and proceeding in some probe sequence, until an unoccupied slot is found. When searching for an entry, the buckets are scanned in the same sequence, until either the target record is found, or an unused array slot is found, which indicates an unsuccessful search.
Well-known probe sequences include:
The performance of open addressing may be slower compared to separate chaining since the probe sequence increases when the load factor α {\displaystyle \alpha } approaches 1. The probing results in an infinite loop if the load factor reaches 1, in the case of a completely filled table. The average cost of linear probing depends on the hash function's ability to distribute the elements uniformly throughout the table to avoid clustering, since formation of clusters would result in increased search time.
Since the slots are located in successive locations, linear probing could lead to better utilization of CPU cache due to locality of references resulting in reduced memory latency.
Coalesced hashing is a hybrid of both separate chaining and open addressing in which the buckets or nodes link within the table. The algorithm is ideally suited for fixed memory allocation. The collision in coalesced hashing is resolved by identifying the largest-indexed empty slot on the hash table, then the colliding value is inserted into that slot. The bucket is also linked to the inserted node's slot which contains its colliding hash address.
Cuckoo hashing is a form of open addressing collision resolution technique which guarantees O ( 1 ) {\displaystyle O(1)} worst-case lookup complexity and constant amortized time for insertions. The collision is resolved through maintaining two hash tables, each having its own hashing function, and collided slot gets replaced with the given item, and the preoccupied element of the slot gets displaced into the other hash table. The process continues until every key has its own spot in the empty buckets of the tables; if the procedure enters into infinite loop—which is identified through maintaining a threshold loop counter—both hash tables get rehashed with newer hash functions and the procedure continues.
Hopscotch hashing is an open addressing based algorithm which combines the elements of cuckoo hashing, linear probing and chaining through the notion of a neighbourhood of buckets—the subsequent buckets around any given occupied bucket, also called a "virtual" bucket. The algorithm is designed to deliver better performance when the load factor of the hash table grows beyond 90%; it also provides high throughput in concurrent settings, thus well suited for implementing resizable concurrent hash table. The neighbourhood characteristic of hopscotch hashing guarantees a property that, the cost of finding the desired item from any given buckets within the neighbourhood is very close to the cost of finding it in the bucket itself; the algorithm attempts to be an item into its neighbourhood—with a possible cost involved in displacing other items.
Each bucket within the hash table includes an additional "hop-information"—an H-bit bit array for indicating the relative distance of the item which was originally hashed into the current virtual bucket within H-1 entries. Let k {\displaystyle k} and B k {\displaystyle Bk} be the key to be inserted and bucket to which the key is hashed into respectively; several cases are involved in the insertion procedure such that the neighbourhood property of the algorithm is vowed: if B k {\displaystyle Bk} is empty, the element is inserted, and the leftmost bit of bitmap is set to 1; if not empty, linear probing is used for finding an empty slot in the table, the bitmap of the bucket gets updated followed by the insertion; if the empty slot is not within the range of the neighbourhood, i.e. H-1, subsequent swap and hop-info bit array manipulation of each bucket is performed in accordance with its neighbourhood invariant properties.
Robin Hood hashing is an open addressing based collision resolution algorithm; the collisions are resolved through favouring the displacement of the element that is farthest—or longest probe sequence length (PSL)—from its "home location" i.e. the bucket to which the item was hashed into. Although Robin Hood hashing does not change the theoretical search cost, it significantly affects the variance of the distribution of the items on the buckets, i.e. dealing with cluster formation in the hash table. Each node within the hash table that uses Robin Hood hashing should be augmented to store an extra PSL value. Let x {\displaystyle x} be the key to be inserted, x . p s l {\displaystyle x.psl} be the (incremental) PSL length of x {\displaystyle x} , T {\displaystyle T} be the hash table and j {\displaystyle j} be the index, the insertion procedure is as follows:
Repeated insertions cause the number of entries in a hash table to grow, which consequently increases the load factor; to maintain the amortized O ( 1 ) {\displaystyle O(1)} performance of the lookup and insertion operations, a hash table is dynamically resized and the items of the tables are rehashed into the buckets of the new hash table, since the items cannot be copied over as varying table sizes results in different hash value due to modulo operation. If a hash table becomes "too empty" after deleting some elements, resizing may be performed to avoid excessive memory usage.
Generally, a new hash table with a size double that of the original hash table gets allocated privately and every item in the original hash table gets moved to the newly allocated one by computing the hash values of the items followed by the insertion operation. Rehashing is simple, but computationally expensive.
Some hash table implementations, notably in real-time systems, cannot pay the price of enlarging the hash table all at once, because it may interrupt time-critical operations. If one cannot avoid dynamic resizing, a solution is to perform the resizing gradually to avoid storage blip—typically at 50% of new table's size—during rehashing and to avoid memory fragmentation that triggers heap compaction due to deallocation of large memory blocks caused by the old hash table. In such case, the rehashing operation is done incrementally through extending prior memory block allocated for the old hash table such that the buckets of the hash table remain unaltered. A common approach for amortized rehashing involves maintaining two hash functions h old {\displaystyle h_{\text{old}}} and h new {\displaystyle h_{\text{new}}} . The process of rehashing a bucket's items in accordance with the new hash function is termed as cleaning, which is implemented through command pattern by encapsulating the operations such as A d d ( k e y ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {Add} (\mathrm {key} )} , G e t ( k e y ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {Get} (\mathrm {key} )} and D e l e t e ( k e y ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {Delete} (\mathrm {key} )} through a L o o k u p ( k e y , command ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {Lookup} (\mathrm {key} ,{\text{command}})} wrapper such that each element in the bucket gets rehashed and its procedure involve as follows:
Linear hashing is an implementation of the hash table which enables dynamic growths or shrinks of the table one bucket at a time.
The performance of a hash table is dependent on the hash function's ability in generating quasi-random numbers ( σ {\displaystyle \sigma } ) for entries in the hash table where K {\displaystyle K} , n {\displaystyle n} and h ( x ) {\displaystyle h(x)} denotes the key, number of buckets and the hash function such that σ = h ( K ) % n {\displaystyle \sigma \ =\ h(K)\ \%\ n} . If the hash function generates the same σ {\displaystyle \sigma } for distinct keys ( K 1 ≠ K 2 , h ( K 1 ) = h ( K 2 ) {\displaystyle K_{1}\neq K_{2},\ h(K_{1})\ =\ h(K_{2})} ), this results in collision, which is dealt with in a variety of ways. The constant time complexity ( O ( 1 ) {\displaystyle O(1)} ) of the operation in a hash table is presupposed on the condition that the hash function doesn't generate colliding indices; thus, the performance of the hash table is directly proportional to the chosen hash function's ability to disperse the indices. However, construction of such a hash function is practically infeasible, that being so, implementations depend on case-specific collision resolution techniques in achieving higher performance.
Hash tables are commonly used to implement many types of in-memory tables. They are used to implement associative arrays.
Hash tables may also be used as disk-based data structures and database indices (such as in dbm) although B-trees are more popular in these applications.
Hash tables can be used to implement caches, auxiliary data tables that are used to speed up the access to data that is primarily stored in slower media. In this application, hash collisions can be handled by discarding one of the two colliding entries—usually erasing the old item that is currently stored in the table and overwriting it with the new item, so every item in the table has a unique hash value.
Hash tables can be used in the implementation of set data structure, which can store unique values without any particular order; set is typically used in testing the membership of a value in the collection, rather than element retrieval.
A transposition table to a complex Hash Table which stores information about each section that has been searched.
Many programming languages provide hash table functionality, either as built-in associative arrays or as standard library modules.
In JavaScript, an "object" is a mutable collection of key-value pairs (called "properties"), where each key is either a string or a guaranteed-unique "symbol"; any other value, when used as a key, is first coerced to a string. Aside from the seven "primitive" data types, every value in JavaScript is an object. ECMAScript 2015 also added the Map data structure, which accepts arbitrary values as keys.
C++11 includes unordered_map in its standard library for storing keys and values of arbitrary types.
Go's built-in map implements a hash table in the form of a type.
Java programming language includes the HashSet, HashMap, LinkedHashSet, and LinkedHashMap generic collections.
Python's built-in dict implements a hash table in the form of a type.
Ruby's built-in Hash uses the open addressing model from Ruby 2.4 onwards.
Rust programming language includes HashMap, HashSet as part of the Rust Standard Library.
The .NET standard library includes HashSet, so it can be used from languages such as C# and VB.NET. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In computing, a hash table, also known as a hash map, is a data structure that implements an associative array, also called a dictionary, which is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an index, also called a hash code, into an array of buckets or slots, from which the desired value can be found. During lookup, the key is hashed and the resulting hash indicates where the corresponding value is stored.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ideally, the hash function will assign each key to a unique bucket, but most hash table designs employ an imperfect hash function, which might cause hash collisions where the hash function generates the same index for more than one key. Such collisions are typically accommodated in some way.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In a well-dimensioned hash table, the average time complexity for each lookup is independent of the number of elements stored in the table. Many hash table designs also allow arbitrary insertions and deletions of key–value pairs, at amortized constant average cost per operation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hashing is an example of a space-time tradeoff. If memory is infinite, the entire key can be used directly as an index to locate its value with a single memory access. On the other hand, if infinite time is available, values can be stored without regard for their keys, and a binary search or linear search can be used to retrieve the element.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In many situations, hash tables turn out to be on average more efficient than search trees or any other table lookup structure. For this reason, they are widely used in many kinds of computer software, particularly for associative arrays, database indexing, caches, and sets.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The idea of hashing arose independently in different places. In January 1953, Hans Peter Luhn wrote an internal IBM memorandum that used hashing with chaining. The first example of open addressing was proposed by A. D. Linh, building on Luhn's memorandum. Around the same time, Gene Amdahl, Elaine M. McGraw, Nathaniel Rochester, and Arthur Samuel of IBM Research implemented hashing for the IBM 701 assembler. Open addressing with linear probing is credited to Amdahl, although Andrey Ershov independently had the same idea. The term \"open addressing\" was coined by W. Wesley Peterson on his article which discusses the problem of search in large files.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first published work on hashing with chaining is credited to Arnold Dumey, who discussed the idea of using remainder modulo a prime as a hash function. The word \"hashing\" was first published in an article by Robert Morris. A theoretical analysis of linear probing was submitted originally by Konheim and Weiss.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "An associative array stores a set of (key, value) pairs and allows insertion, deletion, and lookup (search), with the constraint of unique keys. In the hash table implementation of associative arrays, an array A {\\displaystyle A} of length m {\\displaystyle m} is partially filled with n {\\displaystyle n} elements, where m ≥ n {\\displaystyle m\\geq n} . A value x {\\displaystyle x} gets stored at an index location A [ h ( x ) ] {\\displaystyle A[h(x)]} , where h {\\displaystyle h} is a hash function, and h ( x ) < m {\\displaystyle h(x)<m} . Under reasonable assumptions, hash tables have better time complexity bounds on search, delete, and insert operations in comparison to self-balancing binary search trees.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hash tables are also commonly used to implement sets, by omitting the stored value for each key and merely tracking whether the key is present.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A load factor α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } is a critical statistic of a hash table, and is defined as follows:",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "where",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The performance of the hash table deteriorates in relation to the load factor α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } .",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "To maintain good performance, the software makes sure the load factor α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } never exceeds some constant α max {\\displaystyle \\alpha _{\\max }} .",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Therefore a hash table is resized or rehashed whenever the load factor α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } reaches α max {\\displaystyle \\alpha _{\\max }} .",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A table is also resized if the load factor drops below α max / 4 {\\displaystyle \\alpha _{\\max }/4} .",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "With separate chaining hash tables, each slot of the bucket array stores a pointer to a list or array of data.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Separate chaining hash tables suffer gradually declining performance as the load factor grows, and no fixed point beyond which resizing is absolutely needed.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "With separate chaining, the value of α max {\\displaystyle \\alpha _{\\max }} that gives best performance is typically between 1 and 3.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "With open addressing, each slot of the bucket array holds exactly one item. Therefore an open-addressed hash table cannot have a load factor greater than 1.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The performance of open addressing becomes very bad when the load factor approaches 1.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Therefore a hash table that uses open addressing must be resized or rehashed if the load factor α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } approaches 1.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "With open addressing, Acceptable figures of max load factor α max {\\displaystyle \\alpha _{\\max }} should range around 0.6 to 0.75.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A hash function h {\\displaystyle h} maps the universe U {\\displaystyle U} of keys h : U → { 0 , . . . , m − 1 } {\\displaystyle h:U\\rightarrow \\{0,...,m-1\\}} to array indices or slots within the table for each h ( x ) ∈ 0 , . . . , m − 1 {\\displaystyle h(x)\\in {0,...,m-1}} where x ∈ S {\\displaystyle x\\in S} and m < n {\\displaystyle m<n} . The conventional implementations of hash functions are based on the integer universe assumption that all elements of the table stem from the universe U = { 0 , . . . , u − 1 } {\\displaystyle U=\\{0,...,u-1\\}} , where the bit length of u {\\displaystyle u} is confined within the word size of a computer architecture.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A perfect hash function h {\\displaystyle h} is defined as an injective function such that each element x {\\displaystyle x} in S {\\displaystyle S} maps to a unique value in 0 , . . . , m − 1 {\\displaystyle {0,...,m-1}} . A perfect hash function can be created if all the keys are known ahead of time.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The schemes of hashing used in integer universe assumption include hashing by division, hashing by multiplication, universal hashing, dynamic perfect hashing, and static perfect hashing. However, hashing by division is the commonly used scheme.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The scheme in hashing by division is as follows:",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Where M {\\displaystyle M} is the hash digest of x ∈ S {\\displaystyle x\\in S} and m {\\displaystyle m} is the size of the table.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The scheme in hashing by multiplication is as follows:",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Where A {\\displaystyle A} is a real-valued constant and m {\\displaystyle m} is the size of the table. An advantage of the hashing by multiplication is that the m {\\displaystyle m} is not critical. Although any value A {\\displaystyle A} produces a hash function, Donald Knuth suggests using the golden ratio.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Uniform distribution of the hash values is a fundamental requirement of a hash function. A non-uniform distribution increases the number of collisions and the cost of resolving them. Uniformity is sometimes difficult to ensure by design, but may be evaluated empirically using statistical tests, e.g., a Pearson's chi-squared test for discrete uniform distributions.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The distribution needs to be uniform only for table sizes that occur in the application. In particular, if one uses dynamic resizing with exact doubling and halving of the table size, then the hash function needs to be uniform only when the size is a power of two. Here the index can be computed as some range of bits of the hash function. On the other hand, some hashing algorithms prefer to have the size be a prime number.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "For open addressing schemes, the hash function should also avoid clustering, the mapping of two or more keys to consecutive slots. Such clustering may cause the lookup cost to skyrocket, even if the load factor is low and collisions are infrequent. The popular multiplicative hash is claimed to have particularly poor clustering behavior.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "K-independent hashing offers a way to prove a certain hash function does not have bad keysets for a given type of hashtable. A number of K-independence results are known for collision resolution schemes such as linear probing and cuckoo hashing. Since K-independence can prove a hash function works, one can then focus on finding the fastest possible such hash function.",
"title": "Hash function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "A search algorithm that uses hashing consists of two parts. The first part is computing a hash function which transforms the search key into an array index. The ideal case is such that no two search keys hashes to the same array index. However, this is not always the case and is impossible to guarantee for unseen given data. Hence the second part of the algorithm is collision resolution. The two common methods for collision resolution are separate chaining and open addressing.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In separate chaining, the process involves building a linked list with key–value pair for each search array index. The collided items are chained together through a single linked list, which can be traversed to access the item with a unique search key. Collision resolution through chaining with linked list is a common method of implementation of hash tables. Let T {\\displaystyle T} and x {\\displaystyle x} be the hash table and the node respectively, the operation involves as follows:",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "If the element is comparable either numerically or lexically, and inserted into the list by maintaining the total order, it results in faster termination of the unsuccessful searches.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "If the keys are ordered, it could be efficient to use \"self-organizing\" concepts such as using a self-balancing binary search tree, through which the theoretical worst case could be brought down to O ( log n ) {\\displaystyle O(\\log {n})} , although it introduces additional complexities.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In dynamic perfect hashing, two-level hash tables are used to reduce the look-up complexity to be a guaranteed O ( 1 ) {\\displaystyle O(1)} in the worst case. In this technique, the buckets of k {\\displaystyle k} entries are organized as perfect hash tables with k 2 {\\displaystyle k^{2}} slots providing constant worst-case lookup time, and low amortized time for insertion. A study shows array-based separate chaining to be 97% more performant when compared to the standard linked list method under heavy load.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Techniques such as using fusion tree for each buckets also result in constant time for all operations with high probability.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The linked list of separate chaining implementation may not be cache-conscious due to spatial locality—locality of reference—when the nodes of the linked list are scattered across memory, thus the list traversal during insert and search may entail CPU cache inefficiencies.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In cache-conscious variants, a dynamic array found to be more cache-friendly is used in the place where a linked list or self-balancing binary search trees is usually deployed for collision resolution through separate chaining, since the contiguous allocation pattern of the array could be exploited by hardware-cache prefetchers—such as translation lookaside buffer—resulting in reduced access time and memory consumption.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Open addressing is another collision resolution technique in which every entry record is stored in the bucket array itself, and the hash resolution is performed through probing. When a new entry has to be inserted, the buckets are examined, starting with the hashed-to slot and proceeding in some probe sequence, until an unoccupied slot is found. When searching for an entry, the buckets are scanned in the same sequence, until either the target record is found, or an unused array slot is found, which indicates an unsuccessful search.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Well-known probe sequences include:",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The performance of open addressing may be slower compared to separate chaining since the probe sequence increases when the load factor α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } approaches 1. The probing results in an infinite loop if the load factor reaches 1, in the case of a completely filled table. The average cost of linear probing depends on the hash function's ability to distribute the elements uniformly throughout the table to avoid clustering, since formation of clusters would result in increased search time.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Since the slots are located in successive locations, linear probing could lead to better utilization of CPU cache due to locality of references resulting in reduced memory latency.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Coalesced hashing is a hybrid of both separate chaining and open addressing in which the buckets or nodes link within the table. The algorithm is ideally suited for fixed memory allocation. The collision in coalesced hashing is resolved by identifying the largest-indexed empty slot on the hash table, then the colliding value is inserted into that slot. The bucket is also linked to the inserted node's slot which contains its colliding hash address.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Cuckoo hashing is a form of open addressing collision resolution technique which guarantees O ( 1 ) {\\displaystyle O(1)} worst-case lookup complexity and constant amortized time for insertions. The collision is resolved through maintaining two hash tables, each having its own hashing function, and collided slot gets replaced with the given item, and the preoccupied element of the slot gets displaced into the other hash table. The process continues until every key has its own spot in the empty buckets of the tables; if the procedure enters into infinite loop—which is identified through maintaining a threshold loop counter—both hash tables get rehashed with newer hash functions and the procedure continues.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Hopscotch hashing is an open addressing based algorithm which combines the elements of cuckoo hashing, linear probing and chaining through the notion of a neighbourhood of buckets—the subsequent buckets around any given occupied bucket, also called a \"virtual\" bucket. The algorithm is designed to deliver better performance when the load factor of the hash table grows beyond 90%; it also provides high throughput in concurrent settings, thus well suited for implementing resizable concurrent hash table. The neighbourhood characteristic of hopscotch hashing guarantees a property that, the cost of finding the desired item from any given buckets within the neighbourhood is very close to the cost of finding it in the bucket itself; the algorithm attempts to be an item into its neighbourhood—with a possible cost involved in displacing other items.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Each bucket within the hash table includes an additional \"hop-information\"—an H-bit bit array for indicating the relative distance of the item which was originally hashed into the current virtual bucket within H-1 entries. Let k {\\displaystyle k} and B k {\\displaystyle Bk} be the key to be inserted and bucket to which the key is hashed into respectively; several cases are involved in the insertion procedure such that the neighbourhood property of the algorithm is vowed: if B k {\\displaystyle Bk} is empty, the element is inserted, and the leftmost bit of bitmap is set to 1; if not empty, linear probing is used for finding an empty slot in the table, the bitmap of the bucket gets updated followed by the insertion; if the empty slot is not within the range of the neighbourhood, i.e. H-1, subsequent swap and hop-info bit array manipulation of each bucket is performed in accordance with its neighbourhood invariant properties.",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Robin Hood hashing is an open addressing based collision resolution algorithm; the collisions are resolved through favouring the displacement of the element that is farthest—or longest probe sequence length (PSL)—from its \"home location\" i.e. the bucket to which the item was hashed into. Although Robin Hood hashing does not change the theoretical search cost, it significantly affects the variance of the distribution of the items on the buckets, i.e. dealing with cluster formation in the hash table. Each node within the hash table that uses Robin Hood hashing should be augmented to store an extra PSL value. Let x {\\displaystyle x} be the key to be inserted, x . p s l {\\displaystyle x.psl} be the (incremental) PSL length of x {\\displaystyle x} , T {\\displaystyle T} be the hash table and j {\\displaystyle j} be the index, the insertion procedure is as follows:",
"title": "Collision resolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Repeated insertions cause the number of entries in a hash table to grow, which consequently increases the load factor; to maintain the amortized O ( 1 ) {\\displaystyle O(1)} performance of the lookup and insertion operations, a hash table is dynamically resized and the items of the tables are rehashed into the buckets of the new hash table, since the items cannot be copied over as varying table sizes results in different hash value due to modulo operation. If a hash table becomes \"too empty\" after deleting some elements, resizing may be performed to avoid excessive memory usage.",
"title": "Dynamic resizing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Generally, a new hash table with a size double that of the original hash table gets allocated privately and every item in the original hash table gets moved to the newly allocated one by computing the hash values of the items followed by the insertion operation. Rehashing is simple, but computationally expensive.",
"title": "Dynamic resizing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Some hash table implementations, notably in real-time systems, cannot pay the price of enlarging the hash table all at once, because it may interrupt time-critical operations. If one cannot avoid dynamic resizing, a solution is to perform the resizing gradually to avoid storage blip—typically at 50% of new table's size—during rehashing and to avoid memory fragmentation that triggers heap compaction due to deallocation of large memory blocks caused by the old hash table. In such case, the rehashing operation is done incrementally through extending prior memory block allocated for the old hash table such that the buckets of the hash table remain unaltered. A common approach for amortized rehashing involves maintaining two hash functions h old {\\displaystyle h_{\\text{old}}} and h new {\\displaystyle h_{\\text{new}}} . The process of rehashing a bucket's items in accordance with the new hash function is termed as cleaning, which is implemented through command pattern by encapsulating the operations such as A d d ( k e y ) {\\displaystyle \\mathrm {Add} (\\mathrm {key} )} , G e t ( k e y ) {\\displaystyle \\mathrm {Get} (\\mathrm {key} )} and D e l e t e ( k e y ) {\\displaystyle \\mathrm {Delete} (\\mathrm {key} )} through a L o o k u p ( k e y , command ) {\\displaystyle \\mathrm {Lookup} (\\mathrm {key} ,{\\text{command}})} wrapper such that each element in the bucket gets rehashed and its procedure involve as follows:",
"title": "Dynamic resizing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Linear hashing is an implementation of the hash table which enables dynamic growths or shrinks of the table one bucket at a time.",
"title": "Dynamic resizing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The performance of a hash table is dependent on the hash function's ability in generating quasi-random numbers ( σ {\\displaystyle \\sigma } ) for entries in the hash table where K {\\displaystyle K} , n {\\displaystyle n} and h ( x ) {\\displaystyle h(x)} denotes the key, number of buckets and the hash function such that σ = h ( K ) % n {\\displaystyle \\sigma \\ =\\ h(K)\\ \\%\\ n} . If the hash function generates the same σ {\\displaystyle \\sigma } for distinct keys ( K 1 ≠ K 2 , h ( K 1 ) = h ( K 2 ) {\\displaystyle K_{1}\\neq K_{2},\\ h(K_{1})\\ =\\ h(K_{2})} ), this results in collision, which is dealt with in a variety of ways. The constant time complexity ( O ( 1 ) {\\displaystyle O(1)} ) of the operation in a hash table is presupposed on the condition that the hash function doesn't generate colliding indices; thus, the performance of the hash table is directly proportional to the chosen hash function's ability to disperse the indices. However, construction of such a hash function is practically infeasible, that being so, implementations depend on case-specific collision resolution techniques in achieving higher performance.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Hash tables are commonly used to implement many types of in-memory tables. They are used to implement associative arrays.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Hash tables may also be used as disk-based data structures and database indices (such as in dbm) although B-trees are more popular in these applications.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Hash tables can be used to implement caches, auxiliary data tables that are used to speed up the access to data that is primarily stored in slower media. In this application, hash collisions can be handled by discarding one of the two colliding entries—usually erasing the old item that is currently stored in the table and overwriting it with the new item, so every item in the table has a unique hash value.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Hash tables can be used in the implementation of set data structure, which can store unique values without any particular order; set is typically used in testing the membership of a value in the collection, rather than element retrieval.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "A transposition table to a complex Hash Table which stores information about each section that has been searched.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Many programming languages provide hash table functionality, either as built-in associative arrays or as standard library modules.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In JavaScript, an \"object\" is a mutable collection of key-value pairs (called \"properties\"), where each key is either a string or a guaranteed-unique \"symbol\"; any other value, when used as a key, is first coerced to a string. Aside from the seven \"primitive\" data types, every value in JavaScript is an object. ECMAScript 2015 also added the Map data structure, which accepts arbitrary values as keys.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "C++11 includes unordered_map in its standard library for storing keys and values of arbitrary types.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Go's built-in map implements a hash table in the form of a type.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Java programming language includes the HashSet, HashMap, LinkedHashSet, and LinkedHashMap generic collections.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Python's built-in dict implements a hash table in the form of a type.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Ruby's built-in Hash uses the open addressing model from Ruby 2.4 onwards.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Rust programming language includes HashMap, HashSet as part of the Rust Standard Library.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The .NET standard library includes HashSet, so it can be used from languages such as C# and VB.NET.",
"title": "Implementations"
}
]
| In computing, a hash table, also known as a hash map, is a data structure that implements an associative array, also called a dictionary, which is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an index, also called a hash code, into an array of buckets or slots, from which the desired value can be found. During lookup, the key is hashed and the resulting hash indicates where the corresponding value is stored. Ideally, the hash function will assign each key to a unique bucket, but most hash table designs employ an imperfect hash function, which might cause hash collisions where the hash function generates the same index for more than one key. Such collisions are typically accommodated in some way. In a well-dimensioned hash table, the average time complexity for each lookup is independent of the number of elements stored in the table. Many hash table designs also allow arbitrary insertions and deletions of key–value pairs, at amortized constant average cost per operation. Hashing is an example of a space-time tradeoff. If memory is infinite, the entire key can be used directly as an index to locate its value with a single memory access. On the other hand, if infinite time is available, values can be stored without regard for their keys, and a binary search or linear search can be used to retrieve the element. In many situations, hash tables turn out to be on average more efficient than search trees or any other table lookup structure. For this reason, they are widely used in many kinds of computer software, particularly for associative arrays, database indexing, caches, and sets. | 2001-09-27T02:39:53Z | 2023-12-28T20:57:07Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table |
13,834 | "Hello, World!" program | A "Hello, World!" program is generally a simple computer program which outputs (or displays) to the screen (often the console) a message similar to "Hello, World!" while ignoring any user input. A small piece of code in most general-purpose programming languages, this program is used to illustrate a language's basic syntax. A "Hello, World!" program is often the first written by a student of a new programming language, but such a program can also be used as a sanity check to ensure that the computer software intended to compile or run source code is correctly installed, and that its operator understands how to use it.
While small test programs have existed since the development of programmable computers, the tradition of using the phrase "Hello, World!" as a test message was influenced by an example program in the 1978 book The C Programming Language, with likely earlier use in BCPL. The example program from the book prints "hello, world", and was inherited from a 1974 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial:
In the above example, the main( ) function defines where the program should start executing. The function body consists of a single statement, a call to the printf() function, which stands for "print formatted"; it outputs to the console whatever is passed to it as the parameter, in this case the string "hello, world".
The C-language version was preceded by Kernighan's own 1972 A Tutorial Introduction to the Language B, where the first known version of the program is found in an example used to illustrate external variables:
The program above prints hello, world! on the terminal, including a newline character. The phrase is divided into multiple variables because in B a character constant is limited to four ASCII characters. The previous example in the tutorial printed hi! on the terminal, and the phrase hello, world! was introduced as a slightly longer greeting that required several character constants for its expression.
The Jargon File reports that "hello, world" instead originated in 1967 with the language BCPL. Outside computing, use of the exact phrase began over a decade prior; it was the catchphrase of New York radio disc jockey William B. Williams beginning in the 1950s.
"Hello, World!" programs vary in complexity between different languages. In some languages, particularly scripting languages, the "Hello, World!" program can be written as a single statement, while in others (particularly many low-level languages) there can be many more statements required. For example, in Python, to print the string Hello, World! followed by a newline, one only needs to write print("Hello, World!"). In contrast, the equivalent code in C++ requires the import of the input/output software library, the manual declaration of an entry point, and the explicit instruction that the output string should be sent to the standard output stream.
The phrase "Hello, World!" has seen various deviations in casing and punctuation, such as the capitalization of the leading H and W, and the presence of the comma or exclamation mark. Some devices limit the format to specific variations, such as all-capitalized versions on systems that support only capital letters, while some esoteric programming languages may have to print a slightly modified string. For example, the first non-trivial Malbolge program printed "HEllO WORld", this having been determined to be good enough. Other human languages have been used as the output; for example, a tutorial for the Go programming language outputted both English and Chinese or Japanese characters, demonstrating the programming language's built-in Unicode support. Another notable example is the Rust programming language, whose management system automatically inserts a "Hello, World" program when creating new projects.
Some languages change the functionality of the "Hello, World!" program while maintaining the spirit of demonstrating a simple example. Functional programming languages, such as Lisp, ML, and Haskell, tend to substitute a factorial program for "Hello, World!", as functional programming emphasizes recursive techniques, whereas the original examples emphasize I/O, which violates the spirit of pure functional programming by producing side effects. Languages otherwise capable of printing "Hello, World!" (Assembly, C, VHDL) may also be used in embedded systems, where text output is either difficult (requiring additional components or communication with another computer) or nonexistent. For devices such as microcontrollers, field-programmable gate arrays, and CPLDs, "Hello, World!" may thus be substituted with a blinking LED, which demonstrates timing and interaction between components.
The Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions provide the "Hello, World!" program through their software package manager systems, which can be invoked with the command hello. It serves as a sanity check and a simple example of installing a software package. For developers, it provides an example of creating a .deb package, either traditionally or using debhelper, and the version of hello used, GNU Hello, serves as an example of writing a GNU program.
Variations of the "Hello, World!" program that produce a graphical output (as opposed to text output) have also been shown. Sun demonstrated a "Hello, World!" program in Java based on scalable vector graphics, and the XL programming language features a spinning Earth "Hello, World!" using 3D computer graphics. Mark Guzdial and Elliot Soloway have suggested that the "hello, world" test message may be outdated now that graphics and sound can be manipulated as easily as text.
"Time to hello world" (TTHW) is the time it takes to author a "Hello, World!" program in a given programming language. This is one measure of a programming language's ease of use; since the program is meant as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the language, a more complex "Hello, World!" program may indicate that the programming language is less approachable. The concept has been extended beyond programming languages to APIs, as a measure of how simple it is for a new developer to get a basic example working; a shorter time indicates an easier API for developers to adopt. | [
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"title": ""
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"text": "While small test programs have existed since the development of programmable computers, the tradition of using the phrase \"Hello, World!\" as a test message was influenced by an example program in the 1978 book The C Programming Language, with likely earlier use in BCPL. The example program from the book prints \"hello, world\", and was inherited from a 1974 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial:",
"title": "History"
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{
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"text": "In the above example, the main( ) function defines where the program should start executing. The function body consists of a single statement, a call to the printf() function, which stands for \"print formatted\"; it outputs to the console whatever is passed to it as the parameter, in this case the string \"hello, world\".",
"title": "History"
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{
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"text": "The C-language version was preceded by Kernighan's own 1972 A Tutorial Introduction to the Language B, where the first known version of the program is found in an example used to illustrate external variables:",
"title": "History"
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{
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"text": "The program above prints hello, world! on the terminal, including a newline character. The phrase is divided into multiple variables because in B a character constant is limited to four ASCII characters. The previous example in the tutorial printed hi! on the terminal, and the phrase hello, world! was introduced as a slightly longer greeting that required several character constants for its expression.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Jargon File reports that \"hello, world\" instead originated in 1967 with the language BCPL. Outside computing, use of the exact phrase began over a decade prior; it was the catchphrase of New York radio disc jockey William B. Williams beginning in the 1950s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "\"Hello, World!\" programs vary in complexity between different languages. In some languages, particularly scripting languages, the \"Hello, World!\" program can be written as a single statement, while in others (particularly many low-level languages) there can be many more statements required. For example, in Python, to print the string Hello, World! followed by a newline, one only needs to write print(\"Hello, World!\"). In contrast, the equivalent code in C++ requires the import of the input/output software library, the manual declaration of an entry point, and the explicit instruction that the output string should be sent to the standard output stream.",
"title": "Variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The phrase \"Hello, World!\" has seen various deviations in casing and punctuation, such as the capitalization of the leading H and W, and the presence of the comma or exclamation mark. Some devices limit the format to specific variations, such as all-capitalized versions on systems that support only capital letters, while some esoteric programming languages may have to print a slightly modified string. For example, the first non-trivial Malbolge program printed \"HEllO WORld\", this having been determined to be good enough. Other human languages have been used as the output; for example, a tutorial for the Go programming language outputted both English and Chinese or Japanese characters, demonstrating the programming language's built-in Unicode support. Another notable example is the Rust programming language, whose management system automatically inserts a \"Hello, World\" program when creating new projects.",
"title": "Variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Some languages change the functionality of the \"Hello, World!\" program while maintaining the spirit of demonstrating a simple example. Functional programming languages, such as Lisp, ML, and Haskell, tend to substitute a factorial program for \"Hello, World!\", as functional programming emphasizes recursive techniques, whereas the original examples emphasize I/O, which violates the spirit of pure functional programming by producing side effects. Languages otherwise capable of printing \"Hello, World!\" (Assembly, C, VHDL) may also be used in embedded systems, where text output is either difficult (requiring additional components or communication with another computer) or nonexistent. For devices such as microcontrollers, field-programmable gate arrays, and CPLDs, \"Hello, World!\" may thus be substituted with a blinking LED, which demonstrates timing and interaction between components.",
"title": "Variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions provide the \"Hello, World!\" program through their software package manager systems, which can be invoked with the command hello. It serves as a sanity check and a simple example of installing a software package. For developers, it provides an example of creating a .deb package, either traditionally or using debhelper, and the version of hello used, GNU Hello, serves as an example of writing a GNU program.",
"title": "Variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Variations of the \"Hello, World!\" program that produce a graphical output (as opposed to text output) have also been shown. Sun demonstrated a \"Hello, World!\" program in Java based on scalable vector graphics, and the XL programming language features a spinning Earth \"Hello, World!\" using 3D computer graphics. Mark Guzdial and Elliot Soloway have suggested that the \"hello, world\" test message may be outdated now that graphics and sound can be manipulated as easily as text.",
"title": "Variations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "\"Time to hello world\" (TTHW) is the time it takes to author a \"Hello, World!\" program in a given programming language. This is one measure of a programming language's ease of use; since the program is meant as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the language, a more complex \"Hello, World!\" program may indicate that the programming language is less approachable. The concept has been extended beyond programming languages to APIs, as a measure of how simple it is for a new developer to get a basic example working; a shorter time indicates an easier API for developers to adopt.",
"title": "Time to Hello World"
}
]
| A "Hello, World!" program is generally a simple computer program which outputs to the screen a message similar to "Hello, World!" while ignoring any user input. A small piece of code in most general-purpose programming languages, this program is used to illustrate a language's basic syntax. A "Hello, World!" program is often the first written by a student of a new programming language, but such a program can also be used as a sanity check to ensure that the computer software intended to compile or run source code is correctly installed, and that its operator understands how to use it. | 2001-11-12T17:19:43Z | 2023-12-25T22:34:42Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Hello,_World!%22_program |
13,839 | Heavy metal | Heavy metal may refer to: | [
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"text": "Heavy metal may refer to:",
"title": ""
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| Heavy metal may refer to: Heavy metals, a loose category of relatively dense metals and metalloids
Toxic heavy metal, any heavy metal chemical element of environmental concern
Heavy metal music, a genre of rock music
Heavy metal genres
Heavy Metal (magazine), an American fantasy comic book magazine | 2001-11-13T14:27:40Z | 2023-11-20T04:45:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal |
13,845 | History of Hebrew grammar | Hebrew grammar is the grammar of the Hebrew language.
The Masoretes in the 7th to 11th centuries laid the foundation for grammatical analysis of Hebrew. As early as the 9th century Judah ibn Kuraish discussed the relationship between Arabic and Hebrew. In the 10th century, Aaron ben Moses ben Asher refined the Tiberian vocalization, an extinct pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible.
The first treatises on Hebrew grammar appear in the High Middle Ages, in the context of Midrash (a method of interpreting and studying the Hebrew Bible). The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid Baghdad around the 7th century. The Diqduq (10th century) is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.
Solomon ibn Gabirol in the 11th century composed a versified Hebrew grammar, consisting of 400 verses divided into ten parts. In the 12th century, Ibn Barun compared the Hebrew language with Arabic in the Islamic grammatical tradition. 11th to 12th century grammarians of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain included Judah ben David Hayyuj, Jonah ibn Janah, Abraham ibn Ezra, Joseph Kimhi, Moses Kimhi and David Kimhi. Ibn Ezra gives a list of the oldest Hebrew grammarians in the introduction to his Moznayim (1140). Profiat Duran published an influential grammar in 1403.
Judah Messer Leon's 1454 grammar is a product of the Italian Renaissance. Hebrew grammars by Christian authors appeared during the Renaissance. Hieronymus Buclidius, a friend of Erasmus, gave more than 20,000 francs to establish a branch of Hebrew studies at Louvain in Flanders. Elijah Levita was called to the chair of Hebrew at the University of Paris. Cardinal Grimani and other dignitaries, both of the state and of the Church, studied Hebrew and the Cabala with Jewish teachers; even the warrior Guido Rangoni attempted the Hebrew language with the aid of Jacob Mantino (1526). Pico de la Mirandola (d. 1494) was the first to collect Hebrew manuscripts, and Reuchlin was the first Christian author to write a vocabulary and short grammar of the Hebrew language (1506). A more detailed grammar was published in 1590 by Otto Walper. Conrad Gesner (d. 1565) was the first Christian to compile a catalogue of Hebrew books. Paul Fagius and Elia Levita operated the first Hebrew printing office in the 1540s. Levita also compiled the first Hebrew-Yiddish dictionary.
Through the influence of Johannes Buxtorf (d. 1629) a serious attempt was made to understand the post-Biblical literature, and many of the most important works were translated into Latin. Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar appeared in 1813.
The Hebrew language is subdivided by era, with significant differences apparent between the varieties. All varieties, from Biblical to Modern, use a typically Semitic templatic morphology with triconsonantal stems, though Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew have significant borrowed components of the lexicon that do not fit into this pattern. Verbal morphology has remained relatively unchanged, though Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew have lost some modal distinctions of Biblical Hebrew and created others through the use of auxiliary verbs.
Significant syntactic changes have arisen in Modern Hebrew as a result of non-Semitic substrate influences. In particular:
However, most Biblical Hebrew constructions are still permissible in Modern Hebrew in formal, literary, archaic or poetic style.
Modern Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew | [
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Masoretes in the 7th to 11th centuries laid the foundation for grammatical analysis of Hebrew. As early as the 9th century Judah ibn Kuraish discussed the relationship between Arabic and Hebrew. In the 10th century, Aaron ben Moses ben Asher refined the Tiberian vocalization, an extinct pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible.",
"title": "History of studies in Hebrew grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The first treatises on Hebrew grammar appear in the High Middle Ages, in the context of Midrash (a method of interpreting and studying the Hebrew Bible). The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid Baghdad around the 7th century. The Diqduq (10th century) is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.",
"title": "History of studies in Hebrew grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Solomon ibn Gabirol in the 11th century composed a versified Hebrew grammar, consisting of 400 verses divided into ten parts. In the 12th century, Ibn Barun compared the Hebrew language with Arabic in the Islamic grammatical tradition. 11th to 12th century grammarians of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain included Judah ben David Hayyuj, Jonah ibn Janah, Abraham ibn Ezra, Joseph Kimhi, Moses Kimhi and David Kimhi. Ibn Ezra gives a list of the oldest Hebrew grammarians in the introduction to his Moznayim (1140). Profiat Duran published an influential grammar in 1403.",
"title": "History of studies in Hebrew grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Judah Messer Leon's 1454 grammar is a product of the Italian Renaissance. Hebrew grammars by Christian authors appeared during the Renaissance. Hieronymus Buclidius, a friend of Erasmus, gave more than 20,000 francs to establish a branch of Hebrew studies at Louvain in Flanders. Elijah Levita was called to the chair of Hebrew at the University of Paris. Cardinal Grimani and other dignitaries, both of the state and of the Church, studied Hebrew and the Cabala with Jewish teachers; even the warrior Guido Rangoni attempted the Hebrew language with the aid of Jacob Mantino (1526). Pico de la Mirandola (d. 1494) was the first to collect Hebrew manuscripts, and Reuchlin was the first Christian author to write a vocabulary and short grammar of the Hebrew language (1506). A more detailed grammar was published in 1590 by Otto Walper. Conrad Gesner (d. 1565) was the first Christian to compile a catalogue of Hebrew books. Paul Fagius and Elia Levita operated the first Hebrew printing office in the 1540s. Levita also compiled the first Hebrew-Yiddish dictionary.",
"title": "History of studies in Hebrew grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Through the influence of Johannes Buxtorf (d. 1629) a serious attempt was made to understand the post-Biblical literature, and many of the most important works were translated into Latin. Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar appeared in 1813.",
"title": "History of studies in Hebrew grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Hebrew language is subdivided by era, with significant differences apparent between the varieties. All varieties, from Biblical to Modern, use a typically Semitic templatic morphology with triconsonantal stems, though Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew have significant borrowed components of the lexicon that do not fit into this pattern. Verbal morphology has remained relatively unchanged, though Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew have lost some modal distinctions of Biblical Hebrew and created others through the use of auxiliary verbs.",
"title": "Eras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Significant syntactic changes have arisen in Modern Hebrew as a result of non-Semitic substrate influences. In particular:",
"title": "Eras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "However, most Biblical Hebrew constructions are still permissible in Modern Hebrew in formal, literary, archaic or poetic style.",
"title": "Eras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Modern Hebrew",
"title": "Bibliography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Biblical Hebrew",
"title": "Bibliography"
}
]
| Hebrew grammar is the grammar of the Hebrew language. | 2001-09-27T21:10:12Z | 2023-11-06T01:06:01Z | [
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"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Hebrew language",
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"Template:Language grammars",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Further information",
"Template:Harvcoltxt",
"Template:Cite book",
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hebrew_grammar |
13,846 | Modern Hebrew phonology | Modern Hebrew has 25 to 27 consonants and 5 to 10 vowels, depending on the speaker and the analysis.
Hebrew has been used primarily for liturgical, literary, and scholarly purposes for most of the past two millennia. As a consequence, its pronunciation was strongly influenced by the vernacular of individual Jewish communities. With the revival of Hebrew as a native language, and especially with the establishment of Israel, the pronunciation of the modern language rapidly coalesced.
The two main accents of modern Hebrew are Oriental and Non-Oriental. Oriental Hebrew was chosen as the preferred accent for Israel by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, but has since declined in popularity. The description in this article follows the language as it is pronounced by native Israeli speakers of the younger generations.
According to the Academy of the Hebrew Language, in the 1880s (the time of the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Hebrew revival) there were three groups of Hebrew regional accents: Ashkenazi (Eastern European), Sephardi (Southern European), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern, Iranian, and North African). Over time features of these systems of pronunciation merged, and at present scholars identify two main pronunciations of modern (i.e., not liturgical) Hebrew: Oriental and Non-Oriental. Oriental Hebrew displays traits of an Arabic substrate. Elder oriental speakers tend to use an alveolar trill [r], preserve the pharyngeal consonants /ħ/ and (less commonly) /ʕ/, preserve gemination, and pronounce /e/ in some places where non-Oriental speakers do not have a vowel (the shva na). A limited number of Oriental speakers, for example elderly Yemenite Jews, even maintain some pharyngealized (emphatic) consonants also found in Arabic, such as /sˤ/ for Biblical /tsʼ/. Israeli Arabs ordinarily use the Oriental pronunciation, vocalising the ‘ayin (ע) as /ʕ/, resh (ר) as [r] and, less frequently, the ḥet (ח) as /ħ/.
Non-Oriental (and General Israeli) pronunciation lost the emphatic and pharyngeal sounds of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Indo-European languages (Germanic and Slavic for Ashkenazim and Romance for Sephardim). The pharyngeals /ħ/ and /ʕ/ are preserved by older Oriental speakers. Dialectally, Georgian Jews pronounce /ʕ/ as [qʼ], while Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it [ŋ], a pronunciation that can also be found in the Italian tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. However, according to Sephardic and Ashkenazic authorities, such as the Mishnah Berurah and the Shulchan Aruch and Mishneh Torah, /ʕ/ is the proper pronunciation. Thus, it is still pronounced as such by some Sephardim and Ashkenazim.
The classical pronunciation associated with the consonant ר rêš was a flap [ɾ], and was grammatically ungeminable. In most dialects of Hebrew among the Jewish diaspora, it remained a flap or a trill [r]. However, in some Ashkenazi dialects of northern Europe it was a uvular rhotic, either a trill [ʀ] or a fricative [ʁ]. This was because most native dialects of Yiddish were spoken that way, and the liturgical Hebrew of these speakers carried the Yiddish pronunciation. Some Iraqi Jews also pronounce rêš as a guttural [ʀ], reflecting Baghdad Jewish Arabic.
Though an Ashkenazi Jew in the Russian Empire, the Zionist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda based his Standard Hebrew on Sephardi Hebrew, originally spoken in Spain, and therefore recommended an alveolar [r]. However, just like him, the first waves of Jews to resettle in the Holy Land were Ashkenazi, and Standard Hebrew would come to be spoken with their native pronunciation. Consequently, by now nearly all Israeli Jews pronounce the consonant ר rêš as a uvular approximant ([ʁ̞]), which also exists in Yiddish.
Many Jewish immigrants to Israel spoke a variety of Arabic in their countries of origin, and pronounced the Hebrew rhotic consonant /ʁ/ as an alveolar trill, identical to Arabic ر rāʾ, and which followed the conventions of old Hebrew. In modern Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi poetry and folk music, as well as in the standard (or "standardised") Hebrew used in the Israeli media, an alveolar rhotic is sometimes used.
The following table lists the consonant phonemes of Israeli Hebrew in IPA transcription:
For many young speakers, obstruents assimilate in voicing. Voiceless obstruents (stops/affricates /p, t, ts, tʃ, k/ and fricatives /f, s, ʃ, χ/) become voiced ([b, d, dz, dʒ, ɡ, v, z, ʒ, ʁ]) when they appear immediately before voiced obstruents, and vice versa. For example:
/n/ is pronounced [ŋ] before velar consonants.
Standard Israeli Hebrew (SIH) phonology, based on the Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation tradition, has a number of differences from Biblical Hebrew (BH) and Mishnaic Hebrew (MH) in the form of splits and mergers.
The consonant pairs [b]–[v] (archaically [β]), [k]–[χ] (archaically [x]), and [p]–[f] (archaically [ɸ]) were historically allophonic, as a consequence of a phenomenon of spirantisation known as begadkefat under the influence of the Aramaic language on BH/MH. In Modern Hebrew, the above six sounds are phonemic.
The full inventory of Hebrew consonants which undergo and/or underwent spirantisation are:
However, the above-mentioned allophonic alternation of BH/MH [t]–[θ], [d]–[ð] and [ɡ]–[ɣ] was lost in Modern Hebrew, with these six allophones merging into simple /t, d, ɡ/.
These phonemic changes were partly due to the mergers noted above, to the loss of consonant gemination, which had distinguished stops from their fricative allophones in intervocalic position, and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ and non-syllable-initial /p/ and /b/ in loan words. Spirantization still occurs in verbal and nominal derivation, but now the alternations /b/–/v/, /k/–/χ/, and /p/–/f/ are phonemic rather than allophonic.
In Traditional Hebrew words can end with an H consonant, e.g. when the suffix "-ah" is used, meaning "her" (see Mappiq). The final H sound is hardly ever pronounced in Modern Hebrew. However, the final H with Mappiq still retains the guttural characteristic that it should take a patach and render the pronunciation /a(h)/ at the end of the word, for example, גָּבוֹהַּ gavoa(h) ("tall").
Modern Hebrew has a simple five-vowel system.
Long vowels may occur where two identical vowels were historically separated by a pharyngeal or glottal consonant (this separation is preserved in writing, and is still pronounced by some), and the second was not stressed. (Where the second was stressed, the result is a sequence of two short vowels.) They also often occur when morphology brings two identical vowels together, but they are not predictable in that environment.
Any of the five short vowels may be realized as a schwa [ə] when far from lexical stress.
There are two diphthongs, /aj/ and /ej/.
In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (chataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in Modern Hebrew, except that /e/ is often pronounced [ej] as in Ashkenazi Hebrew.
Vowel length in Modern Hebrew is environmentally determined and not phonemic, it tends to be affected by the degree of stress, and pretonic lengthening may also occur, mostly in open syllables. When a glottal is lost, a two-vowel sequence arises, and they may be merged into a single long vowel:
Modern pronunciation does not follow traditional use of the niqqud (diacritic) "shva". In Modern Hebrew, words written with a shva may be pronounced with either /e/ or without any vowel, and this does not correspond well to how the word was pronounced historically. For example, the first shva in the word קִמַּטְתְּ 'you (fem.) crumpled' is pronounced /e/ (/kiˈmatet/) though historically it was silent, whereas the shva in זְמַן ('time'), which was pronounced historically, is usually silent ([zman]). Orthographic shva is generally pronounced /e/ in prefixes such as ve- ('and') and be- ('in'), or when following another shva in grammatical patterns, as in /tilmeˈdi/ ('you [f. sg.] will learn'). An epenthetic /e/ appears when necessary to avoid violating a phonological constraint, such as between two consonants that are identical or differ only in voicing (e.g. /la'madeti/ 'I learned', not */la'madti/) (though this rule is lost in some younger speakers and quick speech) or when an impermissible initial cluster would result (e.g. */rC-/ or */Cʔ-/, where C stands for any consonant). Guttural consonants (א, ה, ח, ע) rarely take a shva. Instead, they can take reduced segol (חֱ), reduced patach (חֲ), or reduced kamatz (חֳ).
Stress is phonemic in Modern Hebrew. There are two frequent patterns of lexical stress, on the last syllable (milrá מִלְּרַע) and on the penultimate syllable (mil‘él מִלְּעֵיל). Final stress has traditionally been more frequent, but in the colloquial language many words are shifting to penultimate stress. Contrary to the prescribed standard, some words exhibit stress on the antepenultimate syllable or even farther back. This often occurs in loanwords, e.g. פּוֹלִיטִיקָה /poˈlitika/ ('politics'), and sometimes in native colloquial compounds, e.g. אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ /ˈeχʃehu/ ('somehow'). Colloquial stress has often shifted from the last syllable to the penultimate, e.g. כּוֹבַע 'hat', normative /koˈvaʕ/ (Ezekiel 38 5) or /ˈkovaʕ/ (Isaiah 59 17), colloquial (always) /ˈkovaʕ/; שׁוֹבָךְ ('dovecote'), normative /ʃoˈvaχ/, colloquial /ˈʃovaχ/. This shift is common in the colloquial pronunciation of many personal names, for example דָּוִד ('David'), normative /daˈvid/, colloquial /ˈdavid/.
Historically, stress was predictable, depending on syllable weight (that is, vowel length and whether a syllable ended with a consonant). Because spoken Israeli Hebrew has lost gemination (a common source of syllable-final consonants) as well as the original distinction between long and short vowels, but the position of the stress often remained where it had been, stress has become phonemic, as the following table illustrates. Phonetically, the following word pairs differ only in the location of the stress; orthographically they differ also in the written representation of vowel length of the vowels (assuming the vowels are even written):
In fast-spoken colloquial Hebrew, when a vowel falls beyond two syllables from the main stress of a word or phrase, it may be reduced or elided. For example:
When /l/ follows an unstressed vowel, it is sometimes elided, possibly with the surrounding vowels:
Syllables /ʁV/ drop before /χ/ except at the end of a prosodic unit:
but: הוּא בַּדֶּרֶךְ [u ba'deʁeχ] ('he is on his way') at the end of a prosodic unit.
Sequences of dental stops reduce to a single consonant, again except at the end of a prosodic unit:
but: שֶׁלָּמַדְתִּי [ʃela'madeti] ('that I studied') | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Modern Hebrew has 25 to 27 consonants and 5 to 10 vowels, depending on the speaker and the analysis.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hebrew has been used primarily for liturgical, literary, and scholarly purposes for most of the past two millennia. As a consequence, its pronunciation was strongly influenced by the vernacular of individual Jewish communities. With the revival of Hebrew as a native language, and especially with the establishment of Israel, the pronunciation of the modern language rapidly coalesced.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The two main accents of modern Hebrew are Oriental and Non-Oriental. Oriental Hebrew was chosen as the preferred accent for Israel by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, but has since declined in popularity. The description in this article follows the language as it is pronounced by native Israeli speakers of the younger generations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "According to the Academy of the Hebrew Language, in the 1880s (the time of the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Hebrew revival) there were three groups of Hebrew regional accents: Ashkenazi (Eastern European), Sephardi (Southern European), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern, Iranian, and North African). Over time features of these systems of pronunciation merged, and at present scholars identify two main pronunciations of modern (i.e., not liturgical) Hebrew: Oriental and Non-Oriental. Oriental Hebrew displays traits of an Arabic substrate. Elder oriental speakers tend to use an alveolar trill [r], preserve the pharyngeal consonants /ħ/ and (less commonly) /ʕ/, preserve gemination, and pronounce /e/ in some places where non-Oriental speakers do not have a vowel (the shva na). A limited number of Oriental speakers, for example elderly Yemenite Jews, even maintain some pharyngealized (emphatic) consonants also found in Arabic, such as /sˤ/ for Biblical /tsʼ/. Israeli Arabs ordinarily use the Oriental pronunciation, vocalising the ‘ayin (ע) as /ʕ/, resh (ר) as [r] and, less frequently, the ḥet (ח) as /ħ/.",
"title": "Oriental and non-Oriental accents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Non-Oriental (and General Israeli) pronunciation lost the emphatic and pharyngeal sounds of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Indo-European languages (Germanic and Slavic for Ashkenazim and Romance for Sephardim). The pharyngeals /ħ/ and /ʕ/ are preserved by older Oriental speakers. Dialectally, Georgian Jews pronounce /ʕ/ as [qʼ], while Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it [ŋ], a pronunciation that can also be found in the Italian tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. However, according to Sephardic and Ashkenazic authorities, such as the Mishnah Berurah and the Shulchan Aruch and Mishneh Torah, /ʕ/ is the proper pronunciation. Thus, it is still pronounced as such by some Sephardim and Ashkenazim.",
"title": "Oriental and non-Oriental accents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The classical pronunciation associated with the consonant ר rêš was a flap [ɾ], and was grammatically ungeminable. In most dialects of Hebrew among the Jewish diaspora, it remained a flap or a trill [r]. However, in some Ashkenazi dialects of northern Europe it was a uvular rhotic, either a trill [ʀ] or a fricative [ʁ]. This was because most native dialects of Yiddish were spoken that way, and the liturgical Hebrew of these speakers carried the Yiddish pronunciation. Some Iraqi Jews also pronounce rêš as a guttural [ʀ], reflecting Baghdad Jewish Arabic.",
"title": "Oriental and non-Oriental accents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Though an Ashkenazi Jew in the Russian Empire, the Zionist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda based his Standard Hebrew on Sephardi Hebrew, originally spoken in Spain, and therefore recommended an alveolar [r]. However, just like him, the first waves of Jews to resettle in the Holy Land were Ashkenazi, and Standard Hebrew would come to be spoken with their native pronunciation. Consequently, by now nearly all Israeli Jews pronounce the consonant ר rêš as a uvular approximant ([ʁ̞]), which also exists in Yiddish.",
"title": "Oriental and non-Oriental accents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Many Jewish immigrants to Israel spoke a variety of Arabic in their countries of origin, and pronounced the Hebrew rhotic consonant /ʁ/ as an alveolar trill, identical to Arabic ر rāʾ, and which followed the conventions of old Hebrew. In modern Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi poetry and folk music, as well as in the standard (or \"standardised\") Hebrew used in the Israeli media, an alveolar rhotic is sometimes used.",
"title": "Oriental and non-Oriental accents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The following table lists the consonant phonemes of Israeli Hebrew in IPA transcription:",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "For many young speakers, obstruents assimilate in voicing. Voiceless obstruents (stops/affricates /p, t, ts, tʃ, k/ and fricatives /f, s, ʃ, χ/) become voiced ([b, d, dz, dʒ, ɡ, v, z, ʒ, ʁ]) when they appear immediately before voiced obstruents, and vice versa. For example:",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "/n/ is pronounced [ŋ] before velar consonants.",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Standard Israeli Hebrew (SIH) phonology, based on the Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation tradition, has a number of differences from Biblical Hebrew (BH) and Mishnaic Hebrew (MH) in the form of splits and mergers.",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The consonant pairs [b]–[v] (archaically [β]), [k]–[χ] (archaically [x]), and [p]–[f] (archaically [ɸ]) were historically allophonic, as a consequence of a phenomenon of spirantisation known as begadkefat under the influence of the Aramaic language on BH/MH. In Modern Hebrew, the above six sounds are phonemic.",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The full inventory of Hebrew consonants which undergo and/or underwent spirantisation are:",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "However, the above-mentioned allophonic alternation of BH/MH [t]–[θ], [d]–[ð] and [ɡ]–[ɣ] was lost in Modern Hebrew, with these six allophones merging into simple /t, d, ɡ/.",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "These phonemic changes were partly due to the mergers noted above, to the loss of consonant gemination, which had distinguished stops from their fricative allophones in intervocalic position, and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ and non-syllable-initial /p/ and /b/ in loan words. Spirantization still occurs in verbal and nominal derivation, but now the alternations /b/–/v/, /k/–/χ/, and /p/–/f/ are phonemic rather than allophonic.",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In Traditional Hebrew words can end with an H consonant, e.g. when the suffix \"-ah\" is used, meaning \"her\" (see Mappiq). The final H sound is hardly ever pronounced in Modern Hebrew. However, the final H with Mappiq still retains the guttural characteristic that it should take a patach and render the pronunciation /a(h)/ at the end of the word, for example, גָּבוֹהַּ gavoa(h) (\"tall\").",
"title": "Consonants"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Modern Hebrew has a simple five-vowel system.",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Long vowels may occur where two identical vowels were historically separated by a pharyngeal or glottal consonant (this separation is preserved in writing, and is still pronounced by some), and the second was not stressed. (Where the second was stressed, the result is a sequence of two short vowels.) They also often occur when morphology brings two identical vowels together, but they are not predictable in that environment.",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Any of the five short vowels may be realized as a schwa [ə] when far from lexical stress.",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There are two diphthongs, /aj/ and /ej/.",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (chataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in Modern Hebrew, except that /e/ is often pronounced [ej] as in Ashkenazi Hebrew.",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Vowel length in Modern Hebrew is environmentally determined and not phonemic, it tends to be affected by the degree of stress, and pretonic lengthening may also occur, mostly in open syllables. When a glottal is lost, a two-vowel sequence arises, and they may be merged into a single long vowel:",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Modern pronunciation does not follow traditional use of the niqqud (diacritic) \"shva\". In Modern Hebrew, words written with a shva may be pronounced with either /e/ or without any vowel, and this does not correspond well to how the word was pronounced historically. For example, the first shva in the word קִמַּטְתְּ 'you (fem.) crumpled' is pronounced /e/ (/kiˈmatet/) though historically it was silent, whereas the shva in זְמַן ('time'), which was pronounced historically, is usually silent ([zman]). Orthographic shva is generally pronounced /e/ in prefixes such as ve- ('and') and be- ('in'), or when following another shva in grammatical patterns, as in /tilmeˈdi/ ('you [f. sg.] will learn'). An epenthetic /e/ appears when necessary to avoid violating a phonological constraint, such as between two consonants that are identical or differ only in voicing (e.g. /la'madeti/ 'I learned', not */la'madti/) (though this rule is lost in some younger speakers and quick speech) or when an impermissible initial cluster would result (e.g. */rC-/ or */Cʔ-/, where C stands for any consonant). Guttural consonants (א, ה, ח, ע) rarely take a shva. Instead, they can take reduced segol (חֱ), reduced patach (חֲ), or reduced kamatz (חֳ).",
"title": "Vowels"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Stress is phonemic in Modern Hebrew. There are two frequent patterns of lexical stress, on the last syllable (milrá מִלְּרַע) and on the penultimate syllable (mil‘él מִלְּעֵיל). Final stress has traditionally been more frequent, but in the colloquial language many words are shifting to penultimate stress. Contrary to the prescribed standard, some words exhibit stress on the antepenultimate syllable or even farther back. This often occurs in loanwords, e.g. פּוֹלִיטִיקָה /poˈlitika/ ('politics'), and sometimes in native colloquial compounds, e.g. אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ /ˈeχʃehu/ ('somehow'). Colloquial stress has often shifted from the last syllable to the penultimate, e.g. כּוֹבַע 'hat', normative /koˈvaʕ/ (Ezekiel 38 5) or /ˈkovaʕ/ (Isaiah 59 17), colloquial (always) /ˈkovaʕ/; שׁוֹבָךְ ('dovecote'), normative /ʃoˈvaχ/, colloquial /ˈʃovaχ/. This shift is common in the colloquial pronunciation of many personal names, for example דָּוִד ('David'), normative /daˈvid/, colloquial /ˈdavid/.",
"title": "Stress"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Historically, stress was predictable, depending on syllable weight (that is, vowel length and whether a syllable ended with a consonant). Because spoken Israeli Hebrew has lost gemination (a common source of syllable-final consonants) as well as the original distinction between long and short vowels, but the position of the stress often remained where it had been, stress has become phonemic, as the following table illustrates. Phonetically, the following word pairs differ only in the location of the stress; orthographically they differ also in the written representation of vowel length of the vowels (assuming the vowels are even written):",
"title": "Stress"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In fast-spoken colloquial Hebrew, when a vowel falls beyond two syllables from the main stress of a word or phrase, it may be reduced or elided. For example:",
"title": "Morphophonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "When /l/ follows an unstressed vowel, it is sometimes elided, possibly with the surrounding vowels:",
"title": "Morphophonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Syllables /ʁV/ drop before /χ/ except at the end of a prosodic unit:",
"title": "Morphophonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "but: הוּא בַּדֶּרֶךְ [u ba'deʁeχ] ('he is on his way') at the end of a prosodic unit.",
"title": "Morphophonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Sequences of dental stops reduce to a single consonant, again except at the end of a prosodic unit:",
"title": "Morphophonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "but: שֶׁלָּמַדְתִּי [ʃela'madeti] ('that I studied')",
"title": "Morphophonology"
}
]
| Modern Hebrew has 25 to 27 consonants and 5 to 10 vowels, depending on the speaker and the analysis. Hebrew has been used primarily for liturgical, literary, and scholarly purposes for most of the past two millennia. As a consequence, its pronunciation was strongly influenced by the vernacular of individual Jewish communities. With the revival of Hebrew as a native language, and especially with the establishment of Israel, the pronunciation of the modern language rapidly coalesced. The two main accents of modern Hebrew are Oriental and Non-Oriental. Oriental Hebrew was chosen as the preferred accent for Israel by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, but has since declined in popularity. The description in this article follows the language as it is pronounced by native Israeli speakers of the younger generations. | 2001-10-25T10:10:35Z | 2023-12-12T23:47:48Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Hebrew_phonology |
13,849 | House of Hohenzollern | The House of Hohenzollern (/ˌhoʊənˈzɒlərn/, US also /-nˈzɔːl-, -ntˈsɔːl-/; German: Haus Hohenzollern, pronounced [ˌhaʊs hoːənˈtsɔlɐn] ; Romanian: Casa de Hohenzollern) is a formerly royal (and from 1871 to 1918, imperial) German dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania. The family came from the area around the town of Hechingen in Swabia during the late 11th century and took their name from Hohenzollern Castle. The first ancestors of the Hohenzollerns were mentioned in 1061.
The Hohenzollern family split into two branches, the Catholic Swabian branch and the Protestant Franconian branch, which ruled the Burgraviate of Nuremberg and later became the Brandenburg-Prussian branch. The Swabian branch ruled the principalities of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen until 1849, and also ruled Romania from 1866 to 1947. Members of the Franconian branch became Margrave of Brandenburg in 1415 and Duke of Prussia in 1525.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were ruled in personal union after 1618 and were called Brandenburg-Prussia. From there, the Kingdom of Prussia was created in 1701, eventually leading to the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire in 1871, with the Hohenzollerns as hereditary German Emperors and Kings of Prussia.
Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 led to the German Revolution. The Hohenzollerns were overthrown and the Weimar Republic was established, thus bringing an end to the German and Prussian monarchy. Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, is the current head of the formerly royal Prussian line, while Karl Friedrich, Prince of Hohenzollern, is the head of the formerly princely Swabian line.
Zollern, from 1218 Hohenzollern, was a county of the Holy Roman Empire. Later its capital was Hechingen.
The Hohenzollerns named their estates after Hohenzollern Castle in the Swabian Alps. The Hohenzollern Castle lies on an 855 meters high mountain called Hohenzollern. It still belongs to the family today.
The dynasty was first mentioned in 1061. According to the medieval chronicler Berthold of Reichenau, Burkhard I, Count of Zollern (de Zolorin) was born before 1025 and died in 1061.
In 1095, Count Adalbert of Zollern founded the Benedictine monastery of Alpirsbach, situated in the Black Forest.
The Zollerns received the Graf title from Emperor Henry V in 1111.
As loyal vassals of the Swabian Hohenstaufen dynasty, they were able to significantly enlarge their territory. Count Frederick III (c. 1139 – c. 1200) accompanied Emperor Frederick Barbarossa against Henry the Lion in 1180, and through his marriage was granted the Burgraviate of Nuremberg by Emperor Henry VI in 1192. In about 1185, he married Sophia of Raabs, the daughter of Conrad II, Burgrave of Nuremberg. After the death of Conrad II who left no male heirs, Frederick III was granted Nuremberg as Burgrave Frederick I.
In 1218, the burgraviate passed to Frederick's elder son Conrad I, he thereby became the ancestor of the Franconian Hohenzollern branch, which acquired the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1415.
After Frederick's death, his sons partitioned the family lands between themselves:
The senior Franconian branch of the House of Hohenzollern was founded by Conrad I, Burgrave of Nuremberg (1186–1261).
The family supported the Hohenstaufen and Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire during the 12th to 15th centuries, being rewarded with several territorial grants. Beginning in the 16th century, this branch of the family became Protestant and decided on expansion through marriage and the purchase of surrounding lands.
In the first phase, the family gradually added to their lands, at first with many small acquisitions in the Franconian region of Germany:
In the second phase, the family expanded their lands further with large acquisitions in the Brandenburg and Prussian regions of Germany and present-day Poland:
These acquisitions eventually transformed the Franconian Hohenzollerns from a minor German princely family into one of the most important dynasties in Europe.
From 8 January 1701 the title of Elector of Brandenburg was attached to the title of King in Prussia and, from 13 September 1772, to that of King of Prussia.
At Frederick V's death on 21 January 1398, his lands were partitioned between his two sons:
After John III/I's death on 11 June 1420, the margraviates of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Kulmbach were briefly reunited under Frederick VI/I/I. He ruled the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach after 1398. From 1420, he became Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach. From 1411 Frederick VI became governor of Brandenburg and later Elector and Margrave of Brandenburg as Frederick I. Upon his death on 21 September 1440, his territories were divided among his sons:
In 1427 Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg sold Nuremberg Castle and his rights as burgrave to the Imperial City of Nuremberg. The territories of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Kulmbach remained possessions of the family, once parts of the Burgraviate of Nuremberg.
On 2 December 1791, Christian II Frederick sold the sovereignty of his principalities to King Frederick William II of Prussia.
On 2 December 1791, Charles Alexander sold the sovereignty of his principalities to King Frederick William II of Prussia.
The Duchy of Jägerndorf (Krnov) was purchased in 1523.
The duchy of Jägerndorf was confiscated by Emperor Ferdinand III in 1622.
In 1411, Frederick VI, Burgrave of the small but wealthy Nuremberg, was appointed governor of Brandenburg in order to restore order and stability. At the Council of Constance in 1415, King Sigismund elevated Frederick to the rank of Elector and Margrave of Brandenburg as Frederick I. In 1417, Elector Frederick purchased Brandenburg from its then-sovereign, Emperor Sigismund, for 400,000 Hungarian guilders.
The short-lived Margraviate of Brandenburg-Küstrin was set up as a secundogeniture of the House of Hohenzollern.
Although recognized as a branch of the dynasty since 1688, the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Schwedt remained subordinate to the electors, and was never an independent principality.
In 1525, the Duchy of Prussia was established as a fief of the King of Poland. Albert of Prussia was the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights and the first Duke of Prussia. He belonged to the Ansbach branch of the dynasty. The Duchy of Prussia adopted Protestantism as the official state religion.
From 1701, the title of Duke of Prussia was attached to the title of King in and of Prussia.
In 1701, the title of King in Prussia was granted, without the Duchy of Prussia being elevated to a Kingdom within Poland but recognized as a kingdom by the Holy Roman Emperor, theoretically the highest sovereign in the West. From 1701 onwards the titles of Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg were always attached to the title of King in Prussia. The Duke of Prussia adopted the title of king as Frederick I, establishing his status as a monarch whose royal territory lay outside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, with the assent of Emperor Leopold I: Frederick could not be "King of Prussia" because part of Prussia's lands were under the suzerainty of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. In Brandenburg and the other Hohenzollern domains within the borders of the empire, he was legally still an elector under the ultimate overlordship of the emperor. By this time, however, the emperor's authority had become purely nominal over the other German prices outside the immediate hereditary lands of the emperor. Brandenburg was still legally part of the empire and ruled in personal union with Prussia, though the two states came to be treated as one de facto. The king was officially Margrave of Brandenburg within the Empire until the Empire's dissolution in 1806. In the age of absolutism, most monarchs were obsessed with the desire to emulate Louis XIV of France with his luxurious palace at Versailles.
In 1772, the Duchy of Prussia was elevated to a kingdom.
Frederick William's successor, Frederick the Great gained Silesia in the Silesian Wars so that Prussia emerged as a great power. The king was strongly influenced by French culture and civilization and preferred the French language.
In the 1772 First Partition of Poland, the Prussian king Frederick the Great annexed neighboring Royal Prussia, i.e., the Polish voivodeships of Pomerania (Gdańsk Pomerania or Pomerelia), Malbork, Chełmno and the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, thereby connecting his Prussian and Farther Pomeranian lands and cutting the rest of Poland from the Baltic coast. The territory of Warmia was incorporated into the lands of former Ducal Prussia, which, by administrative deed of 31 January 1772 were named East Prussia. The former Polish Pomerelian lands beyond the Vistula River together with Malbork and Chełmno Land formed the Province of West Prussia with its capital at Marienwerder (Kwidzyn) in 1773. The Polish Partition Sejm ratified the cession on 30 September 1772, whereafter Frederick officially went on to call himself King "of" Prussia. From 1772 onwards the titles of Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg were always attached to the title King of Prussia.
In 1871, the Kingdom of Prussia became a constituent member of the German Empire, and the King of Prussia gained the additional title of German Emperor.
In 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed. With the accession of William I to the newly established imperial German throne, the titles of King of Prussia, Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg were always attached to the title of German Emperor.
Prussia's Minister President Otto von Bismarck convinced William that German Emperor instead of Emperor of Germany would be appropriate. He became primus inter pares among other German sovereigns.
William II intended to develop a German navy capable of challenging Britain's Royal Navy. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914 set off the chain of events that led to World War I. As a result of the war, the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires ceased to exist.
In 1918, the German empire was abolished and replaced by the Weimar Republic. After the outbreak of the German revolution in 1918, both Emperor William II and Crown Prince William signed the document of abdication.
The official religion of the state was "bi-confessional". John Sigismund's most significant action was his conversion from Lutheranism to Calvinism, after he had earlier equalized the rights of Catholics and Protestants in the Duchy of Prussia under pressure from the King of Poland. He was probably won over to Calvinism during a visit to Heidelberg in 1606, but it was not until 25 December 1613 that he publicly took communion according to the Calvinist rite. The vast majority of his subjects in Brandenburg, including his wife Anna of Prussia, remained deeply Lutheran, however. After the Elector and his Calvinist court officials drew up plans for mass conversion of the population to the new faith in February 1614, as provided for by the rule of Cuius regio, eius religio within the Holy Roman Empire, there were serious protests, with his wife backing the Lutherans. This was doubly important as Anna brought with her the duchy of Prussia into the Brandenburg line of the house and the nascent Brandenburg-Prussian state. Resistance was so strong that in 1615, John Sigismund backed down and relinquished all attempts at forcible conversion. Instead, he allowed his subjects to be either Lutheran or Calvinist according to the dictates of their own consciences. Henceforward, Brandenburg-Prussia would be a bi-confessional state, with the ruling Hohenzollern house staying Calvinist.
This situation persisted until Frederick William III of Prussia. Frederick William was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of churches. The merging of the Lutheran and Calvinist (Reformed) confessions to form the United Church of Prussia was highly controversial. Angry responses included a large and well-organized opposition. The crown's aggressive efforts to restructure religion were unprecedented in Prussian history. In a series of proclamations over several years, the Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together the majority group of Lutherans and the minority group of Reformed Protestants. The main effect was that the government of Prussia had full control over church affairs, with the king himself recognized as the leading bishop.
In June 1926, a referendum on expropriating the formerly ruling princes of Germany without compensation failed and as a consequence, the financial situation of the Hohenzollern family improved considerably. A settlement between the state and the family made Cecilienhof property of the state but granted a right of residence to Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Cecilie. The family also kept the ownership of Monbijou Palace in Berlin, Oleśnica Castle in Silesia, Rheinsberg Palace, Schwedt Palace and other property until 1945.
Since the abolition of the German monarchy, no Hohenzollern claims to imperial or royal prerogatives are recognized by Germany's Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949, which guarantees a republic.
The communist government of the Soviet occupation zone expropriated all landowners and industrialists; the House of Hohenzollern lost almost all of its fortune, retaining a few company shares and Hohenzollern Castle in West Germany. The Polish government appropriated the Silesian property and the Dutch government seized Huis Doorn, the Emperor's seat in exile.
After German reunification, however, the family was legally able to reclaim their portable property, namely art collections and parts of the interior of their former palaces. Negotiations on the return of or compensation for these assets are not yet completed.
The Berlin Palace, home of the German monarchs, was rebuilt in 2020. The Berlin Palace and the Humboldt Forum are located in the middle of Berlin.
The head of the house is the titular King of Prussia and German Emperor. He also bears a historical claim to the title of Prince of Orange. Members of this line style themselves princes of Prussia.
Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the current head of the royal Prussian House of Hohenzollern, was married to Princess Sophie of Isenburg on 27 August 2011. On 20 January 2013, she gave birth to twin sons, Carl Friedrich Franz Alexander and Louis Ferdinand Christian Albrecht, in Bremen. Carl Friedrich, the elder of the two, is the heir apparent.
The cadet Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzollern was founded by Frederick IV, Count of Zollern. The family ruled three territories with seats at, respectively, Hechingen, Sigmaringen and Haigerloch. The counts were elevated to princes in 1623. The Swabian branch of the Hohenzollerns is Roman Catholic.
Affected by economic problems and internal feuds, the Hohenzollern counts from the 14th century onwards came under pressure by their neighbors, the Counts of Württemberg and the cities of the Swabian League, whose troops besieged and finally destroyed Hohenzollern Castle in 1423. Nevertheless, the Hohenzollerns retained their estates, backed by their Brandenburg cousins and the Imperial House of Habsburg. In 1535, Count Charles I of Hohenzollern (1512–1576) received the counties of Sigmaringen and Veringen as Imperial fiefs.
In 1576, when Charles I, Count of Hohenzollern died, his county was divided to form the three Swabian branches. Eitel Frederick IV took Hohenzollern with the title of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Karl II took Sigmaringen and Veringen, and Christopher got Haigerloch. Christopher's family died out in 1634.
In 1695, the remaining two Swabian branches entered into an agreement with the Margrave of Brandenburg, which provided that if both branches became extinct, the principalities should fall to Brandenburg. Because of the Revolutions of 1848, Constantine, Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Karl Anton, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen abdicated their thrones in December 1849. The principalities were ruled by the Kings of Prussia from December 1849 onwards, with the Hechingen and Sigmaringen branches obtaining official treatment as cadets of the Prussian royal family.
The Hohenzollern-Hechingen branch became extinct in 1869. A descendant of this branch was Countess Sophie Chotek, morganatic wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Lotharingen.
In 1204, the County of Hohenzollern was established out of the fusion of the County of Zollern and the Burgraviate of Nuremberg. The Swabian branch inherited the county of Zollern and, being descended from Frederick I of Nuremberg, were all named "Friedrich" down through the 11th generation. Each one's numeral is counted from the first Friedrich to rule his branch's appanage.
The most senior of these in the 14th century, Count Frederick VIII (d. 1333), had two sons, the elder of whom became Frederick IX (d. 1379), first Count of Hohenzollern, and fathered Friedrich X who left no sons when he died in 1412.
But the younger son of Friedrich VIII, called Friedrich of Strassburg, uniquely, took no numeral of his own, retaining the old title "Count of Zollern" and pre-deceased his brother in 1364/65. Prince Wilhelm Karl zu Isenburg's 1957 genealogical series, Europäische Stammtafeln, says Friedrich of Strassburg shared, rather, in the rule of Zollern with his elder brother until his premature death.
It appears, but is not stated, that Strassburg's son became the recognized co-ruler of his cousin Friedrich X (as compensation for having received no appanage and/or because of incapacity on the part of Friedrich X) and, as such, assumed (or is, historically, attributed) the designation Frederick XI although he actually pre-deceased Friedrich X, dying in 1401.
Friedrich XI, however, left two sons who jointly succeeded their cousin-once-removed, being Count Frederick XII (d. childless 1443) and Count Eitel Friedrich I (d. 1439), the latter becoming the ancestor of all subsequent branches of the Princes of Hohenzollern.
In the 12th century, a son of Frederick I secured the county of Hohenberg. The county remained in the possession of the family until 1486.
The influence of the Swabian line was weakened by several partitions of its lands. In the 16th century, the situation changed completely when Eitel Frederick II, a friend and adviser of the emperor Maximilian I, received the district of Haigerloch. His grandson Charles I was granted the counties of Sigmaringen and Vehringen by Charles V.
The County of Hohenzollern-Hechingen was established in 1576 with allodial rights. It included the original County of Zollern, with the Hohenzollern Castle and the monastery at Stetten.
In December 1849, the ruling princes of both Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen abdicated their thrones, and their principalities were incorporated as the Prussian province of Hohenzollern. The Hechingen branch became extinct in dynastic line with Konstantin's death in 1869.
The County of Hohenzollern-Haigerloch was established in 1576 without allodial rights.
Between 1634 and 1681, the county was temporarily integrated into the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
Upon the death of Francis Christopher Anton in 1767, the Haigerloch territory was incorporated into the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.
The County of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was established in 1576 with allodial rights and a seat at Sigmaringen Castle.
In December 1849, sovereignty over the principality was yielded to the Franconian branch of the family and incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia, which accorded status as cadets of the Prussian Royal Family to the Swabian Hohenzollerns. The last ruling Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Karl Anton, would later serve as Minister President of Prussia between 1858 and 1862.
The family continued to use the title of Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. After the Hechingen branch became extinct in 1869, the Sigmaringen branch adopted title of Prince of Hohenzollern.
In 1866, Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was chosen prince of Romania, becoming King Carol I of Romania in 1881.
Charles's elder brother, Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern, was offered the Spanish throne in 1870 after a revolt exiled Isabella II in 1868. Although encouraged by Bismarck to accept, Leopold declined in the face of French opposition. Nonetheless, Bismarck altered and then published the Ems telegram to create a casus belli: France declared war, but Bismarck's Germany won the Franco-Prussian War.
The head of the Sigmaringen branch (the only extant line of the Swabian branch of the dynasty) is Karl Friedrich, styled His Highness The Prince of Hohenzollern. His official seat is Sigmaringen Castle.
The Principality of Romania was established in 1862, after the Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia had been united in 1859 under Alexandru Ioan Cuza as Prince of Romania in a personal union. He was deposed in 1866 by the Romanian parliament.
Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was invited to become reigning Prince of Romania in 1866. In 1881 he became Carol I, King of Romania. Carol I had an only daughter who died young, so the younger son of his brother Leopold, Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, would succeed his uncle as King of Romania in 1914, and his descendants, having converted to the Orthodox Church, continued to reign there until the end of the monarchy in 1947.
In 1947, the King Michael I abdicated and the country was proclaimed a People's Republic. Michael did not press his claim to the defunct Romanian throne, but he was welcomed back to the country after half a century in exile as a private citizen, with substantial former royal properties being placed at his disposal. However, his dynastic claim was not recognized by post-Communist Romanians.
On 10 May 2011, King Michael I severed the dynastic ties between the Romanian Royal Family and the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. After that the branch of the Hohenzollerns was dynastically represented only by the last king Michael, and his daughters. Having no sons, he declared that his dynastic heir, instead of being a male member of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen princely family to which he formerly belonged patrilineally and in accordance with the last Romanian monarchical constitution, should be his eldest daughter Margareta.
The royal house remains popular in Romania and in 2014 Prime Minister Victor Ponta promised a referendum on whether or not to reinstate the monarchy if he were re-elected.
In mid-2019, it was revealed that Prince Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, Head of the House of Hohenzollern had filed claims for permanent right of residency for his family in Cecilienhof, or one of two other Hohenzollern palaces in Potsdam, as well as return of the family library, 266 paintings, an imperial crown and sceptre, and the letters of Empress Augusta Victoria.
Central to the argument was that Monbijou Palace, which had been permanently given to the family following the fall of the Kaiser, was demolished by the East German government in 1959. Lawyers for the German state argued that the involvement of members of the family in National Socialism had voided any such rights.
In June 2019, a claim made by Prince Georg Friedrich that Rheinfels Castle be returned to the Hohenzollern family was dismissed by a court. In 1924, the ruined Castle had been given by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate to the town of St Goar, under the provision it was not sold. In 1998, the town leased the ruins to a nearby hotel. His case made the claim that this constituted a breach of the bequest. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The House of Hohenzollern (/ˌhoʊənˈzɒlərn/, US also /-nˈzɔːl-, -ntˈsɔːl-/; German: Haus Hohenzollern, pronounced [ˌhaʊs hoːənˈtsɔlɐn] ; Romanian: Casa de Hohenzollern) is a formerly royal (and from 1871 to 1918, imperial) German dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania. The family came from the area around the town of Hechingen in Swabia during the late 11th century and took their name from Hohenzollern Castle. The first ancestors of the Hohenzollerns were mentioned in 1061.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Hohenzollern family split into two branches, the Catholic Swabian branch and the Protestant Franconian branch, which ruled the Burgraviate of Nuremberg and later became the Brandenburg-Prussian branch. The Swabian branch ruled the principalities of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen until 1849, and also ruled Romania from 1866 to 1947. Members of the Franconian branch became Margrave of Brandenburg in 1415 and Duke of Prussia in 1525.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were ruled in personal union after 1618 and were called Brandenburg-Prussia. From there, the Kingdom of Prussia was created in 1701, eventually leading to the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire in 1871, with the Hohenzollerns as hereditary German Emperors and Kings of Prussia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 led to the German Revolution. The Hohenzollerns were overthrown and the Weimar Republic was established, thus bringing an end to the German and Prussian monarchy. Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, is the current head of the formerly royal Prussian line, while Karl Friedrich, Prince of Hohenzollern, is the head of the formerly princely Swabian line.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Zollern, from 1218 Hohenzollern, was a county of the Holy Roman Empire. Later its capital was Hechingen.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Hohenzollerns named their estates after Hohenzollern Castle in the Swabian Alps. The Hohenzollern Castle lies on an 855 meters high mountain called Hohenzollern. It still belongs to the family today.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The dynasty was first mentioned in 1061. According to the medieval chronicler Berthold of Reichenau, Burkhard I, Count of Zollern (de Zolorin) was born before 1025 and died in 1061.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1095, Count Adalbert of Zollern founded the Benedictine monastery of Alpirsbach, situated in the Black Forest.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Zollerns received the Graf title from Emperor Henry V in 1111.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "As loyal vassals of the Swabian Hohenstaufen dynasty, they were able to significantly enlarge their territory. Count Frederick III (c. 1139 – c. 1200) accompanied Emperor Frederick Barbarossa against Henry the Lion in 1180, and through his marriage was granted the Burgraviate of Nuremberg by Emperor Henry VI in 1192. In about 1185, he married Sophia of Raabs, the daughter of Conrad II, Burgrave of Nuremberg. After the death of Conrad II who left no male heirs, Frederick III was granted Nuremberg as Burgrave Frederick I.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1218, the burgraviate passed to Frederick's elder son Conrad I, he thereby became the ancestor of the Franconian Hohenzollern branch, which acquired the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1415.",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After Frederick's death, his sons partitioned the family lands between themselves:",
"title": "County of Zollern"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The senior Franconian branch of the House of Hohenzollern was founded by Conrad I, Burgrave of Nuremberg (1186–1261).",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The family supported the Hohenstaufen and Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire during the 12th to 15th centuries, being rewarded with several territorial grants. Beginning in the 16th century, this branch of the family became Protestant and decided on expansion through marriage and the purchase of surrounding lands.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the first phase, the family gradually added to their lands, at first with many small acquisitions in the Franconian region of Germany:",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the second phase, the family expanded their lands further with large acquisitions in the Brandenburg and Prussian regions of Germany and present-day Poland:",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "These acquisitions eventually transformed the Franconian Hohenzollerns from a minor German princely family into one of the most important dynasties in Europe.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "From 8 January 1701 the title of Elector of Brandenburg was attached to the title of King in Prussia and, from 13 September 1772, to that of King of Prussia.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "At Frederick V's death on 21 January 1398, his lands were partitioned between his two sons:",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "After John III/I's death on 11 June 1420, the margraviates of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Kulmbach were briefly reunited under Frederick VI/I/I. He ruled the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach after 1398. From 1420, he became Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach. From 1411 Frederick VI became governor of Brandenburg and later Elector and Margrave of Brandenburg as Frederick I. Upon his death on 21 September 1440, his territories were divided among his sons:",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1427 Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg sold Nuremberg Castle and his rights as burgrave to the Imperial City of Nuremberg. The territories of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Kulmbach remained possessions of the family, once parts of the Burgraviate of Nuremberg.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On 2 December 1791, Christian II Frederick sold the sovereignty of his principalities to King Frederick William II of Prussia.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "On 2 December 1791, Charles Alexander sold the sovereignty of his principalities to King Frederick William II of Prussia.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Duchy of Jägerndorf (Krnov) was purchased in 1523.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The duchy of Jägerndorf was confiscated by Emperor Ferdinand III in 1622.",
"title": "Franconian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1411, Frederick VI, Burgrave of the small but wealthy Nuremberg, was appointed governor of Brandenburg in order to restore order and stability. At the Council of Constance in 1415, King Sigismund elevated Frederick to the rank of Elector and Margrave of Brandenburg as Frederick I. In 1417, Elector Frederick purchased Brandenburg from its then-sovereign, Emperor Sigismund, for 400,000 Hungarian guilders.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The short-lived Margraviate of Brandenburg-Küstrin was set up as a secundogeniture of the House of Hohenzollern.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Although recognized as a branch of the dynasty since 1688, the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Schwedt remained subordinate to the electors, and was never an independent principality.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1525, the Duchy of Prussia was established as a fief of the King of Poland. Albert of Prussia was the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights and the first Duke of Prussia. He belonged to the Ansbach branch of the dynasty. The Duchy of Prussia adopted Protestantism as the official state religion.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "From 1701, the title of Duke of Prussia was attached to the title of King in and of Prussia.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1701, the title of King in Prussia was granted, without the Duchy of Prussia being elevated to a Kingdom within Poland but recognized as a kingdom by the Holy Roman Emperor, theoretically the highest sovereign in the West. From 1701 onwards the titles of Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg were always attached to the title of King in Prussia. The Duke of Prussia adopted the title of king as Frederick I, establishing his status as a monarch whose royal territory lay outside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, with the assent of Emperor Leopold I: Frederick could not be \"King of Prussia\" because part of Prussia's lands were under the suzerainty of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. In Brandenburg and the other Hohenzollern domains within the borders of the empire, he was legally still an elector under the ultimate overlordship of the emperor. By this time, however, the emperor's authority had become purely nominal over the other German prices outside the immediate hereditary lands of the emperor. Brandenburg was still legally part of the empire and ruled in personal union with Prussia, though the two states came to be treated as one de facto. The king was officially Margrave of Brandenburg within the Empire until the Empire's dissolution in 1806. In the age of absolutism, most monarchs were obsessed with the desire to emulate Louis XIV of France with his luxurious palace at Versailles.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 1772, the Duchy of Prussia was elevated to a kingdom.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Frederick William's successor, Frederick the Great gained Silesia in the Silesian Wars so that Prussia emerged as a great power. The king was strongly influenced by French culture and civilization and preferred the French language.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the 1772 First Partition of Poland, the Prussian king Frederick the Great annexed neighboring Royal Prussia, i.e., the Polish voivodeships of Pomerania (Gdańsk Pomerania or Pomerelia), Malbork, Chełmno and the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, thereby connecting his Prussian and Farther Pomeranian lands and cutting the rest of Poland from the Baltic coast. The territory of Warmia was incorporated into the lands of former Ducal Prussia, which, by administrative deed of 31 January 1772 were named East Prussia. The former Polish Pomerelian lands beyond the Vistula River together with Malbork and Chełmno Land formed the Province of West Prussia with its capital at Marienwerder (Kwidzyn) in 1773. The Polish Partition Sejm ratified the cession on 30 September 1772, whereafter Frederick officially went on to call himself King \"of\" Prussia. From 1772 onwards the titles of Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg were always attached to the title King of Prussia.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1871, the Kingdom of Prussia became a constituent member of the German Empire, and the King of Prussia gained the additional title of German Emperor.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed. With the accession of William I to the newly established imperial German throne, the titles of King of Prussia, Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg were always attached to the title of German Emperor.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Prussia's Minister President Otto von Bismarck convinced William that German Emperor instead of Emperor of Germany would be appropriate. He became primus inter pares among other German sovereigns.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "William II intended to develop a German navy capable of challenging Britain's Royal Navy. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914 set off the chain of events that led to World War I. As a result of the war, the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires ceased to exist.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 1918, the German empire was abolished and replaced by the Weimar Republic. After the outbreak of the German revolution in 1918, both Emperor William II and Crown Prince William signed the document of abdication.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The official religion of the state was \"bi-confessional\". John Sigismund's most significant action was his conversion from Lutheranism to Calvinism, after he had earlier equalized the rights of Catholics and Protestants in the Duchy of Prussia under pressure from the King of Poland. He was probably won over to Calvinism during a visit to Heidelberg in 1606, but it was not until 25 December 1613 that he publicly took communion according to the Calvinist rite. The vast majority of his subjects in Brandenburg, including his wife Anna of Prussia, remained deeply Lutheran, however. After the Elector and his Calvinist court officials drew up plans for mass conversion of the population to the new faith in February 1614, as provided for by the rule of Cuius regio, eius religio within the Holy Roman Empire, there were serious protests, with his wife backing the Lutherans. This was doubly important as Anna brought with her the duchy of Prussia into the Brandenburg line of the house and the nascent Brandenburg-Prussian state. Resistance was so strong that in 1615, John Sigismund backed down and relinquished all attempts at forcible conversion. Instead, he allowed his subjects to be either Lutheran or Calvinist according to the dictates of their own consciences. Henceforward, Brandenburg-Prussia would be a bi-confessional state, with the ruling Hohenzollern house staying Calvinist.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "This situation persisted until Frederick William III of Prussia. Frederick William was determined to unify the Protestant churches to homogenize their liturgy, organization, and architecture. The long-term goal was to have fully centralized royal control of all the Protestant churches in the Prussian Union of churches. The merging of the Lutheran and Calvinist (Reformed) confessions to form the United Church of Prussia was highly controversial. Angry responses included a large and well-organized opposition. The crown's aggressive efforts to restructure religion were unprecedented in Prussian history. In a series of proclamations over several years, the Church of the Prussian Union was formed, bringing together the majority group of Lutherans and the minority group of Reformed Protestants. The main effect was that the government of Prussia had full control over church affairs, with the king himself recognized as the leading bishop.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In June 1926, a referendum on expropriating the formerly ruling princes of Germany without compensation failed and as a consequence, the financial situation of the Hohenzollern family improved considerably. A settlement between the state and the family made Cecilienhof property of the state but granted a right of residence to Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Cecilie. The family also kept the ownership of Monbijou Palace in Berlin, Oleśnica Castle in Silesia, Rheinsberg Palace, Schwedt Palace and other property until 1945.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Since the abolition of the German monarchy, no Hohenzollern claims to imperial or royal prerogatives are recognized by Germany's Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949, which guarantees a republic.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The communist government of the Soviet occupation zone expropriated all landowners and industrialists; the House of Hohenzollern lost almost all of its fortune, retaining a few company shares and Hohenzollern Castle in West Germany. The Polish government appropriated the Silesian property and the Dutch government seized Huis Doorn, the Emperor's seat in exile.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "After German reunification, however, the family was legally able to reclaim their portable property, namely art collections and parts of the interior of their former palaces. Negotiations on the return of or compensation for these assets are not yet completed.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Berlin Palace, home of the German monarchs, was rebuilt in 2020. The Berlin Palace and the Humboldt Forum are located in the middle of Berlin.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The head of the house is the titular King of Prussia and German Emperor. He also bears a historical claim to the title of Prince of Orange. Members of this line style themselves princes of Prussia.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the current head of the royal Prussian House of Hohenzollern, was married to Princess Sophie of Isenburg on 27 August 2011. On 20 January 2013, she gave birth to twin sons, Carl Friedrich Franz Alexander and Louis Ferdinand Christian Albrecht, in Bremen. Carl Friedrich, the elder of the two, is the heir apparent.",
"title": "Brandenburg-Prussian branch since 1918 abdication"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The cadet Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzollern was founded by Frederick IV, Count of Zollern. The family ruled three territories with seats at, respectively, Hechingen, Sigmaringen and Haigerloch. The counts were elevated to princes in 1623. The Swabian branch of the Hohenzollerns is Roman Catholic.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Affected by economic problems and internal feuds, the Hohenzollern counts from the 14th century onwards came under pressure by their neighbors, the Counts of Württemberg and the cities of the Swabian League, whose troops besieged and finally destroyed Hohenzollern Castle in 1423. Nevertheless, the Hohenzollerns retained their estates, backed by their Brandenburg cousins and the Imperial House of Habsburg. In 1535, Count Charles I of Hohenzollern (1512–1576) received the counties of Sigmaringen and Veringen as Imperial fiefs.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 1576, when Charles I, Count of Hohenzollern died, his county was divided to form the three Swabian branches. Eitel Frederick IV took Hohenzollern with the title of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Karl II took Sigmaringen and Veringen, and Christopher got Haigerloch. Christopher's family died out in 1634.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1695, the remaining two Swabian branches entered into an agreement with the Margrave of Brandenburg, which provided that if both branches became extinct, the principalities should fall to Brandenburg. Because of the Revolutions of 1848, Constantine, Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Karl Anton, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen abdicated their thrones in December 1849. The principalities were ruled by the Kings of Prussia from December 1849 onwards, with the Hechingen and Sigmaringen branches obtaining official treatment as cadets of the Prussian royal family.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Hohenzollern-Hechingen branch became extinct in 1869. A descendant of this branch was Countess Sophie Chotek, morganatic wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Lotharingen.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1204, the County of Hohenzollern was established out of the fusion of the County of Zollern and the Burgraviate of Nuremberg. The Swabian branch inherited the county of Zollern and, being descended from Frederick I of Nuremberg, were all named \"Friedrich\" down through the 11th generation. Each one's numeral is counted from the first Friedrich to rule his branch's appanage.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The most senior of these in the 14th century, Count Frederick VIII (d. 1333), had two sons, the elder of whom became Frederick IX (d. 1379), first Count of Hohenzollern, and fathered Friedrich X who left no sons when he died in 1412.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "But the younger son of Friedrich VIII, called Friedrich of Strassburg, uniquely, took no numeral of his own, retaining the old title \"Count of Zollern\" and pre-deceased his brother in 1364/65. Prince Wilhelm Karl zu Isenburg's 1957 genealogical series, Europäische Stammtafeln, says Friedrich of Strassburg shared, rather, in the rule of Zollern with his elder brother until his premature death.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "It appears, but is not stated, that Strassburg's son became the recognized co-ruler of his cousin Friedrich X (as compensation for having received no appanage and/or because of incapacity on the part of Friedrich X) and, as such, assumed (or is, historically, attributed) the designation Frederick XI although he actually pre-deceased Friedrich X, dying in 1401.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Friedrich XI, however, left two sons who jointly succeeded their cousin-once-removed, being Count Frederick XII (d. childless 1443) and Count Eitel Friedrich I (d. 1439), the latter becoming the ancestor of all subsequent branches of the Princes of Hohenzollern.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In the 12th century, a son of Frederick I secured the county of Hohenberg. The county remained in the possession of the family until 1486.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The influence of the Swabian line was weakened by several partitions of its lands. In the 16th century, the situation changed completely when Eitel Frederick II, a friend and adviser of the emperor Maximilian I, received the district of Haigerloch. His grandson Charles I was granted the counties of Sigmaringen and Vehringen by Charles V.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The County of Hohenzollern-Hechingen was established in 1576 with allodial rights. It included the original County of Zollern, with the Hohenzollern Castle and the monastery at Stetten.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In December 1849, the ruling princes of both Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen abdicated their thrones, and their principalities were incorporated as the Prussian province of Hohenzollern. The Hechingen branch became extinct in dynastic line with Konstantin's death in 1869.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The County of Hohenzollern-Haigerloch was established in 1576 without allodial rights.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Between 1634 and 1681, the county was temporarily integrated into the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Upon the death of Francis Christopher Anton in 1767, the Haigerloch territory was incorporated into the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The County of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was established in 1576 with allodial rights and a seat at Sigmaringen Castle.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In December 1849, sovereignty over the principality was yielded to the Franconian branch of the family and incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia, which accorded status as cadets of the Prussian Royal Family to the Swabian Hohenzollerns. The last ruling Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Karl Anton, would later serve as Minister President of Prussia between 1858 and 1862.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The family continued to use the title of Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. After the Hechingen branch became extinct in 1869, the Sigmaringen branch adopted title of Prince of Hohenzollern.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 1866, Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was chosen prince of Romania, becoming King Carol I of Romania in 1881.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Charles's elder brother, Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern, was offered the Spanish throne in 1870 after a revolt exiled Isabella II in 1868. Although encouraged by Bismarck to accept, Leopold declined in the face of French opposition. Nonetheless, Bismarck altered and then published the Ems telegram to create a casus belli: France declared war, but Bismarck's Germany won the Franco-Prussian War.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The head of the Sigmaringen branch (the only extant line of the Swabian branch of the dynasty) is Karl Friedrich, styled His Highness The Prince of Hohenzollern. His official seat is Sigmaringen Castle.",
"title": "Swabian branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Principality of Romania was established in 1862, after the Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia had been united in 1859 under Alexandru Ioan Cuza as Prince of Romania in a personal union. He was deposed in 1866 by the Romanian parliament.",
"title": "Kings of the Romanians"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was invited to become reigning Prince of Romania in 1866. In 1881 he became Carol I, King of Romania. Carol I had an only daughter who died young, so the younger son of his brother Leopold, Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, would succeed his uncle as King of Romania in 1914, and his descendants, having converted to the Orthodox Church, continued to reign there until the end of the monarchy in 1947.",
"title": "Kings of the Romanians"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 1947, the King Michael I abdicated and the country was proclaimed a People's Republic. Michael did not press his claim to the defunct Romanian throne, but he was welcomed back to the country after half a century in exile as a private citizen, with substantial former royal properties being placed at his disposal. However, his dynastic claim was not recognized by post-Communist Romanians.",
"title": "Kings of the Romanians"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "On 10 May 2011, King Michael I severed the dynastic ties between the Romanian Royal Family and the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. After that the branch of the Hohenzollerns was dynastically represented only by the last king Michael, and his daughters. Having no sons, he declared that his dynastic heir, instead of being a male member of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen princely family to which he formerly belonged patrilineally and in accordance with the last Romanian monarchical constitution, should be his eldest daughter Margareta.",
"title": "Kings of the Romanians"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The royal house remains popular in Romania and in 2014 Prime Minister Victor Ponta promised a referendum on whether or not to reinstate the monarchy if he were re-elected.",
"title": "Kings of the Romanians"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In mid-2019, it was revealed that Prince Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, Head of the House of Hohenzollern had filed claims for permanent right of residency for his family in Cecilienhof, or one of two other Hohenzollern palaces in Potsdam, as well as return of the family library, 266 paintings, an imperial crown and sceptre, and the letters of Empress Augusta Victoria.",
"title": "Property claims"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Central to the argument was that Monbijou Palace, which had been permanently given to the family following the fall of the Kaiser, was demolished by the East German government in 1959. Lawyers for the German state argued that the involvement of members of the family in National Socialism had voided any such rights.",
"title": "Property claims"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In June 2019, a claim made by Prince Georg Friedrich that Rheinfels Castle be returned to the Hohenzollern family was dismissed by a court. In 1924, the ruined Castle had been given by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate to the town of St Goar, under the provision it was not sold. In 1998, the town leased the ruins to a nearby hotel. His case made the claim that this constituted a breach of the bequest.",
"title": "Property claims"
}
]
| The House of Hohenzollern is a formerly royal German dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania. The family came from the area around the town of Hechingen in Swabia during the late 11th century and took their name from Hohenzollern Castle. The first ancestors of the Hohenzollerns were mentioned in 1061. The Hohenzollern family split into two branches, the Catholic Swabian branch and the Protestant Franconian branch, which ruled the Burgraviate of Nuremberg and later became the Brandenburg-Prussian branch. The Swabian branch ruled the principalities of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen until 1849, and also ruled Romania from 1866 to 1947. Members of the Franconian branch became Margrave of Brandenburg in 1415 and Duke of Prussia in 1525. The Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were ruled in personal union after 1618 and were called Brandenburg-Prussia. From there, the Kingdom of Prussia was created in 1701, eventually leading to the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire in 1871, with the Hohenzollerns as hereditary German Emperors and Kings of Prussia. Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 led to the German Revolution. The Hohenzollerns were overthrown and the Weimar Republic was established, thus bringing an end to the German and Prussian monarchy. Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, is the current head of the formerly royal Prussian line, while Karl Friedrich, Prince of Hohenzollern, is the head of the formerly princely Swabian line. | 2001-11-02T03:43:30Z | 2023-11-21T06:31:46Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern |
13,850 | Hang gliding | Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorised, heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider. Most modern hang gliders are made of an aluminium alloy or composite frame covered with synthetic sailcloth to form a wing. Typically the pilot is in a harness suspended from the airframe, and controls the aircraft by shifting body weight in opposition to a control frame.
Early hang gliders had a low lift-to-drag ratio, so pilots were restricted to gliding down small hills. By the 1980s this ratio significantly improved, and since then pilots have been able to soar for hours, gain thousands of feet of altitude in thermal updrafts, perform aerobatics, and glide cross-country for hundreds of kilometers. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale and national airspace governing organisations control some regulatory aspects of hang gliding. Obtaining the safety benefits of being instructed is highly recommended and indeed a mandatory requirement in many countries.
In 1853, George Cayley invented a slope-launched, piloted glider. Most early glider designs did not ensure safe flight; the problem was that early flight pioneers did not sufficiently understand the underlying principles that made a bird's wing work. Starting in the 1880s technical and scientific advancements were made that led to the first truly practical gliders, such as those developed in the United States by John Joseph Montgomery. Otto Lilienthal built controllable gliders in the 1890s, with which he could ridge soar. His rigorously documented work influenced later designers, making Lilienthal one of the most influential early aviation pioneers. His aircraft was controlled by weight shift and is similar to a modern hang glider.
Hang gliding saw a stiffened flexible wing hang glider in 1904, when Jan Lavezzari flew a double lateen sail hang glider off Berck Beach, France. In 1910 in Breslau, the triangle control frame with hang glider pilot hung behind the triangle in a hang glider, was evident in a gliding club's activity. The biplane hang glider was very widely publicized in public magazines with plans for building; such biplane hang gliders were constructed and flown in several nations since Octave Chanute and his tailed biplane hang gliders were demonstrated. In April 1909, a how-to article by Carl S. Bates proved to be a seminal hang glider article that seemingly affected builders even of contemporary times. Several builders would have their first hang glider made by following the plan in his article. Volmer Jensen with a biplane hang glider in 1940 called VJ-11 allowed safe three-axis control of a foot-launched hang glider.
On 23 November 1948, Francis Rogallo and Gertrude Rogallo applied for a kite patent for a fully flexible kited wing with approved claims for its stiffenings and gliding uses; the flexible wing or Rogallo wing, which in 1957 the American space agency NASA began testing in various flexible and semi-rigid configurations in order to use it as a recovery system for the Gemini space capsules. The various stiffening formats and the wing's simplicity of design and ease of construction, along with its capability of slow flight and its gentle landing characteristics, did not go unnoticed by hang glider enthusiasts. In 1960–1962 Barry Hill Palmer adapted the flexible wing concept to make foot-launched hang gliders with four different control arrangements. In 1963 Mike Burns adapted the flexible wing to build a towable kite-hang glider he called Skiplane. In 1963, John W. Dickenson adapted the flexible wing airfoil concept to make another water-ski kite glider; for this, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale vested Dickenson with the Hang Gliding Diploma (2006) for the invention of the "modern" hang glider. Since then, the Rogallo wing has been the most used airfoil of hang gliders.
Hangglider sailcloth is normally made from woven or laminated fiber, such as dacron or mylar, respectively.
Woven polyester sailcloth is a very tight weave of small diameter polyester fibers that has been stabilized by the hot-press impregnation of a polyester resin. The resin impregnation is required to provide resistance to distortion and stretch. This resistance is important in maintaining the aerodynamic shape of the sail. Woven polyester provides the best combination of light weight and durability in a sail with the best overall handling qualities.
Laminated sail materials using polyester film achieve superior performance by using a lower stretch material that is better at maintaining sail shape but is still relatively light in weight. The disadvantages of polyester film fabrics is that the reduced elasticity under load generally results in stiffer and less responsive handling, and polyester laminated fabrics are generally not as durable or long lasting as the woven fabrics.
In most hang gliders, the pilot is ensconced in a harness suspended from the airframe, and exercises control by shifting body weight in opposition to a stationary control frame, also known as a triangle control frame, or an A-frame. The control frame normally consists of 2 "down-tubes" and a control bar/base bar/base-tube. Either end of the control bar is attached to an upright tube or a more aerodynamic strut (a "down-tube"), where both extend from the base-tube and are connected to the apex of the control frame/ the keel of the glider. This creates the shape of a triangle or 'A-frame'. In many of these configurations additional wheels or other equipment can be suspended from the bottom bar or rod ends.
Images showing a triangle control frame on Otto Lilienthal's 1892 hang glider shows that the technology of such frames has existed since the early design of gliders, but he did not mention it in his patents. A control frame for body weight shift was also shown in Octave Chanute's designs. It was a major part of the now common design of hang gliders by George A. Spratt from 1929. The most simple A-frame that is cable-stayed was demonstrated in a Breslau gliding club hang gliding meet in a battened wing foot-launchable hang glider in the year 1908 by W. Simon; hang glider historian Stephan Nitsch has collected instances also of the U control frame used in the first decade of the 1900s; the U is variant of the A-frame.
Due to the poor safety record of early hang gliding pioneers, the sport has traditionally been considered unsafe. Advances in pilot training and glider construction have led to a much improved safety record. Modern hang gliders are very sturdy when constructed to Hang Glider Manufacturers Association, BHPA, Deutscher Hängegleiterverband, or other certified standards using modern materials. Although lightweight, they can be easily damaged, either through misuse or by continued operation in unsafe wind and weather conditions. All modern gliders have built-in dive recovery mechanisms such as luff lines in kingposted gliders, or "sprogs" in topless gliders.
Pilots fly in harnesses that support their bodies. Several different types of harnesses exist. Pod harnesses are put on like a jacket and the leg portion is behind the pilot during launch. Once in the air the feet are tucked into the bottom of the harness. They are zipped up in the air with a rope and unzipped before landing with a separate rope. A cocoon harness is slipped over the head and lies in front of the legs during launch. After takeoff, the feet are tucked into it and the back is left open. A knee hanger harness is also slipped over the head but the knee part is wrapped around the knees before launch and just pick up the pilots leg automatically after launch. A supine or suprone harness is a seated harness. The shoulder straps are put on before launch and after takeoff the pilot slides back into the seat and flies in a seated position.
Pilots carry a parachute enclosed in the harness. In case of serious problems, the parachute is manually deployed (either by hand or with a ballistic assist) and carries both pilot and glider down to earth. Pilots also wear helmets and generally carry other safety items such as knives (for cutting their parachute bridle after impact or cutting their harness lines and straps in case of a tree or water landing), light ropes (for lowering from trees to haul up tools or climbing ropes), radios (for communication with other pilots or ground crew), and first-aid equipment.
The accident rate from hang glider flying has been dramatically decreased by pilot training. Early hang glider pilots learned their sport through trial and error and gliders were sometimes home-built. Training programs have been developed for today's pilot with emphasis on flight within safe limits, as well as the discipline to cease flying when weather conditions are unfavorable, for example: excess wind or risk cloud suck.
In the UK, a 2011 study reported there is one death per 116,000 flights, a risk comparable to sudden cardiac death from running a marathon or playing tennis. An estimate of worldwide mortality rate is one death per 1,000 active pilots per year.
Most pilots learn at recognised courses which lead to the internationally recognised International Pilot Proficiency Information card issued by the FAI.
Launch techniques include launching from a hill/cliff/mountain/sand dune/any raised terrain on foot, tow-launching from a ground-based tow system, aerotowing (behind a powered aircraft), powered harnesses, and being towed up by a boat. Modern winch tows typically utilize hydraulic systems designed to regulate line tension, this reduces scenarios for lock out as strong aerodynamic forces will result in additional rope spooling out rather than direct tension on the tow line. Other more exotic launch techniques have also been used successfully, such as hot air balloon drops from very high altitude. When weather conditions are unsuitable to sustain a soaring flight, this results in a top-to-bottom flight and is referred to as a "sled run". In addition to typical launch configurations, a hang glider may be so constructed for alternative launching modes other than being foot launched; one practical avenue for this is for people who physically cannot foot-launch.
In 1983 Denis Cummings re-introduced a safe tow system that was designed to tow through the centre of mass and had a gauge that displayed the towing tension, it also integrated a 'weak link' that broke when the safe tow tension was exceeded. After initial testing, in the Hunter Valley, Denis Cummings, pilot, John Clark, (Redtruck), driver and Bob Silver, officianado, began the Flatlands Hang gliding competition at Parkes, NSW. The competition quickly grew, from 16 pilots the first year to hosting a World Championship with 160 pilots towing from several wheat paddocks in western NSW. In 1986 Denis and 'Redtruck' took a group of international pilots to Alice Springs to take advantage of the massive thermals. Using the new system many world records were set. With the growing use of the system, other launch methods were incorporated, static winch and towing behind an ultralight trike or an ultralight airplane.
A glider in flight is continuously descending, so to achieve an extended flight, the pilot must seek air currents rising faster than the sink rate of the glider. Selecting the sources of rising air currents is the skill that has to be mastered if the pilot wants to achieve flying long distances, known as cross-country (XC). Rising air masses derive from the following sources:
With each generation of materials and with the improvements in aerodynamics, the performance of hang gliders has increased. One measure of performance is the glide ratio. For example, a ratio of 12:1 means that in smooth air a glider can travel forward 12 metres while only losing 1 metre of altitude.
Some performance figures as of 2006:
Because hang gliders are most often used for recreational flying, a premium is placed on gentle behaviour especially at the stall and natural pitch stability. The wing loading must be very low in order to allow the pilot to run fast enough to get above stall speed. Unlike a traditional aircraft with an extended fuselage and empennage for maintaining stability, hang gliders rely on the natural stability of their flexible wings to return to equilibrium in yaw and pitch. Roll stability is generally set to be near neutral. In calm air, a properly designed wing will maintain balanced trimmed flight with little pilot input. The flex wing pilot is suspended beneath the wing by a strap attached to his harness. The pilot lies prone (sometimes supine) within a large, triangular, metal control frame. Controlled flight is achieved by the pilot pushing and pulling on this control frame thus shifting his weight fore or aft, and right or left in coordinated maneuvers.
Furthermore, the fact that the wing is designed to bend and flex, provides favourable dynamics analogous to a spring suspension. This provides a gentler flying experience than a similarly sized rigid-winged hang glider.
To maximize a pilot's understanding of how the hang glider is flying, most pilots carry flight instruments. The most basic being a variometer and altimeter—often combined. Some more advanced pilots also carry airspeed indicators and radios. When flying in competition or cross country, pilots often also carry maps and/or GPS units. Hang gliders do not have instrument panels as such, so all the instruments are mounted to the control frame of the glider or occasionally strapped to the pilot's forearm.
Gliding pilots are able to sense the acceleration forces when they first hit a thermal, but have difficulty gauging constant motion. Thus it is difficult to detect the difference between constantly rising air and constantly sinking air. A variometer is a very sensitive vertical speed indicator. The variometer indicates climb rate or sink rate with audio signals (beeps) and/or a visual display. These units are generally electronic, vary in sophistication, and often include an altimeter and an airspeed indicator. More advanced units often incorporate a barograph for recording flight data and/or a built-in GPS. The main purpose of a variometer is in helping a pilot find and stay in the 'core' of a thermal to maximize height gain, and conversely indicating when he or she is in sinking air and needs to find rising air. Variometers are sometimes capable of electronic calculations to indicate the optimal speed to fly for given conditions. The MacCready theory answers the question on how fast a pilot should cruise between thermals, given the average lift the pilot expects in the next thermal climb and the amount of lift or sink he encounters in cruise mode. Some electronic variometers make the calculations automatically, allowing for factors such as the glider's theoretical performance (glide ratio), altitude, hook in weight, and wind direction.
Pilots sometimes use 2-way radios for training purposes, for communicating with other pilots in the air, and with their ground crew when traveling on cross-country flights.
One type of radio used are PTT (push-to-talk) handheld transceivers, operating in VHF FM. Usually a microphone is worn on the head or incorporated in the helmet, and the PTT switch is either fixed to the outside of the helmet, or strapped to a finger. Operating a VHF band radio without an appropriate license is illegal in most countries that have regulated airwaves (including United States, Canada, Brazil, etc.), so additional information must be obtained with the national or local Hang Gliding association or with the competent radio regulatory authority.
As aircraft operating in airspace occupied by other aircraft, hang glider pilots may also use the appropriate type of radio (i.e. the aircraft transceiver into Aero Mobile Service VHF band). It can, of course, be fitted with a PTT switch to a finger and speakers inside the helmet. The use of aircraft transceivers is subject to regulations specific to the use in the air such as frequencies restrictions, but has several advantages over FM (i.e. frequency modulated) radios used in other services. First is the great range it has (without repeaters) because of its amplitude modulation (i.e. AM). Second is the ability to contact, inform and be informed directly by other aircraft pilots of their intentions thereby improving collision avoidance and increasing safety. Third is to allow greater liberty regarding distance flights in regulated airspaces, in which the aircraft radio is normally a legal requirement. Fourth is the universal emergency frequency monitored by all other users and satellites and used in case of emergency or impending emergency.
GPS (global positioning system) can be used to aid in navigation. For competitions, it is used to verify the contestant reached the required check-points.
Records are sanctioned by the FAI. The world record for straight distance is held by Dustin B. Martin, with a distance of 764 km (475 mi) in 2012, originating from Zapata, Texas.
Judy Leden (GBR) holds the altitude record for a balloon-launched hang glider: 11,800 m (38,800 ft) at Wadi Rum, Jordan on 25 October 1994. Leden also holds the gain of height record: 3,970 m (13,025 ft), set in 1992.
The altitude records for balloon-launched hang gliders:
Competitions started with "flying as long as possible" and spot landings. With increasing performance, cross-country flying has largely replaced them. Usually two to four waypoints have to be passed with a landing at a goal. In the late 1990s low-power GPS units were introduced and have completely replaced photographs of the goal. Every two years there is a world championship. The Rigid and Women's World Championship in 2006 was hosted by Quest Air in Florida. Big Spring, Texas hosted the 2007 World Championship. Hang gliding is also one of the competition categories in World Air Games organized by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (World Air Sports Federation - FAI), which maintains a chronology of the FAI World Hang Gliding Championships.
Other forms of competition include Aerobatic competitions, and Speedgliding competitions, wherein the goal is to descend from a mountain as fast as possible while passing through various gates in a manner similar to down-hill skiing.
For competitive purposes, there are three classes of hang glider:
There are four basic aerobatic maneuvers in a hang glider:
There can be confusion between gliders, hang gliders, and paragliders. Paragliders and hang gliders are both foot-launched glider aircraft and in both cases the pilot is suspended ("hangs") below the lift surface, but "hang glider" is the default term for those where the airframe contains rigid structures. The primary structure of paragliders is supple, consisting mainly of woven material. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorised, heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider. Most modern hang gliders are made of an aluminium alloy or composite frame covered with synthetic sailcloth to form a wing. Typically the pilot is in a harness suspended from the airframe, and controls the aircraft by shifting body weight in opposition to a control frame.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Early hang gliders had a low lift-to-drag ratio, so pilots were restricted to gliding down small hills. By the 1980s this ratio significantly improved, and since then pilots have been able to soar for hours, gain thousands of feet of altitude in thermal updrafts, perform aerobatics, and glide cross-country for hundreds of kilometers. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale and national airspace governing organisations control some regulatory aspects of hang gliding. Obtaining the safety benefits of being instructed is highly recommended and indeed a mandatory requirement in many countries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1853, George Cayley invented a slope-launched, piloted glider. Most early glider designs did not ensure safe flight; the problem was that early flight pioneers did not sufficiently understand the underlying principles that made a bird's wing work. Starting in the 1880s technical and scientific advancements were made that led to the first truly practical gliders, such as those developed in the United States by John Joseph Montgomery. Otto Lilienthal built controllable gliders in the 1890s, with which he could ridge soar. His rigorously documented work influenced later designers, making Lilienthal one of the most influential early aviation pioneers. His aircraft was controlled by weight shift and is similar to a modern hang glider.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hang gliding saw a stiffened flexible wing hang glider in 1904, when Jan Lavezzari flew a double lateen sail hang glider off Berck Beach, France. In 1910 in Breslau, the triangle control frame with hang glider pilot hung behind the triangle in a hang glider, was evident in a gliding club's activity. The biplane hang glider was very widely publicized in public magazines with plans for building; such biplane hang gliders were constructed and flown in several nations since Octave Chanute and his tailed biplane hang gliders were demonstrated. In April 1909, a how-to article by Carl S. Bates proved to be a seminal hang glider article that seemingly affected builders even of contemporary times. Several builders would have their first hang glider made by following the plan in his article. Volmer Jensen with a biplane hang glider in 1940 called VJ-11 allowed safe three-axis control of a foot-launched hang glider.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "On 23 November 1948, Francis Rogallo and Gertrude Rogallo applied for a kite patent for a fully flexible kited wing with approved claims for its stiffenings and gliding uses; the flexible wing or Rogallo wing, which in 1957 the American space agency NASA began testing in various flexible and semi-rigid configurations in order to use it as a recovery system for the Gemini space capsules. The various stiffening formats and the wing's simplicity of design and ease of construction, along with its capability of slow flight and its gentle landing characteristics, did not go unnoticed by hang glider enthusiasts. In 1960–1962 Barry Hill Palmer adapted the flexible wing concept to make foot-launched hang gliders with four different control arrangements. In 1963 Mike Burns adapted the flexible wing to build a towable kite-hang glider he called Skiplane. In 1963, John W. Dickenson adapted the flexible wing airfoil concept to make another water-ski kite glider; for this, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale vested Dickenson with the Hang Gliding Diploma (2006) for the invention of the \"modern\" hang glider. Since then, the Rogallo wing has been the most used airfoil of hang gliders.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hangglider sailcloth is normally made from woven or laminated fiber, such as dacron or mylar, respectively.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Woven polyester sailcloth is a very tight weave of small diameter polyester fibers that has been stabilized by the hot-press impregnation of a polyester resin. The resin impregnation is required to provide resistance to distortion and stretch. This resistance is important in maintaining the aerodynamic shape of the sail. Woven polyester provides the best combination of light weight and durability in a sail with the best overall handling qualities.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Laminated sail materials using polyester film achieve superior performance by using a lower stretch material that is better at maintaining sail shape but is still relatively light in weight. The disadvantages of polyester film fabrics is that the reduced elasticity under load generally results in stiffer and less responsive handling, and polyester laminated fabrics are generally not as durable or long lasting as the woven fabrics.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In most hang gliders, the pilot is ensconced in a harness suspended from the airframe, and exercises control by shifting body weight in opposition to a stationary control frame, also known as a triangle control frame, or an A-frame. The control frame normally consists of 2 \"down-tubes\" and a control bar/base bar/base-tube. Either end of the control bar is attached to an upright tube or a more aerodynamic strut (a \"down-tube\"), where both extend from the base-tube and are connected to the apex of the control frame/ the keel of the glider. This creates the shape of a triangle or 'A-frame'. In many of these configurations additional wheels or other equipment can be suspended from the bottom bar or rod ends.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Images showing a triangle control frame on Otto Lilienthal's 1892 hang glider shows that the technology of such frames has existed since the early design of gliders, but he did not mention it in his patents. A control frame for body weight shift was also shown in Octave Chanute's designs. It was a major part of the now common design of hang gliders by George A. Spratt from 1929. The most simple A-frame that is cable-stayed was demonstrated in a Breslau gliding club hang gliding meet in a battened wing foot-launchable hang glider in the year 1908 by W. Simon; hang glider historian Stephan Nitsch has collected instances also of the U control frame used in the first decade of the 1900s; the U is variant of the A-frame.",
"title": "Components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Due to the poor safety record of early hang gliding pioneers, the sport has traditionally been considered unsafe. Advances in pilot training and glider construction have led to a much improved safety record. Modern hang gliders are very sturdy when constructed to Hang Glider Manufacturers Association, BHPA, Deutscher Hängegleiterverband, or other certified standards using modern materials. Although lightweight, they can be easily damaged, either through misuse or by continued operation in unsafe wind and weather conditions. All modern gliders have built-in dive recovery mechanisms such as luff lines in kingposted gliders, or \"sprogs\" in topless gliders.",
"title": "Training and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Pilots fly in harnesses that support their bodies. Several different types of harnesses exist. Pod harnesses are put on like a jacket and the leg portion is behind the pilot during launch. Once in the air the feet are tucked into the bottom of the harness. They are zipped up in the air with a rope and unzipped before landing with a separate rope. A cocoon harness is slipped over the head and lies in front of the legs during launch. After takeoff, the feet are tucked into it and the back is left open. A knee hanger harness is also slipped over the head but the knee part is wrapped around the knees before launch and just pick up the pilots leg automatically after launch. A supine or suprone harness is a seated harness. The shoulder straps are put on before launch and after takeoff the pilot slides back into the seat and flies in a seated position.",
"title": "Training and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Pilots carry a parachute enclosed in the harness. In case of serious problems, the parachute is manually deployed (either by hand or with a ballistic assist) and carries both pilot and glider down to earth. Pilots also wear helmets and generally carry other safety items such as knives (for cutting their parachute bridle after impact or cutting their harness lines and straps in case of a tree or water landing), light ropes (for lowering from trees to haul up tools or climbing ropes), radios (for communication with other pilots or ground crew), and first-aid equipment.",
"title": "Training and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The accident rate from hang glider flying has been dramatically decreased by pilot training. Early hang glider pilots learned their sport through trial and error and gliders were sometimes home-built. Training programs have been developed for today's pilot with emphasis on flight within safe limits, as well as the discipline to cease flying when weather conditions are unfavorable, for example: excess wind or risk cloud suck.",
"title": "Training and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the UK, a 2011 study reported there is one death per 116,000 flights, a risk comparable to sudden cardiac death from running a marathon or playing tennis. An estimate of worldwide mortality rate is one death per 1,000 active pilots per year.",
"title": "Training and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Most pilots learn at recognised courses which lead to the internationally recognised International Pilot Proficiency Information card issued by the FAI.",
"title": "Training and safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Launch techniques include launching from a hill/cliff/mountain/sand dune/any raised terrain on foot, tow-launching from a ground-based tow system, aerotowing (behind a powered aircraft), powered harnesses, and being towed up by a boat. Modern winch tows typically utilize hydraulic systems designed to regulate line tension, this reduces scenarios for lock out as strong aerodynamic forces will result in additional rope spooling out rather than direct tension on the tow line. Other more exotic launch techniques have also been used successfully, such as hot air balloon drops from very high altitude. When weather conditions are unsuitable to sustain a soaring flight, this results in a top-to-bottom flight and is referred to as a \"sled run\". In addition to typical launch configurations, a hang glider may be so constructed for alternative launching modes other than being foot launched; one practical avenue for this is for people who physically cannot foot-launch.",
"title": "Launch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1983 Denis Cummings re-introduced a safe tow system that was designed to tow through the centre of mass and had a gauge that displayed the towing tension, it also integrated a 'weak link' that broke when the safe tow tension was exceeded. After initial testing, in the Hunter Valley, Denis Cummings, pilot, John Clark, (Redtruck), driver and Bob Silver, officianado, began the Flatlands Hang gliding competition at Parkes, NSW. The competition quickly grew, from 16 pilots the first year to hosting a World Championship with 160 pilots towing from several wheat paddocks in western NSW. In 1986 Denis and 'Redtruck' took a group of international pilots to Alice Springs to take advantage of the massive thermals. Using the new system many world records were set. With the growing use of the system, other launch methods were incorporated, static winch and towing behind an ultralight trike or an ultralight airplane.",
"title": "Launch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A glider in flight is continuously descending, so to achieve an extended flight, the pilot must seek air currents rising faster than the sink rate of the glider. Selecting the sources of rising air currents is the skill that has to be mastered if the pilot wants to achieve flying long distances, known as cross-country (XC). Rising air masses derive from the following sources:",
"title": "Soaring flight and cross-country flying"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "With each generation of materials and with the improvements in aerodynamics, the performance of hang gliders has increased. One measure of performance is the glide ratio. For example, a ratio of 12:1 means that in smooth air a glider can travel forward 12 metres while only losing 1 metre of altitude.",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Some performance figures as of 2006:",
"title": "Performance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Because hang gliders are most often used for recreational flying, a premium is placed on gentle behaviour especially at the stall and natural pitch stability. The wing loading must be very low in order to allow the pilot to run fast enough to get above stall speed. Unlike a traditional aircraft with an extended fuselage and empennage for maintaining stability, hang gliders rely on the natural stability of their flexible wings to return to equilibrium in yaw and pitch. Roll stability is generally set to be near neutral. In calm air, a properly designed wing will maintain balanced trimmed flight with little pilot input. The flex wing pilot is suspended beneath the wing by a strap attached to his harness. The pilot lies prone (sometimes supine) within a large, triangular, metal control frame. Controlled flight is achieved by the pilot pushing and pulling on this control frame thus shifting his weight fore or aft, and right or left in coordinated maneuvers.",
"title": "Stability and equilibrium"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Furthermore, the fact that the wing is designed to bend and flex, provides favourable dynamics analogous to a spring suspension. This provides a gentler flying experience than a similarly sized rigid-winged hang glider.",
"title": "Stability and equilibrium"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "To maximize a pilot's understanding of how the hang glider is flying, most pilots carry flight instruments. The most basic being a variometer and altimeter—often combined. Some more advanced pilots also carry airspeed indicators and radios. When flying in competition or cross country, pilots often also carry maps and/or GPS units. Hang gliders do not have instrument panels as such, so all the instruments are mounted to the control frame of the glider or occasionally strapped to the pilot's forearm.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Gliding pilots are able to sense the acceleration forces when they first hit a thermal, but have difficulty gauging constant motion. Thus it is difficult to detect the difference between constantly rising air and constantly sinking air. A variometer is a very sensitive vertical speed indicator. The variometer indicates climb rate or sink rate with audio signals (beeps) and/or a visual display. These units are generally electronic, vary in sophistication, and often include an altimeter and an airspeed indicator. More advanced units often incorporate a barograph for recording flight data and/or a built-in GPS. The main purpose of a variometer is in helping a pilot find and stay in the 'core' of a thermal to maximize height gain, and conversely indicating when he or she is in sinking air and needs to find rising air. Variometers are sometimes capable of electronic calculations to indicate the optimal speed to fly for given conditions. The MacCready theory answers the question on how fast a pilot should cruise between thermals, given the average lift the pilot expects in the next thermal climb and the amount of lift or sink he encounters in cruise mode. Some electronic variometers make the calculations automatically, allowing for factors such as the glider's theoretical performance (glide ratio), altitude, hook in weight, and wind direction.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Pilots sometimes use 2-way radios for training purposes, for communicating with other pilots in the air, and with their ground crew when traveling on cross-country flights.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "One type of radio used are PTT (push-to-talk) handheld transceivers, operating in VHF FM. Usually a microphone is worn on the head or incorporated in the helmet, and the PTT switch is either fixed to the outside of the helmet, or strapped to a finger. Operating a VHF band radio without an appropriate license is illegal in most countries that have regulated airwaves (including United States, Canada, Brazil, etc.), so additional information must be obtained with the national or local Hang Gliding association or with the competent radio regulatory authority.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "As aircraft operating in airspace occupied by other aircraft, hang glider pilots may also use the appropriate type of radio (i.e. the aircraft transceiver into Aero Mobile Service VHF band). It can, of course, be fitted with a PTT switch to a finger and speakers inside the helmet. The use of aircraft transceivers is subject to regulations specific to the use in the air such as frequencies restrictions, but has several advantages over FM (i.e. frequency modulated) radios used in other services. First is the great range it has (without repeaters) because of its amplitude modulation (i.e. AM). Second is the ability to contact, inform and be informed directly by other aircraft pilots of their intentions thereby improving collision avoidance and increasing safety. Third is to allow greater liberty regarding distance flights in regulated airspaces, in which the aircraft radio is normally a legal requirement. Fourth is the universal emergency frequency monitored by all other users and satellites and used in case of emergency or impending emergency.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "GPS (global positioning system) can be used to aid in navigation. For competitions, it is used to verify the contestant reached the required check-points.",
"title": "Instruments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Records are sanctioned by the FAI. The world record for straight distance is held by Dustin B. Martin, with a distance of 764 km (475 mi) in 2012, originating from Zapata, Texas.",
"title": "Records"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Judy Leden (GBR) holds the altitude record for a balloon-launched hang glider: 11,800 m (38,800 ft) at Wadi Rum, Jordan on 25 October 1994. Leden also holds the gain of height record: 3,970 m (13,025 ft), set in 1992.",
"title": "Records"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The altitude records for balloon-launched hang gliders:",
"title": "Records"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Competitions started with \"flying as long as possible\" and spot landings. With increasing performance, cross-country flying has largely replaced them. Usually two to four waypoints have to be passed with a landing at a goal. In the late 1990s low-power GPS units were introduced and have completely replaced photographs of the goal. Every two years there is a world championship. The Rigid and Women's World Championship in 2006 was hosted by Quest Air in Florida. Big Spring, Texas hosted the 2007 World Championship. Hang gliding is also one of the competition categories in World Air Games organized by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (World Air Sports Federation - FAI), which maintains a chronology of the FAI World Hang Gliding Championships.",
"title": "Competition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Other forms of competition include Aerobatic competitions, and Speedgliding competitions, wherein the goal is to descend from a mountain as fast as possible while passing through various gates in a manner similar to down-hill skiing.",
"title": "Competition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "For competitive purposes, there are three classes of hang glider:",
"title": "Competition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "There are four basic aerobatic maneuvers in a hang glider:",
"title": "Aerobatics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There can be confusion between gliders, hang gliders, and paragliders. Paragliders and hang gliders are both foot-launched glider aircraft and in both cases the pilot is suspended (\"hangs\") below the lift surface, but \"hang glider\" is the default term for those where the airframe contains rigid structures. The primary structure of paragliders is supple, consisting mainly of woven material.",
"title": "Comparison of gliders, hang gliders and paragliders"
}
]
| Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorised, heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider. Most modern hang gliders are made of an aluminium alloy or composite frame covered with synthetic sailcloth to form a wing. Typically the pilot is in a harness suspended from the airframe, and controls the aircraft by shifting body weight in opposition to a control frame. Early hang gliders had a low lift-to-drag ratio, so pilots were restricted to gliding down small hills. By the 1980s this ratio significantly improved, and since then pilots have been able to soar for hours, gain thousands of feet of altitude in thermal updrafts, perform aerobatics, and glide cross-country for hundreds of kilometers. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale and national airspace governing organisations control some regulatory aspects of hang gliding. Obtaining the safety benefits of being instructed is highly recommended and indeed a mandatory requirement in many countries. | 2001-09-28T15:27:08Z | 2023-12-26T06:39:05Z | [
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13,851 | Hole (disambiguation) | A hole is a hollow place, an opening in/through a solid body, or an excavation in the ground.
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| A hole is a hollow place, an opening in/through a solid body, or an excavation in the ground. Hole or holes may also refer to: | 2001-09-28T09:32:01Z | 2023-10-18T16:38:07Z | [
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13,854 | History of France | The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language. Over the course of the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman Legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire.
In the later stages of the Roman Empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration, most importantly by the Germanic Franks. The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul under his rule in the late 5th century, setting the stage for Frankish dominance in the region for hundreds of years. Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne. The medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western part of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, known as West Francia, and achieved increasing prominence under the rule of the House of Capet, founded by Hugh Capet in 987.
A succession crisis following the death of the last direct Capetian monarch in 1328 led to the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The war formally began in 1337 following Philip VI's attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its hereditary holder, Edward III of England, the Plantagenet claimant to the French throne. Despite early Plantagenet victories, including the capture and ransom of John II of France, fortunes turned in favor of the Valois later in the war. Among the notable figures of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led French forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453.
Victory in the Hundred Years' War had the effect of strengthening French nationalism and vastly increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the Ancien Régime period over the next centuries, France transformed into a centralized absolute monarchy through Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. At the height of the French Wars of Religion, France became embroiled in another succession crisis, as the last Valois king, Henry III, fought against rival factions the House of Bourbon and the House of Guise. Henry, the Bourbon King of Navarre, won the conflict and established the Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century. The French monarchy's political power reached a zenith under the rule of Louis XIV, "The Sun King".
In the late 18th century the monarchy and associated institutions were overthrown in the French Revolution. The country was governed for a period as a Republic, until Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire was declared. Following his defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, France went through several further regime changes, being ruled as a monarchy, then briefly as a Second Republic, and then as a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870.
France was one of the Triple Entente powers in World War I against Germany and the Central Powers. France was one of the Allied Powers in World War II, but was conquered by Nazi Germany in 1940. The Third Republic was dismantled, and most of the country was controlled directly by Germany while the south was controlled until 1942 by the collaborationist Vichy government. Living conditions were harsh as Germany drained away food and manpower, and many Jews were killed. The Free France movement took over the colonial empire, and coordinated the wartime Resistance. Following liberation in 1944, the Fourth Republic was established. France slowly recovered, and enjoyed a baby boom that reversed its very low fertility rate. Long wars in Indochina and Algeria drained French resources and ended in political defeat. In the wake of the 1958 Algerian Crisis, Charles de Gaulle set up the French Fifth Republic. Into the 1960s decolonization saw most of the French colonial empire become independent, while smaller parts were incorporated into the French state as overseas departments and collectivities. Since World War II France has been a permanent member in the UN Security Council and NATO. It played a central role in the unification process after 1945 that led to the European Union. Despite slow economic growth in recent years, it remains a strong economic, cultural, military and political factor in the 21st century.
Stone tools discovered at Chilhac (1968) and Lézignan-la-Cèbe in 2009 indicate that pre-human ancestors may have been present in France at least 1.6 million years ago. Neanderthals were present in Europe from about 400,000 BC, but died out about 40,000 years ago, possibly out-competed by the modern humans during a period of cold weather. The earliest modern humans — Homo sapiens — entered Europe by 43,000 years ago (the Upper Palaeolithic).
The Paleolithic cave paintings of Gargas (c. 25,000 BC) and Lascaux (c. 15,000 BC) as well as the Neolithic-era Carnac stones (c. 4500 BC) are among the many remains of local prehistoric activity in the region. In the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age the territory of France was largely dominated by the Bell Beaker culture, followed by the Armorican Tumulus culture, Rhône culture, Tumulus culture, Urnfield culture and Atlantic Bronze Age culture, among others. The Iron Age saw the development of the Hallstatt culture followed by the La Tène culture, the final cultural stage prior to Roman expansion across Gaul. The first written records for the history of France appear in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Roman writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language.
Over the course of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman forces under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman empire.
In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille) on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, making it one of the oldest cities in France. At the same time, some Celtic tribes arrived in the eastern parts (Germania superior) of the current territory of France, but this occupation spread in the rest of France only between the 5th and 3rd century BC.
Covering large parts of modern-day France, Belgium, northwest Germany and northern Italy, Gaul was inhabited by many Celtic and Belgae tribes whom the Romans referred to as Gauls and who spoke the Gaulish language roughly between the Oise and the Garonne (Gallia Celtica), according to Julius Caesar. On the lower Garonne the people spoke Aquitanian, a Pre-Indo-European language related to (or a direct ancestor of) Basque whereas a Belgian language was spoken north of Lutecia but north of the Loire according to other authors like Strabo. The Celts founded cities such as Lutetia Parisiorum (Paris) and Burdigala (Bordeaux) while the Aquitanians founded Tolosa (Toulouse).
Long before any Roman settlements, Greek navigators settled in what would become Provence. The Phoceans founded important cities such as Massalia (Marseille) and Nikaia (Nice), bringing them into conflict with the neighboring Celts and Ligurians. Some Phocean great navigators, such as Pytheas, were born in Marseille. The Celts themselves often fought with Aquitanians and Germans, and a Gaulish war band led by Brennus invaded Rome c. 393 or 388 BC following the Battle of the Allia.
However, the tribal society of the Gauls did not change fast enough for the centralized Roman state, who would learn to counter them. The Gaulish tribal confederacies were then defeated by the Romans in battles such as Sentinum and Telamon during the 3rd century BC. In the early 3rd century BC, some Belgae (Germani cisrhenani) conquered the surrounding territories of the Somme in northern Gaul after battles supposedly against the Armoricani (Gauls) near Ribemont-sur-Ancre and Gournay-sur-Aronde, where sanctuaries were found.
When Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca fought the Romans, he recruited several Gaulish mercenaries who fought on his side at Cannae. It was this Gaulish participation that caused Provence to be annexed in 122 BC by the Roman Republic. Later, the Consul of Gaul — Julius Caesar — conquered all of Gaul. Despite Gaulish opposition led by Vercingetorix, the Gauls succumbed to the Roman onslaught. The Gauls had some success at first at Gergovia, but were ultimately defeated at Alesia in 52 BC. The Romans founded cities such as Lugdunum (Lyon), Narbonensis (Narbonne) and allow in a correspondence between Lucius Munatius Plancus and Cicero to formalize the existence of Cularo (Grenoble).
Gaul was divided into several different provinces. The Romans displaced populations to prevent local identities from becoming a threat to Roman control. Thus, many Celts were displaced in Aquitania or were enslaved and moved out of Gaul. There was a strong cultural evolution in Gaul under the Roman Empire, the most obvious one being the replacement of the Gaulish language by Vulgar Latin. It has been argued the similarities between the Gaulish and Latin languages favoured the transition. Gaul remained under Roman control for centuries and Celtic culture was then gradually replaced by Gallo-Roman culture.
The Gauls became better integrated with the Empire with the passage of time. For instance, generals Marcus Antonius Primus and Gnaeus Julius Agricola were both born in Gaul, as were emperors Claudius and Caracalla. Emperor Antoninus Pius also came from a Gaulish family. In the decade following Valerian's capture by the Persians in 260, Postumus established a short-lived Gallic Empire, which included the Iberian Peninsula and Britannia, in addition to Gaul itself. Germanic tribes, the Franks and the Alamanni, entered Gaul at this time. The Gallic Empire ended with Emperor Aurelian's victory at Châlons in 274.
A migration of Celts occurred in the 4th century in Armorica. They were led by the legendary king Conan Meriadoc and came from Britain. They spoke the now extinct British language, which evolved into the Breton, Cornish, and Welsh languages.
In 418 the Aquitanian province was given to the Goths in exchange for their support against the Vandals. Those same Goths had sacked Rome in 410 and established a capital in Toulouse.
The Roman Empire had difficulty responding to all the barbarian raids, and Flavius Aëtius had to use these tribes against each other in order to maintain some Roman control. He first used the Huns against the Burgundians, and these mercenaries destroyed Worms, killed king Gunther, and pushed the Burgundians westward. The Burgundians were resettled by Aëtius near Lugdunum in 443. The Huns, united by Attila, became a greater threat, and Aëtius used the Visigoths against the Huns. The conflict climaxed in 451 at the Battle of Châlons, in which the Romans and Goths defeated Attila.
The Roman Empire was on the verge of collapsing. Aquitania was definitely abandoned to the Visigoths, who would soon conquer a significant part of southern Gaul as well as most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Burgundians claimed their own kingdom, and northern Gaul was practically abandoned to the Franks. Aside from the Germanic peoples, the Vascones entered Wasconia from the Pyrenees and the Bretons formed three kingdoms in Armorica: Domnonia, Cornouaille and Broërec.
In 486, Clovis I, leader of the Salian Franks, defeated Syagrius at Soissons and subsequently united most of northern and central Gaul under his rule. Clovis then recorded a succession of victories against other Germanic tribes such as the Alamanni at Tolbiac. In 496, pagan Clovis adopted Catholicism. This gave him greater legitimacy and power over his Christian subjects and granted him clerical support against the Arian Visigoths. He defeated Alaric II at Vouillé in 507 and annexed Aquitaine, and thus Toulouse, into his Frankish kingdom.
The Goths retired to Toledo in what would become Spain. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty but his kingdom would not survive his death in 511. Under Frankish inheritance traditions, all sons inherit part of the land, so four kingdoms emerged: centered on Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. Over time, the borders and numbers of Frankish kingdoms were fluid and changed frequently. Also during this time, the Mayors of the Palace, originally the chief advisor to the kings, would become the real power in the Frankish lands; the Merovingian kings themselves would be reduced to little more than figureheads.
By this time Muslims had conquered Hispania and Septimania became part of the Al-Andalus, which were threatening the Frankish kingdoms. Duke Odo the Great defeated a major invading force at Toulouse in 721 but failed to repel a raiding party in 732. The mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated that raiding party at the Battle of Tours and earned respect and power within the Frankish Kingdom. The assumption of the crown in 751 by Pepin the Short (son of Charles Martel) established the Carolingian dynasty as the kings of the Franks.
Carolingian power reached its fullest extent under Pepin's son, Charlemagne. In 771, Charlemagne reunited the Frankish domains after a further period of division, subsequently conquering the Lombards under Desiderius in what is now northern Italy (774), incorporating Bavaria (788) into his realm, defeating the Avars of the Danubian plain (796), advancing the frontier with Al-Andalus as far south as Barcelona (801), and subjugating Lower Saxony after a prolonged campaign (804).
In recognition of his successes and his political support for the papacy, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans, or Roman Emperor in the West, by Pope Leo III in 800. Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious (emperor 814–840) kept the empire united; however, this Carolingian Empire would not survive Louis I's death. Two of his sons — Charles the Bald and Louis the German — swore allegiance to each other against their brother — Lothair I — in the Oaths of Strasbourg, and the empire was divided among Louis's three sons (Treaty of Verdun, 843). After a last brief reunification (884–887), the imperial title ceased to be held in the western realm, which was to form the basis of the future French kingdom. The eastern realm, which would become Germany, elected the Saxon dynasty of Henry the Fowler.
Under the Carolingians, the kingdom was ravaged by Viking raiders. In this struggle some important figures such as Count Odo of Paris and his brother King Robert rose to fame and became kings. This emerging dynasty, whose members were called the Robertines, were the predecessors of the Capetian dynasty. Led by Rollo, some Vikings had settled in Normandy and were granted the land, first as counts and then as dukes, by King Charles the Simple, in order to protect the land from other raiders. The people that emerged from the interactions between the new Viking aristocracy and the already mixed Franks and Gallo-Romans became known as the Normans.
France was a very decentralised state during the Middle Ages. The authority of the king was more religious than administrative. The 11th century in France marked the apogee of princely power at the expense of the king when states like Normandy, Flanders or Languedoc enjoyed a local authority comparable to kingdoms in all but name. The Capetians, as they were descended from the Robertians, were formerly powerful princes themselves who had successfully unseated the weak and unfortunate Carolingian kings. The Capetians, in a way, held a dual status of King and Prince; as king they held the Crown of Charlemagne and as Count of Paris they held their personal fiefdom, best known as Île-de-France.
Some of the king's vassals would grow sufficiently powerful that they would become some of the strongest rulers of western Europe. The Normans, the Plantagenets, the Lusignans, the Hautevilles, the Ramnulfids, and the House of Toulouse successfully carved lands outside France for themselves. The most important of these conquests for French history was the Norman Conquest by William the Conqueror.
An important part of the French aristocracy also involved itself in the crusades, and French knights founded and ruled the Crusader states.
The monarchy overcame the powerful barons over ensuing centuries, and established absolute sovereignty over France in the 16th century. Hugh Capet in 987 became "King of the Franks" (Rex Francorum). He was recorded to be recognised king by the Gauls, Bretons, Danes, Aquitanians, Goths, Spanish and Gascons.
Hugh's son—Robert the Pious—was crowned King of the Franks before Capet's demise. Hugh Capet decided so in order to have his succession secured. Robert II, as King of the Franks, met Emperor Henry II in 1023 on the borderline. They agreed to end all claims over each other's realm, setting a new stage of Capetian and Ottonian relationships. The reign of Robert II was quite important because it involved the Peace and Truce of God (beginning in 989) and the Cluniac Reforms.
Under King Philip I, the kingdom enjoyed a modest recovery during his extraordinarily long reign (1060–1108). His reign also saw the launch of the First Crusade to regain the Holy Land.
It is from Louis VI (reigned 1108–37) onward that royal authority became more accepted. Louis VI was more a soldier and warmongering king than a scholar. The way the king raised money from his vassals made him quite unpopular; he was described as greedy and ambitious. His regular attacks on his vassals, although damaging the royal image, reinforced the royal power. From 1127 onward Louis had the assistance of a skilled religious statesman, Abbot Suger. Louis VI successfully defeated, both military and politically, many of the robber barons. When Louis VI died in 1137, much progress had been made towards strengthening Capetian authority.
Thanks to Abbot Suger's political advice, King Louis VII (junior king 1131–37, senior king 1137–80) enjoyed greater moral authority over France than his predecessors. Powerful vassals paid homage to the French king. Abbot Suger arranged the 1137 marriage between Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Bordeaux, which made Louis VII Duke of Aquitaine and gave him considerable power. The marriage was ultimately annulled and Eleanor soon married the Duke of Normandy — Henry Fitzempress, who would become King of England as Henry II two years later.
The late direct Capetian kings were considerably more powerful and influential than the earliest ones. This period also saw the rise of a complex system of international alliances and conflicts opposing, through dynasties, kings of France and England and the Holy Roman Emperor. The reign of Philip II Augustus (junior king 1179–80, senior king 1180–1223) saw the French royal domain and influence greatly expanded. He set the context for the rise of power to much more powerful monarchs like Saint Louis and Philip the Fair. Philip II spent an important part of his reign fighting the so-called Angevin Empire.
During the first part of his reign Philip II allied himself with the Duke of Aquitaine and son of Henry II—Richard Lionheart—and together they launched a decisive attack on Henry's home of Chinon and removed him from power. Richard replaced his father as King of England afterward. The two kings then went crusading during the Third Crusade; however, their alliance and friendship broke down during the crusade. John Lackland, Richard's successor, refused to come to the French court for a trial against the Lusignans and, as Louis VI had done often to his rebellious vassals, Philip II confiscated John's possessions in France. John's defeat was swift and his attempts to reconquer his French possession at the decisive Battle of Bouvines (1214) resulted in complete failure. Philip II had annexed Normandy and Anjou, plus capturing the Counts of Boulogne and Flanders, although Aquitaine and Gascony remained loyal to the Plantagenet King.
Prince Louis (the future Louis VIII, reigned 1223–26) was involved in the subsequent English civil war as French and English (or rather Anglo-Norman) aristocracies were once one and were now split between allegiances. While the French kings were struggling against the Plantagenets, the Church called for the Albigensian Crusade. Southern France was then largely absorbed in the royal domains.
France became a truly centralised kingdom under Louis IX (reigned 1226–70). The kingdom was vulnerable: war was still going on in the County of Toulouse, and the royal army was occupied fighting resistance in Languedoc. Count Raymond VII of Toulouse finally signed the Treaty of Paris in 1229, in which he retained much of his lands for life, but his daughter, married to Count Alfonso of Poitou, produced him no heir and so the County of Toulouse went to the King of France. King Henry III of England had not yet recognized the Capetian overlordship over Aquitaine and still hoped to recover Normandy and Anjou and reform the Angevin Empire. He landed in 1230 at Saint-Malo with a massive force. This evolved into the Saintonge War (1242). Ultimately, Henry III was defeated and had to recognise Louis IX's overlordship, although the King of France did not seize Aquitaine. Louis IX was now the most important landowner of France. There were some opposition to his rule in Normandy, yet it proved remarkably easy to rule, especially compared to the County of Toulouse which had been brutally conquered. The Conseil du Roi, which would evolve into the Parlement, was founded in these times. After his conflict with King Henry III of England, Louis established a cordial relation with the Plantagenet King.
The Kingdom was involved in two crusades under Louis: the Seventh Crusade and the Eighth Crusade. Both proved to be complete failures for the French King. Philip III became king when Saint Louis died in 1270 during the Eighth Crusade. Philip III was called "the Bold" on the basis of his abilities in combat and on horseback, and not because of his character or ruling abilities. Philip III took part in another crusading disaster: the Aragonese Crusade, which cost him his life in 1285. More administrative reforms were made by Philip IV, also called Philip the Fair (reigned 1285–1314). This king was responsible for the end of the Knights Templar, signed the Auld Alliance, and established the Parlement of Paris. Philip IV was so powerful that he could name popes and emperors, unlike the early Capetians. The papacy was moved to Avignon and all the contemporary popes were French, such as Philip IV's puppet Bertrand de Goth, Pope Clement V.
The tensions between the Houses of Plantagenet and Capet climaxed during the so-called Hundred Years' War (actually several distinct wars over the period 1337 to 1453) when the Plantagenets claimed the throne of France from the Valois. This was also the time of the Black Death, as well as several devastating civil wars. In 1420, by the Treaty of Troyes Henry V was made heir to Charles VI. Henry V failed to outlive Charles so it was Henry VI of England and France who consolidated the Dual-Monarchy of England and France.
It has been argued that the difficult conditions the French population suffered during the Hundred Years' War awakened French nationalism, a nationalism represented by Joan of Arc (1412–1431). Although this is debatable, the Hundred Years' War is remembered more as a Franco-English war than as a succession of feudal struggles. During this war, France evolved politically and militarily.
Although a Franco-Scottish army was successful at the Battle of Baugé (1421), the humiliating defeats of Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) forced the French nobility to realise they could not stand just as armoured knights without an organised army. Charles VII (reigned 1422–61) established the first French standing army, the Compagnies d'ordonnance, and defeated the Plantagenets once at Patay (1429) and again, using cannons, at Formigny (1450). The Battle of Castillon (1453) was the last engagement of this war; Calais and the Channel Islands remained ruled by the Plantagenets.
The Early Modern period in French history spans the following reigns, from 1461 to the Revolution, breaking in 1789:
France in the Ancien Régime covered a territory of around 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi). This land supported 13 million people in 1484 and 20 million people in 1700. France had the second largest population in Europe around 1700. France's lead slowly faded after 1700, as other countries grew faster.
Political power was widely dispersed. The law courts ("Parlements") were powerful. However, the king had only about 10,000 officials in royal service – very few indeed for such a large country, and with very slow internal communications over an inadequate road system. Travel was usually faster by ocean ship or river boat. The different estates of the realm — the clergy, the nobility, and commoners — occasionally met together in the "Estates General", but in practice the Estates General had no power, for it could petition the king but could not pass laws.
The Catholic Church controlled about 40% of the wealth. The king (not the pope) nominated bishops, but typically had to negotiate with noble families that had close ties to local monasteries and church establishments. The nobility came second in terms of wealth, but there was no unity. Each noble had his own lands, his own network of regional connections, and his own military force.
The cities had a quasi-independent status, and were largely controlled by the leading merchants and guilds. Peasants made up the vast majority of population, who in many cases had well-established rights that the authorities had to respect. In the 17th century peasants had ties to the market economy, provided much of the capital investment necessary for agricultural growth, and frequently moved from village to village (or town). Although most peasants in France spoke local dialects, an official language emerged in Paris and the French language became the preferred language of Europe's aristocracy and the lingua franca of diplomacy and international relations. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V quipped, "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse."
With the death in 1477 of Charles the Bold, France and the Habsburgs began a long process of dividing his rich Burgundian lands, leading to numerous wars. In 1532, Brittany was incorporated into the Kingdom of France.
France engaged in the long Italian Wars (1494–1559), which marked the beginning of early modern France. Francis I faced powerful foes, and he was captured at Pavia. The French monarchy then sought for allies and found one in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Admiral Barbarossa captured Nice in 1543 and handed it down to Francis I.
During the 16th century, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs were the dominant power in Europe. The many domains of Charles V encircled France. The Spanish Tercio was used with great success against French knights. Finally, on 7 January 1558, the Duke of Guise seized Calais from the English.
Economic historians call the era from about 1475 to 1630 the "beautiful 16th century" because of the return of peace, prosperity and optimism across the nation, and the steady growth of population. In 1559, Henry II of France signed (with the approval of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor) two treaties (Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis): one with Elizabeth I of England and one with Philip II of Spain. This ended long-lasting conflicts between France, England and Spain.
The Protestant Reformation, inspired in France mainly by John Calvin, began to challenge the legitimacy and rituals of the Catholic Church. French King Henry II severely persecuted Protestants under the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551). Renewed Catholic reaction — headed by the powerful Francis, Duke of Guise — led to a massacre of Huguenots at Vassy in 1562, starting the first of the French Wars of Religion, during which English, German, and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant ("Huguenot") and Catholic forces.
King Henry II died in 1559 in a jousting tournament; he was succeeded in turn by his three sons, each of which assumed the throne as minors or were weak, ineffectual rulers. In the power vacuum entered Henry's widow, Catherine de' Medici, who became a central figure in the early years of the Wars of Religion. She is often blamed for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, when thousands of Huguenots were murdered in Paris and the provinces of France.
The Wars of Religion culminated in the War of the Three Henrys (1584–98), at the height of which bodyguards of the King Henry III assassinated Henry de Guise, leader of the Spanish-backed Catholic league, in December 1588. In revenge, a priest assassinated Henry III in 1589. This led to the ascension of the Huguenot Henry IV; in order to bring peace to a country beset by religious and succession wars, he converted to Catholicism. He issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which guaranteed religious liberties to the Protestants, thereby effectively ending the civil war. Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 by a fanatical Catholic.
When in 1620 the Huguenots proclaimed a constitution for the 'Republic of the Reformed Churches of France', the chief minister Cardinal Richelieu invoked the entire powers of the state to stop it. Religious conflicts therefore resumed under Louis XIII when Richelieu forced Protestants to disarm their army and fortresses. This conflict ended in the Siege of La Rochelle (1627–28), in which Protestants and their English supporters were defeated. The following Peace of Alais (1629) confirmed religious freedom yet dismantled the Protestant military defences.
In the face of persecution, Huguenots dispersed widely throughout Europe and America.
The religious conflicts that plagued France also ravaged the Habsburg-led Holy Roman Empire. The Thirty Years' War eroded the power of the Catholic Habsburgs. Although Cardinal Richelieu, the powerful chief minister of France, had mauled the Protestants, he joined this war on their side in 1636 because it was in the national interest. Imperial Habsburg forces invaded France, ravaged Champagne, and nearly threatened Paris.
Richelieu died in 1642 and was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, while Louis XIII died one year later and was succeeded by Louis XIV. France was served by some very efficient commanders such as Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé and Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne. The French forces won a decisive victory at Rocroi (1643), and the Spanish army was decimated; the Tercio was broken. The Truce of Ulm (1647) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) brought an end to the war.
France was hit by civil unrest known as The Fronde which in turn evolved into the Franco-Spanish War in 1653. Louis II de Bourbon joined the Spanish army this time, but suffered a severe defeat at Dunkirk (1658) by Henry de la Tour d'Auvergne. The terms for the peace inflicted upon the Spanish kingdoms in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) were harsh, as France annexed Northern Catalonia.
During the 16th century, the king began to claim North American territories and established several colonies. Jacques Cartier was one of the great explorers who ventured deep into American territories during the 16th century.
The early 17th century saw the first successful French settlements in the New World with the voyages of Samuel de Champlain. The largest settlement was New France.
Louis XIV, known as the "Sun King", reigned over France from 1643 until 1715. Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from Paris, sought to eliminate remnants of feudalism in France, and subjugated and weakened the aristocracy. By these means he consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution. However, Louis XIV's long reign saw France involved in many wars that drained its treasury.
France dominated League of the Rhine fought against the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Saint Gotthard in 1664. France fought the War of Devolution against Spain in 1667. France's defeat of Spain and invasion of the Spanish Netherlands alarmed England and Sweden. With the Dutch Republic they formed the Triple Alliance to check Louis XIV's expansion. Louis II de Bourbon had captured Franche-Comté, but in face of an indefensible position, Louis XIV agreed to the peace of Aachen. War broke out again between France and the Dutch Republic in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–78). France attacked the Dutch Republic and was joined by England in this conflict. Through targeted inundations of polders by breaking dykes, the French invasion of the Dutch Republic was brought to a halt. The Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter inflicted a few strategic defeats on the Anglo-French naval alliance and forced England to retire from the war in 1674. Because the Netherlands could not resist indefinitely, it agreed to peace in the Treaties of Nijmegen, according to which France would annex France-Comté and acquire further concessions in the Spanish Netherlands. On 6 May 1682, the royal court moved to the lavish Palace of Versailles, which Louis XIV had greatly expanded. Over time, Louis XIV compelled many members of the nobility, especially the noble elite, to inhabit Versailles. He controlled the nobility with an elaborate system of pensions and privileges, and replaced their power with himself.
Peace did not last, and war between France and Spain again resumed. The War of the Reunions broke out (1683–84), and again Spain, with its ally the Holy Roman Empire, was defeated. Meanwhile, in October 1685 Louis signed the Edict of Fontainebleau ordering the destruction of all Protestant churches and schools in France. Its immediate consequence was a large Protestant exodus from France. Over two million people died in two famines in 1693 and 1710.
France would soon be involved in another war, the War of the Grand Alliance. This time the theatre was not only in Europe but also in North America. Although the war was long and difficult (it was also called the Nine Years' War), its results were inconclusive. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 confirmed French sovereignty over Alsace, yet rejected its claims to Luxembourg. Louis also had to evacuate Catalonia and the Palatinate. This peace was considered a truce by all sides, thus war was to start again.
In 1701, the War of the Spanish Succession began. The Bourbon Philip of Anjou was designated heir to the throne of Spain as Philip V. The Habsburg Emperor Leopold opposed a Bourbon succession, because the power that such a succession would bring to the Bourbon rulers of France would disturb the delicate balance of power in Europe. Therefore, he claimed the Spanish thrones for himself. England and the Dutch Republic joined Leopold against Louis XIV and Philip of Anjou. They inflicted a few resounding defeats on the French army; the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 was the first major land battle lost by France since its victory at Rocroi in 1643. Yet, the extremely bloody battles of Ramillies (1706) and Malplaquet (1709) proved to be Pyrrhic victories for the allies, as they had lost too many men to continue the war. Led by Villars, French forces recovered much of the lost ground in battles such as Denain (1712). Finally, a compromise was achieved with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Philip of Anjou was confirmed as Philip V, king of Spain; Emperor Leopold did not get the throne, but Philip V was barred from inheriting France.
Louis XIV wanted to be remembered as a patron of the arts, and invited Jean-Baptiste Lully to establish the French opera.
The wars were so expensive, and so inconclusive, that although France gained some territory to the east, its enemies gained more strength than it did. Vauban, France's leading military strategist, warned the King in 1689 that a hostile "Alliance" was too powerful at sea. He recommended the best way for France to fight back was to license French merchants ships to privateer and seize enemy merchant ships, while avoiding its navies:
France has its declared enemies Germany and all the states that it embraces; Spain with all its dependencies in Europe, Asia, Africa and America; the Duchy of Savoy, England, Scotland, Ireland, and all their colonies in the East and West Indies; and Holland with all its possessions in the four corners of the world where it has great establishments. France has… undeclared enemies, indirectly hostile hostile and envious of its greatness, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Venice, Genoa, and part of the Swiss Confederation, all of which states secretly aid France's enemies by the troops that they hire to them, the money they lend them and by protecting and covering their trade.
Vauban was pessimistic about France's so-called friends and allies and recommended against expensive land wars, or hopeless naval wars:
For lukewarm, useless, or impotent friends, France has the Pope, who is indifferent; the King of England [James II] expelled from his country [And living in exile in Paris]; the grand Duke of Tuscany; the Dukes of Mantua, Mokena, and Parma (all in Italy); and the other faction of the Swiss. Some of these are sunk in the softness that comes of years of peace, the others are cool in their affections….The English and Dutch are the main pillars of the Alliance; they support it by making war against us in concert with the other powers, and they keep it going by means of the money that they pay every year to… Allies…. We must therefore fall back on privateering as the method of conducting war which is most feasible, simple, cheap, and safe, and which will cost least to the state, the more so since any losses will not be felt by the King, who risks virtually nothing….It will enrich the country, train many good officers for the King, and in a short time force his enemies to sue for peace.
Louis XIV died in 1715 and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson who reigned as Louis XV until his death in 1774. In 1718, France was once again at war, as Philip II of Orléans's regency joined the War of the Quadruple Alliance against Spain. In 1733 another war broke in central Europe, this time about the Polish succession, and France joined the war against the Austrian Empire. Peace was settled in the Treaty of Vienna (1738), according to which France would annex, through inheritance, the Duchy of Lorraine.
Two years later, in 1740, war broke out over the Austrian succession, and France seized the opportunity to join the conflict. The war played out in North America and India as well as Europe, and inconclusive terms were agreed to in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). Prussia was then becoming a new threat, as it had gained substantial territory from Austria. This led to the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, in which the alliances seen during the previous war were mostly inverted. France was now allied to Austria and Russia, while Britain was now allied to Prussia.
In the North American theatre, France was allied with various Native American peoples during the Seven Years' War and, despite a temporary success at the battles of the Great Meadows and Monongahela, French forces were defeated at the disastrous Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec. In 1762, Russia, France, and Austria were on the verge of crushing Prussia, when the Anglo-Prussian Alliance was saved by the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg. At sea, naval defeats against British fleets at Lagos and Quiberon Bay in 1759 and a crippling blockade forced France to keep its ships in port. Finally peace was concluded in the Treaty of Paris (1763), and France lost its North American empire.
Britain's success in the Seven Years' War had allowed them to eclipse France as the leading colonial power. France sought revenge for this defeat, and under Choiseul France started to rebuild. In 1766, the French Kingdom annexed Lorraine and the following year bought Corsica from Genoa. Having lost its colonial empire, France saw a good opportunity for revenge against Britain in signing an alliance with the Americans in 1778, and sending an army and navy that turned the American Revolution into a world war. Admiral de Grasse defeated a British fleet at Chesapeake Bay while Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette joined American forces in defeating the British at Yorktown. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Paris (1783); the United States became independent. The British Royal Navy scored a major victory over France in 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes and France finished the war with huge debts and the minor gain of the island of Tobago.
The "Philosophes" were 18th-century French intellectuals who dominated the French Enlightenment and were influential across Europe. The philosopher Denis Diderot was editor in chief of the famous Enlightenment accomplishment, the 72,000-article Encyclopédie (1751–72). It sparked a revolution in learning throughout the enlightened world.
In the early part of the 18th century the movement was dominated by Voltaire and Montesquieu. Around 1750 the Philosophes reached their most influential period, as Montesquieu published Spirit of Laws (1748) and Jean Jacques Rousseau published Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences (1750). The leader of the French Enlightenment and a writer of enormous influence across Europe, was Voltaire.
Astronomy, chemistry, mathematics and technology flourished. French chemists such as Antoine Lavoisier worked to replace the archaic units of weights and measures by a coherent scientific system. Lavoisier also formulated the law of Conservation of mass and discovered oxygen and hydrogen.
When King Louis XV died in 1774 he left his grandson, Louis XVI, "A heavy legacy, with ruined finances, unhappy subjects, and a faulty and incompetent government." Wars effectively bankrupted the state. The taxation system was highly inefficient. Several years of bad harvests and an inadequate transportation system had caused rising food prices, hunger, and malnutrition; the country was further destabilized by the lower classes' increased feeling that the royal court was isolated from, and indifferent to, their hardships. In February 1787, the king's finance minister, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, convened an Assembly of Notables to approve a new land tax that would, for the first time, include a tax on the property of nobles and clergy. The assembly did not approve the tax, and instead demanded that Louis XVI call the Estates-General.
In August 1788, the King agreed to convene the Estates-General in May 1789. While the Third Estate demanded and was granted "double representation" so as to balance the First and Second Estate, voting was to occur "by orders" – votes of the Third Estate were to be weighted – effectively canceling double representation. This eventually led to the Third Estate breaking away from the Estates-General and, joined by members of the other estates, proclaiming the creation of the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People". In an attempt to keep control of the process and prevent the Assembly from convening, Louis XVI ordered the closure of the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly met nearby on a tennis court and pledged the Tennis Court Oath on 20 June 1789, binding them "never to separate, and to meet wherever circumstances demand, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations".
Paris was soon consumed with riots and widespread looting. Because the royal leadership essentially abandoned the city, the mobs soon had the support of the French Guard, including arms and trained soldiers. On 14 July 1789, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the Bastille fortress, which also served as a symbol of royal tyranny. Insurgents seized the Bastille prison. The French now celebrate 14 July each year as 'Bastille day' or, as the French say: Quatorze Juillet (the Fourteenth of July), as a symbol of the shift away from the Ancien Régime to a more modern, democratic state.
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American War of Independence, on 15 July took command of the National Guard, and the king on 17 July accepted to wear the two-colour cockade (blue and red), later adapted into the tricolour cockade, as the new symbol of revolutionary France. Although peace was made, several nobles did not regard the new order as acceptable and emigrated in order to push the neighboring, aristocratic kingdoms to war against the new regime. The state was now struck for several weeks in July and August 1789 by violence against aristocracy, also called 'the Great Fear'.
On 4 and 11 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished privileges and feudalism, sweeping away personal serfdom, exclusive hunting rights and other seigneurial rights of the Second Estate (nobility). The tithe was also abolished. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted by the National Assembly on 27 August 1789, as a first step in their effort to write a constitution.
When a mob from Paris attacked the royal palace at Versailles in October 1789 seeking redress for their severe poverty, the royal family was forced to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. In November 1789, the Assembly decided to nationalize and sell all church property, thus in part addressing the financial crisis.
In July 1790, the Assembly adopted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This law reorganized the French Catholic Church, arranged that henceforth the salaries of the priests would be paid by the state, abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax on crops and again cancelled some privileges for the clergy. In October a group of bishops wrote a declaration saying they could not accept the law, and this fueled civilian opposition against it. The Assembly then in late November 1790 decreed that all clergy should take an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This stiffened the resistance, especially in the west of France including Normandy, Brittany and the Vendée, where few priests took the oath and the civilian population turned against the revolution. Priests swearing the oath were designated 'constitutional', and those not taking the oath as 'non-juring' or 'refractory' clergy.
In June 1791, the royal family secretly fled Paris in disguise for Varennes, but they were soon discovered and returned to Paris, essentially under house arrest. In August 1791, Emperor Leopold II of Austria and King Frederick William II of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz declared their intention to bring the French king in a position "to consolidate the basis of a monarchical government", and that they were preparing their own troops for action. Instead of cowing the French, this infuriated them, and they militarised the borders.
With most of the Assembly still favoring a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groups reached a compromise. Under the Constitution of 3 September 1791, France would function as a constitutional monarchy. The King had to share power with the elected Legislative Assembly, although he still retained his royal veto and the ability to select ministers. He had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation or permitting anyone to do so in his name would be a de jure abdication.
On 1 October 1791, the Legislative Assembly was formed. A group of Assembly members who propagated war against Austria and Prussia was, after a remark by politician Maximilien Robespierre, henceforth designated the 'Girondins'. A group around Robespierre – later called 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins' – pleaded against war; this opposition between those groups would harden and become bitter in the next 1+1⁄2 years.
In response to the threat of war of August 1791 from Austria and Prussia, leaders of the Assembly saw such a war as a means to strengthen support for their revolutionary government, and the French people as well as the Assembly thought that they would win a war against Austria and Prussia. On 20 April 1792, France declared war on Austria. Late April 1792, France invaded and conquered the Austrian Netherlands (roughly present-day Belgium and Luxembourg).
Nevertheless, in the summer of 1792, all of Paris was against the king, and hoped that the Assembly would depose the king, but the Assembly hesitated. At dawn of 10 August 1792, a crowd of Parisians and soldiers marched on the Tuileries Palace where the king resided. After 11:00am, the Assembly 'temporarily relieved the king from his task'. In reaction, on 19 August an army under Prussian general Duke of Brunswick invaded France and besieged Longwy. Late August 1792, elections were held, now under male universal suffrage, for the new National Convention. On 26 August, the Assembly decreed the deportation of refractory priests in the west of France. In reaction, peasants in the Vendée took over a town, in another step toward civil war.
On 2, 3 and 4 September 1792, hundreds of Parisians, supporters of the revolution, infuriated by Verdun being captured by the Prussian enemy, the uprisings in the west of France, and rumours that the incarcerated prisoners in Paris were conspiring with the foreign enemy, raided the Parisian prisons and murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners, many of them Catholic priests but also common criminals. Jean-Paul Marat, a political ally of prominent politician Robespierre, in an open letter on 3 September incited the rest of France to follow the Parisian example; Robespierre himself kept a low profile in regard to the murder orgy. The Assembly and the city council of Paris (la Commune) seemed inapt and hardly motivated to call a halt to the unleashed bloodshed.
On 20 September 1792, the French won a battle against Prussian troops near Valmy and the new National Convention replaced the Legislative Assembly. From the start the Convention suffered from the bitter division between a group around Robespierre, Danton and Marat referred to as 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins' or 'left' and a group referred to as 'Girondins' or 'right'. But the majority of the representatives, referred to as 'la Plaine', were member of neither of those two antagonistic groups and managed to preserve some speed in the convention's debates. Right away on 21 September the Convention abolished the monarchy, making France the French First Republic. A new French Republican Calendar was introduced to replace the Christian Gregorian calendar, renaming the year 1792 as year 1 of the Republic.
With wars against Prussia and Austria having started earlier in 1792, in November France also declared war on the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. Ex-king Louis XVI was tried, convicted, and guillotined in January 1793.
Introduction of a nationwide conscription for the army in February 1793 was the spark that in March made the Vendée, already rebellious since 1790 because of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, ignite into civil war against Paris. Meanwhile, France in March also declared war on Spain. That month, the Vendée rebels won some victories against Paris and the French army was defeated in Belgium by Austria with the French general Dumouriez defecting to the Austrians: the French Republic's survival was now in real danger.
On 6 April 1793, to prevent the Convention from losing itself in abstract debate and to streamline government decisions, the Comité de salut public (Committee of Public Safety) was created of nine, later twelve members, as executive government which was accountable to the convention. That month the 'Girondins' group indicted Jean-Paul Marat before the Revolutionary Tribunal for 'attempting to destroy the sovereignty of the people' and 'preaching plunder and massacre', referring to his behaviour during the September 1792 Paris massacres. Marat was quickly acquitted but the incident further acerbated the 'Girondins' versus 'Montagnards' party strife in the convention. In the spring of 1793, Austrian, British, Dutch and Spanish troops invaded France.
With rivalry, even enmity, in the National Convention and its predecessors between so-called 'Montagnards' and 'Girondins' smouldering ever since late 1791, Jacques Hébert, Convention member leaning to the 'Montagnards' group, on 24 May 1793 called on the sans-culottes—the idealized simple, non-aristocratic, hard-working, upright, patriotic, republican, Paris labourers—to rise in revolt against the "henchmen of Capet [=the killed ex-king] and Dumouriez [=the defected general]". Hébert was arrested immediately by a Convention committee investigating Paris rebelliousness. While that committee consisted only of members from la Plaine and the Girondins, the anger of the sans-culottes was directed towards the Girondins. 25 May, a delegation of la Commune (the Paris city council) protested against Hébert's arrest. The convention's President Isnard, a Girondin, answered them: "Members of la Commune ... If by your incessant rebellions something befalls to the representatives of the nation, I declare, in the name of France, that Paris will be totally obliterated".
On 29 May 1793, in Lyon an uprising overthrew a group of Montagnards ruling the city; Marseille, Toulon and more cities saw similar events.
On 2 June 1793, the convention's session in Tuileries Palace—since early May their venue—not for the first time degenerated into chaos and pandemonium. This time crowds of people including 80,000 armed soldiers swarmed in and around the palace. Incessant screaming from the public galleries, always in favour of the Montagnards, suggested that all of Paris was against the Girondins, which was not really the case. Petitions circulated, indicting and condemning 22 Girondins. Barère, member of the Committee of Public Safety, suggested: to end this division which is harming the Republic, the Girondin leaders should lay down their offices voluntarily. A decree was adopted that day by the convention, after much tumultuous debate, expelling 22 leading Girondins from the convention. Late that night, indeed dozens of Girondins had resigned and left the convention.
In the course of 1793, the Holy Roman Empire, the kings of Portugal and Naples and the Grand-Duke of Tuscany declared war against France.
By the summer of 1793, most French departments in one way or another opposed the central Paris government, and in many cases 'Girondins', fled from Paris after 2 June, led those revolts. In Brittany's countryside, the people rejecting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 had taken to a guerrilla warfare known as Chouannerie. But generally, the French opposition against 'Paris' had now evolved into a plain struggle for power over the country against the 'Montagnards' around Robespierre and Marat now dominating Paris.
In June–July 1793, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Brittany, Caen and the rest of Normandy gathered armies to march on Paris and against 'the revolution'. In July, Lyon guillotined the deposed 'Montagnard' head of the city council. Barère, member of the Committee of Public Safety, on 1 August incited the convention to tougher measures against the Vendée, at war with Paris since March: "We'll have peace only when no Vendée remains ... we'll have to exterminate that rebellious people". In August, Convention troops besieged Lyon.
In August–September 1793, militants urged the convention to do more to quell the counter-revolution. A delegation of the Commune (Paris city council) suggested to form revolutionary armies to arrest hoarders and conspirators. Bertrand Barère, member of the Committee of Public Safety—the de facto executive government—ever since April 1793, among others on 5 September reacted favorably, saying: let's "make terror the order of the day!" On 17 September, the National Convention passed the Law of Suspects, a decree ordering the arrest of all declared opponents of the current form of government and suspected "enemies of freedom". This decree was one of the causes for 17,000 death sentences until the end of July 1794, reason for historians to label those 10+1⁄2 months 'the (Reign of) Terror'.
On 19 September the Vendée rebels again defeated a Republican Convention army. On 1 October Barère repeated his plea to subdue the Vendée: "refuge of fanaticism, where priests have raised their altars". In October the Convention troops captured Lyon and reinstated a Montagnard government there.
Criteria for bringing someone before the Revolutionary Tribunal, created March 1793, had always been vast and vague. By August, political disagreement seemed enough to be summoned before the Tribunal; appeal against a Tribunal verdict was impossible. Late August 1793, an army general had been guillotined on the accusation of choosing too timid strategies on the battlefield. Mid-October, the widowed former queen Marie Antoinette was on trial for a long list of charges such as "teaching [her husband] Louis Capet the art of dissimulation" and incest with her son, she too was guillotined. In October, 21 former 'Girondins' Convention members who had not left Paris after June were convicted to death and executed, on the charge of verbally supporting the preparation of an insurrection in Caen by fellow-Girondins.
On 17 October 1793, the 'blue' Republican army near Cholet defeated the 'white' Vendéan insubordinate army and all surviving Vendée residents, counting in tens of thousands, fled over the river Loire north into Brittany. A Convention's representative on mission in Nantes commissioned in October to pacify the region did so by simply drowning prisoners in the river Loire: until February 1794 he drowned at least 4,000. By November 1793, the revolts in Normandy, Bordeaux and Lyon were overcome, in December also that in Toulon. Two representatives on mission sent to punish Lyon between November 1793 and April 1794 executed 2,000 people by guillotine or firing-squad. The Vendéan army since October roaming through Brittany on 12 December 1793 again ran up against Republican troops and saw 10,000 of its rebels perish, meaning the end of this once threatening army. Some historians claim that after that defeat Convention Republic armies in 1794 massacred 117,000 Vendéan civilians to obliterate the Vendéan people, but others contest that claim. Some historians consider the civil war to have lasted until 1796 with a toll of 450,000 lives.
Maximilien Robespierre, since July 1793 member of the Committee of Public Prosperity, on 5 February 1794 in a speech in the Convention identified Jacques Hébert and his faction as "internal enemies" working toward the triumph of tyranny. After a dubious trial Hébert and some allies were guillotined in March. On 5 April, again at the instigation of Robespierre, Danton and 13 associated politicians were executed. A week later again 19 politicians. This hushed the Convention deputies: if henceforth they disagreed with Robespierre they hardly dared to speak out. A law enacted on 10 June 1794 (22 Prairial II) further streamlined criminal procedures: if the Revolutionary Tribunal saw sufficient proof of someone being an "enemy of the people" a counsel for defence would not be allowed. The frequency of guillotine executions in Paris now rose from on average three a day to an average of 29 a day.
Meanwhile, France's external wars were going well, with victories over Austrian and British troops in May and June 1794 opening up Belgium for French conquest. However, cooperation within the Committee of Public Safety, since April 1793 the de facto executive government, started to break down. On 29 June 1794, three colleagues of Robespierre at the Committee called him a dictator in his face; Robespierre, baffled, left the meeting. This encouraged other Convention members to also defy Robespierre. On 26 July, a long and vague speech of Robespierre was not met with thunderous applause as usual but with hostility; some deputies yelled that Robespierre should have the courage to say which deputies he deemed necessary to be killed next, which Robespierre refused to do.
In the Convention session of 27 July 1794, Robespierre and his allies hardly managed to say a word as they were constantly interrupted by a row of critics such as Tallien, Billaud-Varenne, Vadier, Barère and acting president Thuriot. Finally, even Robespierre's own voice failed on him: it faltered at his last attempt to beg permission to speak. A decree was adopted to arrest Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon. On 28 July, they and 19 others were beheaded. On 29 July, again 70 Parisians were guillotined. Subsequently, the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794) was repealed, and the 'Girondins' expelled from the Convention in June 1793, if not dead yet, were reinstated as Convention deputies.
After July 1794, most civilians henceforth ignored the Republican calendar and returned to the traditional seven-day weeks. The government in a law of 21 February 1795 set steps of return to freedom of religion and reconciliation with the since 1790 refractory Catholic priests, but any religious signs outside churches or private homes, such as crosses, clerical garb, bell ringing, remained prohibited. When the people's enthusiasm for attending church grew to unexpected levels the government backed out and in October 1795 again, like in 1790, required all priests to swear oaths on the Republic.
In the very cold winter of 1794–95, with the French army demanding more and more bread, the same was getting scarce in Paris, as was wood to keep houses warm, and in an echo of the October 1789 March on Versailles, on 1 April 1795 (12 Germinal III) a mostly female crowd marched on the Convention calling for bread. But no Convention member sympathized; they just told the women to return home. Again in May a crowd of 20,000 men and 40,000 women invaded the convention and even killed a deputy in the halls, but again they failed to make the Convention take notice of the needs of the lower classes. Instead, the Convention banned women from all political assemblies, and deputies who had solidarized with this insurrection were sentenced to death: such allegiance between parliament and street fighting was no longer tolerated.
Late 1794, France conquered present-day Belgium. In January 1795 they subdued the Dutch Republic with full consent and cooperation of the influential Dutch patriottenbeweging ('patriots' movement'), resulting in the Batavian Republic, a satellite and puppet state of France. In April 1795, France concluded a peace agreement with Prussia; later that year peace was agreed with Spain.
In October 1795, the Republic was reorganised, replacing the one-chamber parliament (the National Convention) by a bi-cameral system: the first chamber called the 'Council of 500' initiating the laws, the second the 'Council of Elders' reviewing and approving or not the passed laws. Each year, one-third of the chambers was to be renewed. The executive power lay with five directors – hence the name 'Directory' for this form of government – with a five-year mandate, each year one of them being replaced. The early directors did not much understand the nation they were governing; they especially had an innate inability to see Catholicism as anything other than counter-revolutionary and royalist. Local administrators had a better sense of people's priorities, and one of them wrote to the minister of the interior: "Give back the crosses, the church bells, the Sundays, and everyone will cry: 'vive la République!'"
French armies in 1796 advanced into Germany, Austria and Italy. In 1797, France conquered the Rhineland, Belgium and much of Italy, and unsuccessfully attacked Wales.
Parliamentary elections in the spring of 1797 resulted in considerable gains for the royalists. This frightened the republican directors and they staged a coup d'état on 4 September 1797 (Coup of 18 Fructidor V) to remove two supposedly pro-royalist directors and some prominent royalists from both Councils. The new, 'corrected' government, still strongly convinced that Catholicism and royalism were equally dangerous to the Republic, started a fresh campaign to promote the Republican calendar officially introduced in 1792, with its ten-day week, and tried to hallow the tenth day, décadi, as substitute for the Christian Sunday. Not only citizens opposed and even mocked such decrees, also local government officials refused to enforce such laws.
France was still waging wars, in 1798 in Egypt, Switzerland, Rome, Ireland, Belgium and against the U.S.A., in 1799 in Baden-Württemberg. In 1799, when the French armies abroad experienced some setbacks, the newly chosen director Sieyes considered a new overhaul necessary for the Directory's form of government because in his opinion it needed a stronger executive. Together with general Napoleon Bonaparte who had just returned to France, Sieyes began preparing another coup d'état, which took place on 9–10 November 1799 (18–19 Brumaire VIII), replacing the five directors now with three "consuls": Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger Ducos.
During the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797), the Directory had replaced the National Convention. Five directors then ruled France. As Great Britain was still at war with France, a plan was made to take Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, a British ally. This was Napoleon's idea and the Directory agreed to the plan in order to send the popular general away from the mainland. Napoleon defeated the Ottoman forces during the Battle of the Pyramids (21 July 1798) and sent hundreds of scientists and linguists out to thoroughly explore modern and ancient Egypt. Only a few weeks later the British fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson unexpectedly destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile (1–3 August 1798). Napoleon planned to move into Syria but was defeated at the Siege of Acre and he returned to France without his army, which surrendered.
The Directory was threatened by the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Royalists and their allies still dreamed of restoring the monarchy to power, while the Prussian and Austrian crowns did not accept their territorial losses during the previous war. In 1799, the Russian army expelled the French from Italy in battles such as Cassano, while the Austrian army defeated the French in Switzerland at Stockach and Zurich. Napoleon then seized power through a coup and established the Consulate in 1799. The Austrian army was defeated at the Battle of Marengo (1800) and again at the Battle of Hohenlinden (1800).
While at sea the French had some success at Boulogne but Nelson's Royal Navy destroyed an anchored Danish and Norwegian fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) because the Scandinavian kingdoms were against the British blockade of France. The Second Coalition was beaten and peace was settled in two distinct treaties: the Treaty of Lunéville and the Treaty of Amiens. A brief interlude of peace ensued in 1802–03, during which Napoleon sold French Louisiana to the United States because it was indefensible.
In 1801, Napoleon concluded a "Concordat" with Pope Pius VII that opened peaceful relations between church and state in France. The policies of the Revolution were reversed, except the Church did not get its lands back. Bishops and clergy were to receive state salaries, and the government would pay for the building and maintenance of churches. Napoleon reorganized higher learning by dividing the Institut National into four (later five) academies.
In 1804, Napoleon was titled Emperor by the senate, thus founding the First French Empire. Napoleon's rule was constitutional, and although autocratic, it was much more advanced than traditional European monarchies of the time. The proclamation of the French Empire was met by the Third Coalition. The French army was renamed La Grande Armée in 1805 and Napoleon used propaganda and nationalism to control the French population. The French army achieved a resounding victory at Ulm (16–19 October 1805), where an entire Austrian army was captured.
A Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated at Trafalgar (21 October 1805) and all plans to invade Britain were then made impossible. Despite this naval defeat, it was on land that this war would be won; Napoleon inflicted on the Austrian and Russian Empires one of their greatest defeats at Austerlitz (also known as the "Battle of the Three Emperors" on 2 December 1805), destroying the Third Coalition. Peace was settled in the Treaty of Pressburg; the Austrian Empire lost the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the Confederation of the Rhine was created by Napoleon over former Austrian territories.
Prussia joined Britain and Russia, thus forming the Fourth Coalition. Although the Coalition was joined by other allies, the French Empire was also not alone since it now had a complex network of allies and subject states. The largely outnumbered French army crushed the Prussian army at Jena-Auerstedt in 1806; Napoleon captured Berlin and went as far as Eastern Prussia. There the Russian Empire was defeated at the Battle of Friedland (14 June 1807). Peace was dictated in the Treaties of Tilsit, in which Russia had to join the Continental System, and Prussia handed half of its territories to France. The Duchy of Warsaw was formed over these territorial losses, and Polish troops entered the Grande Armée in significant numbers.
In order to ruin the British economy, Napoleon set up the Continental System in 1807, and tried to prevent merchants across Europe from trading with British. The large amount of smuggling frustrated Napoleon, and did more harm to his economy than to his enemies'.
Freed from his obligation in the east, Napoleon then went back to the west, as the French Empire was still at war with Britain. Only two countries remained neutral in the war: Sweden and Portugal, and Napoleon then looked toward the latter. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1807), a Franco-Spanish alliance against Portugal was sealed as Spain eyed Portuguese territories. French armies entered Spain in order to attack Portugal, but then seized Spanish fortresses and took over the kingdom by surprise. Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, was made King of Spain after Charles IV abdicated.
This occupation of the Iberian peninsula fueled local nationalism, and soon the Spanish and Portuguese fought the French using guerilla tactics, defeating the French forces at the Battle of Bailén (June and July 1808). Britain sent a short-lived ground support force to Portugal, and French forces evacuated Portugal as defined in the Convention of Sintra following the Allied victory at Vimeiro (21 August 1808). France only controlled Catalonia and Navarre and could have been definitely expelled from the Iberian peninsula had the Spanish armies attacked again, but the Spanish did not.
Another French attack was launched on Spain, led by Napoleon himself, and was described as "an avalanche of fire and steel". However, the French Empire was no longer regarded as invincible by European powers. In 1808, Austria formed the Fifth Coalition in order to break down the French Empire. The Austrian Empire defeated the French at Aspern-Essling, yet was beaten at Wagram while the Polish allies defeated the Austrian Empire at Raszyn (April 1809). Although not as decisive as the previous Austrian defeats, the peace treaty in October 1809 stripped Austria of a large amount of territory, reducing it even more.
In 1812, war broke out with Russia, engaging Napoleon in the disastrous French invasion of Russia (1812). Napoleon assembled the largest army Europe had ever seen, including troops from all subject states, to invade Russia, which had just left the continental system and was gathering an army on the Polish frontier. Following an exhausting march and the bloody but inconclusive Battle of Borodino, near Moscow, the Grande Armée entered and captured Moscow, only to find it burning as part of the Russian scorched earth tactics. Although there still were battles, the Napoleonic army left Russia in late 1812 annihilated, most of all by the Russian winter, exhaustion, and scorched earth warfare. On the Spanish front the French troops were defeated at Vitoria (June 1813) and then at the Battle of the Pyrenees (July–August 1813). Since the Spanish guerrillas seemed to be uncontrollable, the French troops eventually evacuated Spain.
Since France had been defeated on these two fronts, states that had been conquered and controlled by Napoleon saw a good opportunity to strike back. The Sixth Coalition was formed under British leadership. The German states of the Confederation of the Rhine switched sides, finally opposing Napoleon. Napoleon was largely defeated in the Battle of the Nations outside Leipzig in October 1813, his forces heavily outnumbered by the Allied coalition armies and was overwhelmed by much larger armies during the Six Days Campaign (February 1814), although, the Six Days Campaign is often considered a tactical masterpiece because the allies suffered much higher casualties. Napoleon abdicated on 6 April 1814, and was exiled to Elba.
The conservative Congress of Vienna reversed the political changes that had occurred during the wars. Napoleon suddenly returned, seized control of France, raised an army, and marched on his enemies in the Hundred Days. It ended with his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and his exile to St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
The monarchy was subsequently restored and Louis XVIII, Younger brother of Louis XVI became king, and the exiles returned. However many of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms were kept in place.
Napoleon centralized power in Paris, with all the provinces governed by all-powerful prefects whom he selected. They were more powerful than royal intendants of the ancien régime and had a long-term impact in unifying the nation, minimizing regional differences, and shifting all decisions to Paris.
Religion had been a major issue during the Revolution, and Napoleon resolved most of the outstanding problems. Thereby he moved the clergy and large numbers of devout Catholics from hostility to the government to support for him. The Catholic system was reestablished by the Concordat of 1801 (signed with Pope Pius VII), so that church life returned to normal; the church lands were not restored, but the Jesuits were allowed back in and the bitter fights between the government and Church ended. Protestant, Jews and atheists were tolerated.
The French taxation system had collapsed in the 1780s. In the 1790s the government seized and sold church lands and lands of exiled aristocrats. Napoleon instituted a modern, efficient tax system that guaranteed a steady flow of revenues and made long-term financing possible.
Napoleon kept the system of conscription that had been created in the 1790s, so that every young man served in the army, which could be rapidly expanded even as it was based on a core of careerists and talented officers. Before the Revolution the aristocracy formed the officer corps. Now promotion was by merit and achievement—every private carried a marshal's baton, it was said.
The modern era of French education began in the 1790s. The Revolution in the 1790s abolished the traditional universities. Napoleon sought to replace them with new institutions, the École Polytechnique, focused on technology. The elementary schools received little attention.
Of permanent importance was the Napoleonic Code created by eminent jurists under Napoleon's supervision. Praised for its clarity, it spread rapidly throughout Europe and the world in general, and marked the end of feudalism and the liberation of serfs where it took effect. The Code recognized the principles of civil liberty, equality before the law, and the secular character of the state. It discarded the old right of primogeniture (where only the eldest son inherited) and required that inheritances be divided equally among all the children. The court system was standardized; all judges were appointed by the national government in Paris.
The century after the fall of Napoleon I was politically unstable:
Every [French] head of state from 1814 to 1873 spent part of his life in exile. Every regime was the target of assassination attempts of a frequency that put Spanish and Russian politics in the shade. Even in peaceful times governments changed every few months. In less peaceful times, political deaths, imprisonments and deportations are literally incalculable.
France was no longer the dominant power it had been before 1814, but it played a major role in European economics, culture, diplomacy and military affairs. The Bourbons were restored, but left a weak record and one branch was overthrown in 1830 and the other branch in 1848 as Napoleon's nephew was elected president. He made himself emperor as Napoleon III, but was overthrown when he was defeated and captured by Prussians in an 1870 war that humiliated France and made the new nation of Germany dominant in the continent. The Third Republic was established, but the possibility of a return to monarchy remained into the 1880s. The French built up an empire, especially in Africa and Indochina. The economy was strong, with a good railway system. The arrival of the Rothschild banking family of France in 1812 guaranteed the role of Paris alongside London as a major center of international finance.
The French Revolution and Napoleonic eras brought a series of major changes to France which the Bourbon restoration did not reverse. First of all, France became highly centralized, with all decisions made in Paris. The political geography was completely reorganized and made uniform. France was divided into 80+ departments, which have endured into the 21st century. Each department had the identical administrative structure, and was tightly controlled by a prefect appointed by Paris. The complex multiple overlapping legal jurisdictions of the old regime had all been abolished, and there was now one standardized legal code, administered by judges appointed by Paris, and supported by police under national control. Education was centralized, with the Grand Master of the University of France controlling every element of the entire educational system from Paris. Newly technical universities were opened in Paris which to this day have a critical role in training the elite.
Conservatism was bitterly split into the old aristocracy that returned, and the new elites that arose after 1796. The old aristocracy was eager to regain its land but felt no loyalty to the new regime. The new elite – the "noblesse d'empire" – ridiculed the other group as an outdated remnant of a discredited regime that had led the nation to disaster. Both groups shared a fear of social disorder, but the level of distrust as well as the cultural differences were too great and the monarchy too inconsistent in its policies for political cooperation to be possible.
The old aristocracy had returned, and recovered much of the land they owned directly. However they completely lost all their old seigneurial rights to the rest of the farmland, and the peasants no longer were under their control. The old aristocracy had dallied with the ideas of the Enlightenment and rationalism. Now the aristocracy was much more conservative, and much more supportive of the Catholic Church. For the best jobs meritocracy was the new policy, and aristocrats had to compete directly with the growing business and professional class. Anti-clerical sentiment became much stronger than ever before, but was now based in certain elements of the middle class and indeed the peasantry as well.
In France, as in most of Europe, the sum total of wealth was concentrated. The richest 10 percent of families owned between 80 and 90 percent of the wealth from 1810 to 1914. Their share then fell to about 60 percent, where it remained into the 21st century. The share of the top one percent of the population grew from 45 percent in 1810 to 60 percent in 1914, then fell steadily to 20 percent in 1970 to the present.
The "200 families" controlled much of the nation's wealth after 1815. The "200" is based on the policy that of the 40,000 shareholders of the Bank of France, only 200 were allowed to attend the annual meeting and they cast all the votes. Out of a nation of 27 million people, only 80,000 to 90,000 were allowed to vote in 1820, and the richest one-fourth of them had two votes.
The great masses of the French people were peasants in the countryside, or impoverished workers in the cities. They gained new rights, and a new sense of possibilities. Although relieved of many of the old burdens, controls, and taxes, the peasantry was still highly traditional in its social and economic behavior. Many eagerly took on mortgages to buy as much land as possible for their children, so debt was an important factor in their calculations. The working class in the cities was a small element, and had been freed of many restrictions imposed by medieval guilds. However France was very slow to industrialize (in the sense of large factories using modern machinery), and much of the work remained drudgery without machinery or technology to help. This provided a good basis for small-scale expensive luxury crafts that attracted an international upscale market. France was still localized, especially in terms of language, but now there was an emerging French nationalism that showed its national pride in the Army, and foreign affairs.
The Catholic Church lost all its lands and buildings during the Revolution, and these were sold off or came under the control of local governments. The bishop still ruled his diocese (which was aligned with the new department boundaries), but could only communicate with the pope through the government in Paris. Bishops, priests, nuns and other religious people were paid salaries by the state. All the old religious rites and ceremonies were retained, and the government maintained the religious buildings. The Church was allowed to operate its own seminaries and to some extent local schools as well, although this became a central political issue into the 20th century. Bishops were much less powerful than before, and had no political voice. However, the Catholic Church reinvented itself and put a new emphasis on personal religiosity that gave it a hold on the psychology of the faithful.
France remained basically Catholic. The 1872 census counted 36 million people, of whom 35.4 million were listed as Catholics, 600,000 as Protestants, 50,000 as Jews and 80,000 as freethinkers. The Revolution failed to destroy the Catholic Church, and Napoleon's concordat of 1801 restored its status. The return of the Bourbons in 1814 brought back many rich nobles and landowners who supported the Church, seeing it as a bastion of conservatism and monarchism. However the monasteries with their vast land holdings and political power were gone; much of the land had been sold to urban entrepreneurs who lacked historic connections to the land and the peasants.
Few new priests were trained in the 1790–1814 period, and many left the church. The result was that the number of parish clergy plunged from 60,000 in 1790 to 25,000 in 1815, many of them elderly. Entire regions, especially around Paris, were left with few priests. On the other hand, some traditional regions held fast to the faith, led by local nobles and historic families.
The comeback was very slow in the larger cities and industrial areas. With systematic missionary work and a new emphasis on liturgy and devotions to the Virgin Mary, plus support from Napoleon III, there was a comeback. In 1870, there were 56,500 priests, representing a much younger and more dynamic force in the villages and towns, with a thick network of schools, charities and lay organizations. Conservative Catholics held control of the national government from 1820 to 1830, but most often played secondary political roles or had to fight the assault from republicans, liberals, socialists and seculars.
French economic history since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to industrialization, and the 'total wars' of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Quantitative analysis of output data shows the French per capita growth rates were slightly smaller than Britain. However the British population tripled in size, while France grew by only a third—so the overall British economy grew much faster. The ups and downs of French per capita economic growth in 1815–1913:
For the 1870–1913 era, the growth rates for 12 similar advanced countries – 10 in Europe plus the United States and Canada – show that in terms of per capita growth, France was about average. However its population growth was very slow, so as far as the growth rate in total size of the economy France was in next to the last place, just ahead of Italy. The 12 countries averaged 2.7% per year in total output, but France only averaged 1.6%.
[The] average size of industrial undertakings was smaller in France than in other advanced countries; that machinery was generally less up to date, productivity lower, costs higher. The domestic system and handicraft production long persisted, while big modern factories were for long exceptional. Large lumps of the Ancien Régime economy survived ... On the whole, the qualitative lag between the British and French economy ... persisted during the whole period under consideration, and later on a similar lag developed between France and some other countries—Belgium, Germany, the United States. France did not succeed in catching up with Britain, but was overtaken by several of her rivals.
This period of time is called the Bourbon Restoration and was marked by conflicts between reactionary Ultra-royalists, who wanted to restore the pre-1789 system of absolute monarchy, and liberals, who wanted to strengthen constitutional monarchy. Louis XVIII was the younger brother of Louis XVI, and reigned from 1814 to 1824. On becoming king, Louis issued a constitution known as the Charter which preserved many of the liberties won during the French Revolution and provided for a parliament composed of an elected Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Peers that was nominated by the king.
After two decades of war and revolution, the restoration brought peace and quiet, and general prosperity. "Frenchmen were, on the whole, well governed, prosperous, contented during the 15-year period; one historian even describes the restoration era as 'one of the happiest periods in [France's] history'."
France had recovered from the strain and disorganization, the wars, the killings, and the horrors of two decades of disruption. It was at peace throughout the period. It paid a large war indemnity to the winners, but managed to finance that without distress; the occupation soldiers left peacefully. Population increased by 3 million, and prosperity was strong from 1815 to 1825, with the depression of 1825 caused by bad harvests. The national credit was strong, there was significant increase in public wealth, and the national budget showed a surplus every year. In the private sector, banking grew dramatically, making Paris a world center for finance, along with London. The Rothschild family was world-famous, with the French branch led by James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868). The communication system was improved, as roads were upgraded, canals were lengthened, and steamboat traffic became common. Industrialization was delayed in comparison to Britain and Belgium. The railway system had yet to make an appearance. Industry was heavily protected with tariffs, so there was little demand for entrepreneurship or innovation.
Culture flourished with the new romantic impulses. Oratory was highly regarded, and debates were very high standard. Châteaubriand and Madame de Staël enjoyed Europe-wide reputations for their innovations in romantic literature. De Staël made important contributions to political sociology, and the sociology of literature. History flourished; François Guizot, Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël drew lessons from the past to guide the future. The paintings of Eugène Delacroix set the standards for romantic art. Music, theater, science, and philosophy all flourished. The higher learning flourished at the Sorbonne. Major new institutions gave France world leadership in numerous advanced fields, as typified by the École Nationale des Chartes (1821) for historiography, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in 1829 for innovative engineering; and the École des Beaux-Arts for the fine arts, reestablished in 1830.
Overall, the Bourbon government's handling of foreign affairs was successful. France kept a low profile, and Europe forgot its animosities. Louis and Charles had little interest in foreign affairs, so France played only minor roles. Its army helped restore the Spanish monarch in 1823. It helped the other powers deal with Greece and Turkey. King Charles X, an ultra-reactionary, mistakenly thought that foreign glory would cover domestic frustration, so he made an all-out effort to conquer Algiers in 1830. He sent a massive force of 38,000 soldiers and 4,500 horses carried by 103 warships and 469 merchant ships. The expedition was a dramatic military success in only three weeks. The invasion paid for itself with 48 million francs from the captured treasury. The episode launched the second French colonial empire, but it did not provide desperately needed political support for the King at home. Charles X repeatedly exacerbated internal tensions, and tried to neutralize his enemies with repressive measures. He depended too heavily upon his inept chief minister Polignac. Repression failed and a quick sudden revolution forced Charles into exile for the third time.
Protest against the absolute monarchy was in the air. The elections of deputies to 16 May 1830 had gone very badly for King Charles X. In response, he tried repression but that only aggravated the crisis as suppressed deputies, gagged journalists, students from the university and many working men of Paris poured into the streets and erected barricades during the "three glorious days" (French: Les Trois Glorieuses) of 26–29 July 1830. Charles X was deposed and replaced by King Louis-Philippe in the July Revolution. It is traditionally regarded as a rising of the bourgeoisie against the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. Participants in the July Revolution included the Marquis de Lafayette. Working behind the scenes on behalf of the bourgeois propertied interests was Louis Adolphe Thiers.
Louis-Philippe's "July Monarchy" (1830–1848) was dominated by the "high bourgeoisie" of bankers, financiers, industrialists and merchants.
During the reign of the July Monarchy, the Romantic Era was starting to bloom. Driven by the Romantic Era, an atmosphere of protest and revolt was all around in France. On 22 November 1831 in Lyon (the second largest city in France) the silk workers revolted and took over the town hall in protest of recent salary reductions and working conditions. This was one of the first instances of a free workers' revolt in the entire world.
Because of the constant threats to the throne, the July Monarchy began to rule with a stronger and stronger hand. Soon political meetings were outlawed. However, "banquets" were still legal and all through 1847, there was a nationwide campaign of republican banquets demanding more democracy. The climactic banquet was scheduled for 22 February 1848 in Paris but the government banned it. In response citizens of all classes poured out onto the streets of Paris in a revolt against the July Monarchy. Demands were made for abdication of "Citizen King" Louis-Philippe and for establishment of a representative democracy in France. The king abdicated, and the French Second Republic was proclaimed. Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine, who had been a leader of the moderate republicans in France during the 1840s, became the Minister of Foreign Affairs and in effect the premier in the new Provisional government. In reality Lamartine was the virtual head of government in 1848.
Frustration among the laboring classes arose when the Constituent Assembly did not address the concerns of the workers. Strikes and worker demonstrations became more common as the workers gave vent to these frustrations. These demonstrations reached a climax when on 15 May 1848, workers from the secret societies broke out in armed uprising against the anti-labor and anti-democratic policies being pursued by the Constituent Assembly and the Provisional Government. Fearful of a total breakdown of law and order, the Provisional Government invited General Louis Eugene Cavaignac back from Algeria, in June 1848, to put down the workers' armed revolt. From June 1848 until December 1848 General Cavaignac became head of the executive of the Provisional Government.
On 10 December 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president by a landslide. His support came from a wide section of the French public. Various classes of French society voted for Louis Napoleon for very different and often contradictory reasons. Louis Napoleon himself encouraged this contradiction by "being all things to all people". One of his major promises to the peasantry and other groups was that there would be no new taxes.
The new National Constituent Assembly was heavily composed of royalist sympathizers of both the Legitimist (Bourbon) wing and the Orleanist (Citizen King Louis Philippe) wing. Because of the ambiguity surrounding Louis Napoleon's political positions, his agenda as president was very much in doubt. For prime minister, he selected Odilon Barrot, an unobjectionable middle-road parliamentarian who had led the "loyal opposition" under Louis Philippe. Other appointees represented various royalist factions.
The Pope had been forced out of Rome as part of the Revolutions of 1848, and Louis Napoleon sent a 14,000-man expeditionary force of troops to the Papal State under General Nicolas Charles Victor Oudinot to restore him. In late April 1849, it was defeated and pushed back from Rome by Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteer corps, but then it recovered and recaptured Rome.
In June 1849, demonstrations against the government broke out and were suppressed. The leaders, including prominent politicians, were arrested. The government banned several democratic and socialist newspapers in France; the editors were arrested. Karl Marx was at risk, so in August he moved to London.
The government sought ways to balance its budget and reduce its debts. Toward this end, Hippolyte Passy was appointed Finance Minister. When the Legislative Assembly met at the beginning of October 1849, Passy proposed an income tax to help balance the finances of France. The bourgeoisie, who would pay most of the tax, protested. The furor over the income tax caused the resignation of Barrot as prime minister, but a new wine tax also caused protests.
The 1850 elections resulted in a conservative body. It passed the Falloux Laws, putting education into the hands of the Catholic clergy. It opened an era of cooperation between Church and state that lasted until the Jules Ferry laws reversed course in 1879. The Falloux Laws provided universal primary schooling in France and expanded opportunities for secondary schooling. In practice, the curricula were similar in Catholic and state schools. Catholic schools were especially useful in schooling for girls, which had long been neglected. Although a new electoral law was passed that respected the principle of universal (male) suffrage, the stricter residential requirement of the new law actually had the effect of disenfranchising 3,000,000 of 10,000,000 voters.
A wide range of reforms were carried out during the time Napoleon III led France. As noted by one study "While the emperor imposed new authoritarian measures and used censorship and surveillance to stifle any opposition, he offered workers an unprecedented range of relief measures: soup kitchens, price controls on bread, insurance schemes, retirement plans, orphanages, nurseries, and hospitals." Regulations for the prevention of food adulterations were introduced, along with the transfer of taxes from necessaries to luxuries, the assurance of Christian burial to the poorest Christian, and increased pay and honour to the lower ranks of the army and to the private soldier. Public assistance was encouraged, while a law of 1864 legalised strikes although not trade unions. Substantial contributions were also made by Napoleon to a fund to develop worker's cooperatives. Other laws originated and institutions founded by Napoleon included the organisation of public baths and lavatories, maternity societies to provide attendance on poor women at their houses during childbirth, orphanages, refuges for old age, the Convalescent Institution at Vincennes, the Asylum for Incurables at Vesinet, a retiring fund for the poorer assistant clergy, loan societies to make provision for their members in sickness, and for their widows and orphans, and a law for improving the dwellings of the working classes. A decree was issued providing for the observance of Sunday rest in all public works. In 1851, some enactment was introduced for providing the indigent with legal assistance. Another law from that year, which regulated assistance for the needy, "specifically impressed upon hospitals their obligation to take in the poor and sick regardless of their origins." Napoleon also authorized several cooperatives and moderate unions, supported welfare institutions like orphanages, nurseries and aid for accident victims, and "encouraged the first adult education programs and pension plans for workers."
The president rejected the constitution and made himself emperor as Napoleon III. He is known for working to modernize the French economy, the rebuilding of Paris, expanding the overseas empire, and engaging in numerous wars. His effort to build an empire in Mexico was a fiasco. Autocratic at first, he opened the political system somewhat in the 1860s. He lost all his allies and recklessly declared war on a much more powerful Prussia in 1870; he was captured and deposed.
As 1851 opened, Louis Napoleon was not allowed by the Constitution of 1848 to seek re-election as President of France. He proclaimed himself Emperor of the French in 1852, with almost dictatorial powers. He made completion of a good railway system a high priority. He consolidated three dozen small, incomplete lines into six major companies using Paris as a hub. Paris grew dramatically in terms of population, industry, finance, commercial activity, and tourism. Napoleon working with Georges-Eugène Haussmann spent lavishly to rebuild the city into a world-class showpiece. The financial soundness for all six companies was solidified by government guarantees. Although France had started late, by 1870 it had an excellent railway system, supported as well by good roads, canals and ports.
Despite his promises in 1852 of a peaceful reign, the Emperor could not resist the temptations of glory in foreign affairs. He was visionary, mysterious and secretive; he had a poor staff, and kept running afoul of his domestic supporters. In the end he was incompetent as a diplomat. Napoleon did have some successes: he strengthened French control over Algeria, established bases in Africa, began the takeover of Indochina, and opened trade with China. He facilitated a French company building the Suez Canal, which Britain could not stop. In Europe, however, Napoleon failed again and again. The Crimean War of 1854–1856 produced no gains. Napoleon had long been an admirer of Italy and wanted to see it unified, although that might create a rival power. He plotted with Cavour of the Italian kingdom of Sardinia to expel Austria and set up an Italian confederation of four new states headed by the pope. Events in 1859 ran out of his control. Austria was quickly defeated, but instead of four new states a popular uprising united all of Italy under the Italian kingdom of Sardinia. The pope held onto Rome only because Napoleon sent troops to protect him. His reward was the County of Nice (which included the city of Nice and the rugged Alpine territory to its north and east, as well as the Free Cities of Menton and Roquebrune) and the Duchy of Savoy. He angered Catholics when the pope lost most of his domains. Napoleon then reversed himself and angered both the anticlerical liberals at home and his erstwhile Italian allies when he protected the pope in Rome.
The British grew annoyed at Napoleon's humanitarian intervention in Syria in 1860–1861. Napoleon lowered the tariffs, which helped in the long run but in the short run angered owners of large estates and the textile and iron industrialists, while leading worried workers to organize. Matters grew worse in the 1860s as Napoleon nearly blundered into war with the United States in 1862, while his takeover of Mexico in 1861–1867 was a total disaster. The puppet emperor he put on the Mexican throne was overthrown and executed. Finally in the end he went to war with the Germans in 1870 when it was too late to stop German unification. Napoleon had alienated everyone; after failing to obtain an alliance with Austria and Italy, France had no allies and was bitterly divided at home. It was disastrously defeated on the battlefield, losing Alsace and Lorraine. Historian A. J. P. Taylor was blunt: "he ruined France as a great power".
In 1854, the Second Empire joined the Crimean War, which saw France and Britain opposed to the Russian Empire, which was decisively defeated at Sevastopol in 1854–55 and at Inkerman in 1854. In 1856, France joined the Second Opium War on the British side against China; a missionary's murder was used as a pretext to take interests in southwest Asia in the Treaty of Tientsin.
When France was negotiating with the Netherlands about purchasing Luxembourg in 1867, the Prussian Kingdom threatened the French government with war. This "Luxembourg Crisis" came as a shock to French diplomats as there had been an agreement between the Prussian and French governments about Luxembourg. Napoleon III suffered stronger and stronger criticism from Republicans like Jules Favre, and his position seemed more fragile with the passage of time.
The country interfered in Korea in 1866 taking, once again, missionaries' murders as a pretext. The French finally withdrew from the war with little gain but war's booty. The next year a French expedition to Japan was formed to help the Tokugawa shogunate to modernize its army. However, Tokugawa was defeated during the Boshin War at the Battle of Toba–Fushimi by large Imperial armies.
Rising tensions in 1869 about the possible candidacy of Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne of Spain caused a rise in the scale of animosity between France and Germany. Prince Leopold was a part of the Prussian royal family. He had been asked by the Spanish Cortes to accept the vacant throne of Spain.
Such an event was more than France could possibly accept. Relations between France and Germany deteriorated, and finally the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) broke out. German nationalism united the German states, with the exception of Austria, against Napoleon III. The French Empire was defeated decisively at Metz and Sedan. Napoleon III surrendered himself and 100,000 French troops to the German troops at Sedan on 1–2 September 1870.
Two days later, on 4 September 1870, Léon Gambetta proclaimed a new republic in France. Later, when Paris was encircled by German troops, Gambetta fled Paris and became the virtual dictator of the war effort which was carried on from the rural provinces. Metz remained under siege until 27 October 1870, when 173,000 French troops there finally surrendered. Surrounded, Paris was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. The Treaty of Frankfurt allowed the newly formed German Empire to annex the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.
The seemingly timeless world of the French peasantry swiftly changed from 1870 to 1914. French peasants had been poor and locked into old traditions until railroads, republican schools, and universal (male) military conscription modernized rural France. The centralized government in Paris had the goal of creating a unified nation-state, so it required all students be taught standardized French. In the process, a new national identity was forged.
Railways became a national medium for the modernization of traditionalistic regions, and a leading advocate of this approach was the poet-politician Alphonse de Lamartine. In 1857, an army colonel hoped that railways might improve the lot of "populations two or three centuries behind their fellows" and eliminate "the savage instincts born of isolation and misery". Consequently, France built a centralized system that radiated from Paris (plus in the south some lines that cut east to west). This design was intended to achieve political and cultural goals rather than maximize efficiency. After some consolidation, six companies controlled monopolies of their regions, subject to close control by the government in terms of fares, finances, and even minute technical details.
The central government Corps of Bridges, Waters and Forests brought in British engineers, handled much of the construction work, and provided engineering expertise and planning, land acquisition, and construction of permanent infrastructure such as track beds, bridges and tunnels. It also subsidized militarily necessary lines along the German border. Private operating companies provided management, hired labor, laid the tracks, and built and operated stations. They purchased and maintained the rolling stock—6,000 locomotives were in operation in 1880, which averaged 51,600 passengers a year or 21,200 tons of freight. Much of the equipment was imported from Britain and therefore did not stimulate machinery makers in France.
Although starting the whole system at once was politically expedient, it delayed completion, and forced even more reliance on temporary experts brought in from Britain. Financing was also a problem. The solution was a narrow base of funding through the Rothschilds and the closed circles of the Paris Bourse, so France did not develop the same kind of national stock exchange that flourished in London and New York. The system did help modernize the parts of rural France it reached, but it did not help create local industrial centers. Critics such as Émile Zola complained that it never overcame the corruption of the political system, but rather contributed to it.
The railways probably helped the industrial revolution in France by facilitating a national market for raw materials, wines, cheeses, and imported manufactured products. Yet the goals set by the French for their railway system were moralistic, political, and military rather than economic. As a result, the freight trains were shorter and less heavily loaded than those in such rapidly industrializing nations such as Britain, Belgium or Germany. Other infrastructure needs in rural France, such as better roads and canals, were neglected because of the expense of the railways, so it seems likely that there were net negative effects in areas not served by the trains.
Following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck proposed harsh terms for peace – including the German occupation of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. A new French National Assembly was elected to consider the German terms for peace. Elected on 8 February 1871, this new National Assembly was composed of 650 deputies.
Sitting in Bordeaux, the French National Assembly established the Third Republic. However, 400 members of the new Assembly were monarchists. (Léon Gambetta was one of the "non-monarchist" Republicans that were elected to the new National Assembly from Paris.) On 16 February 1871, Adolphe Thiers was elected as the chief executive of the new Republic. Because of the revolutionary unrest in Paris, the centre of the Thiers government was located at Versailles.
In late 1870 to early 1871, the workers of Paris rose up in premature and unsuccessful small-scale uprisings. The National Guard within Paris had become increasingly restive and defiant of the police, the army chief of staff, and even their own National Guard commanders. Thiers immediately recognized a revolutionary situation and, on 18 March 1871, sent regular army units to take control of artillery that belonged to the National Guard of Paris. Some soldiers of the regular army units fraternized with the rebels and the revolt escalated.
The barricades went up just as in 1830 and 1848. The Paris Commune was born. Once again the Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall) became the center of attention for the people in revolt; this time the Hôtel de Ville became the seat of the revolutionary government. Other cities in France followed the example of the Paris Commune, as in Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse. All of the Communes outside Paris were promptly crushed by the Thiers government.
An election on 26 March 1871 in Paris produced a government based on the working class. Louis Auguste Blanqui was in prison but a majority of delegates were his followers, called "Blanquists". The minority comprised anarchists and followers of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1855); as anarchists, the "Proudhonists" were supporters of limited or no government and wanted the revolution to follow an ad hoc course with little or no planning. Analysis of arrests records indicate the typical communard was opposed to the military, the clerics, and the rural aristocrats. He saw the bourgeoisie as the enemy.
After two months the French army moved in to retake Paris, with pitched battles fought in working-class neighbourhoods. Hundreds were executed in front of the Communards' Wall, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles for trials. The number killed during the "Bloody Week" (la semaine sanglante) of 21–28 May 1871 was perhaps 30,000, with as many as 50,000 later executed or imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia; thousands more escaped to exile. The government won approval for its actions in a national referendum with 321,000 in favor and only 54,000 opposed.
The Republican government next had to confront counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimists (embodied in the person of Henri, Count of Chambord, grandson of Charles X) and the Orleanist royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity and atheism, breaking with France's traditions. This conflict became increasingly sharp in 1873, when Thiers himself was censured by the National Assembly as not being "sufficiently conservative" and resigned to make way for Marshal Patrice MacMahon as the new president. Amidst the rumors of right-wing intrigue and/or coups by the Bonapartists or Bourbons in 1874, the National Assembly set about drawing up a new constitution that would be acceptable to all parties.
The new constitution provided for universal male suffrage and called for a bicameral legislature, consisting of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. The initial republic was in effect led by pro-royalists, but republicans (the "Radicals") and Bonapartists scrambled for power. The first election under this new constitution – held in early 1876 – resulted in a republican victory, with 363 republicans elected as opposed to 180 monarchists. However, 75 of the monarchists elected to the new Chamber of Deputies were Bonapartists.
The possibility of a coup d'état was an ever-present factor. Léon Gambetta chose moderate Armand Dufaure as premier but he failed to form a government. MacMahon next chose conservative Jules Simon. He too failed, setting the stage for the 16 May 1877 crisis, which led to the resignation of MacMahon. A restoration of the king now seemed likely, and royalists agreed on Henri, Count of Chambord, the grandson of Charles X. He insisted on the impossible demand that France abandons its republican tricolour flag and returns to the use of the royalist fleur de lys flag, which ruined the royalist cause. Its turn never came again as the Orleanist faction rallied themselves to the Republic, behind Adolphe Thiers. The new President of the Republic in 1879 was Jules Grevy. In January 1886, Georges Boulanger became Minister of War. Georges Clemanceau was instrumental in obtaining this appointment for Boulanger. This was the start of the Boulanger era and another time of threats of a coup.
The Legitimist (Bourbon) faction mostly left politics but one segment founded L'Action Française in 1898, during the Dreyfus Affair; it became an influential movement throughout the 1930s, in particular among the conservative Catholic intellectuals.
While liberalism was individualistic and laissez-faire in Britain and the United States, in France liberalism was based instead on a solidaristic conception of society, following the theme of the French Revolution, Liberté, égalité, fraternité ("liberty, equality, fraternity"). In the Third Republic, especially between 1895 and 1914 "Solidarité" ["solidarism"] was the guiding concept of a liberal social policy, whose chief champions were the prime ministers Leon Bourgeois (1895–96) and Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau (1899–1902).
The period from 1879 to 1914 saw power mostly in the hands of moderate republicans and "radicals"; they avoided state ownership of industry and had a middle class political base. Their main policies were governmental intervention (financed by a progressive income tax) to provide a social safety net. They opposed church schools. They expanded educational opportunities and promoted consumers' and producers' cooperatives. In terms of foreign policy they supported the League of Nations, compulsory arbitration, controlled disarmament, and economic sanctions to keep the peace.
The French welfare state expanded when it tried to followed some of Bismarck's policies, starting with relief for the poor.
French foreign policy from 1871 to 1914 showed a dramatic transformation from a humiliated power with no friends and not much of an empire in 1871, to the centerpiece of the European alliance system in 1914, with a flourishing empire that was second in size only to Great Britain. Although religion was a hotly contested matter and domestic politics, the Catholic Church made missionary work and church building a specialty in the colonies. Most French ignored foreign policy; its issues were a low priority in politics.
French foreign policy was based on a fear of Germany—whose larger size and fast-growing economy could not be matched—combined with a revanchism that demanded the return of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same time, in the midst of the Scramble for Africa, French and British interest in Africa came into conflict. The most dangerous episode was the Fashoda Incident of 1898 when French troops tried to claim an area in the Southern Sudan, and a British force purporting to be acting in the interests of the Khedive of Egypt arrived. Under heavy pressure the French withdrew securing Anglo-Egyptian control over the area. The status quo was recognised by an agreement between the two states acknowledging British control over Egypt, while France became the dominant power in Morocco, but France suffered a humiliating defeat overall.
The Suez Canal, initially built by the French, became a joint British-French project in 1875, as both saw it as vital to maintaining their influence and empires in Asia. In 1882, ongoing civil disturbances in Egypt prompted Britain to intervene, extending a hand to France. France's leading expansionist Jules Ferry was out of office, and the government allowed Britain to take effective control of Egypt.
France had colonies in Asia and looked for alliances and found in Japan a possible ally. During his visit to France, Iwakura Tomomi asked for French assistance in reforming Japan. French military missions were sent to Japan in 1872–1880, in 1884–1889 and the last one much later in 1918–1919 to help modernize the Japanese army. Conflicts between the Chinese Emperor and the French Republic over Indochina climaxed during the Sino-French War (1884–1885). Admiral Courbet destroyed the Chinese fleet anchored at Fuzhou. The treaty ending the war, put France in a protectorate over northern and central Vietnam, which it divided into Tonkin and Annam.
In an effort to isolate Germany, France went to great pains to woo Russia and Great Britain, first by means of the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, then the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Great Britain, and finally the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907, which became the Triple Entente. This alliance with Britain and Russia against Germany and Austria eventually led Russia and Britain to enter World War I as France's Allies.
Distrust of Germany, faith in the army, and native French antisemitism combined to make the Dreyfus Affair (the unjust trial and condemnation of a Jewish military officer for "treason" in 1894) a political scandal of the utmost gravity. For a decade, the nation was divided between "dreyfusards" and "anti-dreyfusards", and far-right Catholic agitators inflamed the situation even when proofs of Dreyfus's innocence came to light. The writer Émile Zola published an impassioned editorial on the injustice (J'Accuse...!) and was himself condemned by the government for libel. Dreyfus was finally pardoned in 1906. The upshot was a weakening of the conservative element in politics. Moderates were deeply divided over the Dreyfus Affair, and this allowed the Radicals to hold power from 1899 until World War I. During this period, crises like the threatened "Boulangist" coup d'état (1889) showed the fragility of the republic.
Throughout the lifetime of the Third Republic there were battles over the status of the Catholic Church. The French clergy and bishops were closely associated with the Monarchists and many of its hierarchy were from noble families. Republicans were based in the anticlerical middle class who saw the Church's alliance with the monarchists as a political threat to republicanism, and a threat to the modern spirit of progress. The Republicans detested the church for its political and class affiliations; for them, the church represented outmoded traditions, superstition and monarchism. The Republicans were strengthened by Protestant and Jewish support. Numerous laws were passed to weaken the Catholic Church. In 1879, priests were excluded from the administrative committees of hospitals and of boards of charity. In 1880, new measures were directed against the religious congregations. From 1880 to 1890 came the substitution of lay women for nuns in many hospitals. Napoleon's 1801 Concordat continued in operation but in 1881, the government cut off salaries to priests it disliked.
The 1882 school laws of Republican Jules Ferry set up a national system of public schools that taught strict puritanical morality but no religion. For a while privately funded Catholic schools were tolerated. Civil marriage became compulsory, divorce was introduced and chaplains were removed from the army.
When Leo XIII became pope in 1878 he tried to calm Church-State relations. In 1884, he told French bishops not to act in a hostile manner to the State. In 1892, he issued an encyclical advising French Catholics to rally to the Republic and defend the Church by participating in Republican politics. This attempt at improving the relationship failed.
Deep-rooted suspicions remained on both sides and were inflamed by the Dreyfus Affair. Catholics were for the most part anti-dreyfusard. The Assumptionists published antisemitic and anti-republican articles in their journal La Croix. This infuriated Republican politicians, who were eager to take revenge. Often they worked in alliance with Masonic lodges. The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry (1899–1902) and the Combes Ministry (1902–1905) fought with the Vatican over the appointment of bishops. Chaplains were removed from naval and military hospitals (1903–04), and soldiers were ordered not to frequent Catholic clubs (1904). Combes as Prime Minister in 1902, was determined to thoroughly defeat Catholicism. He closed down all parochial schools in France. Then he had parliament reject authorisation of all religious orders. This meant that all 54 orders were dissolved and about 20,000 members immediately left France, many for Spain.
In 1905 the 1801 Concordat was abrogated; Church and state were separated. All Church property was confiscated. Public worship was given over to associations of Catholic laymen who controlled access to churches. In practice, Masses and rituals continued. The Church was badly hurt and lost half its priests. In the long run, however, it gained autonomy—for the State no longer had a voice in choosing bishops and Gallicanism was dead. Conservative Catholics regained control of Parliament in 1919 and reversed most of the penalties imposed on the Church, and gave bishops back control of Church lands and buildings. The new pope was eager to assist the changes, and diplomatic relations were restored with the Vatican. However, the long-term secularization of French society continued, as most people only attended ceremonies for such major events as birth, marriage and funerals.
The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was referred to as the Belle Époque because of peace, prosperity and the cultural innovations of Monet, Bernhardt, and Debussy, and popular amusements – cabaret, can-can, the cinema, and new art movements such as Impressionism and Art Nouveau.
In 1889, the Exposition Universelle showed off newly modernised Paris to the world, which could look over it all from atop the new Eiffel Tower. Meant to last only a few decades, the tower was never removed and became France's most iconic landmark.
France was nevertheless a nation divided internally on notions of ideology, religion, class, regionalisms, and money. On the international front, France came repeatedly to the brink of war with the other imperial powers, such as the 1898 Fashoda Incident with Great Britain over East Africa.
The second colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, protectorates and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "first colonial empire", that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost, and the "second colonial empire", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. The second colonial empire came to an end after the loss in later wars of Vietnam (1954) and Algeria (1962), and relatively peaceful decolonizations elsewhere after 1960.
France lost wars to Britain that stripped away nearly all of its colonies by 1765. France rebuilt a new empire mostly after 1850, concentrating chiefly in Africa as well as Indochina and the South Pacific. Republicans, at first hostile to empire, only became supportive when Germany after 1880 started to build their own colonial empire. As it developed, the new empire took on roles of trade with France, especially supplying raw materials and purchasing manufactured items as well as lending prestige to the motherland and spreading French civilization and language and the Catholic religion. It also provided manpower in the World Wars.
It became a moral mission to lift the world up to French standards by bringing Christianity and French culture. In 1884, the leading proponent of colonialism, Jules Ferry, declared; "The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races." Full citizenship rights – assimilation – were offered. In reality the French settlers were given full rights and the natives given very limited rights. Apart from Algeria few settlers permanently settled in its colonies. Even in Algeria, the "Pied-Noir" (French settlers) always remained a small minority.
At its apex, it was one of the largest empires in history. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 11,500,000 km (4,400,000 sq mi) in 1920, with a population of 110 million people in 1939. In World War II, the Free French used the overseas colonies as bases from which they fought to liberate France. "In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas empire at the end of the Second World War." Only two days after the defeat of Nazi Germany, France suppressed Algerian calls for independence, who were celebrating VE day, ending in a massacre, which killed at least 30,000 Muslims. However, gradually anti-colonial movements successfully challenged European authority. The French Constitution of 27 October 1946 (Fourth Republic), established the French Union which endured until 1958. Newer remnants of the colonial empire were integrated into France as overseas departments and territories within the French Republic. These now total about 1% of the pre-1939 colonial area, with 2.7 million people living in them in 2013. By the 1970s, the last "vestiges of empire held little interest for the French. ... Except for the traumatic decolonization of Algeria, however, what is remarkable is how few long-lasting effects on France the giving up of empire entailed."
The population held steady from 40.7 million in 1911, to 41.5 million in 1936. The sense that the population was too small, especially in regard to the rapid growth of more powerful Germany, was a common theme in the early twentieth century. Natalist policies were proposed in the 1930s, and implemented in the 1940s.
France experienced a baby boom after 1945; it reversed a long-term record of low birth rates. In addition, there was a steady immigration, especially from former French colonies in North Africa. The population grew from 41 million in 1946, to 50 million in 1966, and 60 million by 1990. The farming population declined sharply, from 35% of the workforce in 1945 to under 5% by 2000. By 2004, France had the second highest birthrate in Europe, behind only Ireland.
France did not expect war in 1914, but when it came in August the entire nation rallied enthusiastically for two years. It specialized in sending infantry forward again and again, only to be stopped again and again by German artillery, trenches, barbed wire and machine guns, with horrific casualty rates. Despite the loss of major industrial districts France produced an enormous output of munitions that armed both the French and the American armies. By 1917 the infantry was on the verge of mutiny, with a widespread sense that it was now the American turn to storm the German lines. But they rallied and defeated the greatest German offensive, which came in spring 1918, then rolled over the collapsing invaders. November 1918 brought a surge of pride and unity, and an unrestrained demand for revenge.
Preoccupied with internal problems, France paid little attention to foreign policy in the 1911–14 period, although it did extend military service to three years from two over strong Socialist objections in 1913. The rapidly escalating Balkan crisis of 1914 caught France unaware, and it played only a small role in the coming of World War I. The Serbian crisis triggered a complex set of military alliances between European states, causing most of the continent, including France, to be drawn into war within a few short weeks. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in late July, triggering Russian mobilization. On 1 August both Germany and France ordered mobilization. Germany was much better prepared militarily than any of the other countries involved, including France. The German Empire, as an ally of Austria, declared war on Russia. France was allied with Russia and so was ready to commit to war against the German Empire. On 3 August Germany declared war on France, and sent its armies through neutral Belgium. Britain entered the war on 4 August, and started sending in troops on 7 August. Italy, although tied to Germany, remained neutral and then joined the Allies in 1915.
Germany's "Schlieffen Plan" was to quickly defeat the French. They captured Brussels, Belgium by 20 August and soon had captured a large portion of northern France. The original plan was to continue southwest and attack Paris from the west. By early September they were within 65 kilometres (40 mi) of Paris, and the French government had relocated to Bordeaux. The Allies finally stopped the advance northeast of Paris at the Marne River (5–12 September 1914).
The war now became a stalemate – the famous "Western Front" was fought largely in France and was characterized by very little movement despite extremely large and violent battles, often with new and more destructive military technology. On the Western Front, the small improvised trenches of the first few months rapidly grew deeper and more complex, gradually becoming vast areas of interlocking defensive works. The land war quickly became dominated by the muddy, bloody stalemate of Trench warfare, a form of war in which both opposing armies had static lines of defense. The war of movement quickly turned into a war of position. Neither side advanced much, but both sides suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. German and Allied armies produced essentially a matched pair of trench lines from the Swiss border in the south to the North Sea coast of Belgium. Meanwhile, large swaths of northeastern France came under the brutal control of German occupiers.
Trench warfare prevailed on the Western Front from September 1914 until March 1918. Famous battles in France include Battle of Verdun (spanning 10 months from 21 February to 18 December 1916), Battle of the Somme (1 July to 18 November 1916), and five separate conflicts called the Battle of Ypres (from 1914 to 1918).
After Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, a pacifist, was assassinated at the start of the war, the French socialist movement abandoned its antimilitarist positions and joined the national war effort. Prime Minister René Viviani called for unity—for a "Union sacrée" ("Sacred Union")--Which was a wartime truce between the right and left factions that had been fighting bitterly. France had few dissenters. However, war-weariness was a major factor by 1917, even reaching the army. The soldiers were reluctant to attack; Mutiny was a factor as soldiers said it was best to wait for the arrival of millions of Americans. The soldiers were protesting not just the futility of frontal assaults in the face of German machine guns but also degraded conditions at the front lines and at home, especially infrequent leaves, poor food, the use of African and Asian colonials on the home front, and concerns about the welfare of their wives and children.
After defeating Russia in 1917, Germany now could concentrate on the Western Front, and planned an all-out assault in the spring of 1918, but had to do it before the very rapidly growing American army played a role. In March 1918 Germany launched its offensive and by May had reached the Marne and was again close to Paris. However, in the Second Battle of the Marne (15 July to 6 August 1918), the Allied line held. The Allies then shifted to the offensive. The Germans, out of reinforcements, were overwhelmed day after day and the high command saw it was hopeless. Austria and Turkey collapsed, and the Kaiser's government fell. Germany signed "The Armistice" that ended the fighting effective 11 November 1918, "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month."
The war was fought in large part on French soil, with 3.4 million French dead including civilians, and four times as many military casualties. The economy was hurt by the German invasion of major industrial areas in the northeast. While the occupied area in 1913 contained only 14% of France's industrial workers, it produced 58% of the steel, and 40% of the coal. In 1914, the government implemented a war economy with controls and rationing. By 1915 the war economy went into high gear, as millions of French women and colonial men replaced the civilian roles of many of the 3 million soldiers. Considerable assistance came with the influx of American food, money and raw materials in 1917. This war economy would have important reverberations after the war, as it would be a first breach of liberal theories of non-interventionism. The damages caused by the war amounted to about 113% of the GDP of 1913, chiefly the destruction of productive capital and housing. The national debt rose from 66% of GDP in 1913 to 170% in 1919, reflecting the heavy use of bond issues to pay for the war. Inflation was severe, with the franc losing over half its value against the British pound.
The richest families were hurt, as the top 1 percent saw their share of wealth drop from about 60% in 1914 to 36% in 1935, then plunge to 20 percent in 1970 to the present. A great deal of physical and financial damage was done during the world wars, foreign investments were cashed in to pay for the wars, the Russian Bolsheviks expropriated large-scale investments, postwar inflation demolished cash holdings, stocks and bonds plunged during the Great Depression, and progressive taxes ate away at accumulated wealth.
Peace terms were imposed by the Big Four, meeting in Paris in 1919: David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States. Clemenceau demanded the harshest terms and won most of them in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Germany was forced to admit its guilt for starting the war, and was permanently weakened militarily. Germany had to pay huge sums in war reparations to the Allies (who in turn had large loans from the U.S. to pay off).
France regained Alsace-Lorraine and occupied the German industrial Saar Basin, a coal and steel region. The German African colonies were put under League of Nations mandates, and were administered by France and other victors. From the remains of the Ottoman Empire, France acquired the Mandate of Syria and the Mandate of Lebanon. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch wanted a peace that would never allow Germany to be a threat to France again, but after the Treaty of Versailles was signed he said, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years."
France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the Armistice. Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War. From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as Prime Minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy, using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations. He realized France could neither contain the much larger Germany by itself nor secure effective support from Britain or the League.
As a response to the Weimar Republic's default on its reparations in the aftermath of World War I, France occupied the industrial region of the Ruhr as a means of ensuring German payments. The intervention was a failure, and France accepted the international solution to the reparations issues, as expressed in the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan.
Politically, the 1920s was dominated by the Right, with right-wing coalitions in 1919, 1926, and 1928, and later in 1934 and 1938.
In the 1920s, France established an elaborate system of border defences called the Maginot Line, designed to fight off any German attack. The Line did not extend into Belgium, which Germany would exploit in 1940. Military alliances were signed with weak powers in 1920–21, called the "Little Entente".
The Great Depression affected France a bit later than other countries, hitting around 1931. While the GDP in the 1920s grew at the very strong rate of 4.43% per year, the 1930s rate fell to only 0.63%. The depression was relatively mild: unemployment peaked under 5%, the fall in production was at most 20% below the 1929 output; there was no banking crisis.
In contrast to the mild economic upheaval, the political upheaval was enormous. Socialist Leon Blum, leading the Popular Front, brought together Socialists and Radicals to become Prime Minister from 1936 to 1937; he was the first Jew and the first Socialist to lead France. The Communists in the Chamber of Deputies voted to keep the government in power, and generally supported the government's economic policies, but rejected its foreign policies. The Popular Front passed numerous labor reforms, which increased wages, cut working hours to 40 hours with overtime illegal and provided many lesser benefits to the working class such as mandatory two-week paid vacations. However, renewed inflation cancelled the gains in wage rates, unemployment did not fall, and economic recovery was very slow. The Popular Front failed in economics, foreign policy, and long-term stability: "Disappointment and failure was the legacy of the Popular Front." At first the Popular Front created enormous excitement and expectations on the left—including very large scale sitdown strikes—but in the end it failed to live up to its promise. However, Socialists would later take inspiration from the attempts of the Popular Front to set up a welfare state.
The government joined Britain in establishing an arms embargo during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Blum rejected support for the Spanish Republicans because of his fear that civil war might spread to deeply divided France. Financial support in military cooperation with Poland was also a policy. The government nationalized arms suppliers, and dramatically increased its program of rearming the French military in a last-minute catch-up with the Germans.
Appeasement of Germany, in cooperation with Britain, was the policy after 1936, as France sought peace even in the face of Hitler's escalating demands. Prime Minister Édouard Daladier refused to go to war against Germany and Italy without British support as Neville Chamberlain wanted to save peace at Munich in 1938.
Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 finally caused France and Britain to declare war against Germany. But the Allies did not launch massive assaults and instead kept a defensive stance: this was called the Phoney War in Britain or Drôle de guerre — the funny sort of war — in France. It did not prevent the German army from conquering Poland in a matter of weeks with its innovative Blitzkrieg tactics, also helped by the Soviet Union's attack on Poland.
When Germany had its hands free for an attack in the west, the Battle of France began in May 1940, and the same Blitzkrieg tactics proved just as devastating there. The Wehrmacht bypassed the Maginot Line by marching through the Ardennes forest. A second German force was sent into Belgium and the Netherlands to act as a diversion to this main thrust. In six weeks of savage fighting the French lost 90,000 men.
Many civilians sought refuge by taking to the roads of France: some 2 million refugees from Belgium and the Netherlands were joined by between 8 and 10 million French civilians, representing a quarter of the French population, all heading south and west. This movement may well have been the largest single movement of civilians in history prior to the Partition of India in 1947.
Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, but not before the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk, along with many French soldiers.
Vichy France was established on 10 July 1940 to govern the unoccupied part of France and its colonies. It was led by Philippe Pétain, the aging war hero of the First World War. Petain's representatives signed a harsh Armistice on 22 June 1940 whereby Germany kept most of the French army in camps in Germany, and France had to pay out large sums in gold and food supplies. Germany occupied three-fifths of France's territory, leaving the rest in the southeast to the new Vichy government. However, in practice, most local government was handled by the traditional French officialdom. In November 1942 all of Vichy France was finally occupied by German forces. Vichy continued in existence but it was closely supervised by the Germans.
The Vichy regime sought to collaborate with Germany, keeping peace in France to avoid further occupation although at the expense of personal freedom and individual safety. Some 76,000 Jews were deported during the German occupation, often with the help of the Vichy authorities, and murdered in the Nazis' extermination camps.
The 2 million French soldiers held as POWs and forced laborers in Germany throughout the war were not at risk of death in combat, but the anxieties of separation for their 800,000 wives were high. The government provided a modest allowance, but one in ten became prostitutes to support their families. It gave women a key symbolic role to carry out the national regeneration. It used propaganda, women's organizations, and legislation to promote maternity, patriotic duty, and female submission to marriage, home, and children's education. Conditions were very difficult for housewives, as food was short as well as most necessities. Divorce laws were made much more stringent, and restrictions were placed on the employment of married women. Family allowances that had begun in the 1930s were continued, and became a vital lifeline for many families; it was a monthly cash bonus for having more children. In 1942, the birth rate started to rise, and by 1945 it was higher than it had been for a century.
General Charles de Gaulle in London declared himself on BBC radio to be the head of a rival government in exile, and gathered the Free French Forces around him, finding support in some French colonies and recognition from Britain but not the United States. After the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir in 1940, where the British fleet destroyed a large part of the French navy, still under command of Vichy France, that killed about 1,100 sailors, there was nationwide indignation and a feeling of distrust in the French forces, leading to the events of the Battle of Dakar. Eventually, several important French ships joined the Free French Forces. The United States maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy and avoided recognition of de Gaulle's claim to be the one and only government of France. Churchill, caught between the U.S. and de Gaulle, tried to find a compromise.
Within France proper, the organized underground grew as the Vichy regime resorted to more strident policies in order to fulfill the enormous demands of the Nazis and the eventual decline of Nazi Germany became more obvious. They formed the Resistance. The most famous figure of the French resistance was Jean Moulin, sent in France by de Gaulle in order to link all resistance movements; he was captured and tortured by Klaus Barbie (the "butcher of Lyon"). Increasing repression culminated in the complete destruction and extermination of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane at the height of the Battle of Normandy. At 2.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 10 June 1944, a company of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, 'Das Reich', entered Oradour-sur-Glane. They herded most of its population into barns, garages and the church, and then massacred 642 men, women and children, all of whom were civilians.
In 1953, 21 men went on trial in Bordeaux for the Oradour killings. Fourteen of the accused proved to be French citizens of Alsace. Following convictions, all but one were pardoned by the French government.
On 6 June 1944 the Allies landed in Normandy (without a French component); on 15 August Allied forces landing in Provence, this time they included 260,000 men of the French First Army. The German lines finally broke, and they fled back to Germany while keeping control of the major ports. Allied forces liberated France and the Free French were given the honor of liberating Paris in late August 1944. The French army recruited French Forces of the Interior (de Gaulle's formal name for resistance fighters) to continue the war until the final defeat of Germany; this army numbered 300,000 men by September 1944 and 370,000 by spring 1945.
The Vichy regime disintegrated. An interim Provisional Government of the French Republic was quickly put into place by de Gaulle. The gouvernement provisoire de la République française, or GPRF, operated under a tripartisme alliance of communists, socialists, and democratic republicans. The GPRF governed France from 1944 to 1946, when it was replaced by the French Fourth Republic. Tens of thousands of collaborators were executed without trial. The new government declared the Vichy laws unconstitutional and illegal, and elected new local governments. Women gained the right to vote.
The political scene in 1944–45 was controlled by the Resistance, but it had numerous factions. Charles de Gaulle and the Free France element had been based outside France, but now came to dominate, in alliance with the Socialists, the Christian Democrats (MRP), and what remained of the Radical party. The Communists had largely dominated the Resistance inside France, but cooperated closely with the government in 1944–45, on orders from the Kremlin. There was a general consensus that important powers that had been an open collaboration with the Germans should be nationalized, such as Renault automobiles and the major newspapers. A new Social Security system was called for, as well as important new concessions to the labour unions. Unions themselves were divided among communist, Socialist, and Christian Democrat factions. Frustrated by his inability to control all the dominant forces, de Gaulle resigned early in 1946. On 13 October 1946, a new constitution established the Fourth Republic. The Fourth Republic consisted of a parliamentary government controlled by a series of coalitions. France attempted to regain control of French Indochina but was defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954. Only months later, France faced another anti-colonialist conflict in Algeria and the debate over whether or not to keep control of Algeria, then home to over one million European settlers, wracked the country and nearly led to a coup and civil war. Charles de Gaulle managed to keep the country together while taking steps to end the war. The Algerian War was concluded with the Évian Accords in 1962 which led to Algerian independence.
The June 1951 elections saw a re-emergence of the right, and until June 1954 France was governed by a succession of centre-right coalitions.
Wartime damage to the economy was severe, and apart from gold reserves, France had inadequate resources to recover on its own. The transportation system was in total shambles — the Allies had bombed out the railways and the bridges, and the Germans had destroyed the port facilities. Energy was in extremely short supply, with very low stocks of coal and oil. Imports of raw materials were largely cut off, so most factories shut down. The invaders had stripped most of the valuable industrial tools for German factories. Discussions with the United States for emergency aid dragged on, with repeated postponements on both sides. Meanwhile, several million French prisoners of war and forced labourers were being returned home, with few jobs and little food available for them. The plan was for 20 percent of German reparations to be paid to France, but Germany was in much worse shape even in France, and in no position to pay.
After de Gaulle left office in January 1946, the diplomatic logjam was broken in terms of American aid. The U.S. Army shipped in food, from 1944 to 1946, and U.S. Treasury loans and cash grants were disbursed from 1945 until 1947, with Marshall Plan aid continuing until 1951. France received additional aid from 1951 to 1955 in order to help the country rearm and prosecute its war in Indochina. Apart from low-interest loans, the other funds were grants that did not involve repayment. The debts left over from World War I, whose payment had been suspended since 1931, were renegotiated in the Blum-Byrnes agreement of 1946. The United States forgave all $2.8 billion in debt from the First World War, and gave France a new loan of $650 million. In return, French negotiator Jean Monnet set out the French five-year plan for recovery and development. The Marshall Plan gave France $2.3 billion with no repayment. The total of all American grants and credits to France from 1946 to 1953, amounted to $4.9 billion.
A central feature of the Marshall Plan was to encourage international trade, reduce tariffs, lower barriers, and modernize French management. The Marshall Plan set up intensive tours of American industry. France sent 500 missions with 4700 businessmen and experts to tour American factories, farms, stores and offices. They were especially impressed with the prosperity of American workers, and how they could purchase an inexpensive new automobile for nine months work, compared to 30 months in France. Some French businesses resisted Americanization, but the most profitable, especially chemicals, oil, electronics, and instrumentation, seized upon the opportunity to attract American investments and build a larger market. The U.S. insisted on opportunities for Hollywood films, and the French film industry responded with new life.
Although the economic situation in France was grim in 1945, resources did exist and the economy regained normal growth by the 1950s. France managed to regain its international status thanks to a successful production strategy, a demographic spurt, and technical and political innovations. Conditions varied from firm to firm. Some had been destroyed or damaged, nationalized or requisitioned, but the majority carried on, sometimes working harder and more efficiently than before the war. Industries were reorganized on a basis that ranged from consensual (electricity) to conflictual (machine tools), therefore producing uneven results. Despite strong American pressure through the ERP, there was little change in the organization and content of the training for French industrial managers. This was mainly due to the reticence of the existing institutions and the struggle among different economic and political interest groups for control over efforts to improve the further training of practitioners.
The Monnet Plan provided a coherent framework for economic policy, and it was strongly supported by the Marshall Plan. It was inspired by moderate, Keynesian free-trade ideas rather than state control. Although relaunched in an original way, the French economy was about as productive as comparable West European countries.
Claude Fohlen argues that:
Pierre Mendès France, was a Radical party leader who was Prime Minister for eight months in 1954–55, working with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties. His top priority was ending the war in Indochina, which had already cost 92,000 dead 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured in the wake of the humiliating defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The United States had paid most of the costs of the war, but its support inside France had collapsed. Public opinion polls showed that in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to keep Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. At the Geneva Conference in July 1954 Mendès France made a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed France to pull out all its forces. That left South Vietnam standing alone. However, the United States moved in and provided large-scale financial military and economic support for South Vietnam. Mendès-France next came to an agreement with Habib Bourguiba, the nationalist leader in Tunisia, for the independence of that colony by 1956, and began discussions with the nationalist leaders in Morocco for a French withdrawal.
With over a million European residents in Algeria (the Pieds-Noirs), France refused to grant independence until the Algerian War of Independence had turned into a French political and civil crisis. Algeria was given its independence in 1962, unleashing a massive wave of immigration from the former colony back to France of both Pied-Noir and Algerians who had supported France.
In 1956, another crisis struck French colonies, this time in Egypt. The Suez Canal, having been built by the French government, belonged to the French Republic and was operated by the Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez. Great Britain had bought the Egyptian share from Isma'il Pasha and was the second-largest owner of the canal before the crisis.
The Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal despite French and British opposition; he determined that a European response was unlikely. Great Britain and France attacked Egypt and built an alliance with Israel against Nasser. Israel attacked from the east, Britain from Cyprus and France from Algeria. Egypt, the most powerful Arab state of the time, was defeated in a mere few days. The Suez crisis caused an outcry of indignation in the entire Arab world and Saudi Arabia set an embargo on oil on France and Britain. The US President Dwight D. Eisenhower forced a ceasefire; Britain and Israel soon withdrew, leaving France alone in Egypt. Under strong international pressures, the French government ultimately evacuated its troops from Suez and largely disengaged from the Middle East.
The May 1958 seizure of power in Algiers by French army units and French settlers opposed to concessions in the face of Arab nationalist insurrection ripped apart the unstable Fourth Republic. The National Assembly brought De Gaulle back to power during the May 1958 crisis. He founded the Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency, and he was elected in the latter role. He managed to keep France together while taking steps to end the war, much to the anger of the Pieds-Noirs (Frenchmen settled in Algeria) and the military; both had supported his return to power to maintain colonial rule. He granted independence to Algeria in 1962 and progressively to other French colonies.
Proclaiming grandeur essential to the nature of France, de Gaulle initiated his "Politics of Grandeur." He demanded complete autonomy for France in world affairs, which meant that major decisions could not be forced upon it by NATO, the European Community or anyone else. De Gaulle pursued a policy of "national independence." He vetoed Britain's entry into the Common Market, fearing it might gain too great a voice on French affairs. While not officially abandoning NATO, he withdrew from its military integrated command, fearing that the United States had too much control over NATO. He launched an independent nuclear development program that made France the fourth nuclear power. France then adopted the dissuasion du faible au fort doctrine which meant a Soviet attack on France would only bring total destruction to both sides.
He restored cordial Franco-German relations in order to create a European counterweight between the "Anglo-Saxon" (American and British) and Soviet spheres of influence. De Gaulle openly criticised the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He was angry at American economic power, especially what his Finance minister called the "exorbitant privilege" of the U.S. dollar. He went to Canada and proclaimed "Vive le Québec libre", the catchphrase for an independent Quebec.
In May 1968, he appeared likely to lose power amidst widespread protests by students and workers, but persisted through the crisis with backing from the army. His party, denouncing radicalism, won the 1968 election with an increased majority in the Assembly. Nonetheless, de Gaulle resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum in which he proposed more decentralization. His War Memoirs became a classic of modern French literature and many French political parties and figures claim the gaullist heritage.
By the late 1960s, France's economic growth, while strong, was beginning to lose steam. A global currency crisis meant a devaluation of the Franc against the West German Mark and the U.S. Dollar in 1968, which was one of the leading factors for the social upheaval of that year. Industrial policy was used to bolster French industries.
The Trente Glorieuses era (1945–1975) ended with the worldwide 1973 oil crisis, which increased costs in energy and thus on production. Economic instability marked the Giscard d'Estaing government (1974–1981). Giscard turned to Prime Minister Raymond Barre in 1976, who advocated numerous complex, strict policies ("Barre Plans"). The first Barre plan emerged on 22 September 1976, with a priority to stop inflation. It included a three-month price freeze; a reduction in the value-added tax; wage controls; salary controls; a reduction of the growth in the money supply; and increases in the income tax, automobile taxes, luxury taxes and bank rates. There were measures to restore the trade balance, and support the growth of the economy and employment. Oil imports, whose price had shot up, were limited. There was special aid to exports, and an action fund was set up to aid industries. There was increased financial aid to farmers, who were suffering from a drought, and for social security. The package was not very popular, but was pursued with vigour.
Economic troubles continued into the early years of the presidency of François Mitterrand. A recession in the early 1980s led to the abandonment of dirigisme in favour of a more pragmatic approach to economic intervention. Growth resumed later in the decade, only to be slowed down by the economic depression of the early 1990s, which affected the Socialist Party. Liberalisation under Jacques Chirac in the late 1990s strengthened the economy. However, after 2005 the world economy stagnated and the 2008 global crisis and its effects in both the Eurozone and France itself dogged the conservative government of Nicolas Sarkozy, who lost reelection in 2012 against Socialist Francois Hollande.
France's recent economic history has been less turbulent than in many other countries. The average income in France, after having been steady for a long time, increased elevenfold between 1700 and 1975, which constitutes a 0.9% growth rate per year, a rate which has been outdone almost every year since 1975: By the early Eighties, for instance, wages in France were on or slightly above the EEC average.
After the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War potential menaces to mainland France appeared considerably reduced. France began reducing its nuclear capacities and conscription was abolished in 2001. In 1990, France, led by François Mitterrand, joined the short successful Gulf War against Iraq; the French participation to this war was called the Opération Daguet.
Terrorism grew worse. In 1994, Air France Flight 8969 was hijacked by terrorists; they were captured.
Conservative Jacques Chirac assumed office as president on 17 May 1995, after a campaign focused on the need to combat France's stubbornly high unemployment rate. While France continues to revere its rich history and independence, French leaders increasingly tie the future of France to the continued development of the European Union. In 1992, France ratified the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union. In 1999, the Euro was introduced to replace the French franc. Beyond membership in the European Union, France is also involved in many joint European projects such as Airbus, the Galileo positioning system and the Eurocorps.
The French have stood among the strongest supporters of NATO and EU policy in the Balkans to prevent genocide in former Yugoslavia. French troops joined the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. France has also been actively involved against international terrorism. In 2002, Alliance Base, an international Counterterrorist Intelligence Center, was secretly established in Paris. The same year France contributed to the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but it strongly rejected the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even threatening to veto the US proposed resolution.
Jacques Chirac was reelected in 2002, mainly because his socialist rival Lionel Jospin was removed from the runoff by the right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Chirac was especially remembered as a fierce opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was elected and took office on 16 May 2007. The problem of high unemployment has yet to be resolved. Sarkozy was very actively involved in the military operation in Libya to oust the Gaddafi government in 2011.
In 2012 election for president, Socialist François Hollande defeated Sarkozy's try for reelection. Hollande advocated a growth policy in contrast to the austerity policy advocated by Germany's Angela Merkel as a way of tackling the European sovereign debt crisis. In 2014, Hollande stood with Merkel and US President Obama in imposing sanctions on Russia for its actions against Ukraine. In December 2016, Hollande announced he will not seek re-election as president of France.
In the 2017 election for president the winner was Emmanuel Macron, the founder of a new party "La République En Marche!". It declared itself above left and right. He called parliamentary elections that brought him the absolute majority of députés. He appointed a prime minister from the centre right, and ministers from both the centre left and centre right.
In the 2022 presidential election president Macron was re-elected after beating his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, in the runoff. He was the first re-elected incumbent French president since 2002.
Sophie Meunier in 2017 ponders whether France is still relevant in world affairs:
At the close of the Algerian war, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, including some who had supported France (Harkis), settled permanently in France, especially in the larger cities where they lived in subsidized public housing, and suffered very high unemployment rates. In October 2005, the predominantly Arab-immigrant suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Lille, and other French cities erupted in riots by socially alienated teenagers, many of them second- or third-generation immigrants.
Schneider says:
For the next three convulsive weeks, riots spread from suburb to suburb, affecting more than three hundred towns….Nine thousand vehicles were torched, hundreds of public and commercial buildings destroyed, four thousand rioters arrested, and 125 police officers wounded.
Traditional interpretations say these race riots were spurred by radical Muslims or unemployed youth. Another view states that the riots reflected a broader problem of racism and police violence in France.
In March 2012, a Muslim radical named Mohammed Merah shot three French soldiers and four Jewish citizens, including children in Toulouse and Montauban.
In January 2015, the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that had ridiculed the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, and a neighbourhood Jewish grocery store came under attack from angry Muslims who had been born and raised in the Paris region. World leaders rally to Paris to show their support for free speech. Analysts agree that the episode had a profound impact on France. The New York Times summarized the ongoing debate:
So as France grieves, it is also faced with profound questions about its future: How large is the radicalized part of the country's Muslim population, the largest in Europe? How deep is the rift between France's values of secularism, of individual, sexual and religious freedom, of freedom of the press and the freedom to shock, and a growing Muslim conservatism that rejects many of these values in the name of religion? | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language. Over the course of the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman Legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In the later stages of the Roman Empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration, most importantly by the Germanic Franks. The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul under his rule in the late 5th century, setting the stage for Frankish dominance in the region for hundreds of years. Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne. The medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western part of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, known as West Francia, and achieved increasing prominence under the rule of the House of Capet, founded by Hugh Capet in 987.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A succession crisis following the death of the last direct Capetian monarch in 1328 led to the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The war formally began in 1337 following Philip VI's attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its hereditary holder, Edward III of England, the Plantagenet claimant to the French throne. Despite early Plantagenet victories, including the capture and ransom of John II of France, fortunes turned in favor of the Valois later in the war. Among the notable figures of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led French forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Victory in the Hundred Years' War had the effect of strengthening French nationalism and vastly increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the Ancien Régime period over the next centuries, France transformed into a centralized absolute monarchy through Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. At the height of the French Wars of Religion, France became embroiled in another succession crisis, as the last Valois king, Henry III, fought against rival factions the House of Bourbon and the House of Guise. Henry, the Bourbon King of Navarre, won the conflict and established the Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century. The French monarchy's political power reached a zenith under the rule of Louis XIV, \"The Sun King\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the late 18th century the monarchy and associated institutions were overthrown in the French Revolution. The country was governed for a period as a Republic, until Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire was declared. Following his defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, France went through several further regime changes, being ruled as a monarchy, then briefly as a Second Republic, and then as a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "France was one of the Triple Entente powers in World War I against Germany and the Central Powers. France was one of the Allied Powers in World War II, but was conquered by Nazi Germany in 1940. The Third Republic was dismantled, and most of the country was controlled directly by Germany while the south was controlled until 1942 by the collaborationist Vichy government. Living conditions were harsh as Germany drained away food and manpower, and many Jews were killed. The Free France movement took over the colonial empire, and coordinated the wartime Resistance. Following liberation in 1944, the Fourth Republic was established. France slowly recovered, and enjoyed a baby boom that reversed its very low fertility rate. Long wars in Indochina and Algeria drained French resources and ended in political defeat. In the wake of the 1958 Algerian Crisis, Charles de Gaulle set up the French Fifth Republic. Into the 1960s decolonization saw most of the French colonial empire become independent, while smaller parts were incorporated into the French state as overseas departments and collectivities. Since World War II France has been a permanent member in the UN Security Council and NATO. It played a central role in the unification process after 1945 that led to the European Union. Despite slow economic growth in recent years, it remains a strong economic, cultural, military and political factor in the 21st century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Stone tools discovered at Chilhac (1968) and Lézignan-la-Cèbe in 2009 indicate that pre-human ancestors may have been present in France at least 1.6 million years ago. Neanderthals were present in Europe from about 400,000 BC, but died out about 40,000 years ago, possibly out-competed by the modern humans during a period of cold weather. The earliest modern humans — Homo sapiens — entered Europe by 43,000 years ago (the Upper Palaeolithic).",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Paleolithic cave paintings of Gargas (c. 25,000 BC) and Lascaux (c. 15,000 BC) as well as the Neolithic-era Carnac stones (c. 4500 BC) are among the many remains of local prehistoric activity in the region. In the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age the territory of France was largely dominated by the Bell Beaker culture, followed by the Armorican Tumulus culture, Rhône culture, Tumulus culture, Urnfield culture and Atlantic Bronze Age culture, among others. The Iron Age saw the development of the Hallstatt culture followed by the La Tène culture, the final cultural stage prior to Roman expansion across Gaul. The first written records for the history of France appear in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Roman writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Over the course of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman forces under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman empire.",
"title": "Prehistory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille) on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, making it one of the oldest cities in France. At the same time, some Celtic tribes arrived in the eastern parts (Germania superior) of the current territory of France, but this occupation spread in the rest of France only between the 5th and 3rd century BC.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Covering large parts of modern-day France, Belgium, northwest Germany and northern Italy, Gaul was inhabited by many Celtic and Belgae tribes whom the Romans referred to as Gauls and who spoke the Gaulish language roughly between the Oise and the Garonne (Gallia Celtica), according to Julius Caesar. On the lower Garonne the people spoke Aquitanian, a Pre-Indo-European language related to (or a direct ancestor of) Basque whereas a Belgian language was spoken north of Lutecia but north of the Loire according to other authors like Strabo. The Celts founded cities such as Lutetia Parisiorum (Paris) and Burdigala (Bordeaux) while the Aquitanians founded Tolosa (Toulouse).",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Long before any Roman settlements, Greek navigators settled in what would become Provence. The Phoceans founded important cities such as Massalia (Marseille) and Nikaia (Nice), bringing them into conflict with the neighboring Celts and Ligurians. Some Phocean great navigators, such as Pytheas, were born in Marseille. The Celts themselves often fought with Aquitanians and Germans, and a Gaulish war band led by Brennus invaded Rome c. 393 or 388 BC following the Battle of the Allia.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "However, the tribal society of the Gauls did not change fast enough for the centralized Roman state, who would learn to counter them. The Gaulish tribal confederacies were then defeated by the Romans in battles such as Sentinum and Telamon during the 3rd century BC. In the early 3rd century BC, some Belgae (Germani cisrhenani) conquered the surrounding territories of the Somme in northern Gaul after battles supposedly against the Armoricani (Gauls) near Ribemont-sur-Ancre and Gournay-sur-Aronde, where sanctuaries were found.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "When Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca fought the Romans, he recruited several Gaulish mercenaries who fought on his side at Cannae. It was this Gaulish participation that caused Provence to be annexed in 122 BC by the Roman Republic. Later, the Consul of Gaul — Julius Caesar — conquered all of Gaul. Despite Gaulish opposition led by Vercingetorix, the Gauls succumbed to the Roman onslaught. The Gauls had some success at first at Gergovia, but were ultimately defeated at Alesia in 52 BC. The Romans founded cities such as Lugdunum (Lyon), Narbonensis (Narbonne) and allow in a correspondence between Lucius Munatius Plancus and Cicero to formalize the existence of Cularo (Grenoble).",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Gaul was divided into several different provinces. The Romans displaced populations to prevent local identities from becoming a threat to Roman control. Thus, many Celts were displaced in Aquitania or were enslaved and moved out of Gaul. There was a strong cultural evolution in Gaul under the Roman Empire, the most obvious one being the replacement of the Gaulish language by Vulgar Latin. It has been argued the similarities between the Gaulish and Latin languages favoured the transition. Gaul remained under Roman control for centuries and Celtic culture was then gradually replaced by Gallo-Roman culture.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Gauls became better integrated with the Empire with the passage of time. For instance, generals Marcus Antonius Primus and Gnaeus Julius Agricola were both born in Gaul, as were emperors Claudius and Caracalla. Emperor Antoninus Pius also came from a Gaulish family. In the decade following Valerian's capture by the Persians in 260, Postumus established a short-lived Gallic Empire, which included the Iberian Peninsula and Britannia, in addition to Gaul itself. Germanic tribes, the Franks and the Alamanni, entered Gaul at this time. The Gallic Empire ended with Emperor Aurelian's victory at Châlons in 274.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A migration of Celts occurred in the 4th century in Armorica. They were led by the legendary king Conan Meriadoc and came from Britain. They spoke the now extinct British language, which evolved into the Breton, Cornish, and Welsh languages.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 418 the Aquitanian province was given to the Goths in exchange for their support against the Vandals. Those same Goths had sacked Rome in 410 and established a capital in Toulouse.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Roman Empire had difficulty responding to all the barbarian raids, and Flavius Aëtius had to use these tribes against each other in order to maintain some Roman control. He first used the Huns against the Burgundians, and these mercenaries destroyed Worms, killed king Gunther, and pushed the Burgundians westward. The Burgundians were resettled by Aëtius near Lugdunum in 443. The Huns, united by Attila, became a greater threat, and Aëtius used the Visigoths against the Huns. The conflict climaxed in 451 at the Battle of Châlons, in which the Romans and Goths defeated Attila.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Roman Empire was on the verge of collapsing. Aquitania was definitely abandoned to the Visigoths, who would soon conquer a significant part of southern Gaul as well as most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Burgundians claimed their own kingdom, and northern Gaul was practically abandoned to the Franks. Aside from the Germanic peoples, the Vascones entered Wasconia from the Pyrenees and the Bretons formed three kingdoms in Armorica: Domnonia, Cornouaille and Broërec.",
"title": "Ancient history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 486, Clovis I, leader of the Salian Franks, defeated Syagrius at Soissons and subsequently united most of northern and central Gaul under his rule. Clovis then recorded a succession of victories against other Germanic tribes such as the Alamanni at Tolbiac. In 496, pagan Clovis adopted Catholicism. This gave him greater legitimacy and power over his Christian subjects and granted him clerical support against the Arian Visigoths. He defeated Alaric II at Vouillé in 507 and annexed Aquitaine, and thus Toulouse, into his Frankish kingdom.",
"title": "Frankish kingdoms (486–987)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Goths retired to Toledo in what would become Spain. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty but his kingdom would not survive his death in 511. Under Frankish inheritance traditions, all sons inherit part of the land, so four kingdoms emerged: centered on Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. Over time, the borders and numbers of Frankish kingdoms were fluid and changed frequently. Also during this time, the Mayors of the Palace, originally the chief advisor to the kings, would become the real power in the Frankish lands; the Merovingian kings themselves would be reduced to little more than figureheads.",
"title": "Frankish kingdoms (486–987)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "By this time Muslims had conquered Hispania and Septimania became part of the Al-Andalus, which were threatening the Frankish kingdoms. Duke Odo the Great defeated a major invading force at Toulouse in 721 but failed to repel a raiding party in 732. The mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated that raiding party at the Battle of Tours and earned respect and power within the Frankish Kingdom. The assumption of the crown in 751 by Pepin the Short (son of Charles Martel) established the Carolingian dynasty as the kings of the Franks.",
"title": "Frankish kingdoms (486–987)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Carolingian power reached its fullest extent under Pepin's son, Charlemagne. In 771, Charlemagne reunited the Frankish domains after a further period of division, subsequently conquering the Lombards under Desiderius in what is now northern Italy (774), incorporating Bavaria (788) into his realm, defeating the Avars of the Danubian plain (796), advancing the frontier with Al-Andalus as far south as Barcelona (801), and subjugating Lower Saxony after a prolonged campaign (804).",
"title": "Frankish kingdoms (486–987)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In recognition of his successes and his political support for the papacy, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans, or Roman Emperor in the West, by Pope Leo III in 800. Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious (emperor 814–840) kept the empire united; however, this Carolingian Empire would not survive Louis I's death. Two of his sons — Charles the Bald and Louis the German — swore allegiance to each other against their brother — Lothair I — in the Oaths of Strasbourg, and the empire was divided among Louis's three sons (Treaty of Verdun, 843). After a last brief reunification (884–887), the imperial title ceased to be held in the western realm, which was to form the basis of the future French kingdom. The eastern realm, which would become Germany, elected the Saxon dynasty of Henry the Fowler.",
"title": "Frankish kingdoms (486–987)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Under the Carolingians, the kingdom was ravaged by Viking raiders. In this struggle some important figures such as Count Odo of Paris and his brother King Robert rose to fame and became kings. This emerging dynasty, whose members were called the Robertines, were the predecessors of the Capetian dynasty. Led by Rollo, some Vikings had settled in Normandy and were granted the land, first as counts and then as dukes, by King Charles the Simple, in order to protect the land from other raiders. The people that emerged from the interactions between the new Viking aristocracy and the already mixed Franks and Gallo-Romans became known as the Normans.",
"title": "Frankish kingdoms (486–987)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "France was a very decentralised state during the Middle Ages. The authority of the king was more religious than administrative. The 11th century in France marked the apogee of princely power at the expense of the king when states like Normandy, Flanders or Languedoc enjoyed a local authority comparable to kingdoms in all but name. The Capetians, as they were descended from the Robertians, were formerly powerful princes themselves who had successfully unseated the weak and unfortunate Carolingian kings. The Capetians, in a way, held a dual status of King and Prince; as king they held the Crown of Charlemagne and as Count of Paris they held their personal fiefdom, best known as Île-de-France.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Some of the king's vassals would grow sufficiently powerful that they would become some of the strongest rulers of western Europe. The Normans, the Plantagenets, the Lusignans, the Hautevilles, the Ramnulfids, and the House of Toulouse successfully carved lands outside France for themselves. The most important of these conquests for French history was the Norman Conquest by William the Conqueror.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "An important part of the French aristocracy also involved itself in the crusades, and French knights founded and ruled the Crusader states.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The monarchy overcame the powerful barons over ensuing centuries, and established absolute sovereignty over France in the 16th century. Hugh Capet in 987 became \"King of the Franks\" (Rex Francorum). He was recorded to be recognised king by the Gauls, Bretons, Danes, Aquitanians, Goths, Spanish and Gascons.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hugh's son—Robert the Pious—was crowned King of the Franks before Capet's demise. Hugh Capet decided so in order to have his succession secured. Robert II, as King of the Franks, met Emperor Henry II in 1023 on the borderline. They agreed to end all claims over each other's realm, setting a new stage of Capetian and Ottonian relationships. The reign of Robert II was quite important because it involved the Peace and Truce of God (beginning in 989) and the Cluniac Reforms.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Under King Philip I, the kingdom enjoyed a modest recovery during his extraordinarily long reign (1060–1108). His reign also saw the launch of the First Crusade to regain the Holy Land.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "It is from Louis VI (reigned 1108–37) onward that royal authority became more accepted. Louis VI was more a soldier and warmongering king than a scholar. The way the king raised money from his vassals made him quite unpopular; he was described as greedy and ambitious. His regular attacks on his vassals, although damaging the royal image, reinforced the royal power. From 1127 onward Louis had the assistance of a skilled religious statesman, Abbot Suger. Louis VI successfully defeated, both military and politically, many of the robber barons. When Louis VI died in 1137, much progress had been made towards strengthening Capetian authority.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Thanks to Abbot Suger's political advice, King Louis VII (junior king 1131–37, senior king 1137–80) enjoyed greater moral authority over France than his predecessors. Powerful vassals paid homage to the French king. Abbot Suger arranged the 1137 marriage between Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Bordeaux, which made Louis VII Duke of Aquitaine and gave him considerable power. The marriage was ultimately annulled and Eleanor soon married the Duke of Normandy — Henry Fitzempress, who would become King of England as Henry II two years later.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The late direct Capetian kings were considerably more powerful and influential than the earliest ones. This period also saw the rise of a complex system of international alliances and conflicts opposing, through dynasties, kings of France and England and the Holy Roman Emperor. The reign of Philip II Augustus (junior king 1179–80, senior king 1180–1223) saw the French royal domain and influence greatly expanded. He set the context for the rise of power to much more powerful monarchs like Saint Louis and Philip the Fair. Philip II spent an important part of his reign fighting the so-called Angevin Empire.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "During the first part of his reign Philip II allied himself with the Duke of Aquitaine and son of Henry II—Richard Lionheart—and together they launched a decisive attack on Henry's home of Chinon and removed him from power. Richard replaced his father as King of England afterward. The two kings then went crusading during the Third Crusade; however, their alliance and friendship broke down during the crusade. John Lackland, Richard's successor, refused to come to the French court for a trial against the Lusignans and, as Louis VI had done often to his rebellious vassals, Philip II confiscated John's possessions in France. John's defeat was swift and his attempts to reconquer his French possession at the decisive Battle of Bouvines (1214) resulted in complete failure. Philip II had annexed Normandy and Anjou, plus capturing the Counts of Boulogne and Flanders, although Aquitaine and Gascony remained loyal to the Plantagenet King.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Prince Louis (the future Louis VIII, reigned 1223–26) was involved in the subsequent English civil war as French and English (or rather Anglo-Norman) aristocracies were once one and were now split between allegiances. While the French kings were struggling against the Plantagenets, the Church called for the Albigensian Crusade. Southern France was then largely absorbed in the royal domains.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "France became a truly centralised kingdom under Louis IX (reigned 1226–70). The kingdom was vulnerable: war was still going on in the County of Toulouse, and the royal army was occupied fighting resistance in Languedoc. Count Raymond VII of Toulouse finally signed the Treaty of Paris in 1229, in which he retained much of his lands for life, but his daughter, married to Count Alfonso of Poitou, produced him no heir and so the County of Toulouse went to the King of France. King Henry III of England had not yet recognized the Capetian overlordship over Aquitaine and still hoped to recover Normandy and Anjou and reform the Angevin Empire. He landed in 1230 at Saint-Malo with a massive force. This evolved into the Saintonge War (1242). Ultimately, Henry III was defeated and had to recognise Louis IX's overlordship, although the King of France did not seize Aquitaine. Louis IX was now the most important landowner of France. There were some opposition to his rule in Normandy, yet it proved remarkably easy to rule, especially compared to the County of Toulouse which had been brutally conquered. The Conseil du Roi, which would evolve into the Parlement, was founded in these times. After his conflict with King Henry III of England, Louis established a cordial relation with the Plantagenet King.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Kingdom was involved in two crusades under Louis: the Seventh Crusade and the Eighth Crusade. Both proved to be complete failures for the French King. Philip III became king when Saint Louis died in 1270 during the Eighth Crusade. Philip III was called \"the Bold\" on the basis of his abilities in combat and on horseback, and not because of his character or ruling abilities. Philip III took part in another crusading disaster: the Aragonese Crusade, which cost him his life in 1285. More administrative reforms were made by Philip IV, also called Philip the Fair (reigned 1285–1314). This king was responsible for the end of the Knights Templar, signed the Auld Alliance, and established the Parlement of Paris. Philip IV was so powerful that he could name popes and emperors, unlike the early Capetians. The papacy was moved to Avignon and all the contemporary popes were French, such as Philip IV's puppet Bertrand de Goth, Pope Clement V.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The tensions between the Houses of Plantagenet and Capet climaxed during the so-called Hundred Years' War (actually several distinct wars over the period 1337 to 1453) when the Plantagenets claimed the throne of France from the Valois. This was also the time of the Black Death, as well as several devastating civil wars. In 1420, by the Treaty of Troyes Henry V was made heir to Charles VI. Henry V failed to outlive Charles so it was Henry VI of England and France who consolidated the Dual-Monarchy of England and France.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "It has been argued that the difficult conditions the French population suffered during the Hundred Years' War awakened French nationalism, a nationalism represented by Joan of Arc (1412–1431). Although this is debatable, the Hundred Years' War is remembered more as a Franco-English war than as a succession of feudal struggles. During this war, France evolved politically and militarily.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Although a Franco-Scottish army was successful at the Battle of Baugé (1421), the humiliating defeats of Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) forced the French nobility to realise they could not stand just as armoured knights without an organised army. Charles VII (reigned 1422–61) established the first French standing army, the Compagnies d'ordonnance, and defeated the Plantagenets once at Patay (1429) and again, using cannons, at Formigny (1450). The Battle of Castillon (1453) was the last engagement of this war; Calais and the Channel Islands remained ruled by the Plantagenets.",
"title": "State building into the Kingdom of France (987–1453)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Early Modern period in French history spans the following reigns, from 1461 to the Revolution, breaking in 1789:",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "France in the Ancien Régime covered a territory of around 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi). This land supported 13 million people in 1484 and 20 million people in 1700. France had the second largest population in Europe around 1700. France's lead slowly faded after 1700, as other countries grew faster.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Political power was widely dispersed. The law courts (\"Parlements\") were powerful. However, the king had only about 10,000 officials in royal service – very few indeed for such a large country, and with very slow internal communications over an inadequate road system. Travel was usually faster by ocean ship or river boat. The different estates of the realm — the clergy, the nobility, and commoners — occasionally met together in the \"Estates General\", but in practice the Estates General had no power, for it could petition the king but could not pass laws.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Catholic Church controlled about 40% of the wealth. The king (not the pope) nominated bishops, but typically had to negotiate with noble families that had close ties to local monasteries and church establishments. The nobility came second in terms of wealth, but there was no unity. Each noble had his own lands, his own network of regional connections, and his own military force.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The cities had a quasi-independent status, and were largely controlled by the leading merchants and guilds. Peasants made up the vast majority of population, who in many cases had well-established rights that the authorities had to respect. In the 17th century peasants had ties to the market economy, provided much of the capital investment necessary for agricultural growth, and frequently moved from village to village (or town). Although most peasants in France spoke local dialects, an official language emerged in Paris and the French language became the preferred language of Europe's aristocracy and the lingua franca of diplomacy and international relations. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V quipped, \"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.\"",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "With the death in 1477 of Charles the Bold, France and the Habsburgs began a long process of dividing his rich Burgundian lands, leading to numerous wars. In 1532, Brittany was incorporated into the Kingdom of France.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "France engaged in the long Italian Wars (1494–1559), which marked the beginning of early modern France. Francis I faced powerful foes, and he was captured at Pavia. The French monarchy then sought for allies and found one in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Admiral Barbarossa captured Nice in 1543 and handed it down to Francis I.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "During the 16th century, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs were the dominant power in Europe. The many domains of Charles V encircled France. The Spanish Tercio was used with great success against French knights. Finally, on 7 January 1558, the Duke of Guise seized Calais from the English.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Economic historians call the era from about 1475 to 1630 the \"beautiful 16th century\" because of the return of peace, prosperity and optimism across the nation, and the steady growth of population. In 1559, Henry II of France signed (with the approval of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor) two treaties (Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis): one with Elizabeth I of England and one with Philip II of Spain. This ended long-lasting conflicts between France, England and Spain.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The Protestant Reformation, inspired in France mainly by John Calvin, began to challenge the legitimacy and rituals of the Catholic Church. French King Henry II severely persecuted Protestants under the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551). Renewed Catholic reaction — headed by the powerful Francis, Duke of Guise — led to a massacre of Huguenots at Vassy in 1562, starting the first of the French Wars of Religion, during which English, German, and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant (\"Huguenot\") and Catholic forces.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "King Henry II died in 1559 in a jousting tournament; he was succeeded in turn by his three sons, each of which assumed the throne as minors or were weak, ineffectual rulers. In the power vacuum entered Henry's widow, Catherine de' Medici, who became a central figure in the early years of the Wars of Religion. She is often blamed for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, when thousands of Huguenots were murdered in Paris and the provinces of France.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Wars of Religion culminated in the War of the Three Henrys (1584–98), at the height of which bodyguards of the King Henry III assassinated Henry de Guise, leader of the Spanish-backed Catholic league, in December 1588. In revenge, a priest assassinated Henry III in 1589. This led to the ascension of the Huguenot Henry IV; in order to bring peace to a country beset by religious and succession wars, he converted to Catholicism. He issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which guaranteed religious liberties to the Protestants, thereby effectively ending the civil war. Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 by a fanatical Catholic.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "When in 1620 the Huguenots proclaimed a constitution for the 'Republic of the Reformed Churches of France', the chief minister Cardinal Richelieu invoked the entire powers of the state to stop it. Religious conflicts therefore resumed under Louis XIII when Richelieu forced Protestants to disarm their army and fortresses. This conflict ended in the Siege of La Rochelle (1627–28), in which Protestants and their English supporters were defeated. The following Peace of Alais (1629) confirmed religious freedom yet dismantled the Protestant military defences.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In the face of persecution, Huguenots dispersed widely throughout Europe and America.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The religious conflicts that plagued France also ravaged the Habsburg-led Holy Roman Empire. The Thirty Years' War eroded the power of the Catholic Habsburgs. Although Cardinal Richelieu, the powerful chief minister of France, had mauled the Protestants, he joined this war on their side in 1636 because it was in the national interest. Imperial Habsburg forces invaded France, ravaged Champagne, and nearly threatened Paris.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Richelieu died in 1642 and was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, while Louis XIII died one year later and was succeeded by Louis XIV. France was served by some very efficient commanders such as Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé and Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne. The French forces won a decisive victory at Rocroi (1643), and the Spanish army was decimated; the Tercio was broken. The Truce of Ulm (1647) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) brought an end to the war.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "France was hit by civil unrest known as The Fronde which in turn evolved into the Franco-Spanish War in 1653. Louis II de Bourbon joined the Spanish army this time, but suffered a severe defeat at Dunkirk (1658) by Henry de la Tour d'Auvergne. The terms for the peace inflicted upon the Spanish kingdoms in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) were harsh, as France annexed Northern Catalonia.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "During the 16th century, the king began to claim North American territories and established several colonies. Jacques Cartier was one of the great explorers who ventured deep into American territories during the 16th century.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The early 17th century saw the first successful French settlements in the New World with the voyages of Samuel de Champlain. The largest settlement was New France.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Louis XIV, known as the \"Sun King\", reigned over France from 1643 until 1715. Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from Paris, sought to eliminate remnants of feudalism in France, and subjugated and weakened the aristocracy. By these means he consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution. However, Louis XIV's long reign saw France involved in many wars that drained its treasury.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "France dominated League of the Rhine fought against the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Saint Gotthard in 1664. France fought the War of Devolution against Spain in 1667. France's defeat of Spain and invasion of the Spanish Netherlands alarmed England and Sweden. With the Dutch Republic they formed the Triple Alliance to check Louis XIV's expansion. Louis II de Bourbon had captured Franche-Comté, but in face of an indefensible position, Louis XIV agreed to the peace of Aachen. War broke out again between France and the Dutch Republic in the Franco-Dutch War (1672–78). France attacked the Dutch Republic and was joined by England in this conflict. Through targeted inundations of polders by breaking dykes, the French invasion of the Dutch Republic was brought to a halt. The Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter inflicted a few strategic defeats on the Anglo-French naval alliance and forced England to retire from the war in 1674. Because the Netherlands could not resist indefinitely, it agreed to peace in the Treaties of Nijmegen, according to which France would annex France-Comté and acquire further concessions in the Spanish Netherlands. On 6 May 1682, the royal court moved to the lavish Palace of Versailles, which Louis XIV had greatly expanded. Over time, Louis XIV compelled many members of the nobility, especially the noble elite, to inhabit Versailles. He controlled the nobility with an elaborate system of pensions and privileges, and replaced their power with himself.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Peace did not last, and war between France and Spain again resumed. The War of the Reunions broke out (1683–84), and again Spain, with its ally the Holy Roman Empire, was defeated. Meanwhile, in October 1685 Louis signed the Edict of Fontainebleau ordering the destruction of all Protestant churches and schools in France. Its immediate consequence was a large Protestant exodus from France. Over two million people died in two famines in 1693 and 1710.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "France would soon be involved in another war, the War of the Grand Alliance. This time the theatre was not only in Europe but also in North America. Although the war was long and difficult (it was also called the Nine Years' War), its results were inconclusive. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 confirmed French sovereignty over Alsace, yet rejected its claims to Luxembourg. Louis also had to evacuate Catalonia and the Palatinate. This peace was considered a truce by all sides, thus war was to start again.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 1701, the War of the Spanish Succession began. The Bourbon Philip of Anjou was designated heir to the throne of Spain as Philip V. The Habsburg Emperor Leopold opposed a Bourbon succession, because the power that such a succession would bring to the Bourbon rulers of France would disturb the delicate balance of power in Europe. Therefore, he claimed the Spanish thrones for himself. England and the Dutch Republic joined Leopold against Louis XIV and Philip of Anjou. They inflicted a few resounding defeats on the French army; the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 was the first major land battle lost by France since its victory at Rocroi in 1643. Yet, the extremely bloody battles of Ramillies (1706) and Malplaquet (1709) proved to be Pyrrhic victories for the allies, as they had lost too many men to continue the war. Led by Villars, French forces recovered much of the lost ground in battles such as Denain (1712). Finally, a compromise was achieved with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Philip of Anjou was confirmed as Philip V, king of Spain; Emperor Leopold did not get the throne, but Philip V was barred from inheriting France.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Louis XIV wanted to be remembered as a patron of the arts, and invited Jean-Baptiste Lully to establish the French opera.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The wars were so expensive, and so inconclusive, that although France gained some territory to the east, its enemies gained more strength than it did. Vauban, France's leading military strategist, warned the King in 1689 that a hostile \"Alliance\" was too powerful at sea. He recommended the best way for France to fight back was to license French merchants ships to privateer and seize enemy merchant ships, while avoiding its navies:",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "France has its declared enemies Germany and all the states that it embraces; Spain with all its dependencies in Europe, Asia, Africa and America; the Duchy of Savoy, England, Scotland, Ireland, and all their colonies in the East and West Indies; and Holland with all its possessions in the four corners of the world where it has great establishments. France has… undeclared enemies, indirectly hostile hostile and envious of its greatness, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Venice, Genoa, and part of the Swiss Confederation, all of which states secretly aid France's enemies by the troops that they hire to them, the money they lend them and by protecting and covering their trade.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Vauban was pessimistic about France's so-called friends and allies and recommended against expensive land wars, or hopeless naval wars:",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "For lukewarm, useless, or impotent friends, France has the Pope, who is indifferent; the King of England [James II] expelled from his country [And living in exile in Paris]; the grand Duke of Tuscany; the Dukes of Mantua, Mokena, and Parma (all in Italy); and the other faction of the Swiss. Some of these are sunk in the softness that comes of years of peace, the others are cool in their affections….The English and Dutch are the main pillars of the Alliance; they support it by making war against us in concert with the other powers, and they keep it going by means of the money that they pay every year to… Allies…. We must therefore fall back on privateering as the method of conducting war which is most feasible, simple, cheap, and safe, and which will cost least to the state, the more so since any losses will not be felt by the King, who risks virtually nothing….It will enrich the country, train many good officers for the King, and in a short time force his enemies to sue for peace.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Louis XIV died in 1715 and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson who reigned as Louis XV until his death in 1774. In 1718, France was once again at war, as Philip II of Orléans's regency joined the War of the Quadruple Alliance against Spain. In 1733 another war broke in central Europe, this time about the Polish succession, and France joined the war against the Austrian Empire. Peace was settled in the Treaty of Vienna (1738), according to which France would annex, through inheritance, the Duchy of Lorraine.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Two years later, in 1740, war broke out over the Austrian succession, and France seized the opportunity to join the conflict. The war played out in North America and India as well as Europe, and inconclusive terms were agreed to in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). Prussia was then becoming a new threat, as it had gained substantial territory from Austria. This led to the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, in which the alliances seen during the previous war were mostly inverted. France was now allied to Austria and Russia, while Britain was now allied to Prussia.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In the North American theatre, France was allied with various Native American peoples during the Seven Years' War and, despite a temporary success at the battles of the Great Meadows and Monongahela, French forces were defeated at the disastrous Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec. In 1762, Russia, France, and Austria were on the verge of crushing Prussia, when the Anglo-Prussian Alliance was saved by the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg. At sea, naval defeats against British fleets at Lagos and Quiberon Bay in 1759 and a crippling blockade forced France to keep its ships in port. Finally peace was concluded in the Treaty of Paris (1763), and France lost its North American empire.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Britain's success in the Seven Years' War had allowed them to eclipse France as the leading colonial power. France sought revenge for this defeat, and under Choiseul France started to rebuild. In 1766, the French Kingdom annexed Lorraine and the following year bought Corsica from Genoa. Having lost its colonial empire, France saw a good opportunity for revenge against Britain in signing an alliance with the Americans in 1778, and sending an army and navy that turned the American Revolution into a world war. Admiral de Grasse defeated a British fleet at Chesapeake Bay while Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette joined American forces in defeating the British at Yorktown. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Paris (1783); the United States became independent. The British Royal Navy scored a major victory over France in 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes and France finished the war with huge debts and the minor gain of the island of Tobago.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The \"Philosophes\" were 18th-century French intellectuals who dominated the French Enlightenment and were influential across Europe. The philosopher Denis Diderot was editor in chief of the famous Enlightenment accomplishment, the 72,000-article Encyclopédie (1751–72). It sparked a revolution in learning throughout the enlightened world.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the early part of the 18th century the movement was dominated by Voltaire and Montesquieu. Around 1750 the Philosophes reached their most influential period, as Montesquieu published Spirit of Laws (1748) and Jean Jacques Rousseau published Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences (1750). The leader of the French Enlightenment and a writer of enormous influence across Europe, was Voltaire.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Astronomy, chemistry, mathematics and technology flourished. French chemists such as Antoine Lavoisier worked to replace the archaic units of weights and measures by a coherent scientific system. Lavoisier also formulated the law of Conservation of mass and discovered oxygen and hydrogen.",
"title": "Early Modern France (1453–1789)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "When King Louis XV died in 1774 he left his grandson, Louis XVI, \"A heavy legacy, with ruined finances, unhappy subjects, and a faulty and incompetent government.\" Wars effectively bankrupted the state. The taxation system was highly inefficient. Several years of bad harvests and an inadequate transportation system had caused rising food prices, hunger, and malnutrition; the country was further destabilized by the lower classes' increased feeling that the royal court was isolated from, and indifferent to, their hardships. In February 1787, the king's finance minister, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, convened an Assembly of Notables to approve a new land tax that would, for the first time, include a tax on the property of nobles and clergy. The assembly did not approve the tax, and instead demanded that Louis XVI call the Estates-General.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In August 1788, the King agreed to convene the Estates-General in May 1789. While the Third Estate demanded and was granted \"double representation\" so as to balance the First and Second Estate, voting was to occur \"by orders\" – votes of the Third Estate were to be weighted – effectively canceling double representation. This eventually led to the Third Estate breaking away from the Estates-General and, joined by members of the other estates, proclaiming the creation of the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of \"the People\". In an attempt to keep control of the process and prevent the Assembly from convening, Louis XVI ordered the closure of the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly met nearby on a tennis court and pledged the Tennis Court Oath on 20 June 1789, binding them \"never to separate, and to meet wherever circumstances demand, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations\".",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Paris was soon consumed with riots and widespread looting. Because the royal leadership essentially abandoned the city, the mobs soon had the support of the French Guard, including arms and trained soldiers. On 14 July 1789, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the Bastille fortress, which also served as a symbol of royal tyranny. Insurgents seized the Bastille prison. The French now celebrate 14 July each year as 'Bastille day' or, as the French say: Quatorze Juillet (the Fourteenth of July), as a symbol of the shift away from the Ancien Régime to a more modern, democratic state.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American War of Independence, on 15 July took command of the National Guard, and the king on 17 July accepted to wear the two-colour cockade (blue and red), later adapted into the tricolour cockade, as the new symbol of revolutionary France. Although peace was made, several nobles did not regard the new order as acceptable and emigrated in order to push the neighboring, aristocratic kingdoms to war against the new regime. The state was now struck for several weeks in July and August 1789 by violence against aristocracy, also called 'the Great Fear'.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "On 4 and 11 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished privileges and feudalism, sweeping away personal serfdom, exclusive hunting rights and other seigneurial rights of the Second Estate (nobility). The tithe was also abolished. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted by the National Assembly on 27 August 1789, as a first step in their effort to write a constitution.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "When a mob from Paris attacked the royal palace at Versailles in October 1789 seeking redress for their severe poverty, the royal family was forced to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. In November 1789, the Assembly decided to nationalize and sell all church property, thus in part addressing the financial crisis.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In July 1790, the Assembly adopted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This law reorganized the French Catholic Church, arranged that henceforth the salaries of the priests would be paid by the state, abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax on crops and again cancelled some privileges for the clergy. In October a group of bishops wrote a declaration saying they could not accept the law, and this fueled civilian opposition against it. The Assembly then in late November 1790 decreed that all clergy should take an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This stiffened the resistance, especially in the west of France including Normandy, Brittany and the Vendée, where few priests took the oath and the civilian population turned against the revolution. Priests swearing the oath were designated 'constitutional', and those not taking the oath as 'non-juring' or 'refractory' clergy.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In June 1791, the royal family secretly fled Paris in disguise for Varennes, but they were soon discovered and returned to Paris, essentially under house arrest. In August 1791, Emperor Leopold II of Austria and King Frederick William II of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz declared their intention to bring the French king in a position \"to consolidate the basis of a monarchical government\", and that they were preparing their own troops for action. Instead of cowing the French, this infuriated them, and they militarised the borders.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "With most of the Assembly still favoring a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groups reached a compromise. Under the Constitution of 3 September 1791, France would function as a constitutional monarchy. The King had to share power with the elected Legislative Assembly, although he still retained his royal veto and the ability to select ministers. He had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation or permitting anyone to do so in his name would be a de jure abdication.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "On 1 October 1791, the Legislative Assembly was formed. A group of Assembly members who propagated war against Austria and Prussia was, after a remark by politician Maximilien Robespierre, henceforth designated the 'Girondins'. A group around Robespierre – later called 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins' – pleaded against war; this opposition between those groups would harden and become bitter in the next 1+1⁄2 years.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In response to the threat of war of August 1791 from Austria and Prussia, leaders of the Assembly saw such a war as a means to strengthen support for their revolutionary government, and the French people as well as the Assembly thought that they would win a war against Austria and Prussia. On 20 April 1792, France declared war on Austria. Late April 1792, France invaded and conquered the Austrian Netherlands (roughly present-day Belgium and Luxembourg).",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Nevertheless, in the summer of 1792, all of Paris was against the king, and hoped that the Assembly would depose the king, but the Assembly hesitated. At dawn of 10 August 1792, a crowd of Parisians and soldiers marched on the Tuileries Palace where the king resided. After 11:00am, the Assembly 'temporarily relieved the king from his task'. In reaction, on 19 August an army under Prussian general Duke of Brunswick invaded France and besieged Longwy. Late August 1792, elections were held, now under male universal suffrage, for the new National Convention. On 26 August, the Assembly decreed the deportation of refractory priests in the west of France. In reaction, peasants in the Vendée took over a town, in another step toward civil war.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "On 2, 3 and 4 September 1792, hundreds of Parisians, supporters of the revolution, infuriated by Verdun being captured by the Prussian enemy, the uprisings in the west of France, and rumours that the incarcerated prisoners in Paris were conspiring with the foreign enemy, raided the Parisian prisons and murdered between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners, many of them Catholic priests but also common criminals. Jean-Paul Marat, a political ally of prominent politician Robespierre, in an open letter on 3 September incited the rest of France to follow the Parisian example; Robespierre himself kept a low profile in regard to the murder orgy. The Assembly and the city council of Paris (la Commune) seemed inapt and hardly motivated to call a halt to the unleashed bloodshed.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "On 20 September 1792, the French won a battle against Prussian troops near Valmy and the new National Convention replaced the Legislative Assembly. From the start the Convention suffered from the bitter division between a group around Robespierre, Danton and Marat referred to as 'Montagnards' or 'Jacobins' or 'left' and a group referred to as 'Girondins' or 'right'. But the majority of the representatives, referred to as 'la Plaine', were member of neither of those two antagonistic groups and managed to preserve some speed in the convention's debates. Right away on 21 September the Convention abolished the monarchy, making France the French First Republic. A new French Republican Calendar was introduced to replace the Christian Gregorian calendar, renaming the year 1792 as year 1 of the Republic.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "With wars against Prussia and Austria having started earlier in 1792, in November France also declared war on the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. Ex-king Louis XVI was tried, convicted, and guillotined in January 1793.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Introduction of a nationwide conscription for the army in February 1793 was the spark that in March made the Vendée, already rebellious since 1790 because of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, ignite into civil war against Paris. Meanwhile, France in March also declared war on Spain. That month, the Vendée rebels won some victories against Paris and the French army was defeated in Belgium by Austria with the French general Dumouriez defecting to the Austrians: the French Republic's survival was now in real danger.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "On 6 April 1793, to prevent the Convention from losing itself in abstract debate and to streamline government decisions, the Comité de salut public (Committee of Public Safety) was created of nine, later twelve members, as executive government which was accountable to the convention. That month the 'Girondins' group indicted Jean-Paul Marat before the Revolutionary Tribunal for 'attempting to destroy the sovereignty of the people' and 'preaching plunder and massacre', referring to his behaviour during the September 1792 Paris massacres. Marat was quickly acquitted but the incident further acerbated the 'Girondins' versus 'Montagnards' party strife in the convention. In the spring of 1793, Austrian, British, Dutch and Spanish troops invaded France.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "With rivalry, even enmity, in the National Convention and its predecessors between so-called 'Montagnards' and 'Girondins' smouldering ever since late 1791, Jacques Hébert, Convention member leaning to the 'Montagnards' group, on 24 May 1793 called on the sans-culottes—the idealized simple, non-aristocratic, hard-working, upright, patriotic, republican, Paris labourers—to rise in revolt against the \"henchmen of Capet [=the killed ex-king] and Dumouriez [=the defected general]\". Hébert was arrested immediately by a Convention committee investigating Paris rebelliousness. While that committee consisted only of members from la Plaine and the Girondins, the anger of the sans-culottes was directed towards the Girondins. 25 May, a delegation of la Commune (the Paris city council) protested against Hébert's arrest. The convention's President Isnard, a Girondin, answered them: \"Members of la Commune ... If by your incessant rebellions something befalls to the representatives of the nation, I declare, in the name of France, that Paris will be totally obliterated\".",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "On 29 May 1793, in Lyon an uprising overthrew a group of Montagnards ruling the city; Marseille, Toulon and more cities saw similar events.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "On 2 June 1793, the convention's session in Tuileries Palace—since early May their venue—not for the first time degenerated into chaos and pandemonium. This time crowds of people including 80,000 armed soldiers swarmed in and around the palace. Incessant screaming from the public galleries, always in favour of the Montagnards, suggested that all of Paris was against the Girondins, which was not really the case. Petitions circulated, indicting and condemning 22 Girondins. Barère, member of the Committee of Public Safety, suggested: to end this division which is harming the Republic, the Girondin leaders should lay down their offices voluntarily. A decree was adopted that day by the convention, after much tumultuous debate, expelling 22 leading Girondins from the convention. Late that night, indeed dozens of Girondins had resigned and left the convention.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In the course of 1793, the Holy Roman Empire, the kings of Portugal and Naples and the Grand-Duke of Tuscany declared war against France.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "By the summer of 1793, most French departments in one way or another opposed the central Paris government, and in many cases 'Girondins', fled from Paris after 2 June, led those revolts. In Brittany's countryside, the people rejecting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 had taken to a guerrilla warfare known as Chouannerie. But generally, the French opposition against 'Paris' had now evolved into a plain struggle for power over the country against the 'Montagnards' around Robespierre and Marat now dominating Paris.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In June–July 1793, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Brittany, Caen and the rest of Normandy gathered armies to march on Paris and against 'the revolution'. In July, Lyon guillotined the deposed 'Montagnard' head of the city council. Barère, member of the Committee of Public Safety, on 1 August incited the convention to tougher measures against the Vendée, at war with Paris since March: \"We'll have peace only when no Vendée remains ... we'll have to exterminate that rebellious people\". In August, Convention troops besieged Lyon.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In August–September 1793, militants urged the convention to do more to quell the counter-revolution. A delegation of the Commune (Paris city council) suggested to form revolutionary armies to arrest hoarders and conspirators. Bertrand Barère, member of the Committee of Public Safety—the de facto executive government—ever since April 1793, among others on 5 September reacted favorably, saying: let's \"make terror the order of the day!\" On 17 September, the National Convention passed the Law of Suspects, a decree ordering the arrest of all declared opponents of the current form of government and suspected \"enemies of freedom\". This decree was one of the causes for 17,000 death sentences until the end of July 1794, reason for historians to label those 10+1⁄2 months 'the (Reign of) Terror'.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "On 19 September the Vendée rebels again defeated a Republican Convention army. On 1 October Barère repeated his plea to subdue the Vendée: \"refuge of fanaticism, where priests have raised their altars\". In October the Convention troops captured Lyon and reinstated a Montagnard government there.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Criteria for bringing someone before the Revolutionary Tribunal, created March 1793, had always been vast and vague. By August, political disagreement seemed enough to be summoned before the Tribunal; appeal against a Tribunal verdict was impossible. Late August 1793, an army general had been guillotined on the accusation of choosing too timid strategies on the battlefield. Mid-October, the widowed former queen Marie Antoinette was on trial for a long list of charges such as \"teaching [her husband] Louis Capet the art of dissimulation\" and incest with her son, she too was guillotined. In October, 21 former 'Girondins' Convention members who had not left Paris after June were convicted to death and executed, on the charge of verbally supporting the preparation of an insurrection in Caen by fellow-Girondins.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "On 17 October 1793, the 'blue' Republican army near Cholet defeated the 'white' Vendéan insubordinate army and all surviving Vendée residents, counting in tens of thousands, fled over the river Loire north into Brittany. A Convention's representative on mission in Nantes commissioned in October to pacify the region did so by simply drowning prisoners in the river Loire: until February 1794 he drowned at least 4,000. By November 1793, the revolts in Normandy, Bordeaux and Lyon were overcome, in December also that in Toulon. Two representatives on mission sent to punish Lyon between November 1793 and April 1794 executed 2,000 people by guillotine or firing-squad. The Vendéan army since October roaming through Brittany on 12 December 1793 again ran up against Republican troops and saw 10,000 of its rebels perish, meaning the end of this once threatening army. Some historians claim that after that defeat Convention Republic armies in 1794 massacred 117,000 Vendéan civilians to obliterate the Vendéan people, but others contest that claim. Some historians consider the civil war to have lasted until 1796 with a toll of 450,000 lives.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Maximilien Robespierre, since July 1793 member of the Committee of Public Prosperity, on 5 February 1794 in a speech in the Convention identified Jacques Hébert and his faction as \"internal enemies\" working toward the triumph of tyranny. After a dubious trial Hébert and some allies were guillotined in March. On 5 April, again at the instigation of Robespierre, Danton and 13 associated politicians were executed. A week later again 19 politicians. This hushed the Convention deputies: if henceforth they disagreed with Robespierre they hardly dared to speak out. A law enacted on 10 June 1794 (22 Prairial II) further streamlined criminal procedures: if the Revolutionary Tribunal saw sufficient proof of someone being an \"enemy of the people\" a counsel for defence would not be allowed. The frequency of guillotine executions in Paris now rose from on average three a day to an average of 29 a day.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Meanwhile, France's external wars were going well, with victories over Austrian and British troops in May and June 1794 opening up Belgium for French conquest. However, cooperation within the Committee of Public Safety, since April 1793 the de facto executive government, started to break down. On 29 June 1794, three colleagues of Robespierre at the Committee called him a dictator in his face; Robespierre, baffled, left the meeting. This encouraged other Convention members to also defy Robespierre. On 26 July, a long and vague speech of Robespierre was not met with thunderous applause as usual but with hostility; some deputies yelled that Robespierre should have the courage to say which deputies he deemed necessary to be killed next, which Robespierre refused to do.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In the Convention session of 27 July 1794, Robespierre and his allies hardly managed to say a word as they were constantly interrupted by a row of critics such as Tallien, Billaud-Varenne, Vadier, Barère and acting president Thuriot. Finally, even Robespierre's own voice failed on him: it faltered at his last attempt to beg permission to speak. A decree was adopted to arrest Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon. On 28 July, they and 19 others were beheaded. On 29 July, again 70 Parisians were guillotined. Subsequently, the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794) was repealed, and the 'Girondins' expelled from the Convention in June 1793, if not dead yet, were reinstated as Convention deputies.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "After July 1794, most civilians henceforth ignored the Republican calendar and returned to the traditional seven-day weeks. The government in a law of 21 February 1795 set steps of return to freedom of religion and reconciliation with the since 1790 refractory Catholic priests, but any religious signs outside churches or private homes, such as crosses, clerical garb, bell ringing, remained prohibited. When the people's enthusiasm for attending church grew to unexpected levels the government backed out and in October 1795 again, like in 1790, required all priests to swear oaths on the Republic.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "In the very cold winter of 1794–95, with the French army demanding more and more bread, the same was getting scarce in Paris, as was wood to keep houses warm, and in an echo of the October 1789 March on Versailles, on 1 April 1795 (12 Germinal III) a mostly female crowd marched on the Convention calling for bread. But no Convention member sympathized; they just told the women to return home. Again in May a crowd of 20,000 men and 40,000 women invaded the convention and even killed a deputy in the halls, but again they failed to make the Convention take notice of the needs of the lower classes. Instead, the Convention banned women from all political assemblies, and deputies who had solidarized with this insurrection were sentenced to death: such allegiance between parliament and street fighting was no longer tolerated.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Late 1794, France conquered present-day Belgium. In January 1795 they subdued the Dutch Republic with full consent and cooperation of the influential Dutch patriottenbeweging ('patriots' movement'), resulting in the Batavian Republic, a satellite and puppet state of France. In April 1795, France concluded a peace agreement with Prussia; later that year peace was agreed with Spain.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In October 1795, the Republic was reorganised, replacing the one-chamber parliament (the National Convention) by a bi-cameral system: the first chamber called the 'Council of 500' initiating the laws, the second the 'Council of Elders' reviewing and approving or not the passed laws. Each year, one-third of the chambers was to be renewed. The executive power lay with five directors – hence the name 'Directory' for this form of government – with a five-year mandate, each year one of them being replaced. The early directors did not much understand the nation they were governing; they especially had an innate inability to see Catholicism as anything other than counter-revolutionary and royalist. Local administrators had a better sense of people's priorities, and one of them wrote to the minister of the interior: \"Give back the crosses, the church bells, the Sundays, and everyone will cry: 'vive la République!'\"",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "French armies in 1796 advanced into Germany, Austria and Italy. In 1797, France conquered the Rhineland, Belgium and much of Italy, and unsuccessfully attacked Wales.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Parliamentary elections in the spring of 1797 resulted in considerable gains for the royalists. This frightened the republican directors and they staged a coup d'état on 4 September 1797 (Coup of 18 Fructidor V) to remove two supposedly pro-royalist directors and some prominent royalists from both Councils. The new, 'corrected' government, still strongly convinced that Catholicism and royalism were equally dangerous to the Republic, started a fresh campaign to promote the Republican calendar officially introduced in 1792, with its ten-day week, and tried to hallow the tenth day, décadi, as substitute for the Christian Sunday. Not only citizens opposed and even mocked such decrees, also local government officials refused to enforce such laws.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "France was still waging wars, in 1798 in Egypt, Switzerland, Rome, Ireland, Belgium and against the U.S.A., in 1799 in Baden-Württemberg. In 1799, when the French armies abroad experienced some setbacks, the newly chosen director Sieyes considered a new overhaul necessary for the Directory's form of government because in his opinion it needed a stronger executive. Together with general Napoleon Bonaparte who had just returned to France, Sieyes began preparing another coup d'état, which took place on 9–10 November 1799 (18–19 Brumaire VIII), replacing the five directors now with three \"consuls\": Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger Ducos.",
"title": "Revolutionary France (1789–1799)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "During the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797), the Directory had replaced the National Convention. Five directors then ruled France. As Great Britain was still at war with France, a plan was made to take Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, a British ally. This was Napoleon's idea and the Directory agreed to the plan in order to send the popular general away from the mainland. Napoleon defeated the Ottoman forces during the Battle of the Pyramids (21 July 1798) and sent hundreds of scientists and linguists out to thoroughly explore modern and ancient Egypt. Only a few weeks later the British fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson unexpectedly destroyed the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile (1–3 August 1798). Napoleon planned to move into Syria but was defeated at the Siege of Acre and he returned to France without his army, which surrendered.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The Directory was threatened by the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Royalists and their allies still dreamed of restoring the monarchy to power, while the Prussian and Austrian crowns did not accept their territorial losses during the previous war. In 1799, the Russian army expelled the French from Italy in battles such as Cassano, while the Austrian army defeated the French in Switzerland at Stockach and Zurich. Napoleon then seized power through a coup and established the Consulate in 1799. The Austrian army was defeated at the Battle of Marengo (1800) and again at the Battle of Hohenlinden (1800).",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "While at sea the French had some success at Boulogne but Nelson's Royal Navy destroyed an anchored Danish and Norwegian fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) because the Scandinavian kingdoms were against the British blockade of France. The Second Coalition was beaten and peace was settled in two distinct treaties: the Treaty of Lunéville and the Treaty of Amiens. A brief interlude of peace ensued in 1802–03, during which Napoleon sold French Louisiana to the United States because it was indefensible.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "In 1801, Napoleon concluded a \"Concordat\" with Pope Pius VII that opened peaceful relations between church and state in France. The policies of the Revolution were reversed, except the Church did not get its lands back. Bishops and clergy were to receive state salaries, and the government would pay for the building and maintenance of churches. Napoleon reorganized higher learning by dividing the Institut National into four (later five) academies.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In 1804, Napoleon was titled Emperor by the senate, thus founding the First French Empire. Napoleon's rule was constitutional, and although autocratic, it was much more advanced than traditional European monarchies of the time. The proclamation of the French Empire was met by the Third Coalition. The French army was renamed La Grande Armée in 1805 and Napoleon used propaganda and nationalism to control the French population. The French army achieved a resounding victory at Ulm (16–19 October 1805), where an entire Austrian army was captured.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "A Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated at Trafalgar (21 October 1805) and all plans to invade Britain were then made impossible. Despite this naval defeat, it was on land that this war would be won; Napoleon inflicted on the Austrian and Russian Empires one of their greatest defeats at Austerlitz (also known as the \"Battle of the Three Emperors\" on 2 December 1805), destroying the Third Coalition. Peace was settled in the Treaty of Pressburg; the Austrian Empire lost the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the Confederation of the Rhine was created by Napoleon over former Austrian territories.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Prussia joined Britain and Russia, thus forming the Fourth Coalition. Although the Coalition was joined by other allies, the French Empire was also not alone since it now had a complex network of allies and subject states. The largely outnumbered French army crushed the Prussian army at Jena-Auerstedt in 1806; Napoleon captured Berlin and went as far as Eastern Prussia. There the Russian Empire was defeated at the Battle of Friedland (14 June 1807). Peace was dictated in the Treaties of Tilsit, in which Russia had to join the Continental System, and Prussia handed half of its territories to France. The Duchy of Warsaw was formed over these territorial losses, and Polish troops entered the Grande Armée in significant numbers.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "In order to ruin the British economy, Napoleon set up the Continental System in 1807, and tried to prevent merchants across Europe from trading with British. The large amount of smuggling frustrated Napoleon, and did more harm to his economy than to his enemies'.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Freed from his obligation in the east, Napoleon then went back to the west, as the French Empire was still at war with Britain. Only two countries remained neutral in the war: Sweden and Portugal, and Napoleon then looked toward the latter. In the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1807), a Franco-Spanish alliance against Portugal was sealed as Spain eyed Portuguese territories. French armies entered Spain in order to attack Portugal, but then seized Spanish fortresses and took over the kingdom by surprise. Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, was made King of Spain after Charles IV abdicated.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "This occupation of the Iberian peninsula fueled local nationalism, and soon the Spanish and Portuguese fought the French using guerilla tactics, defeating the French forces at the Battle of Bailén (June and July 1808). Britain sent a short-lived ground support force to Portugal, and French forces evacuated Portugal as defined in the Convention of Sintra following the Allied victory at Vimeiro (21 August 1808). France only controlled Catalonia and Navarre and could have been definitely expelled from the Iberian peninsula had the Spanish armies attacked again, but the Spanish did not.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Another French attack was launched on Spain, led by Napoleon himself, and was described as \"an avalanche of fire and steel\". However, the French Empire was no longer regarded as invincible by European powers. In 1808, Austria formed the Fifth Coalition in order to break down the French Empire. The Austrian Empire defeated the French at Aspern-Essling, yet was beaten at Wagram while the Polish allies defeated the Austrian Empire at Raszyn (April 1809). Although not as decisive as the previous Austrian defeats, the peace treaty in October 1809 stripped Austria of a large amount of territory, reducing it even more.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "In 1812, war broke out with Russia, engaging Napoleon in the disastrous French invasion of Russia (1812). Napoleon assembled the largest army Europe had ever seen, including troops from all subject states, to invade Russia, which had just left the continental system and was gathering an army on the Polish frontier. Following an exhausting march and the bloody but inconclusive Battle of Borodino, near Moscow, the Grande Armée entered and captured Moscow, only to find it burning as part of the Russian scorched earth tactics. Although there still were battles, the Napoleonic army left Russia in late 1812 annihilated, most of all by the Russian winter, exhaustion, and scorched earth warfare. On the Spanish front the French troops were defeated at Vitoria (June 1813) and then at the Battle of the Pyrenees (July–August 1813). Since the Spanish guerrillas seemed to be uncontrollable, the French troops eventually evacuated Spain.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Since France had been defeated on these two fronts, states that had been conquered and controlled by Napoleon saw a good opportunity to strike back. The Sixth Coalition was formed under British leadership. The German states of the Confederation of the Rhine switched sides, finally opposing Napoleon. Napoleon was largely defeated in the Battle of the Nations outside Leipzig in October 1813, his forces heavily outnumbered by the Allied coalition armies and was overwhelmed by much larger armies during the Six Days Campaign (February 1814), although, the Six Days Campaign is often considered a tactical masterpiece because the allies suffered much higher casualties. Napoleon abdicated on 6 April 1814, and was exiled to Elba.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The conservative Congress of Vienna reversed the political changes that had occurred during the wars. Napoleon suddenly returned, seized control of France, raised an army, and marched on his enemies in the Hundred Days. It ended with his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and his exile to St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The monarchy was subsequently restored and Louis XVIII, Younger brother of Louis XVI became king, and the exiles returned. However many of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms were kept in place.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Napoleon centralized power in Paris, with all the provinces governed by all-powerful prefects whom he selected. They were more powerful than royal intendants of the ancien régime and had a long-term impact in unifying the nation, minimizing regional differences, and shifting all decisions to Paris.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Religion had been a major issue during the Revolution, and Napoleon resolved most of the outstanding problems. Thereby he moved the clergy and large numbers of devout Catholics from hostility to the government to support for him. The Catholic system was reestablished by the Concordat of 1801 (signed with Pope Pius VII), so that church life returned to normal; the church lands were not restored, but the Jesuits were allowed back in and the bitter fights between the government and Church ended. Protestant, Jews and atheists were tolerated.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "The French taxation system had collapsed in the 1780s. In the 1790s the government seized and sold church lands and lands of exiled aristocrats. Napoleon instituted a modern, efficient tax system that guaranteed a steady flow of revenues and made long-term financing possible.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Napoleon kept the system of conscription that had been created in the 1790s, so that every young man served in the army, which could be rapidly expanded even as it was based on a core of careerists and talented officers. Before the Revolution the aristocracy formed the officer corps. Now promotion was by merit and achievement—every private carried a marshal's baton, it was said.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The modern era of French education began in the 1790s. The Revolution in the 1790s abolished the traditional universities. Napoleon sought to replace them with new institutions, the École Polytechnique, focused on technology. The elementary schools received little attention.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Of permanent importance was the Napoleonic Code created by eminent jurists under Napoleon's supervision. Praised for its clarity, it spread rapidly throughout Europe and the world in general, and marked the end of feudalism and the liberation of serfs where it took effect. The Code recognized the principles of civil liberty, equality before the law, and the secular character of the state. It discarded the old right of primogeniture (where only the eldest son inherited) and required that inheritances be divided equally among all the children. The court system was standardized; all judges were appointed by the national government in Paris.",
"title": "Napoleonic France (1799–1815)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "The century after the fall of Napoleon I was politically unstable:",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Every [French] head of state from 1814 to 1873 spent part of his life in exile. Every regime was the target of assassination attempts of a frequency that put Spanish and Russian politics in the shade. Even in peaceful times governments changed every few months. In less peaceful times, political deaths, imprisonments and deportations are literally incalculable.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "France was no longer the dominant power it had been before 1814, but it played a major role in European economics, culture, diplomacy and military affairs. The Bourbons were restored, but left a weak record and one branch was overthrown in 1830 and the other branch in 1848 as Napoleon's nephew was elected president. He made himself emperor as Napoleon III, but was overthrown when he was defeated and captured by Prussians in an 1870 war that humiliated France and made the new nation of Germany dominant in the continent. The Third Republic was established, but the possibility of a return to monarchy remained into the 1880s. The French built up an empire, especially in Africa and Indochina. The economy was strong, with a good railway system. The arrival of the Rothschild banking family of France in 1812 guaranteed the role of Paris alongside London as a major center of international finance.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "The French Revolution and Napoleonic eras brought a series of major changes to France which the Bourbon restoration did not reverse. First of all, France became highly centralized, with all decisions made in Paris. The political geography was completely reorganized and made uniform. France was divided into 80+ departments, which have endured into the 21st century. Each department had the identical administrative structure, and was tightly controlled by a prefect appointed by Paris. The complex multiple overlapping legal jurisdictions of the old regime had all been abolished, and there was now one standardized legal code, administered by judges appointed by Paris, and supported by police under national control. Education was centralized, with the Grand Master of the University of France controlling every element of the entire educational system from Paris. Newly technical universities were opened in Paris which to this day have a critical role in training the elite.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Conservatism was bitterly split into the old aristocracy that returned, and the new elites that arose after 1796. The old aristocracy was eager to regain its land but felt no loyalty to the new regime. The new elite – the \"noblesse d'empire\" – ridiculed the other group as an outdated remnant of a discredited regime that had led the nation to disaster. Both groups shared a fear of social disorder, but the level of distrust as well as the cultural differences were too great and the monarchy too inconsistent in its policies for political cooperation to be possible.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "The old aristocracy had returned, and recovered much of the land they owned directly. However they completely lost all their old seigneurial rights to the rest of the farmland, and the peasants no longer were under their control. The old aristocracy had dallied with the ideas of the Enlightenment and rationalism. Now the aristocracy was much more conservative, and much more supportive of the Catholic Church. For the best jobs meritocracy was the new policy, and aristocrats had to compete directly with the growing business and professional class. Anti-clerical sentiment became much stronger than ever before, but was now based in certain elements of the middle class and indeed the peasantry as well.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "In France, as in most of Europe, the sum total of wealth was concentrated. The richest 10 percent of families owned between 80 and 90 percent of the wealth from 1810 to 1914. Their share then fell to about 60 percent, where it remained into the 21st century. The share of the top one percent of the population grew from 45 percent in 1810 to 60 percent in 1914, then fell steadily to 20 percent in 1970 to the present.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "The \"200 families\" controlled much of the nation's wealth after 1815. The \"200\" is based on the policy that of the 40,000 shareholders of the Bank of France, only 200 were allowed to attend the annual meeting and they cast all the votes. Out of a nation of 27 million people, only 80,000 to 90,000 were allowed to vote in 1820, and the richest one-fourth of them had two votes.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "The great masses of the French people were peasants in the countryside, or impoverished workers in the cities. They gained new rights, and a new sense of possibilities. Although relieved of many of the old burdens, controls, and taxes, the peasantry was still highly traditional in its social and economic behavior. Many eagerly took on mortgages to buy as much land as possible for their children, so debt was an important factor in their calculations. The working class in the cities was a small element, and had been freed of many restrictions imposed by medieval guilds. However France was very slow to industrialize (in the sense of large factories using modern machinery), and much of the work remained drudgery without machinery or technology to help. This provided a good basis for small-scale expensive luxury crafts that attracted an international upscale market. France was still localized, especially in terms of language, but now there was an emerging French nationalism that showed its national pride in the Army, and foreign affairs.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "The Catholic Church lost all its lands and buildings during the Revolution, and these were sold off or came under the control of local governments. The bishop still ruled his diocese (which was aligned with the new department boundaries), but could only communicate with the pope through the government in Paris. Bishops, priests, nuns and other religious people were paid salaries by the state. All the old religious rites and ceremonies were retained, and the government maintained the religious buildings. The Church was allowed to operate its own seminaries and to some extent local schools as well, although this became a central political issue into the 20th century. Bishops were much less powerful than before, and had no political voice. However, the Catholic Church reinvented itself and put a new emphasis on personal religiosity that gave it a hold on the psychology of the faithful.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "France remained basically Catholic. The 1872 census counted 36 million people, of whom 35.4 million were listed as Catholics, 600,000 as Protestants, 50,000 as Jews and 80,000 as freethinkers. The Revolution failed to destroy the Catholic Church, and Napoleon's concordat of 1801 restored its status. The return of the Bourbons in 1814 brought back many rich nobles and landowners who supported the Church, seeing it as a bastion of conservatism and monarchism. However the monasteries with their vast land holdings and political power were gone; much of the land had been sold to urban entrepreneurs who lacked historic connections to the land and the peasants.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "Few new priests were trained in the 1790–1814 period, and many left the church. The result was that the number of parish clergy plunged from 60,000 in 1790 to 25,000 in 1815, many of them elderly. Entire regions, especially around Paris, were left with few priests. On the other hand, some traditional regions held fast to the faith, led by local nobles and historic families.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "The comeback was very slow in the larger cities and industrial areas. With systematic missionary work and a new emphasis on liturgy and devotions to the Virgin Mary, plus support from Napoleon III, there was a comeback. In 1870, there were 56,500 priests, representing a much younger and more dynamic force in the villages and towns, with a thick network of schools, charities and lay organizations. Conservative Catholics held control of the national government from 1820 to 1830, but most often played secondary political roles or had to fight the assault from republicans, liberals, socialists and seculars.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "French economic history since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to industrialization, and the 'total wars' of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Quantitative analysis of output data shows the French per capita growth rates were slightly smaller than Britain. However the British population tripled in size, while France grew by only a third—so the overall British economy grew much faster. The ups and downs of French per capita economic growth in 1815–1913:",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "For the 1870–1913 era, the growth rates for 12 similar advanced countries – 10 in Europe plus the United States and Canada – show that in terms of per capita growth, France was about average. However its population growth was very slow, so as far as the growth rate in total size of the economy France was in next to the last place, just ahead of Italy. The 12 countries averaged 2.7% per year in total output, but France only averaged 1.6%.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "[The] average size of industrial undertakings was smaller in France than in other advanced countries; that machinery was generally less up to date, productivity lower, costs higher. The domestic system and handicraft production long persisted, while big modern factories were for long exceptional. Large lumps of the Ancien Régime economy survived ... On the whole, the qualitative lag between the British and French economy ... persisted during the whole period under consideration, and later on a similar lag developed between France and some other countries—Belgium, Germany, the United States. France did not succeed in catching up with Britain, but was overtaken by several of her rivals.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "This period of time is called the Bourbon Restoration and was marked by conflicts between reactionary Ultra-royalists, who wanted to restore the pre-1789 system of absolute monarchy, and liberals, who wanted to strengthen constitutional monarchy. Louis XVIII was the younger brother of Louis XVI, and reigned from 1814 to 1824. On becoming king, Louis issued a constitution known as the Charter which preserved many of the liberties won during the French Revolution and provided for a parliament composed of an elected Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Peers that was nominated by the king.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "After two decades of war and revolution, the restoration brought peace and quiet, and general prosperity. \"Frenchmen were, on the whole, well governed, prosperous, contented during the 15-year period; one historian even describes the restoration era as 'one of the happiest periods in [France's] history'.\"",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "France had recovered from the strain and disorganization, the wars, the killings, and the horrors of two decades of disruption. It was at peace throughout the period. It paid a large war indemnity to the winners, but managed to finance that without distress; the occupation soldiers left peacefully. Population increased by 3 million, and prosperity was strong from 1815 to 1825, with the depression of 1825 caused by bad harvests. The national credit was strong, there was significant increase in public wealth, and the national budget showed a surplus every year. In the private sector, banking grew dramatically, making Paris a world center for finance, along with London. The Rothschild family was world-famous, with the French branch led by James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868). The communication system was improved, as roads were upgraded, canals were lengthened, and steamboat traffic became common. Industrialization was delayed in comparison to Britain and Belgium. The railway system had yet to make an appearance. Industry was heavily protected with tariffs, so there was little demand for entrepreneurship or innovation.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "Culture flourished with the new romantic impulses. Oratory was highly regarded, and debates were very high standard. Châteaubriand and Madame de Staël enjoyed Europe-wide reputations for their innovations in romantic literature. De Staël made important contributions to political sociology, and the sociology of literature. History flourished; François Guizot, Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël drew lessons from the past to guide the future. The paintings of Eugène Delacroix set the standards for romantic art. Music, theater, science, and philosophy all flourished. The higher learning flourished at the Sorbonne. Major new institutions gave France world leadership in numerous advanced fields, as typified by the École Nationale des Chartes (1821) for historiography, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in 1829 for innovative engineering; and the École des Beaux-Arts for the fine arts, reestablished in 1830.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "Overall, the Bourbon government's handling of foreign affairs was successful. France kept a low profile, and Europe forgot its animosities. Louis and Charles had little interest in foreign affairs, so France played only minor roles. Its army helped restore the Spanish monarch in 1823. It helped the other powers deal with Greece and Turkey. King Charles X, an ultra-reactionary, mistakenly thought that foreign glory would cover domestic frustration, so he made an all-out effort to conquer Algiers in 1830. He sent a massive force of 38,000 soldiers and 4,500 horses carried by 103 warships and 469 merchant ships. The expedition was a dramatic military success in only three weeks. The invasion paid for itself with 48 million francs from the captured treasury. The episode launched the second French colonial empire, but it did not provide desperately needed political support for the King at home. Charles X repeatedly exacerbated internal tensions, and tried to neutralize his enemies with repressive measures. He depended too heavily upon his inept chief minister Polignac. Repression failed and a quick sudden revolution forced Charles into exile for the third time.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "Protest against the absolute monarchy was in the air. The elections of deputies to 16 May 1830 had gone very badly for King Charles X. In response, he tried repression but that only aggravated the crisis as suppressed deputies, gagged journalists, students from the university and many working men of Paris poured into the streets and erected barricades during the \"three glorious days\" (French: Les Trois Glorieuses) of 26–29 July 1830. Charles X was deposed and replaced by King Louis-Philippe in the July Revolution. It is traditionally regarded as a rising of the bourgeoisie against the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. Participants in the July Revolution included the Marquis de Lafayette. Working behind the scenes on behalf of the bourgeois propertied interests was Louis Adolphe Thiers.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "Louis-Philippe's \"July Monarchy\" (1830–1848) was dominated by the \"high bourgeoisie\" of bankers, financiers, industrialists and merchants.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "During the reign of the July Monarchy, the Romantic Era was starting to bloom. Driven by the Romantic Era, an atmosphere of protest and revolt was all around in France. On 22 November 1831 in Lyon (the second largest city in France) the silk workers revolted and took over the town hall in protest of recent salary reductions and working conditions. This was one of the first instances of a free workers' revolt in the entire world.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "Because of the constant threats to the throne, the July Monarchy began to rule with a stronger and stronger hand. Soon political meetings were outlawed. However, \"banquets\" were still legal and all through 1847, there was a nationwide campaign of republican banquets demanding more democracy. The climactic banquet was scheduled for 22 February 1848 in Paris but the government banned it. In response citizens of all classes poured out onto the streets of Paris in a revolt against the July Monarchy. Demands were made for abdication of \"Citizen King\" Louis-Philippe and for establishment of a representative democracy in France. The king abdicated, and the French Second Republic was proclaimed. Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine, who had been a leader of the moderate republicans in France during the 1840s, became the Minister of Foreign Affairs and in effect the premier in the new Provisional government. In reality Lamartine was the virtual head of government in 1848.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "Frustration among the laboring classes arose when the Constituent Assembly did not address the concerns of the workers. Strikes and worker demonstrations became more common as the workers gave vent to these frustrations. These demonstrations reached a climax when on 15 May 1848, workers from the secret societies broke out in armed uprising against the anti-labor and anti-democratic policies being pursued by the Constituent Assembly and the Provisional Government. Fearful of a total breakdown of law and order, the Provisional Government invited General Louis Eugene Cavaignac back from Algeria, in June 1848, to put down the workers' armed revolt. From June 1848 until December 1848 General Cavaignac became head of the executive of the Provisional Government.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "On 10 December 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president by a landslide. His support came from a wide section of the French public. Various classes of French society voted for Louis Napoleon for very different and often contradictory reasons. Louis Napoleon himself encouraged this contradiction by \"being all things to all people\". One of his major promises to the peasantry and other groups was that there would be no new taxes.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "The new National Constituent Assembly was heavily composed of royalist sympathizers of both the Legitimist (Bourbon) wing and the Orleanist (Citizen King Louis Philippe) wing. Because of the ambiguity surrounding Louis Napoleon's political positions, his agenda as president was very much in doubt. For prime minister, he selected Odilon Barrot, an unobjectionable middle-road parliamentarian who had led the \"loyal opposition\" under Louis Philippe. Other appointees represented various royalist factions.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "The Pope had been forced out of Rome as part of the Revolutions of 1848, and Louis Napoleon sent a 14,000-man expeditionary force of troops to the Papal State under General Nicolas Charles Victor Oudinot to restore him. In late April 1849, it was defeated and pushed back from Rome by Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteer corps, but then it recovered and recaptured Rome.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "In June 1849, demonstrations against the government broke out and were suppressed. The leaders, including prominent politicians, were arrested. The government banned several democratic and socialist newspapers in France; the editors were arrested. Karl Marx was at risk, so in August he moved to London.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "The government sought ways to balance its budget and reduce its debts. Toward this end, Hippolyte Passy was appointed Finance Minister. When the Legislative Assembly met at the beginning of October 1849, Passy proposed an income tax to help balance the finances of France. The bourgeoisie, who would pay most of the tax, protested. The furor over the income tax caused the resignation of Barrot as prime minister, but a new wine tax also caused protests.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "The 1850 elections resulted in a conservative body. It passed the Falloux Laws, putting education into the hands of the Catholic clergy. It opened an era of cooperation between Church and state that lasted until the Jules Ferry laws reversed course in 1879. The Falloux Laws provided universal primary schooling in France and expanded opportunities for secondary schooling. In practice, the curricula were similar in Catholic and state schools. Catholic schools were especially useful in schooling for girls, which had long been neglected. Although a new electoral law was passed that respected the principle of universal (male) suffrage, the stricter residential requirement of the new law actually had the effect of disenfranchising 3,000,000 of 10,000,000 voters.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 168,
"text": "A wide range of reforms were carried out during the time Napoleon III led France. As noted by one study \"While the emperor imposed new authoritarian measures and used censorship and surveillance to stifle any opposition, he offered workers an unprecedented range of relief measures: soup kitchens, price controls on bread, insurance schemes, retirement plans, orphanages, nurseries, and hospitals.\" Regulations for the prevention of food adulterations were introduced, along with the transfer of taxes from necessaries to luxuries, the assurance of Christian burial to the poorest Christian, and increased pay and honour to the lower ranks of the army and to the private soldier. Public assistance was encouraged, while a law of 1864 legalised strikes although not trade unions. Substantial contributions were also made by Napoleon to a fund to develop worker's cooperatives. Other laws originated and institutions founded by Napoleon included the organisation of public baths and lavatories, maternity societies to provide attendance on poor women at their houses during childbirth, orphanages, refuges for old age, the Convalescent Institution at Vincennes, the Asylum for Incurables at Vesinet, a retiring fund for the poorer assistant clergy, loan societies to make provision for their members in sickness, and for their widows and orphans, and a law for improving the dwellings of the working classes. A decree was issued providing for the observance of Sunday rest in all public works. In 1851, some enactment was introduced for providing the indigent with legal assistance. Another law from that year, which regulated assistance for the needy, \"specifically impressed upon hospitals their obligation to take in the poor and sick regardless of their origins.\" Napoleon also authorized several cooperatives and moderate unions, supported welfare institutions like orphanages, nurseries and aid for accident victims, and \"encouraged the first adult education programs and pension plans for workers.\"",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 169,
"text": "The president rejected the constitution and made himself emperor as Napoleon III. He is known for working to modernize the French economy, the rebuilding of Paris, expanding the overseas empire, and engaging in numerous wars. His effort to build an empire in Mexico was a fiasco. Autocratic at first, he opened the political system somewhat in the 1860s. He lost all his allies and recklessly declared war on a much more powerful Prussia in 1870; he was captured and deposed.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 170,
"text": "As 1851 opened, Louis Napoleon was not allowed by the Constitution of 1848 to seek re-election as President of France. He proclaimed himself Emperor of the French in 1852, with almost dictatorial powers. He made completion of a good railway system a high priority. He consolidated three dozen small, incomplete lines into six major companies using Paris as a hub. Paris grew dramatically in terms of population, industry, finance, commercial activity, and tourism. Napoleon working with Georges-Eugène Haussmann spent lavishly to rebuild the city into a world-class showpiece. The financial soundness for all six companies was solidified by government guarantees. Although France had started late, by 1870 it had an excellent railway system, supported as well by good roads, canals and ports.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 171,
"text": "Despite his promises in 1852 of a peaceful reign, the Emperor could not resist the temptations of glory in foreign affairs. He was visionary, mysterious and secretive; he had a poor staff, and kept running afoul of his domestic supporters. In the end he was incompetent as a diplomat. Napoleon did have some successes: he strengthened French control over Algeria, established bases in Africa, began the takeover of Indochina, and opened trade with China. He facilitated a French company building the Suez Canal, which Britain could not stop. In Europe, however, Napoleon failed again and again. The Crimean War of 1854–1856 produced no gains. Napoleon had long been an admirer of Italy and wanted to see it unified, although that might create a rival power. He plotted with Cavour of the Italian kingdom of Sardinia to expel Austria and set up an Italian confederation of four new states headed by the pope. Events in 1859 ran out of his control. Austria was quickly defeated, but instead of four new states a popular uprising united all of Italy under the Italian kingdom of Sardinia. The pope held onto Rome only because Napoleon sent troops to protect him. His reward was the County of Nice (which included the city of Nice and the rugged Alpine territory to its north and east, as well as the Free Cities of Menton and Roquebrune) and the Duchy of Savoy. He angered Catholics when the pope lost most of his domains. Napoleon then reversed himself and angered both the anticlerical liberals at home and his erstwhile Italian allies when he protected the pope in Rome.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 172,
"text": "The British grew annoyed at Napoleon's humanitarian intervention in Syria in 1860–1861. Napoleon lowered the tariffs, which helped in the long run but in the short run angered owners of large estates and the textile and iron industrialists, while leading worried workers to organize. Matters grew worse in the 1860s as Napoleon nearly blundered into war with the United States in 1862, while his takeover of Mexico in 1861–1867 was a total disaster. The puppet emperor he put on the Mexican throne was overthrown and executed. Finally in the end he went to war with the Germans in 1870 when it was too late to stop German unification. Napoleon had alienated everyone; after failing to obtain an alliance with Austria and Italy, France had no allies and was bitterly divided at home. It was disastrously defeated on the battlefield, losing Alsace and Lorraine. Historian A. J. P. Taylor was blunt: \"he ruined France as a great power\".",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 173,
"text": "In 1854, the Second Empire joined the Crimean War, which saw France and Britain opposed to the Russian Empire, which was decisively defeated at Sevastopol in 1854–55 and at Inkerman in 1854. In 1856, France joined the Second Opium War on the British side against China; a missionary's murder was used as a pretext to take interests in southwest Asia in the Treaty of Tientsin.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 174,
"text": "When France was negotiating with the Netherlands about purchasing Luxembourg in 1867, the Prussian Kingdom threatened the French government with war. This \"Luxembourg Crisis\" came as a shock to French diplomats as there had been an agreement between the Prussian and French governments about Luxembourg. Napoleon III suffered stronger and stronger criticism from Republicans like Jules Favre, and his position seemed more fragile with the passage of time.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 175,
"text": "The country interfered in Korea in 1866 taking, once again, missionaries' murders as a pretext. The French finally withdrew from the war with little gain but war's booty. The next year a French expedition to Japan was formed to help the Tokugawa shogunate to modernize its army. However, Tokugawa was defeated during the Boshin War at the Battle of Toba–Fushimi by large Imperial armies.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 176,
"text": "Rising tensions in 1869 about the possible candidacy of Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to the throne of Spain caused a rise in the scale of animosity between France and Germany. Prince Leopold was a part of the Prussian royal family. He had been asked by the Spanish Cortes to accept the vacant throne of Spain.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 177,
"text": "Such an event was more than France could possibly accept. Relations between France and Germany deteriorated, and finally the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) broke out. German nationalism united the German states, with the exception of Austria, against Napoleon III. The French Empire was defeated decisively at Metz and Sedan. Napoleon III surrendered himself and 100,000 French troops to the German troops at Sedan on 1–2 September 1870.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 178,
"text": "Two days later, on 4 September 1870, Léon Gambetta proclaimed a new republic in France. Later, when Paris was encircled by German troops, Gambetta fled Paris and became the virtual dictator of the war effort which was carried on from the rural provinces. Metz remained under siege until 27 October 1870, when 173,000 French troops there finally surrendered. Surrounded, Paris was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. The Treaty of Frankfurt allowed the newly formed German Empire to annex the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 179,
"text": "The seemingly timeless world of the French peasantry swiftly changed from 1870 to 1914. French peasants had been poor and locked into old traditions until railroads, republican schools, and universal (male) military conscription modernized rural France. The centralized government in Paris had the goal of creating a unified nation-state, so it required all students be taught standardized French. In the process, a new national identity was forged.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 180,
"text": "Railways became a national medium for the modernization of traditionalistic regions, and a leading advocate of this approach was the poet-politician Alphonse de Lamartine. In 1857, an army colonel hoped that railways might improve the lot of \"populations two or three centuries behind their fellows\" and eliminate \"the savage instincts born of isolation and misery\". Consequently, France built a centralized system that radiated from Paris (plus in the south some lines that cut east to west). This design was intended to achieve political and cultural goals rather than maximize efficiency. After some consolidation, six companies controlled monopolies of their regions, subject to close control by the government in terms of fares, finances, and even minute technical details.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 181,
"text": "The central government Corps of Bridges, Waters and Forests brought in British engineers, handled much of the construction work, and provided engineering expertise and planning, land acquisition, and construction of permanent infrastructure such as track beds, bridges and tunnels. It also subsidized militarily necessary lines along the German border. Private operating companies provided management, hired labor, laid the tracks, and built and operated stations. They purchased and maintained the rolling stock—6,000 locomotives were in operation in 1880, which averaged 51,600 passengers a year or 21,200 tons of freight. Much of the equipment was imported from Britain and therefore did not stimulate machinery makers in France.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 182,
"text": "Although starting the whole system at once was politically expedient, it delayed completion, and forced even more reliance on temporary experts brought in from Britain. Financing was also a problem. The solution was a narrow base of funding through the Rothschilds and the closed circles of the Paris Bourse, so France did not develop the same kind of national stock exchange that flourished in London and New York. The system did help modernize the parts of rural France it reached, but it did not help create local industrial centers. Critics such as Émile Zola complained that it never overcame the corruption of the political system, but rather contributed to it.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 183,
"text": "The railways probably helped the industrial revolution in France by facilitating a national market for raw materials, wines, cheeses, and imported manufactured products. Yet the goals set by the French for their railway system were moralistic, political, and military rather than economic. As a result, the freight trains were shorter and less heavily loaded than those in such rapidly industrializing nations such as Britain, Belgium or Germany. Other infrastructure needs in rural France, such as better roads and canals, were neglected because of the expense of the railways, so it seems likely that there were net negative effects in areas not served by the trains.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 184,
"text": "Following the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck proposed harsh terms for peace – including the German occupation of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. A new French National Assembly was elected to consider the German terms for peace. Elected on 8 February 1871, this new National Assembly was composed of 650 deputies.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 185,
"text": "Sitting in Bordeaux, the French National Assembly established the Third Republic. However, 400 members of the new Assembly were monarchists. (Léon Gambetta was one of the \"non-monarchist\" Republicans that were elected to the new National Assembly from Paris.) On 16 February 1871, Adolphe Thiers was elected as the chief executive of the new Republic. Because of the revolutionary unrest in Paris, the centre of the Thiers government was located at Versailles.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 186,
"text": "In late 1870 to early 1871, the workers of Paris rose up in premature and unsuccessful small-scale uprisings. The National Guard within Paris had become increasingly restive and defiant of the police, the army chief of staff, and even their own National Guard commanders. Thiers immediately recognized a revolutionary situation and, on 18 March 1871, sent regular army units to take control of artillery that belonged to the National Guard of Paris. Some soldiers of the regular army units fraternized with the rebels and the revolt escalated.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 187,
"text": "The barricades went up just as in 1830 and 1848. The Paris Commune was born. Once again the Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall) became the center of attention for the people in revolt; this time the Hôtel de Ville became the seat of the revolutionary government. Other cities in France followed the example of the Paris Commune, as in Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse. All of the Communes outside Paris were promptly crushed by the Thiers government.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 188,
"text": "An election on 26 March 1871 in Paris produced a government based on the working class. Louis Auguste Blanqui was in prison but a majority of delegates were his followers, called \"Blanquists\". The minority comprised anarchists and followers of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1855); as anarchists, the \"Proudhonists\" were supporters of limited or no government and wanted the revolution to follow an ad hoc course with little or no planning. Analysis of arrests records indicate the typical communard was opposed to the military, the clerics, and the rural aristocrats. He saw the bourgeoisie as the enemy.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 189,
"text": "After two months the French army moved in to retake Paris, with pitched battles fought in working-class neighbourhoods. Hundreds were executed in front of the Communards' Wall, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles for trials. The number killed during the \"Bloody Week\" (la semaine sanglante) of 21–28 May 1871 was perhaps 30,000, with as many as 50,000 later executed or imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia; thousands more escaped to exile. The government won approval for its actions in a national referendum with 321,000 in favor and only 54,000 opposed.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 190,
"text": "The Republican government next had to confront counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimists (embodied in the person of Henri, Count of Chambord, grandson of Charles X) and the Orleanist royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity and atheism, breaking with France's traditions. This conflict became increasingly sharp in 1873, when Thiers himself was censured by the National Assembly as not being \"sufficiently conservative\" and resigned to make way for Marshal Patrice MacMahon as the new president. Amidst the rumors of right-wing intrigue and/or coups by the Bonapartists or Bourbons in 1874, the National Assembly set about drawing up a new constitution that would be acceptable to all parties.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 191,
"text": "The new constitution provided for universal male suffrage and called for a bicameral legislature, consisting of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. The initial republic was in effect led by pro-royalists, but republicans (the \"Radicals\") and Bonapartists scrambled for power. The first election under this new constitution – held in early 1876 – resulted in a republican victory, with 363 republicans elected as opposed to 180 monarchists. However, 75 of the monarchists elected to the new Chamber of Deputies were Bonapartists.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 192,
"text": "The possibility of a coup d'état was an ever-present factor. Léon Gambetta chose moderate Armand Dufaure as premier but he failed to form a government. MacMahon next chose conservative Jules Simon. He too failed, setting the stage for the 16 May 1877 crisis, which led to the resignation of MacMahon. A restoration of the king now seemed likely, and royalists agreed on Henri, Count of Chambord, the grandson of Charles X. He insisted on the impossible demand that France abandons its republican tricolour flag and returns to the use of the royalist fleur de lys flag, which ruined the royalist cause. Its turn never came again as the Orleanist faction rallied themselves to the Republic, behind Adolphe Thiers. The new President of the Republic in 1879 was Jules Grevy. In January 1886, Georges Boulanger became Minister of War. Georges Clemanceau was instrumental in obtaining this appointment for Boulanger. This was the start of the Boulanger era and another time of threats of a coup.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 193,
"text": "The Legitimist (Bourbon) faction mostly left politics but one segment founded L'Action Française in 1898, during the Dreyfus Affair; it became an influential movement throughout the 1930s, in particular among the conservative Catholic intellectuals.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 194,
"text": "While liberalism was individualistic and laissez-faire in Britain and the United States, in France liberalism was based instead on a solidaristic conception of society, following the theme of the French Revolution, Liberté, égalité, fraternité (\"liberty, equality, fraternity\"). In the Third Republic, especially between 1895 and 1914 \"Solidarité\" [\"solidarism\"] was the guiding concept of a liberal social policy, whose chief champions were the prime ministers Leon Bourgeois (1895–96) and Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau (1899–1902).",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 195,
"text": "The period from 1879 to 1914 saw power mostly in the hands of moderate republicans and \"radicals\"; they avoided state ownership of industry and had a middle class political base. Their main policies were governmental intervention (financed by a progressive income tax) to provide a social safety net. They opposed church schools. They expanded educational opportunities and promoted consumers' and producers' cooperatives. In terms of foreign policy they supported the League of Nations, compulsory arbitration, controlled disarmament, and economic sanctions to keep the peace.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 196,
"text": "The French welfare state expanded when it tried to followed some of Bismarck's policies, starting with relief for the poor.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 197,
"text": "French foreign policy from 1871 to 1914 showed a dramatic transformation from a humiliated power with no friends and not much of an empire in 1871, to the centerpiece of the European alliance system in 1914, with a flourishing empire that was second in size only to Great Britain. Although religion was a hotly contested matter and domestic politics, the Catholic Church made missionary work and church building a specialty in the colonies. Most French ignored foreign policy; its issues were a low priority in politics.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 198,
"text": "French foreign policy was based on a fear of Germany—whose larger size and fast-growing economy could not be matched—combined with a revanchism that demanded the return of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same time, in the midst of the Scramble for Africa, French and British interest in Africa came into conflict. The most dangerous episode was the Fashoda Incident of 1898 when French troops tried to claim an area in the Southern Sudan, and a British force purporting to be acting in the interests of the Khedive of Egypt arrived. Under heavy pressure the French withdrew securing Anglo-Egyptian control over the area. The status quo was recognised by an agreement between the two states acknowledging British control over Egypt, while France became the dominant power in Morocco, but France suffered a humiliating defeat overall.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 199,
"text": "The Suez Canal, initially built by the French, became a joint British-French project in 1875, as both saw it as vital to maintaining their influence and empires in Asia. In 1882, ongoing civil disturbances in Egypt prompted Britain to intervene, extending a hand to France. France's leading expansionist Jules Ferry was out of office, and the government allowed Britain to take effective control of Egypt.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 200,
"text": "France had colonies in Asia and looked for alliances and found in Japan a possible ally. During his visit to France, Iwakura Tomomi asked for French assistance in reforming Japan. French military missions were sent to Japan in 1872–1880, in 1884–1889 and the last one much later in 1918–1919 to help modernize the Japanese army. Conflicts between the Chinese Emperor and the French Republic over Indochina climaxed during the Sino-French War (1884–1885). Admiral Courbet destroyed the Chinese fleet anchored at Fuzhou. The treaty ending the war, put France in a protectorate over northern and central Vietnam, which it divided into Tonkin and Annam.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 201,
"text": "In an effort to isolate Germany, France went to great pains to woo Russia and Great Britain, first by means of the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, then the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Great Britain, and finally the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907, which became the Triple Entente. This alliance with Britain and Russia against Germany and Austria eventually led Russia and Britain to enter World War I as France's Allies.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 202,
"text": "Distrust of Germany, faith in the army, and native French antisemitism combined to make the Dreyfus Affair (the unjust trial and condemnation of a Jewish military officer for \"treason\" in 1894) a political scandal of the utmost gravity. For a decade, the nation was divided between \"dreyfusards\" and \"anti-dreyfusards\", and far-right Catholic agitators inflamed the situation even when proofs of Dreyfus's innocence came to light. The writer Émile Zola published an impassioned editorial on the injustice (J'Accuse...!) and was himself condemned by the government for libel. Dreyfus was finally pardoned in 1906. The upshot was a weakening of the conservative element in politics. Moderates were deeply divided over the Dreyfus Affair, and this allowed the Radicals to hold power from 1899 until World War I. During this period, crises like the threatened \"Boulangist\" coup d'état (1889) showed the fragility of the republic.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 203,
"text": "Throughout the lifetime of the Third Republic there were battles over the status of the Catholic Church. The French clergy and bishops were closely associated with the Monarchists and many of its hierarchy were from noble families. Republicans were based in the anticlerical middle class who saw the Church's alliance with the monarchists as a political threat to republicanism, and a threat to the modern spirit of progress. The Republicans detested the church for its political and class affiliations; for them, the church represented outmoded traditions, superstition and monarchism. The Republicans were strengthened by Protestant and Jewish support. Numerous laws were passed to weaken the Catholic Church. In 1879, priests were excluded from the administrative committees of hospitals and of boards of charity. In 1880, new measures were directed against the religious congregations. From 1880 to 1890 came the substitution of lay women for nuns in many hospitals. Napoleon's 1801 Concordat continued in operation but in 1881, the government cut off salaries to priests it disliked.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 204,
"text": "The 1882 school laws of Republican Jules Ferry set up a national system of public schools that taught strict puritanical morality but no religion. For a while privately funded Catholic schools were tolerated. Civil marriage became compulsory, divorce was introduced and chaplains were removed from the army.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 205,
"text": "When Leo XIII became pope in 1878 he tried to calm Church-State relations. In 1884, he told French bishops not to act in a hostile manner to the State. In 1892, he issued an encyclical advising French Catholics to rally to the Republic and defend the Church by participating in Republican politics. This attempt at improving the relationship failed.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 206,
"text": "Deep-rooted suspicions remained on both sides and were inflamed by the Dreyfus Affair. Catholics were for the most part anti-dreyfusard. The Assumptionists published antisemitic and anti-republican articles in their journal La Croix. This infuriated Republican politicians, who were eager to take revenge. Often they worked in alliance with Masonic lodges. The Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry (1899–1902) and the Combes Ministry (1902–1905) fought with the Vatican over the appointment of bishops. Chaplains were removed from naval and military hospitals (1903–04), and soldiers were ordered not to frequent Catholic clubs (1904). Combes as Prime Minister in 1902, was determined to thoroughly defeat Catholicism. He closed down all parochial schools in France. Then he had parliament reject authorisation of all religious orders. This meant that all 54 orders were dissolved and about 20,000 members immediately left France, many for Spain.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 207,
"text": "In 1905 the 1801 Concordat was abrogated; Church and state were separated. All Church property was confiscated. Public worship was given over to associations of Catholic laymen who controlled access to churches. In practice, Masses and rituals continued. The Church was badly hurt and lost half its priests. In the long run, however, it gained autonomy—for the State no longer had a voice in choosing bishops and Gallicanism was dead. Conservative Catholics regained control of Parliament in 1919 and reversed most of the penalties imposed on the Church, and gave bishops back control of Church lands and buildings. The new pope was eager to assist the changes, and diplomatic relations were restored with the Vatican. However, the long-term secularization of French society continued, as most people only attended ceremonies for such major events as birth, marriage and funerals.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 208,
"text": "The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was referred to as the Belle Époque because of peace, prosperity and the cultural innovations of Monet, Bernhardt, and Debussy, and popular amusements – cabaret, can-can, the cinema, and new art movements such as Impressionism and Art Nouveau.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 209,
"text": "In 1889, the Exposition Universelle showed off newly modernised Paris to the world, which could look over it all from atop the new Eiffel Tower. Meant to last only a few decades, the tower was never removed and became France's most iconic landmark.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 210,
"text": "France was nevertheless a nation divided internally on notions of ideology, religion, class, regionalisms, and money. On the international front, France came repeatedly to the brink of war with the other imperial powers, such as the 1898 Fashoda Incident with Great Britain over East Africa.",
"title": "Long 19th century, 1815–1914"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 211,
"text": "The second colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, protectorates and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the \"first colonial empire\", that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost, and the \"second colonial empire\", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. The second colonial empire came to an end after the loss in later wars of Vietnam (1954) and Algeria (1962), and relatively peaceful decolonizations elsewhere after 1960.",
"title": "Colonial empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 212,
"text": "France lost wars to Britain that stripped away nearly all of its colonies by 1765. France rebuilt a new empire mostly after 1850, concentrating chiefly in Africa as well as Indochina and the South Pacific. Republicans, at first hostile to empire, only became supportive when Germany after 1880 started to build their own colonial empire. As it developed, the new empire took on roles of trade with France, especially supplying raw materials and purchasing manufactured items as well as lending prestige to the motherland and spreading French civilization and language and the Catholic religion. It also provided manpower in the World Wars.",
"title": "Colonial empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 213,
"text": "It became a moral mission to lift the world up to French standards by bringing Christianity and French culture. In 1884, the leading proponent of colonialism, Jules Ferry, declared; \"The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races.\" Full citizenship rights – assimilation – were offered. In reality the French settlers were given full rights and the natives given very limited rights. Apart from Algeria few settlers permanently settled in its colonies. Even in Algeria, the \"Pied-Noir\" (French settlers) always remained a small minority.",
"title": "Colonial empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 214,
"text": "At its apex, it was one of the largest empires in history. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 11,500,000 km (4,400,000 sq mi) in 1920, with a population of 110 million people in 1939. In World War II, the Free French used the overseas colonies as bases from which they fought to liberate France. \"In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas empire at the end of the Second World War.\" Only two days after the defeat of Nazi Germany, France suppressed Algerian calls for independence, who were celebrating VE day, ending in a massacre, which killed at least 30,000 Muslims. However, gradually anti-colonial movements successfully challenged European authority. The French Constitution of 27 October 1946 (Fourth Republic), established the French Union which endured until 1958. Newer remnants of the colonial empire were integrated into France as overseas departments and territories within the French Republic. These now total about 1% of the pre-1939 colonial area, with 2.7 million people living in them in 2013. By the 1970s, the last \"vestiges of empire held little interest for the French. ... Except for the traumatic decolonization of Algeria, however, what is remarkable is how few long-lasting effects on France the giving up of empire entailed.\"",
"title": "Colonial empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 215,
"text": "The population held steady from 40.7 million in 1911, to 41.5 million in 1936. The sense that the population was too small, especially in regard to the rapid growth of more powerful Germany, was a common theme in the early twentieth century. Natalist policies were proposed in the 1930s, and implemented in the 1940s.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 216,
"text": "France experienced a baby boom after 1945; it reversed a long-term record of low birth rates. In addition, there was a steady immigration, especially from former French colonies in North Africa. The population grew from 41 million in 1946, to 50 million in 1966, and 60 million by 1990. The farming population declined sharply, from 35% of the workforce in 1945 to under 5% by 2000. By 2004, France had the second highest birthrate in Europe, behind only Ireland.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 217,
"text": "France did not expect war in 1914, but when it came in August the entire nation rallied enthusiastically for two years. It specialized in sending infantry forward again and again, only to be stopped again and again by German artillery, trenches, barbed wire and machine guns, with horrific casualty rates. Despite the loss of major industrial districts France produced an enormous output of munitions that armed both the French and the American armies. By 1917 the infantry was on the verge of mutiny, with a widespread sense that it was now the American turn to storm the German lines. But they rallied and defeated the greatest German offensive, which came in spring 1918, then rolled over the collapsing invaders. November 1918 brought a surge of pride and unity, and an unrestrained demand for revenge.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 218,
"text": "Preoccupied with internal problems, France paid little attention to foreign policy in the 1911–14 period, although it did extend military service to three years from two over strong Socialist objections in 1913. The rapidly escalating Balkan crisis of 1914 caught France unaware, and it played only a small role in the coming of World War I. The Serbian crisis triggered a complex set of military alliances between European states, causing most of the continent, including France, to be drawn into war within a few short weeks. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in late July, triggering Russian mobilization. On 1 August both Germany and France ordered mobilization. Germany was much better prepared militarily than any of the other countries involved, including France. The German Empire, as an ally of Austria, declared war on Russia. France was allied with Russia and so was ready to commit to war against the German Empire. On 3 August Germany declared war on France, and sent its armies through neutral Belgium. Britain entered the war on 4 August, and started sending in troops on 7 August. Italy, although tied to Germany, remained neutral and then joined the Allies in 1915.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 219,
"text": "Germany's \"Schlieffen Plan\" was to quickly defeat the French. They captured Brussels, Belgium by 20 August and soon had captured a large portion of northern France. The original plan was to continue southwest and attack Paris from the west. By early September they were within 65 kilometres (40 mi) of Paris, and the French government had relocated to Bordeaux. The Allies finally stopped the advance northeast of Paris at the Marne River (5–12 September 1914).",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 220,
"text": "The war now became a stalemate – the famous \"Western Front\" was fought largely in France and was characterized by very little movement despite extremely large and violent battles, often with new and more destructive military technology. On the Western Front, the small improvised trenches of the first few months rapidly grew deeper and more complex, gradually becoming vast areas of interlocking defensive works. The land war quickly became dominated by the muddy, bloody stalemate of Trench warfare, a form of war in which both opposing armies had static lines of defense. The war of movement quickly turned into a war of position. Neither side advanced much, but both sides suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. German and Allied armies produced essentially a matched pair of trench lines from the Swiss border in the south to the North Sea coast of Belgium. Meanwhile, large swaths of northeastern France came under the brutal control of German occupiers.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 221,
"text": "Trench warfare prevailed on the Western Front from September 1914 until March 1918. Famous battles in France include Battle of Verdun (spanning 10 months from 21 February to 18 December 1916), Battle of the Somme (1 July to 18 November 1916), and five separate conflicts called the Battle of Ypres (from 1914 to 1918).",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 222,
"text": "After Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, a pacifist, was assassinated at the start of the war, the French socialist movement abandoned its antimilitarist positions and joined the national war effort. Prime Minister René Viviani called for unity—for a \"Union sacrée\" (\"Sacred Union\")--Which was a wartime truce between the right and left factions that had been fighting bitterly. France had few dissenters. However, war-weariness was a major factor by 1917, even reaching the army. The soldiers were reluctant to attack; Mutiny was a factor as soldiers said it was best to wait for the arrival of millions of Americans. The soldiers were protesting not just the futility of frontal assaults in the face of German machine guns but also degraded conditions at the front lines and at home, especially infrequent leaves, poor food, the use of African and Asian colonials on the home front, and concerns about the welfare of their wives and children.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 223,
"text": "After defeating Russia in 1917, Germany now could concentrate on the Western Front, and planned an all-out assault in the spring of 1918, but had to do it before the very rapidly growing American army played a role. In March 1918 Germany launched its offensive and by May had reached the Marne and was again close to Paris. However, in the Second Battle of the Marne (15 July to 6 August 1918), the Allied line held. The Allies then shifted to the offensive. The Germans, out of reinforcements, were overwhelmed day after day and the high command saw it was hopeless. Austria and Turkey collapsed, and the Kaiser's government fell. Germany signed \"The Armistice\" that ended the fighting effective 11 November 1918, \"the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.\"",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 224,
"text": "The war was fought in large part on French soil, with 3.4 million French dead including civilians, and four times as many military casualties. The economy was hurt by the German invasion of major industrial areas in the northeast. While the occupied area in 1913 contained only 14% of France's industrial workers, it produced 58% of the steel, and 40% of the coal. In 1914, the government implemented a war economy with controls and rationing. By 1915 the war economy went into high gear, as millions of French women and colonial men replaced the civilian roles of many of the 3 million soldiers. Considerable assistance came with the influx of American food, money and raw materials in 1917. This war economy would have important reverberations after the war, as it would be a first breach of liberal theories of non-interventionism. The damages caused by the war amounted to about 113% of the GDP of 1913, chiefly the destruction of productive capital and housing. The national debt rose from 66% of GDP in 1913 to 170% in 1919, reflecting the heavy use of bond issues to pay for the war. Inflation was severe, with the franc losing over half its value against the British pound.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 225,
"text": "The richest families were hurt, as the top 1 percent saw their share of wealth drop from about 60% in 1914 to 36% in 1935, then plunge to 20 percent in 1970 to the present. A great deal of physical and financial damage was done during the world wars, foreign investments were cashed in to pay for the wars, the Russian Bolsheviks expropriated large-scale investments, postwar inflation demolished cash holdings, stocks and bonds plunged during the Great Depression, and progressive taxes ate away at accumulated wealth.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 226,
"text": "Peace terms were imposed by the Big Four, meeting in Paris in 1919: David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States. Clemenceau demanded the harshest terms and won most of them in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Germany was forced to admit its guilt for starting the war, and was permanently weakened militarily. Germany had to pay huge sums in war reparations to the Allies (who in turn had large loans from the U.S. to pay off).",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 227,
"text": "France regained Alsace-Lorraine and occupied the German industrial Saar Basin, a coal and steel region. The German African colonies were put under League of Nations mandates, and were administered by France and other victors. From the remains of the Ottoman Empire, France acquired the Mandate of Syria and the Mandate of Lebanon. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch wanted a peace that would never allow Germany to be a threat to France again, but after the Treaty of Versailles was signed he said, \"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.\"",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 228,
"text": "France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the Armistice. Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War. From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as Prime Minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy, using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations. He realized France could neither contain the much larger Germany by itself nor secure effective support from Britain or the League.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 229,
"text": "As a response to the Weimar Republic's default on its reparations in the aftermath of World War I, France occupied the industrial region of the Ruhr as a means of ensuring German payments. The intervention was a failure, and France accepted the international solution to the reparations issues, as expressed in the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 230,
"text": "Politically, the 1920s was dominated by the Right, with right-wing coalitions in 1919, 1926, and 1928, and later in 1934 and 1938.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 231,
"text": "In the 1920s, France established an elaborate system of border defences called the Maginot Line, designed to fight off any German attack. The Line did not extend into Belgium, which Germany would exploit in 1940. Military alliances were signed with weak powers in 1920–21, called the \"Little Entente\".",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 232,
"text": "The Great Depression affected France a bit later than other countries, hitting around 1931. While the GDP in the 1920s grew at the very strong rate of 4.43% per year, the 1930s rate fell to only 0.63%. The depression was relatively mild: unemployment peaked under 5%, the fall in production was at most 20% below the 1929 output; there was no banking crisis.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 233,
"text": "In contrast to the mild economic upheaval, the political upheaval was enormous. Socialist Leon Blum, leading the Popular Front, brought together Socialists and Radicals to become Prime Minister from 1936 to 1937; he was the first Jew and the first Socialist to lead France. The Communists in the Chamber of Deputies voted to keep the government in power, and generally supported the government's economic policies, but rejected its foreign policies. The Popular Front passed numerous labor reforms, which increased wages, cut working hours to 40 hours with overtime illegal and provided many lesser benefits to the working class such as mandatory two-week paid vacations. However, renewed inflation cancelled the gains in wage rates, unemployment did not fall, and economic recovery was very slow. The Popular Front failed in economics, foreign policy, and long-term stability: \"Disappointment and failure was the legacy of the Popular Front.\" At first the Popular Front created enormous excitement and expectations on the left—including very large scale sitdown strikes—but in the end it failed to live up to its promise. However, Socialists would later take inspiration from the attempts of the Popular Front to set up a welfare state.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 234,
"text": "The government joined Britain in establishing an arms embargo during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Blum rejected support for the Spanish Republicans because of his fear that civil war might spread to deeply divided France. Financial support in military cooperation with Poland was also a policy. The government nationalized arms suppliers, and dramatically increased its program of rearming the French military in a last-minute catch-up with the Germans.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 235,
"text": "Appeasement of Germany, in cooperation with Britain, was the policy after 1936, as France sought peace even in the face of Hitler's escalating demands. Prime Minister Édouard Daladier refused to go to war against Germany and Italy without British support as Neville Chamberlain wanted to save peace at Munich in 1938.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 236,
"text": "Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 finally caused France and Britain to declare war against Germany. But the Allies did not launch massive assaults and instead kept a defensive stance: this was called the Phoney War in Britain or Drôle de guerre — the funny sort of war — in France. It did not prevent the German army from conquering Poland in a matter of weeks with its innovative Blitzkrieg tactics, also helped by the Soviet Union's attack on Poland.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 237,
"text": "When Germany had its hands free for an attack in the west, the Battle of France began in May 1940, and the same Blitzkrieg tactics proved just as devastating there. The Wehrmacht bypassed the Maginot Line by marching through the Ardennes forest. A second German force was sent into Belgium and the Netherlands to act as a diversion to this main thrust. In six weeks of savage fighting the French lost 90,000 men.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 238,
"text": "Many civilians sought refuge by taking to the roads of France: some 2 million refugees from Belgium and the Netherlands were joined by between 8 and 10 million French civilians, representing a quarter of the French population, all heading south and west. This movement may well have been the largest single movement of civilians in history prior to the Partition of India in 1947.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 239,
"text": "Paris fell to the Germans on 14 June 1940, but not before the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk, along with many French soldiers.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 240,
"text": "Vichy France was established on 10 July 1940 to govern the unoccupied part of France and its colonies. It was led by Philippe Pétain, the aging war hero of the First World War. Petain's representatives signed a harsh Armistice on 22 June 1940 whereby Germany kept most of the French army in camps in Germany, and France had to pay out large sums in gold and food supplies. Germany occupied three-fifths of France's territory, leaving the rest in the southeast to the new Vichy government. However, in practice, most local government was handled by the traditional French officialdom. In November 1942 all of Vichy France was finally occupied by German forces. Vichy continued in existence but it was closely supervised by the Germans.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 241,
"text": "The Vichy regime sought to collaborate with Germany, keeping peace in France to avoid further occupation although at the expense of personal freedom and individual safety. Some 76,000 Jews were deported during the German occupation, often with the help of the Vichy authorities, and murdered in the Nazis' extermination camps.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 242,
"text": "The 2 million French soldiers held as POWs and forced laborers in Germany throughout the war were not at risk of death in combat, but the anxieties of separation for their 800,000 wives were high. The government provided a modest allowance, but one in ten became prostitutes to support their families. It gave women a key symbolic role to carry out the national regeneration. It used propaganda, women's organizations, and legislation to promote maternity, patriotic duty, and female submission to marriage, home, and children's education. Conditions were very difficult for housewives, as food was short as well as most necessities. Divorce laws were made much more stringent, and restrictions were placed on the employment of married women. Family allowances that had begun in the 1930s were continued, and became a vital lifeline for many families; it was a monthly cash bonus for having more children. In 1942, the birth rate started to rise, and by 1945 it was higher than it had been for a century.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 243,
"text": "General Charles de Gaulle in London declared himself on BBC radio to be the head of a rival government in exile, and gathered the Free French Forces around him, finding support in some French colonies and recognition from Britain but not the United States. After the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir in 1940, where the British fleet destroyed a large part of the French navy, still under command of Vichy France, that killed about 1,100 sailors, there was nationwide indignation and a feeling of distrust in the French forces, leading to the events of the Battle of Dakar. Eventually, several important French ships joined the Free French Forces. The United States maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy and avoided recognition of de Gaulle's claim to be the one and only government of France. Churchill, caught between the U.S. and de Gaulle, tried to find a compromise.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 244,
"text": "Within France proper, the organized underground grew as the Vichy regime resorted to more strident policies in order to fulfill the enormous demands of the Nazis and the eventual decline of Nazi Germany became more obvious. They formed the Resistance. The most famous figure of the French resistance was Jean Moulin, sent in France by de Gaulle in order to link all resistance movements; he was captured and tortured by Klaus Barbie (the \"butcher of Lyon\"). Increasing repression culminated in the complete destruction and extermination of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane at the height of the Battle of Normandy. At 2.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 10 June 1944, a company of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, 'Das Reich', entered Oradour-sur-Glane. They herded most of its population into barns, garages and the church, and then massacred 642 men, women and children, all of whom were civilians.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 245,
"text": "In 1953, 21 men went on trial in Bordeaux for the Oradour killings. Fourteen of the accused proved to be French citizens of Alsace. Following convictions, all but one were pardoned by the French government.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 246,
"text": "On 6 June 1944 the Allies landed in Normandy (without a French component); on 15 August Allied forces landing in Provence, this time they included 260,000 men of the French First Army. The German lines finally broke, and they fled back to Germany while keeping control of the major ports. Allied forces liberated France and the Free French were given the honor of liberating Paris in late August 1944. The French army recruited French Forces of the Interior (de Gaulle's formal name for resistance fighters) to continue the war until the final defeat of Germany; this army numbered 300,000 men by September 1944 and 370,000 by spring 1945.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 247,
"text": "The Vichy regime disintegrated. An interim Provisional Government of the French Republic was quickly put into place by de Gaulle. The gouvernement provisoire de la République française, or GPRF, operated under a tripartisme alliance of communists, socialists, and democratic republicans. The GPRF governed France from 1944 to 1946, when it was replaced by the French Fourth Republic. Tens of thousands of collaborators were executed without trial. The new government declared the Vichy laws unconstitutional and illegal, and elected new local governments. Women gained the right to vote.",
"title": "1914–1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 248,
"text": "The political scene in 1944–45 was controlled by the Resistance, but it had numerous factions. Charles de Gaulle and the Free France element had been based outside France, but now came to dominate, in alliance with the Socialists, the Christian Democrats (MRP), and what remained of the Radical party. The Communists had largely dominated the Resistance inside France, but cooperated closely with the government in 1944–45, on orders from the Kremlin. There was a general consensus that important powers that had been an open collaboration with the Germans should be nationalized, such as Renault automobiles and the major newspapers. A new Social Security system was called for, as well as important new concessions to the labour unions. Unions themselves were divided among communist, Socialist, and Christian Democrat factions. Frustrated by his inability to control all the dominant forces, de Gaulle resigned early in 1946. On 13 October 1946, a new constitution established the Fourth Republic. The Fourth Republic consisted of a parliamentary government controlled by a series of coalitions. France attempted to regain control of French Indochina but was defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954. Only months later, France faced another anti-colonialist conflict in Algeria and the debate over whether or not to keep control of Algeria, then home to over one million European settlers, wracked the country and nearly led to a coup and civil war. Charles de Gaulle managed to keep the country together while taking steps to end the war. The Algerian War was concluded with the Évian Accords in 1962 which led to Algerian independence.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 249,
"text": "The June 1951 elections saw a re-emergence of the right, and until June 1954 France was governed by a succession of centre-right coalitions.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 250,
"text": "Wartime damage to the economy was severe, and apart from gold reserves, France had inadequate resources to recover on its own. The transportation system was in total shambles — the Allies had bombed out the railways and the bridges, and the Germans had destroyed the port facilities. Energy was in extremely short supply, with very low stocks of coal and oil. Imports of raw materials were largely cut off, so most factories shut down. The invaders had stripped most of the valuable industrial tools for German factories. Discussions with the United States for emergency aid dragged on, with repeated postponements on both sides. Meanwhile, several million French prisoners of war and forced labourers were being returned home, with few jobs and little food available for them. The plan was for 20 percent of German reparations to be paid to France, but Germany was in much worse shape even in France, and in no position to pay.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 251,
"text": "After de Gaulle left office in January 1946, the diplomatic logjam was broken in terms of American aid. The U.S. Army shipped in food, from 1944 to 1946, and U.S. Treasury loans and cash grants were disbursed from 1945 until 1947, with Marshall Plan aid continuing until 1951. France received additional aid from 1951 to 1955 in order to help the country rearm and prosecute its war in Indochina. Apart from low-interest loans, the other funds were grants that did not involve repayment. The debts left over from World War I, whose payment had been suspended since 1931, were renegotiated in the Blum-Byrnes agreement of 1946. The United States forgave all $2.8 billion in debt from the First World War, and gave France a new loan of $650 million. In return, French negotiator Jean Monnet set out the French five-year plan for recovery and development. The Marshall Plan gave France $2.3 billion with no repayment. The total of all American grants and credits to France from 1946 to 1953, amounted to $4.9 billion.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 252,
"text": "A central feature of the Marshall Plan was to encourage international trade, reduce tariffs, lower barriers, and modernize French management. The Marshall Plan set up intensive tours of American industry. France sent 500 missions with 4700 businessmen and experts to tour American factories, farms, stores and offices. They were especially impressed with the prosperity of American workers, and how they could purchase an inexpensive new automobile for nine months work, compared to 30 months in France. Some French businesses resisted Americanization, but the most profitable, especially chemicals, oil, electronics, and instrumentation, seized upon the opportunity to attract American investments and build a larger market. The U.S. insisted on opportunities for Hollywood films, and the French film industry responded with new life.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 253,
"text": "Although the economic situation in France was grim in 1945, resources did exist and the economy regained normal growth by the 1950s. France managed to regain its international status thanks to a successful production strategy, a demographic spurt, and technical and political innovations. Conditions varied from firm to firm. Some had been destroyed or damaged, nationalized or requisitioned, but the majority carried on, sometimes working harder and more efficiently than before the war. Industries were reorganized on a basis that ranged from consensual (electricity) to conflictual (machine tools), therefore producing uneven results. Despite strong American pressure through the ERP, there was little change in the organization and content of the training for French industrial managers. This was mainly due to the reticence of the existing institutions and the struggle among different economic and political interest groups for control over efforts to improve the further training of practitioners.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 254,
"text": "The Monnet Plan provided a coherent framework for economic policy, and it was strongly supported by the Marshall Plan. It was inspired by moderate, Keynesian free-trade ideas rather than state control. Although relaunched in an original way, the French economy was about as productive as comparable West European countries.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 255,
"text": "Claude Fohlen argues that:",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 256,
"text": "Pierre Mendès France, was a Radical party leader who was Prime Minister for eight months in 1954–55, working with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties. His top priority was ending the war in Indochina, which had already cost 92,000 dead 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured in the wake of the humiliating defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The United States had paid most of the costs of the war, but its support inside France had collapsed. Public opinion polls showed that in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to keep Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. At the Geneva Conference in July 1954 Mendès France made a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed France to pull out all its forces. That left South Vietnam standing alone. However, the United States moved in and provided large-scale financial military and economic support for South Vietnam. Mendès-France next came to an agreement with Habib Bourguiba, the nationalist leader in Tunisia, for the independence of that colony by 1956, and began discussions with the nationalist leaders in Morocco for a French withdrawal.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 257,
"text": "With over a million European residents in Algeria (the Pieds-Noirs), France refused to grant independence until the Algerian War of Independence had turned into a French political and civil crisis. Algeria was given its independence in 1962, unleashing a massive wave of immigration from the former colony back to France of both Pied-Noir and Algerians who had supported France.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 258,
"text": "In 1956, another crisis struck French colonies, this time in Egypt. The Suez Canal, having been built by the French government, belonged to the French Republic and was operated by the Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez. Great Britain had bought the Egyptian share from Isma'il Pasha and was the second-largest owner of the canal before the crisis.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 259,
"text": "The Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal despite French and British opposition; he determined that a European response was unlikely. Great Britain and France attacked Egypt and built an alliance with Israel against Nasser. Israel attacked from the east, Britain from Cyprus and France from Algeria. Egypt, the most powerful Arab state of the time, was defeated in a mere few days. The Suez crisis caused an outcry of indignation in the entire Arab world and Saudi Arabia set an embargo on oil on France and Britain. The US President Dwight D. Eisenhower forced a ceasefire; Britain and Israel soon withdrew, leaving France alone in Egypt. Under strong international pressures, the French government ultimately evacuated its troops from Suez and largely disengaged from the Middle East.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 260,
"text": "The May 1958 seizure of power in Algiers by French army units and French settlers opposed to concessions in the face of Arab nationalist insurrection ripped apart the unstable Fourth Republic. The National Assembly brought De Gaulle back to power during the May 1958 crisis. He founded the Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency, and he was elected in the latter role. He managed to keep France together while taking steps to end the war, much to the anger of the Pieds-Noirs (Frenchmen settled in Algeria) and the military; both had supported his return to power to maintain colonial rule. He granted independence to Algeria in 1962 and progressively to other French colonies.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 261,
"text": "Proclaiming grandeur essential to the nature of France, de Gaulle initiated his \"Politics of Grandeur.\" He demanded complete autonomy for France in world affairs, which meant that major decisions could not be forced upon it by NATO, the European Community or anyone else. De Gaulle pursued a policy of \"national independence.\" He vetoed Britain's entry into the Common Market, fearing it might gain too great a voice on French affairs. While not officially abandoning NATO, he withdrew from its military integrated command, fearing that the United States had too much control over NATO. He launched an independent nuclear development program that made France the fourth nuclear power. France then adopted the dissuasion du faible au fort doctrine which meant a Soviet attack on France would only bring total destruction to both sides.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 262,
"text": "He restored cordial Franco-German relations in order to create a European counterweight between the \"Anglo-Saxon\" (American and British) and Soviet spheres of influence. De Gaulle openly criticised the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He was angry at American economic power, especially what his Finance minister called the \"exorbitant privilege\" of the U.S. dollar. He went to Canada and proclaimed \"Vive le Québec libre\", the catchphrase for an independent Quebec.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 263,
"text": "In May 1968, he appeared likely to lose power amidst widespread protests by students and workers, but persisted through the crisis with backing from the army. His party, denouncing radicalism, won the 1968 election with an increased majority in the Assembly. Nonetheless, de Gaulle resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum in which he proposed more decentralization. His War Memoirs became a classic of modern French literature and many French political parties and figures claim the gaullist heritage.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 264,
"text": "By the late 1960s, France's economic growth, while strong, was beginning to lose steam. A global currency crisis meant a devaluation of the Franc against the West German Mark and the U.S. Dollar in 1968, which was one of the leading factors for the social upheaval of that year. Industrial policy was used to bolster French industries.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 265,
"text": "The Trente Glorieuses era (1945–1975) ended with the worldwide 1973 oil crisis, which increased costs in energy and thus on production. Economic instability marked the Giscard d'Estaing government (1974–1981). Giscard turned to Prime Minister Raymond Barre in 1976, who advocated numerous complex, strict policies (\"Barre Plans\"). The first Barre plan emerged on 22 September 1976, with a priority to stop inflation. It included a three-month price freeze; a reduction in the value-added tax; wage controls; salary controls; a reduction of the growth in the money supply; and increases in the income tax, automobile taxes, luxury taxes and bank rates. There were measures to restore the trade balance, and support the growth of the economy and employment. Oil imports, whose price had shot up, were limited. There was special aid to exports, and an action fund was set up to aid industries. There was increased financial aid to farmers, who were suffering from a drought, and for social security. The package was not very popular, but was pursued with vigour.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 266,
"text": "Economic troubles continued into the early years of the presidency of François Mitterrand. A recession in the early 1980s led to the abandonment of dirigisme in favour of a more pragmatic approach to economic intervention. Growth resumed later in the decade, only to be slowed down by the economic depression of the early 1990s, which affected the Socialist Party. Liberalisation under Jacques Chirac in the late 1990s strengthened the economy. However, after 2005 the world economy stagnated and the 2008 global crisis and its effects in both the Eurozone and France itself dogged the conservative government of Nicolas Sarkozy, who lost reelection in 2012 against Socialist Francois Hollande.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 267,
"text": "France's recent economic history has been less turbulent than in many other countries. The average income in France, after having been steady for a long time, increased elevenfold between 1700 and 1975, which constitutes a 0.9% growth rate per year, a rate which has been outdone almost every year since 1975: By the early Eighties, for instance, wages in France were on or slightly above the EEC average.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 268,
"text": "After the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War potential menaces to mainland France appeared considerably reduced. France began reducing its nuclear capacities and conscription was abolished in 2001. In 1990, France, led by François Mitterrand, joined the short successful Gulf War against Iraq; the French participation to this war was called the Opération Daguet.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 269,
"text": "Terrorism grew worse. In 1994, Air France Flight 8969 was hijacked by terrorists; they were captured.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 270,
"text": "Conservative Jacques Chirac assumed office as president on 17 May 1995, after a campaign focused on the need to combat France's stubbornly high unemployment rate. While France continues to revere its rich history and independence, French leaders increasingly tie the future of France to the continued development of the European Union. In 1992, France ratified the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union. In 1999, the Euro was introduced to replace the French franc. Beyond membership in the European Union, France is also involved in many joint European projects such as Airbus, the Galileo positioning system and the Eurocorps.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 271,
"text": "The French have stood among the strongest supporters of NATO and EU policy in the Balkans to prevent genocide in former Yugoslavia. French troops joined the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. France has also been actively involved against international terrorism. In 2002, Alliance Base, an international Counterterrorist Intelligence Center, was secretly established in Paris. The same year France contributed to the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but it strongly rejected the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even threatening to veto the US proposed resolution.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 272,
"text": "Jacques Chirac was reelected in 2002, mainly because his socialist rival Lionel Jospin was removed from the runoff by the right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Chirac was especially remembered as a fierce opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was elected and took office on 16 May 2007. The problem of high unemployment has yet to be resolved. Sarkozy was very actively involved in the military operation in Libya to oust the Gaddafi government in 2011.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 273,
"text": "In 2012 election for president, Socialist François Hollande defeated Sarkozy's try for reelection. Hollande advocated a growth policy in contrast to the austerity policy advocated by Germany's Angela Merkel as a way of tackling the European sovereign debt crisis. In 2014, Hollande stood with Merkel and US President Obama in imposing sanctions on Russia for its actions against Ukraine. In December 2016, Hollande announced he will not seek re-election as president of France.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 274,
"text": "In the 2017 election for president the winner was Emmanuel Macron, the founder of a new party \"La République En Marche!\". It declared itself above left and right. He called parliamentary elections that brought him the absolute majority of députés. He appointed a prime minister from the centre right, and ministers from both the centre left and centre right.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 275,
"text": "In the 2022 presidential election president Macron was re-elected after beating his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, in the runoff. He was the first re-elected incumbent French president since 2002.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 276,
"text": "Sophie Meunier in 2017 ponders whether France is still relevant in world affairs:",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 277,
"text": "At the close of the Algerian war, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, including some who had supported France (Harkis), settled permanently in France, especially in the larger cities where they lived in subsidized public housing, and suffered very high unemployment rates. In October 2005, the predominantly Arab-immigrant suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Lille, and other French cities erupted in riots by socially alienated teenagers, many of them second- or third-generation immigrants.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 278,
"text": "Schneider says:",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 279,
"text": "For the next three convulsive weeks, riots spread from suburb to suburb, affecting more than three hundred towns….Nine thousand vehicles were torched, hundreds of public and commercial buildings destroyed, four thousand rioters arrested, and 125 police officers wounded.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 280,
"text": "Traditional interpretations say these race riots were spurred by radical Muslims or unemployed youth. Another view states that the riots reflected a broader problem of racism and police violence in France.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 281,
"text": "In March 2012, a Muslim radical named Mohammed Merah shot three French soldiers and four Jewish citizens, including children in Toulouse and Montauban.",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 282,
"text": "In January 2015, the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that had ridiculed the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, and a neighbourhood Jewish grocery store came under attack from angry Muslims who had been born and raised in the Paris region. World leaders rally to Paris to show their support for free speech. Analysts agree that the episode had a profound impact on France. The New York Times summarized the ongoing debate:",
"title": "Since 1945"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 283,
"text": "So as France grieves, it is also faced with profound questions about its future: How large is the radicalized part of the country's Muslim population, the largest in Europe? How deep is the rift between France's values of secularism, of individual, sexual and religious freedom, of freedom of the press and the freedom to shock, and a growing Muslim conservatism that rejects many of these values in the name of religion?",
"title": "Since 1945"
}
]
| The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Greek writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language.
Over the course of the first millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman Legions under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. Afterwards a Gallo-Roman culture emerged and Gaul was increasingly integrated into the Roman Empire. In the later stages of the Roman Empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration, most importantly by the Germanic Franks. The Frankish king Clovis I united most of Gaul under his rule in the late 5th century, setting the stage for Frankish dominance in the region for hundreds of years. Frankish power reached its fullest extent under Charlemagne. The medieval Kingdom of France emerged from the western part of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire, known as West Francia, and achieved increasing prominence under the rule of the House of Capet, founded by Hugh Capet in 987. A succession crisis following the death of the last direct Capetian monarch in 1328 led to the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The war formally began in 1337 following Philip VI's attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its hereditary holder, Edward III of England, the Plantagenet claimant to the French throne. Despite early Plantagenet victories, including the capture and ransom of John II of France, fortunes turned in favor of the Valois later in the war. Among the notable figures of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led French forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453. Victory in the Hundred Years' War had the effect of strengthening French nationalism and vastly increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the Ancien Régime period over the next centuries, France transformed into a centralized absolute monarchy through Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. At the height of the French Wars of Religion, France became embroiled in another succession crisis, as the last Valois king, Henry III, fought against rival factions the House of Bourbon and the House of Guise. Henry, the Bourbon King of Navarre, won the conflict and established the Bourbon dynasty. A burgeoning worldwide colonial empire was established in the 16th century. The French monarchy's political power reached a zenith under the rule of Louis XIV, "The Sun King". In the late 18th century the monarchy and associated institutions were overthrown in the French Revolution. The country was governed for a period as a Republic, until Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire was declared. Following his defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, France went through several further regime changes, being ruled as a monarchy, then briefly as a Second Republic, and then as a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870. France was one of the Triple Entente powers in World War I against Germany and the Central Powers. France was one of the Allied Powers in World War II, but was conquered by Nazi Germany in 1940. The Third Republic was dismantled, and most of the country was controlled directly by Germany while the south was controlled until 1942 by the collaborationist Vichy government. Living conditions were harsh as Germany drained away food and manpower, and many Jews were killed. The Free France movement took over the colonial empire, and coordinated the wartime Resistance. Following liberation in 1944, the Fourth Republic was established. France slowly recovered, and enjoyed a baby boom that reversed its very low fertility rate. Long wars in Indochina and Algeria drained French resources and ended in political defeat. In the wake of the 1958 Algerian Crisis, Charles de Gaulle set up the French Fifth Republic. Into the 1960s decolonization saw most of the French colonial empire become independent, while smaller parts were incorporated into the French state as overseas departments and collectivities. Since World War II France has been a permanent member in the UN Security Council and NATO. It played a central role in the unification process after 1945 that led to the European Union. Despite slow economic growth in recent years, it remains a strong economic, cultural, military and political factor in the 21st century. | 2001-09-09T08:38:20Z | 2023-12-20T17:55:52Z | [
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13,855 | Halloween | Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It is at the beginning of the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. In popular culture, the day has become a celebration of horror, being associated with the macabre and supernatural.
One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots. Some go further and suggest that Samhain may have been Christianized as All Hallow's Day, along with its eve, by the early Church. Other academics believe Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, being the vigil of All Hallow's Day. Celebrated in Ireland and Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants took many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century, and then through American influence various Halloween customs spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century.
Popular Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related guising and souling), attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films. Some people practice the Christian observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, although it is a secular celebration for others. Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.
The word Halloween or Hallowe'en ("Saints' evening") is of Christian origin; a term equivalent to "All Hallows Eve" is attested in Old English. The word hallowe[']en comes from the Scottish form of All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day): even is the Scots term for "eve" or "evening", and is contracted to e'en or een; (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en became Hallowe'en.
Halloween is thought to have influences from Christian beliefs and practices. The English word 'Halloween' comes from "All Hallows' Eve", being the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day (All Saints' Day) on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November. Since the time of the early Church, major feasts in Christianity (such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) had vigils that began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows'. These three days are collectively called Allhallowtide and are a time when Western Christians honour all saints and pray for recently departed souls who have yet to reach Heaven. Commemorations of all saints and martyrs were held by several churches on various dates, mostly in springtime. In 4th-century Roman Edessa it was held on 13 May, and on 13 May 609, Pope Boniface IV re-dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to "St Mary and all martyrs". This was the date of Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead.
In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III (731–741) founded an oratory in St Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors". Some sources say it was dedicated on 1 November, while others say it was on Palm Sunday in April 732. By 800, there is evidence that churches in Ireland and Northumbria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on 1 November. Alcuin of Northumbria, a member of Charlemagne's court, may then have introduced this 1 November date in the Frankish Empire. In 835, it became the official date in the Frankish Empire. Some suggest this was due to Celtic influence, while others suggest it was a Germanic idea, although it is claimed that both Germanic and Celtic-speaking peoples commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter. They may have seen it as the most fitting time to do so, as it is a time of 'dying' in nature. It is also suggested the change was made on the "practical grounds that Rome in summer could not accommodate the great number of pilgrims who flocked to it", and perhaps because of public health concerns over Roman Fever, which claimed a number of lives during Rome's sultry summers.
By the end of the 12th century, the celebration had become known as the holy days of obligation in Western Christianity and involved such traditions as ringing church bells for souls in purgatory. It was also "customary for criers dressed in black to parade the streets, ringing a bell of mournful sound and calling on all good Christians to remember the poor souls". The Allhallowtide custom of baking and sharing soul cakes for all christened souls, has been suggested as the origin of trick-or-treating. The custom dates back at least as far as the 15th century and was found in parts of England, Wales, Flanders, Bavaria and Austria. Groups of poor people, often children, would go door-to-door during Allhallowtide, collecting soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the dead, especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called "souling". Soul cakes were also offered for the souls themselves to eat, or the 'soulers' would act as their representatives. As with the Lenten tradition of hot cross buns, soul cakes were often marked with a cross, indicating they were baked as alms. Shakespeare mentions souling in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593). While souling, Christians would carry "lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips", which could have originally represented souls of the dead; jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits. On All Saints' and All Souls' Day during the 19th century, candles were lit in homes in Ireland, Flanders, Bavaria, and in Tyrol, where they were called "soul lights", that served "to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes". In many of these places, candles were also lit at graves on All Souls' Day. In Brittany, libations of milk were poured on the graves of kinfolk, or food would be left overnight on the dinner table for the returning souls; a custom also found in Tyrol and parts of Italy.
Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh linked the wearing of costumes to the belief in vengeful ghosts: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes". In the Middle Ages, churches in Europe that were too poor to display relics of martyred saints at Allhallowtide let parishioners dress up as saints instead. Some Christians observe this custom at Halloween today. Lesley Bannatyne believes this could have been a Christianization of an earlier pagan custom. Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed "that once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival" known as the danse macabre, which was often depicted in church decoration. Christopher Allmand and Rosamond McKitterick write in The New Cambridge Medieval History that the danse macabre urged Christians "not to forget the end of all earthly things". The danse macabre was sometimes enacted in European village pageants and court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and this may be the origin of Halloween costume parties.
In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation, as Protestants berated purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. State-sanctioned ceremonies associated with the intercession of saints and prayer for souls in purgatory were abolished during the Elizabethan reform, though All Hallow's Day remained in the English liturgical calendar to "commemorate saints as godly human beings". For some Nonconformist Protestants, the theology of All Hallows' Eve was redefined; "souls cannot be journeying from Purgatory on their way to Heaven, as Catholics frequently believe and assert. Instead, the so-called ghosts are thought to be in actuality evil spirits". Other Protestants believed in an intermediate state known as Hades (Bosom of Abraham). In some localities, Catholics and Protestants continued souling, candlelit processions, or ringing church bells for the dead; the Anglican church eventually suppressed this bell-ringing. Mark Donnelly, a professor of medieval archaeology, and historian Daniel Diehl write that "barns and homes were blessed to protect people and livestock from the effect of witches, who were believed to accompany the malignant spirits as they traveled the earth". After 1605, Hallowtide was eclipsed in England by Guy Fawkes Night (5 November), which appropriated some of its customs. In England, the ending of official ceremonies related to the intercession of saints led to the development of new, unofficial Hallowtide customs. In 18th–19th century rural Lancashire, Catholic families gathered on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve. One held a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while the rest knelt around him, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay. There was a similar custom in Hertfordshire, and the lighting of 'tindle' fires in Derbyshire. Some suggested these 'tindles' were originally lit to "guide the poor souls back to earth". In Scotland and Ireland, old Allhallowtide customs that were at odds with Reformed teaching were not suppressed as they "were important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities" and curbing them would have been difficult.
In parts of Italy until the 15th century, families left a meal out for the ghosts of relatives, before leaving for church services. In 19th-century Italy, churches staged "theatrical re-enactments of scenes from the lives of the saints" on All Hallow's Day, with "participants represented by realistic wax figures". In 1823, the graveyard of Holy Spirit Hospital in Rome presented a scene in which bodies of those who recently died were arrayed around a wax statue of an angel who pointed upward towards heaven. In the same country, "parish priests went house-to-house, asking for small gifts of food which they shared among themselves throughout that night". In Spain, they continue to bake special pastries called "bones of the holy" (Spanish: Huesos de Santo) and set them on graves. At cemeteries in Spain and France, as well as in Latin America, priests lead Christian processions and services during Allhallowtide, after which people keep an all night vigil. In 19th-century San Sebastián, there was a procession to the city cemetery at Allhallowtide, an event that drew beggars who "appeal[ed] to the tender recollectons of one's deceased relations and friends" for sympathy.
Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots. Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that "there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived". The origins of Halloween customs are typically linked to the Gaelic festival Samhain.
Samhain is one of the quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and has been celebrated on 31 October – 1 November in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. A kindred festival has been held by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany; a name meaning "first day of winter". For the Celts, the day ended and began at sunset; thus the festival begins the evening before 1 November by modern reckoning. Samhain is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature. The names have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century, and are still the Gaelic and Welsh names for Halloween.
Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the 'darker half' of the year. It was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into this world and were particularly active. Most scholars see them as "degraded versions of ancient gods [...] whose power remained active in the people's minds even after they had been officially replaced by later religious beliefs". They were both respected and feared, with individuals often invoking the protection of God when approaching their dwellings. At Samhain, the Aos Sí were appeased to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left outside for them. The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Places were set at the dinner table and by the fire to welcome them. The belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures. In 19th century Ireland, "candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating, drinking, and games would begin".
Throughout Ireland and Britain, especially in the Celtic-speaking regions, the household festivities included divination rituals and games intended to foretell one's future, especially regarding death and marriage. Apples and nuts were often used, and customs included apple bobbing, nut roasting, scrying or mirror-gazing, pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, dream interpretation, and others. Special bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Their flames, smoke, and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers. In some places, torches lit from the bonfire were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them. It is suggested the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun and held back the decay and darkness of winter. They were also used for divination and to ward off evil spirits. In Scotland, these bonfires and divination games were banned by the church elders in some parishes. In Wales, bonfires were also lit to "prevent the souls of the dead from falling to earth". Later, these bonfires "kept away the devil".
From at least the 16th century, the festival included mumming and guising in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales. This involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. It may have originally been a tradition whereby people impersonated the Aos Sí, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf, similar to 'souling'. Impersonating these beings, or wearing a disguise, was also believed to protect oneself from them. In parts of southern Ireland, the guisers included a hobby horse. A man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses – some of which had pagan overtones – in exchange for food. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune. In Scotland, youths went house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed. F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient festival included people in costume representing the spirits, and that faces were marked or blackened with ashes from the sacred bonfire. In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod. In the late 19th and early 20th century, young people in Glamorgan and Orkney cross-dressed.
Elsewhere in Europe, mumming was part of other festivals, but in the Celtic-speaking regions, it was "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers". From at least the 18th century, "imitating malignant spirits" led to playing pranks in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Wearing costumes and playing pranks at Halloween did not spread to England until the 20th century. Pranksters used hollowed-out turnips or mangel wurzels as lanterns, often carved with grotesque faces. By those who made them, the lanterns were variously said to represent the spirits, or used to ward off evil spirits. They were common in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century, as well as in Somerset (see Punkie Night). In the 20th century they spread to other parts of Britain and became generally known as jack-o'-lanterns.
Lesley Bannatyne and Cindy Ott write that Anglican colonists in the southern United States and Catholic colonists in Maryland "recognized All Hallow's Eve in their church calendars", although the Puritans of New England strongly opposed the holiday, along with other traditional celebrations of the established Church, including Christmas. Almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th century give no indication that Halloween was widely celebrated in North America.
It was not until after mass Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century that Halloween became a major holiday in America. Most American Halloween traditions were inherited from the Irish and Scots, though "In Cajun areas, a nocturnal Mass was said in cemeteries on Halloween night. Candles that had been blessed were placed on graves, and families sometimes spent the entire night at the graveside". Originally confined to these immigrant communities, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and was celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial, and religious backgrounds by the early 20th century. Then, through American influence, these Halloween traditions spread to many other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century, including to mainland Europe and some parts of the Far East.
Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. Jack-o'-lanterns are traditionally carried by guisers on All Hallows' Eve in order to frighten evil spirits. There is a popular Irish Christian folktale associated with the jack-o'-lantern, which in folklore is said to represent a "soul who has been denied entry into both heaven and hell":
On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters the Devil and tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest.
In Ireland and Scotland, the turnip has traditionally been carved during Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is both much softer and much larger, making it easier to carve than a turnip. The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837 and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.
The modern imagery of Halloween comes from many sources, including Christian eschatology, national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and Dracula) and classic horror films such as Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932). Imagery of the skull, a reference to Golgotha in the Christian tradition, serves as "a reminder of death and the transitory quality of human life" and is consequently found in memento mori and vanitas compositions; skulls have therefore been commonplace in Halloween, which touches on this theme. Traditionally, the back walls of churches are "decorated with a depiction of the Last Judgment, complete with graves opening and the dead rising, with a heaven filled with angels and a hell filled with devils", a motif that has permeated the observance of this triduum. One of the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne, who, in 1780, made note of pranks at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, "bogles" (ghosts), influencing Robert Burns' "Halloween" (1785). Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks, and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween. Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, and mythical monsters. Black cats, which have been long associated with witches, are also a common symbol of Halloween. Black, orange, and sometimes purple are Halloween's traditional colors.
Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" implies a "threat" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. The practice is said to have roots in the medieval practice of mumming, which is closely related to souling. John Pymm wrote that "many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church." These feast days included All Hallows' Eve, Christmas, Twelfth Night and Shrove Tuesday. Mumming practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, involved masked persons in fancy dress who "paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence".
In England, from the medieval period, up until the 1930s, people practiced the Christian custom of souling on Halloween, which involved groups of soulers, both Protestant and Catholic, going from parish to parish, begging the rich for soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the souls of the givers and their friends. In the Philippines, the practice of souling is called Pangangaluluwa and is practiced on All Hallow's Eve among children in rural areas. People drape themselves in white cloths to represent souls and then visit houses, where they sing in return for prayers and sweets.
In Scotland and Ireland, guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a secular Halloween custom. It is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money. In Ireland, the most popular phrase for kids to shout (until the 2000s) was "Help the Halloween Party". The practice of guising at Halloween in North America was first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.
American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America". In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries".
While the first reference to "guising" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920. The earliest known use in print of the term "trick or treat" appears in 1927, in the Blackie Herald, of Alberta, Canada.
The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but not trick-or-treating. Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice in North America until the 1930s, with the first US appearances of the term in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.
A popular variant of trick-or-treating, known as trunk-or-treating (or Halloween tailgating), occurs when "children are offered treats from the trunks of cars parked in a church parking lot", or sometimes, a school parking lot. In a trunk-or-treat event, the trunk (boot) of each automobile is decorated with a certain theme, such as those of children's literature, movies, scripture, and job roles. Trunk-or-treating has grown in popularity due to its perception as being more safe than going door to door, a point that resonates well with parents, as well as the fact that it "solves the rural conundrum in which homes [are] built a half-mile apart".
Halloween costumes were traditionally modeled after figures such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, scary looking witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.
Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Scotland and Ireland at Halloween by the late 19th century. A Scottish term, the tradition is called "guising" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children. In Ireland and Scotland, the masks are known as 'false faces', a term recorded in Ayr, Scotland in 1890 by a Scot describing guisers: "I had mind it was Halloween . . . the wee callans (boys) were at it already, rinning aboot wi’ their fause-faces (false faces) on and their bits o’ turnip lanthrons (lanterns) in their haun (hand)". Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children, and when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in Canada and the US in the 1920s and 1930s.
Eddie J. Smith, in his book Halloween, Hallowed is Thy Name, offers a religious perspective to the wearing of costumes on All Hallows' Eve, suggesting that by dressing up as creatures "who at one time caused us to fear and tremble", people are able to poke fun at Satan "whose kingdom has been plundered by our Saviour". Images of skeletons and the dead are traditional decorations used as memento mori.
"Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" is a fundraising program to support UNICEF, a United Nations Programme that provides humanitarian aid to children in developing countries. Started as a local event in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood in 1950 and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools (or in modern times, corporate sponsors like Hallmark, at their licensed stores) to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small-change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $118 million for UNICEF since its inception. In Canada, in 2006, UNICEF decided to discontinue their Halloween collection boxes, citing safety and administrative concerns; after consultation with schools, they instead redesigned the program.
The yearly New York's Village Halloween Parade was begun in 1974; it is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, two million spectators, and a worldwide television audience.
Since the late 2010s, ethnic stereotypes as costumes have increasingly come under scrutiny in the United States.
According to a 2018 report from the National Retail Federation, 30 million Americans will spend an estimated $480 million on Halloween costumes for their pets in 2018. This is up from an estimated $200 million in 2010. The most popular costumes for pets are the pumpkin, followed by the hot dog, and the bumblebee in third place.
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween. Some of these games originated as divination rituals or ways of foretelling one's future, especially regarding death, marriage and children. During the Middle Ages, these rituals were done by a "rare few" in rural communities as they were considered to be "deadly serious" practices. In recent centuries, these divination games have been "a common feature of the household festivities" in Ireland and Britain. They often involve apples and hazelnuts. In Celtic mythology, apples were strongly associated with the Otherworld and immortality, while hazelnuts were associated with divine wisdom. Some also suggest that they derive from Roman practices in celebration of Pomona.
The following activities were a common feature of Halloween in Ireland and Britain during the 17th–20th centuries. Some have become more widespread and continue to be popular today. One common game is apple bobbing or dunking (which may be called "dooking" in Scotland) in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use only their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drive the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably leads to a sticky face. Another once-popular game involves hanging a small wooden rod from the ceiling at head height, with a lit candle on one end and an apple hanging from the other. The rod is spun round and everyone takes turns to try to catch the apple with their teeth.
Several of the traditional activities from Ireland and Britain involve foretelling one's future partner or spouse. An apple would be peeled in one long strip, then the peel tossed over the shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name. Two hazelnuts would be roasted near a fire; one named for the person roasting them and the other for the person they desire. If the nuts jump away from the heat, it is a bad sign, but if the nuts roast quietly it foretells a good match. A salty oatmeal bannock would be baked; the person would eat it in three bites and then go to bed in silence without anything to drink. This is said to result in a dream in which their future spouse offers them a drink to quench their thirst. Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Another popular Irish game was known as púicíní ("blindfolds"); a person would be blindfolded and then would choose between several saucers. The item in the saucer would provide a hint as to their future: a ring would mean that they would marry soon; clay, that they would die soon, perhaps within the year; water, that they would emigrate; rosary beads, that they would take Holy Orders (become a nun, priest, monk, etc.); a coin, that they would become rich; a bean, that they would be poor. The game features prominently in the James Joyce short story "Clay" (1914).
In Ireland and Scotland, items would be hidden in food – usually a cake, barmbrack, cranachan, champ or colcannon – and portions of it served out at random. A person's future would be foretold by the item they happened to find; for example, a ring meant marriage and a coin meant wealth.
Up until the 19th century, the Halloween bonfires were also used for divination in parts of Scotland, Wales and Brittany. When the fire died down, a ring of stones would be laid in the ashes, one for each person. In the morning, if any stone was mislaid it was said that the person it represented would not live out the year. In Mexico, children create altars to invite the spirits of deceased children to return (angelitos).
Telling ghost stories, listening to Halloween-themed songs and watching horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of television series and Halloween-themed specials (with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before Halloween, while new horror films are often released before Halloween to take advantage of the holiday.
Haunted attractions are entertainment venues designed to thrill and scare patrons. Most attractions are seasonal Halloween businesses that may include haunted houses, corn mazes, and hayrides, and the level of sophistication of the effects has risen as the industry has grown.
The first recorded purpose-built haunted attraction was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in 1915 in Liphook, England. This attraction actually most closely resembles a carnival fun house, powered by steam. The House still exists, in the Hollycombe Steam Collection.
It was during the 1930s, about the same time as trick-or-treating, that Halloween-themed haunted houses first began to appear in America. It was in the late 1950s that haunted houses as a major attraction began to appear, focusing first on California. Sponsored by the Children's Health Home Junior Auxiliary, the San Mateo Haunted House opened in 1957. The San Bernardino Assistance League Haunted House opened in 1958. Home haunts began appearing across the country during 1962 and 1963. In 1964, the San Manteo Haunted House opened, as well as the Children's Museum Haunted House in Indianapolis.
The haunted house as an American cultural icon can be attributed to the opening of The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland on 12 August 1969. Knott's Berry Farm began hosting its own Halloween night attraction, Knott's Scary Farm, which opened in 1973. Evangelical Christians adopted a form of these attractions by opening one of the first "hell houses" in 1972.
The first Halloween haunted house run by a nonprofit organization was produced in 1970 by the Sycamore-Deer Park Jaycees in Clifton, Ohio. It was cosponsored by WSAI, an AM radio station broadcasting out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was last produced in 1982. Other Jaycees followed suit with their own versions after the success of the Ohio house. The March of Dimes copyrighted a "Mini haunted house for the March of Dimes" in 1976 and began fundraising through their local chapters by conducting haunted houses soon after. Although they apparently quit supporting this type of event nationally sometime in the 1980s, some March of Dimes haunted houses have persisted until today.
On the evening of 11 May 1984, in Jackson Township, New Jersey, the Haunted Castle at Six Flags Great Adventure caught fire. As a result of the fire, eight teenagers perished. The backlash to the tragedy was a tightening of regulations relating to safety, building codes and the frequency of inspections of attractions nationwide. The smaller venues, especially the nonprofit attractions, were unable to compete financially, and the better funded commercial enterprises filled the vacuum. Facilities that were once able to avoid regulation because they were considered to be temporary installations now had to adhere to the stricter codes required of permanent attractions.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, theme parks became a notable figure in the Halloween business. Six Flags Fright Fest began in 1986 and Universal Studios Florida began Halloween Horror Nights in 1991. Knott's Scary Farm experienced a surge in attendance in the 1990s as a result of America's obsession with Halloween as a cultural event. Theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday. Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Studios Japan both participate, while Disney now mounts Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as in the United States. The theme park haunts are by far the largest, both in scale and attendance.
On All Hallows' Eve, many Western Christian denominations encourage abstinence from meat, giving rise to a variety of vegetarian foods associated with this day.
Because in the Northern Hemisphere Halloween comes in the wake of the yearly apple harvest, candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America), caramel apples or taffy apples are common Halloween treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.
At one time, candy apples were commonly given to trick-or-treating children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples in the United States. While there is evidence of such incidents, relative to the degree of reporting of such cases, actual cases involving malicious acts are extremely rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.
One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays, the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish: báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a plain ring, a coin, and other charms are placed before baking. It is considered fortunate to be the lucky one who finds it. It has also been said that those who get a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of king cake at the festival of Epiphany. Halloween-themed foods are also produced by companies in the lead up to the night, for example Cadbury releasing Goo Heads (similar to Creme Eggs) in spooky wrapping.
List of foods associated with Halloween:
On Hallowe'en (All Hallows' Eve), in Poland, believers were once taught to pray out loud as they walk through the forests in order that the souls of the dead might find comfort; in Spain, Christian priests in tiny villages toll their church bells in order to remind their congregants to remember the dead on All Hallows' Eve. In Ireland, and among immigrants in Canada, a custom includes the Christian practice of abstinence, keeping All Hallows' Eve as a meat-free day and serving pancakes or colcannon instead.
The Christian Church traditionally observed Hallowe'en through a vigil. Worshippers prepared themselves for feasting on the following All Saints' Day with prayers and fasting. This church service is known as the Vigil of All Hallows or the Vigil of All Saints; an initiative known as Night of Light seeks to further spread the Vigil of All Hallows throughout Christendom. After the service, "suitable festivities and entertainments" often follow, as well as a visit to the graveyard or cemetery, where flowers and candles are often placed in preparation for All Hallows' Day. In England, Light Parties are organized by churches after worship services on Halloween with the focus on Jesus as the Light of the World. In Finland, because so many people visit the cemeteries on All Hallows' Eve to light votive candles there, they "are known as valomeri, or seas of light".
Today, Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the Anglican Church, some dioceses have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions associated with All Hallow's Eve. Some of these practices include praying, fasting and attending worship services.
O LORD our God, increase, we pray thee, and multiply upon us the gifts of thy grace: that we, who do prevent the glorious festival of all thy Saints, may of thee be enabled joyfully to follow them in all virtuous and godly living. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. —Collect of the Vigil of All Saints, The Anglican Breviary
Other Protestant Christians also celebrate All Hallows' Eve as Reformation Day, a day to remember the Protestant Reformation, alongside All Hallow's Eve or independently from it. This is because Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-five Theses to All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on All Hallows' Eve. Often, "Harvest Festivals" or "Reformation Festivals" are held on All Hallows' Eve, in which children dress up as Bible characters or Reformers. In addition to distributing candy to children who are trick-or-treating on Hallowe'en, many Christians also provide gospel tracts to them. One organization, the American Tract Society, stated that around 3 million gospel tracts are ordered from them alone for Hallowe'en celebrations. Others order Halloween-themed Scripture Candy to pass out to children on this day.
Some Christians feel concerned about the modern celebration of Halloween because they feel it trivializes – or celebrates – paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs. Father Gabriele Amorth, an exorcist in Rome, has said, "if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that." In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a "Saint Fest" on Halloween. Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage. Christian minister Sam Portaro wrote that Halloween is about using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death".
In the Roman Catholic Church, Halloween's Christian connection is acknowledged, and Halloween celebrations are common in many Catholic parochial schools, such as in the United States, while schools throughout Ireland also close for the Halloween break. Many fundamentalist and evangelical churches use "Hell houses" and comic-style tracts in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for evangelism. Others consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith due to its putative origins in the Festival of the Dead celebration. Indeed, even though Eastern Orthodox Christians observe All Hallows' Day on the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Eastern Orthodox Church recommends the observance of Vespers or a Paraklesis on the Western observance of All Hallows' Eve, out of the pastoral need to provide an alternative to popular celebrations.
According to Alfred J. Kolatch in the Second Jewish Book of Why, in Judaism, Halloween is not permitted by Jewish Halakha because it violates Leviticus 18:3, which forbids Jews from partaking in gentile customs. Many Jews observe Yizkor communally four times a year, which is vaguely similar to the observance of Allhallowtide in Christianity, in the sense that prayers are said for both "martyrs and for one's own family". Nevertheless, many American Jews celebrate Halloween, disconnected from its Christian origins. Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser has said that "There is no religious reason why contemporary Jews should not celebrate Halloween" while Orthodox Rabbi Michael Broyde has argued against Jews' observing the holiday. Purim has sometimes been compared to Halloween, in part due to some observants wearing costumes, especially of Biblical figures described in the Purim narrative.
Sheikh Idris Palmer, author of A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam, has ruled that Muslims should not participate in Halloween, stating that "participation in Halloween is worse than participation in Christmas, Easter, ... it is more sinful than congratulating the Christians for their prostration to the crucifix". It has also been ruled to be haram by the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia because of its alleged pagan roots stating "Halloween is celebrated using a humorous theme mixed with horror to entertain and resist the spirit of death that influence humans". Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah disagrees provided the celebration is not referred to as an 'eid' and that behaviour remains in line with Islamic principles.
Hindus remember the dead during the festival of Pitru Paksha, during which Hindus pay homage to and perform a ceremony "to keep the souls of their ancestors at rest". It is celebrated in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada, usually in mid-September. The celebration of the Hindu festival Diwali sometimes conflicts with the date of Halloween; but some Hindus choose to participate in the popular customs of Halloween. Other Hindus, such as Soumya Dasgupta, have opposed the celebration on the grounds that Western holidays like Halloween have "begun to adversely affect our indigenous festivals".
There is no consistent rule or view on Halloween amongst those who describe themselves as Neopagans or Wiccans. Some Neopagans do not observe Halloween, but instead observe Samhain on 1 November, some neopagans do enjoy Halloween festivities, stating that one can observe both "the solemnity of Samhain in addition to the fun of Halloween". Some neopagans are opposed to the celebration of Hallowe'en, stating that it "trivializes Samhain", and "avoid Halloween, because of the interruptions from trick or treaters". The Manitoban writes that "Wiccans don't officially celebrate Halloween, despite the fact that 31 Oct. will still have a star beside it in any good Wiccan's day planner. Starting at sundown, Wiccans celebrate a holiday known as Samhain. Samhain actually comes from old Celtic traditions and is not exclusive to Neopagan religions like Wicca. While the traditions of this holiday originate in Celtic countries, modern day Wiccans don't try to historically replicate Samhain celebrations. Some traditional Samhain rituals are still practised, but at its core, the period is treated as a time to celebrate darkness and the dead – a possible reason why Samhain can be confused with Halloween celebrations."
The traditions and importance of Halloween vary greatly among countries that observe it. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include children dressing up in costume going "guising", holding parties, while other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays. In Brittany children would play practical jokes by setting candles inside skulls in graveyards to frighten visitors. Mass transatlantic immigration in the 19th century popularized Halloween in North America, and celebration in the United States and Canada has had a significant impact on how the event is observed in other nations. This larger North American influence, particularly in iconic and commercial elements, has extended to places such as Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, (most) continental Europe, Finland, Japan, and other parts of East Asia.
According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to spend $12.2 billion on Halloween in 2023, up from $10.6 billion in 2022. Of this amount, $3.9 billion is projected to be spent on home decorations, up from $2.7 billion in 2019. The popularity of Halloween decorations has been growing in recent years, with retailers offering a wider range of increasingly elaborate and oversized decorations. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It is at the beginning of the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. In popular culture, the day has become a celebration of horror, being associated with the macabre and supernatural.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots. Some go further and suggest that Samhain may have been Christianized as All Hallow's Day, along with its eve, by the early Church. Other academics believe Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, being the vigil of All Hallow's Day. Celebrated in Ireland and Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants took many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century, and then through American influence various Halloween customs spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Popular Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related guising and souling), attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films. Some people practice the Christian observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, although it is a secular celebration for others. Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The word Halloween or Hallowe'en (\"Saints' evening\") is of Christian origin; a term equivalent to \"All Hallows Eve\" is attested in Old English. The word hallowe[']en comes from the Scottish form of All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day): even is the Scots term for \"eve\" or \"evening\", and is contracted to e'en or een; (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en became Hallowe'en.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Halloween is thought to have influences from Christian beliefs and practices. The English word 'Halloween' comes from \"All Hallows' Eve\", being the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day (All Saints' Day) on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November. Since the time of the early Church, major feasts in Christianity (such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost) had vigils that began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows'. These three days are collectively called Allhallowtide and are a time when Western Christians honour all saints and pray for recently departed souls who have yet to reach Heaven. Commemorations of all saints and martyrs were held by several churches on various dates, mostly in springtime. In 4th-century Roman Edessa it was held on 13 May, and on 13 May 609, Pope Boniface IV re-dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to \"St Mary and all martyrs\". This was the date of Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III (731–741) founded an oratory in St Peter's for the relics \"of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors\". Some sources say it was dedicated on 1 November, while others say it was on Palm Sunday in April 732. By 800, there is evidence that churches in Ireland and Northumbria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on 1 November. Alcuin of Northumbria, a member of Charlemagne's court, may then have introduced this 1 November date in the Frankish Empire. In 835, it became the official date in the Frankish Empire. Some suggest this was due to Celtic influence, while others suggest it was a Germanic idea, although it is claimed that both Germanic and Celtic-speaking peoples commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter. They may have seen it as the most fitting time to do so, as it is a time of 'dying' in nature. It is also suggested the change was made on the \"practical grounds that Rome in summer could not accommodate the great number of pilgrims who flocked to it\", and perhaps because of public health concerns over Roman Fever, which claimed a number of lives during Rome's sultry summers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "By the end of the 12th century, the celebration had become known as the holy days of obligation in Western Christianity and involved such traditions as ringing church bells for souls in purgatory. It was also \"customary for criers dressed in black to parade the streets, ringing a bell of mournful sound and calling on all good Christians to remember the poor souls\". The Allhallowtide custom of baking and sharing soul cakes for all christened souls, has been suggested as the origin of trick-or-treating. The custom dates back at least as far as the 15th century and was found in parts of England, Wales, Flanders, Bavaria and Austria. Groups of poor people, often children, would go door-to-door during Allhallowtide, collecting soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the dead, especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called \"souling\". Soul cakes were also offered for the souls themselves to eat, or the 'soulers' would act as their representatives. As with the Lenten tradition of hot cross buns, soul cakes were often marked with a cross, indicating they were baked as alms. Shakespeare mentions souling in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593). While souling, Christians would carry \"lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips\", which could have originally represented souls of the dead; jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits. On All Saints' and All Souls' Day during the 19th century, candles were lit in homes in Ireland, Flanders, Bavaria, and in Tyrol, where they were called \"soul lights\", that served \"to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes\". In many of these places, candles were also lit at graves on All Souls' Day. In Brittany, libations of milk were poured on the graves of kinfolk, or food would be left overnight on the dinner table for the returning souls; a custom also found in Tyrol and parts of Italy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh linked the wearing of costumes to the belief in vengeful ghosts: \"It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes\". In the Middle Ages, churches in Europe that were too poor to display relics of martyred saints at Allhallowtide let parishioners dress up as saints instead. Some Christians observe this custom at Halloween today. Lesley Bannatyne believes this could have been a Christianization of an earlier pagan custom. Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed \"that once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival\" known as the danse macabre, which was often depicted in church decoration. Christopher Allmand and Rosamond McKitterick write in The New Cambridge Medieval History that the danse macabre urged Christians \"not to forget the end of all earthly things\". The danse macabre was sometimes enacted in European village pageants and court masques, with people \"dressing up as corpses from various strata of society\", and this may be the origin of Halloween costume parties.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation, as Protestants berated purgatory as a \"popish\" doctrine incompatible with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. State-sanctioned ceremonies associated with the intercession of saints and prayer for souls in purgatory were abolished during the Elizabethan reform, though All Hallow's Day remained in the English liturgical calendar to \"commemorate saints as godly human beings\". For some Nonconformist Protestants, the theology of All Hallows' Eve was redefined; \"souls cannot be journeying from Purgatory on their way to Heaven, as Catholics frequently believe and assert. Instead, the so-called ghosts are thought to be in actuality evil spirits\". Other Protestants believed in an intermediate state known as Hades (Bosom of Abraham). In some localities, Catholics and Protestants continued souling, candlelit processions, or ringing church bells for the dead; the Anglican church eventually suppressed this bell-ringing. Mark Donnelly, a professor of medieval archaeology, and historian Daniel Diehl write that \"barns and homes were blessed to protect people and livestock from the effect of witches, who were believed to accompany the malignant spirits as they traveled the earth\". After 1605, Hallowtide was eclipsed in England by Guy Fawkes Night (5 November), which appropriated some of its customs. In England, the ending of official ceremonies related to the intercession of saints led to the development of new, unofficial Hallowtide customs. In 18th–19th century rural Lancashire, Catholic families gathered on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve. One held a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while the rest knelt around him, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay. There was a similar custom in Hertfordshire, and the lighting of 'tindle' fires in Derbyshire. Some suggested these 'tindles' were originally lit to \"guide the poor souls back to earth\". In Scotland and Ireland, old Allhallowtide customs that were at odds with Reformed teaching were not suppressed as they \"were important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities\" and curbing them would have been difficult.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In parts of Italy until the 15th century, families left a meal out for the ghosts of relatives, before leaving for church services. In 19th-century Italy, churches staged \"theatrical re-enactments of scenes from the lives of the saints\" on All Hallow's Day, with \"participants represented by realistic wax figures\". In 1823, the graveyard of Holy Spirit Hospital in Rome presented a scene in which bodies of those who recently died were arrayed around a wax statue of an angel who pointed upward towards heaven. In the same country, \"parish priests went house-to-house, asking for small gifts of food which they shared among themselves throughout that night\". In Spain, they continue to bake special pastries called \"bones of the holy\" (Spanish: Huesos de Santo) and set them on graves. At cemeteries in Spain and France, as well as in Latin America, priests lead Christian processions and services during Allhallowtide, after which people keep an all night vigil. In 19th-century San Sebastián, there was a procession to the city cemetery at Allhallowtide, an event that drew beggars who \"appeal[ed] to the tender recollectons of one's deceased relations and friends\" for sympathy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots. Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that \"there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived\". The origins of Halloween customs are typically linked to the Gaelic festival Samhain.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Samhain is one of the quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and has been celebrated on 31 October – 1 November in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. A kindred festival has been held by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany; a name meaning \"first day of winter\". For the Celts, the day ended and began at sunset; thus the festival begins the evening before 1 November by modern reckoning. Samhain is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature. The names have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century, and are still the Gaelic and Welsh names for Halloween.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the 'darker half' of the year. It was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into this world and were particularly active. Most scholars see them as \"degraded versions of ancient gods [...] whose power remained active in the people's minds even after they had been officially replaced by later religious beliefs\". They were both respected and feared, with individuals often invoking the protection of God when approaching their dwellings. At Samhain, the Aos Sí were appeased to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left outside for them. The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Places were set at the dinner table and by the fire to welcome them. The belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures. In 19th century Ireland, \"candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating, drinking, and games would begin\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Throughout Ireland and Britain, especially in the Celtic-speaking regions, the household festivities included divination rituals and games intended to foretell one's future, especially regarding death and marriage. Apples and nuts were often used, and customs included apple bobbing, nut roasting, scrying or mirror-gazing, pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, dream interpretation, and others. Special bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Their flames, smoke, and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers. In some places, torches lit from the bonfire were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them. It is suggested the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun and held back the decay and darkness of winter. They were also used for divination and to ward off evil spirits. In Scotland, these bonfires and divination games were banned by the church elders in some parishes. In Wales, bonfires were also lit to \"prevent the souls of the dead from falling to earth\". Later, these bonfires \"kept away the devil\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "From at least the 16th century, the festival included mumming and guising in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales. This involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), usually reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. It may have originally been a tradition whereby people impersonated the Aos Sí, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf, similar to 'souling'. Impersonating these beings, or wearing a disguise, was also believed to protect oneself from them. In parts of southern Ireland, the guisers included a hobby horse. A man dressed as a Láir Bhán (white mare) led youths house-to-house reciting verses – some of which had pagan overtones – in exchange for food. If the household donated food it could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'; not doing so would bring misfortune. In Scotland, youths went house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces, often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed. F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient festival included people in costume representing the spirits, and that faces were marked or blackened with ashes from the sacred bonfire. In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod. In the late 19th and early 20th century, young people in Glamorgan and Orkney cross-dressed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Elsewhere in Europe, mumming was part of other festivals, but in the Celtic-speaking regions, it was \"particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers\". From at least the 18th century, \"imitating malignant spirits\" led to playing pranks in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Wearing costumes and playing pranks at Halloween did not spread to England until the 20th century. Pranksters used hollowed-out turnips or mangel wurzels as lanterns, often carved with grotesque faces. By those who made them, the lanterns were variously said to represent the spirits, or used to ward off evil spirits. They were common in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century, as well as in Somerset (see Punkie Night). In the 20th century they spread to other parts of Britain and became generally known as jack-o'-lanterns.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Lesley Bannatyne and Cindy Ott write that Anglican colonists in the southern United States and Catholic colonists in Maryland \"recognized All Hallow's Eve in their church calendars\", although the Puritans of New England strongly opposed the holiday, along with other traditional celebrations of the established Church, including Christmas. Almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th century give no indication that Halloween was widely celebrated in North America.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "It was not until after mass Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century that Halloween became a major holiday in America. Most American Halloween traditions were inherited from the Irish and Scots, though \"In Cajun areas, a nocturnal Mass was said in cemeteries on Halloween night. Candles that had been blessed were placed on graves, and families sometimes spent the entire night at the graveside\". Originally confined to these immigrant communities, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and was celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial, and religious backgrounds by the early 20th century. Then, through American influence, these Halloween traditions spread to many other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century, including to mainland Europe and some parts of the Far East.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. Jack-o'-lanterns are traditionally carried by guisers on All Hallows' Eve in order to frighten evil spirits. There is a popular Irish Christian folktale associated with the jack-o'-lantern, which in folklore is said to represent a \"soul who has been denied entry into both heaven and hell\":",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters the Devil and tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In Ireland and Scotland, the turnip has traditionally been carved during Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is both much softer and much larger, making it easier to carve than a turnip. The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837 and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The modern imagery of Halloween comes from many sources, including Christian eschatology, national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and Dracula) and classic horror films such as Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932). Imagery of the skull, a reference to Golgotha in the Christian tradition, serves as \"a reminder of death and the transitory quality of human life\" and is consequently found in memento mori and vanitas compositions; skulls have therefore been commonplace in Halloween, which touches on this theme. Traditionally, the back walls of churches are \"decorated with a depiction of the Last Judgment, complete with graves opening and the dead rising, with a heaven filled with angels and a hell filled with devils\", a motif that has permeated the observance of this triduum. One of the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne, who, in 1780, made note of pranks at Halloween; \"What fearfu' pranks ensue!\", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, \"bogles\" (ghosts), influencing Robert Burns' \"Halloween\" (1785). Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks, and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween. Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, and mythical monsters. Black cats, which have been long associated with witches, are also a common symbol of Halloween. Black, orange, and sometimes purple are Halloween's traditional colors.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, \"Trick or treat?\" The word \"trick\" implies a \"threat\" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. The practice is said to have roots in the medieval practice of mumming, which is closely related to souling. John Pymm wrote that \"many of the feast days associated with the presentation of mumming plays were celebrated by the Christian Church.\" These feast days included All Hallows' Eve, Christmas, Twelfth Night and Shrove Tuesday. Mumming practiced in Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, involved masked persons in fancy dress who \"paraded the streets and entered houses to dance or play dice in silence\".",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In England, from the medieval period, up until the 1930s, people practiced the Christian custom of souling on Halloween, which involved groups of soulers, both Protestant and Catholic, going from parish to parish, begging the rich for soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the souls of the givers and their friends. In the Philippines, the practice of souling is called Pangangaluluwa and is practiced on All Hallow's Eve among children in rural areas. People drape themselves in white cloths to represent souls and then visit houses, where they sing in return for prayers and sweets.",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In Scotland and Ireland, guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a secular Halloween custom. It is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit, and money. In Ireland, the most popular phrase for kids to shout (until the 2000s) was \"Help the Halloween Party\". The practice of guising at Halloween in North America was first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, reported children going \"guising\" around the neighborhood.",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book-length history of Halloween in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter \"Hallowe'en in America\". In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; \"Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries\".",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "While the first reference to \"guising\" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920. The earliest known use in print of the term \"trick or treat\" appears in 1927, in the Blackie Herald, of Alberta, Canada.",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but not trick-or-treating. Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice in North America until the 1930s, with the first US appearances of the term in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A popular variant of trick-or-treating, known as trunk-or-treating (or Halloween tailgating), occurs when \"children are offered treats from the trunks of cars parked in a church parking lot\", or sometimes, a school parking lot. In a trunk-or-treat event, the trunk (boot) of each automobile is decorated with a certain theme, such as those of children's literature, movies, scripture, and job roles. Trunk-or-treating has grown in popularity due to its perception as being more safe than going door to door, a point that resonates well with parents, as well as the fact that it \"solves the rural conundrum in which homes [are] built a half-mile apart\".",
"title": "Trick-or-treating and guising"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Halloween costumes were traditionally modeled after figures such as vampires, ghosts, skeletons, scary looking witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Dressing up in costumes and going \"guising\" was prevalent in Scotland and Ireland at Halloween by the late 19th century. A Scottish term, the tradition is called \"guising\" because of the disguises or costumes worn by the children. In Ireland and Scotland, the masks are known as 'false faces', a term recorded in Ayr, Scotland in 1890 by a Scot describing guisers: \"I had mind it was Halloween . . . the wee callans (boys) were at it already, rinning aboot wi’ their fause-faces (false faces) on and their bits o’ turnip lanthrons (lanterns) in their haun (hand)\". Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children, and when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in Canada and the US in the 1920s and 1930s.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Eddie J. Smith, in his book Halloween, Hallowed is Thy Name, offers a religious perspective to the wearing of costumes on All Hallows' Eve, suggesting that by dressing up as creatures \"who at one time caused us to fear and tremble\", people are able to poke fun at Satan \"whose kingdom has been plundered by our Saviour\". Images of skeletons and the dead are traditional decorations used as memento mori.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "\"Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF\" is a fundraising program to support UNICEF, a United Nations Programme that provides humanitarian aid to children in developing countries. Started as a local event in a Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood in 1950 and expanded nationally in 1952, the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools (or in modern times, corporate sponsors like Hallmark, at their licensed stores) to trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small-change donations from the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected more than $118 million for UNICEF since its inception. In Canada, in 2006, UNICEF decided to discontinue their Halloween collection boxes, citing safety and administrative concerns; after consultation with schools, they instead redesigned the program.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The yearly New York's Village Halloween Parade was begun in 1974; it is the world's largest Halloween parade and America's only major nighttime parade, attracting more than 60,000 costumed participants, two million spectators, and a worldwide television audience.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Since the late 2010s, ethnic stereotypes as costumes have increasingly come under scrutiny in the United States.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "According to a 2018 report from the National Retail Federation, 30 million Americans will spend an estimated $480 million on Halloween costumes for their pets in 2018. This is up from an estimated $200 million in 2010. The most popular costumes for pets are the pumpkin, followed by the hot dog, and the bumblebee in third place.",
"title": "Costumes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween. Some of these games originated as divination rituals or ways of foretelling one's future, especially regarding death, marriage and children. During the Middle Ages, these rituals were done by a \"rare few\" in rural communities as they were considered to be \"deadly serious\" practices. In recent centuries, these divination games have been \"a common feature of the household festivities\" in Ireland and Britain. They often involve apples and hazelnuts. In Celtic mythology, apples were strongly associated with the Otherworld and immortality, while hazelnuts were associated with divine wisdom. Some also suggest that they derive from Roman practices in celebration of Pomona.",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The following activities were a common feature of Halloween in Ireland and Britain during the 17th–20th centuries. Some have become more widespread and continue to be popular today. One common game is apple bobbing or dunking (which may be called \"dooking\" in Scotland) in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water and the participants must use only their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. A variant of dunking involves kneeling on a chair, holding a fork between the teeth and trying to drive the fork into an apple. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity that inevitably leads to a sticky face. Another once-popular game involves hanging a small wooden rod from the ceiling at head height, with a lit candle on one end and an apple hanging from the other. The rod is spun round and everyone takes turns to try to catch the apple with their teeth.",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Several of the traditional activities from Ireland and Britain involve foretelling one's future partner or spouse. An apple would be peeled in one long strip, then the peel tossed over the shoulder. The peel is believed to land in the shape of the first letter of the future spouse's name. Two hazelnuts would be roasted near a fire; one named for the person roasting them and the other for the person they desire. If the nuts jump away from the heat, it is a bad sign, but if the nuts roast quietly it foretells a good match. A salty oatmeal bannock would be baked; the person would eat it in three bites and then go to bed in silence without anything to drink. This is said to result in a dream in which their future spouse offers them a drink to quench their thirst. Unmarried women were told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late 19th century and early 20th century.",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Another popular Irish game was known as púicíní (\"blindfolds\"); a person would be blindfolded and then would choose between several saucers. The item in the saucer would provide a hint as to their future: a ring would mean that they would marry soon; clay, that they would die soon, perhaps within the year; water, that they would emigrate; rosary beads, that they would take Holy Orders (become a nun, priest, monk, etc.); a coin, that they would become rich; a bean, that they would be poor. The game features prominently in the James Joyce short story \"Clay\" (1914).",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In Ireland and Scotland, items would be hidden in food – usually a cake, barmbrack, cranachan, champ or colcannon – and portions of it served out at random. A person's future would be foretold by the item they happened to find; for example, a ring meant marriage and a coin meant wealth.",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Up until the 19th century, the Halloween bonfires were also used for divination in parts of Scotland, Wales and Brittany. When the fire died down, a ring of stones would be laid in the ashes, one for each person. In the morning, if any stone was mislaid it was said that the person it represented would not live out the year. In Mexico, children create altars to invite the spirits of deceased children to return (angelitos).",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Telling ghost stories, listening to Halloween-themed songs and watching horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties. Episodes of television series and Halloween-themed specials (with the specials usually aimed at children) are commonly aired on or before Halloween, while new horror films are often released before Halloween to take advantage of the holiday.",
"title": "Games and other activities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Haunted attractions are entertainment venues designed to thrill and scare patrons. Most attractions are seasonal Halloween businesses that may include haunted houses, corn mazes, and hayrides, and the level of sophistication of the effects has risen as the industry has grown.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The first recorded purpose-built haunted attraction was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in 1915 in Liphook, England. This attraction actually most closely resembles a carnival fun house, powered by steam. The House still exists, in the Hollycombe Steam Collection.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "It was during the 1930s, about the same time as trick-or-treating, that Halloween-themed haunted houses first began to appear in America. It was in the late 1950s that haunted houses as a major attraction began to appear, focusing first on California. Sponsored by the Children's Health Home Junior Auxiliary, the San Mateo Haunted House opened in 1957. The San Bernardino Assistance League Haunted House opened in 1958. Home haunts began appearing across the country during 1962 and 1963. In 1964, the San Manteo Haunted House opened, as well as the Children's Museum Haunted House in Indianapolis.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The haunted house as an American cultural icon can be attributed to the opening of The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland on 12 August 1969. Knott's Berry Farm began hosting its own Halloween night attraction, Knott's Scary Farm, which opened in 1973. Evangelical Christians adopted a form of these attractions by opening one of the first \"hell houses\" in 1972.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The first Halloween haunted house run by a nonprofit organization was produced in 1970 by the Sycamore-Deer Park Jaycees in Clifton, Ohio. It was cosponsored by WSAI, an AM radio station broadcasting out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was last produced in 1982. Other Jaycees followed suit with their own versions after the success of the Ohio house. The March of Dimes copyrighted a \"Mini haunted house for the March of Dimes\" in 1976 and began fundraising through their local chapters by conducting haunted houses soon after. Although they apparently quit supporting this type of event nationally sometime in the 1980s, some March of Dimes haunted houses have persisted until today.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "On the evening of 11 May 1984, in Jackson Township, New Jersey, the Haunted Castle at Six Flags Great Adventure caught fire. As a result of the fire, eight teenagers perished. The backlash to the tragedy was a tightening of regulations relating to safety, building codes and the frequency of inspections of attractions nationwide. The smaller venues, especially the nonprofit attractions, were unable to compete financially, and the better funded commercial enterprises filled the vacuum. Facilities that were once able to avoid regulation because they were considered to be temporary installations now had to adhere to the stricter codes required of permanent attractions.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, theme parks became a notable figure in the Halloween business. Six Flags Fright Fest began in 1986 and Universal Studios Florida began Halloween Horror Nights in 1991. Knott's Scary Farm experienced a surge in attendance in the 1990s as a result of America's obsession with Halloween as a cultural event. Theme parks have played a major role in globalizing the holiday. Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Studios Japan both participate, while Disney now mounts Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party events at its parks in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as in the United States. The theme park haunts are by far the largest, both in scale and attendance.",
"title": "Haunted attractions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "On All Hallows' Eve, many Western Christian denominations encourage abstinence from meat, giving rise to a variety of vegetarian foods associated with this day.",
"title": "Food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Because in the Northern Hemisphere Halloween comes in the wake of the yearly apple harvest, candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America), caramel apples or taffy apples are common Halloween treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.",
"title": "Food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "At one time, candy apples were commonly given to trick-or-treating children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples in the United States. While there is evidence of such incidents, relative to the degree of reporting of such cases, actual cases involving malicious acts are extremely rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.",
"title": "Food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays, the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish: báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a plain ring, a coin, and other charms are placed before baking. It is considered fortunate to be the lucky one who finds it. It has also been said that those who get a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of king cake at the festival of Epiphany. Halloween-themed foods are also produced by companies in the lead up to the night, for example Cadbury releasing Goo Heads (similar to Creme Eggs) in spooky wrapping.",
"title": "Food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "List of foods associated with Halloween:",
"title": "Food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "On Hallowe'en (All Hallows' Eve), in Poland, believers were once taught to pray out loud as they walk through the forests in order that the souls of the dead might find comfort; in Spain, Christian priests in tiny villages toll their church bells in order to remind their congregants to remember the dead on All Hallows' Eve. In Ireland, and among immigrants in Canada, a custom includes the Christian practice of abstinence, keeping All Hallows' Eve as a meat-free day and serving pancakes or colcannon instead.",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Christian Church traditionally observed Hallowe'en through a vigil. Worshippers prepared themselves for feasting on the following All Saints' Day with prayers and fasting. This church service is known as the Vigil of All Hallows or the Vigil of All Saints; an initiative known as Night of Light seeks to further spread the Vigil of All Hallows throughout Christendom. After the service, \"suitable festivities and entertainments\" often follow, as well as a visit to the graveyard or cemetery, where flowers and candles are often placed in preparation for All Hallows' Day. In England, Light Parties are organized by churches after worship services on Halloween with the focus on Jesus as the Light of the World. In Finland, because so many people visit the cemeteries on All Hallows' Eve to light votive candles there, they \"are known as valomeri, or seas of light\".",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Today, Christian attitudes towards Halloween are diverse. In the Anglican Church, some dioceses have chosen to emphasize the Christian traditions associated with All Hallow's Eve. Some of these practices include praying, fasting and attending worship services.",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "O LORD our God, increase, we pray thee, and multiply upon us the gifts of thy grace: that we, who do prevent the glorious festival of all thy Saints, may of thee be enabled joyfully to follow them in all virtuous and godly living. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. —Collect of the Vigil of All Saints, The Anglican Breviary",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Other Protestant Christians also celebrate All Hallows' Eve as Reformation Day, a day to remember the Protestant Reformation, alongside All Hallow's Eve or independently from it. This is because Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-five Theses to All Saints' Church in Wittenberg on All Hallows' Eve. Often, \"Harvest Festivals\" or \"Reformation Festivals\" are held on All Hallows' Eve, in which children dress up as Bible characters or Reformers. In addition to distributing candy to children who are trick-or-treating on Hallowe'en, many Christians also provide gospel tracts to them. One organization, the American Tract Society, stated that around 3 million gospel tracts are ordered from them alone for Hallowe'en celebrations. Others order Halloween-themed Scripture Candy to pass out to children on this day.",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Some Christians feel concerned about the modern celebration of Halloween because they feel it trivializes – or celebrates – paganism, the occult, or other practices and cultural phenomena deemed incompatible with their beliefs. Father Gabriele Amorth, an exorcist in Rome, has said, \"if English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year that is not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm in that.\" In more recent years, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has organized a \"Saint Fest\" on Halloween. Similarly, many contemporary Protestant churches view Halloween as a fun event for children, holding events in their churches where children and their parents can dress up, play games, and get candy for free. To these Christians, Halloween holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children: being taught about death and mortality, and the ways of the Celtic ancestors actually being a valuable life lesson and a part of many of their parishioners' heritage. Christian minister Sam Portaro wrote that Halloween is about using \"humor and ridicule to confront the power of death\".",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In the Roman Catholic Church, Halloween's Christian connection is acknowledged, and Halloween celebrations are common in many Catholic parochial schools, such as in the United States, while schools throughout Ireland also close for the Halloween break. Many fundamentalist and evangelical churches use \"Hell houses\" and comic-style tracts in order to make use of Halloween's popularity as an opportunity for evangelism. Others consider Halloween to be completely incompatible with the Christian faith due to its putative origins in the Festival of the Dead celebration. Indeed, even though Eastern Orthodox Christians observe All Hallows' Day on the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Eastern Orthodox Church recommends the observance of Vespers or a Paraklesis on the Western observance of All Hallows' Eve, out of the pastoral need to provide an alternative to popular celebrations.",
"title": "Christian observances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "According to Alfred J. Kolatch in the Second Jewish Book of Why, in Judaism, Halloween is not permitted by Jewish Halakha because it violates Leviticus 18:3, which forbids Jews from partaking in gentile customs. Many Jews observe Yizkor communally four times a year, which is vaguely similar to the observance of Allhallowtide in Christianity, in the sense that prayers are said for both \"martyrs and for one's own family\". Nevertheless, many American Jews celebrate Halloween, disconnected from its Christian origins. Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser has said that \"There is no religious reason why contemporary Jews should not celebrate Halloween\" while Orthodox Rabbi Michael Broyde has argued against Jews' observing the holiday. Purim has sometimes been compared to Halloween, in part due to some observants wearing costumes, especially of Biblical figures described in the Purim narrative.",
"title": "Analogous celebrations and perspectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Sheikh Idris Palmer, author of A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam, has ruled that Muslims should not participate in Halloween, stating that \"participation in Halloween is worse than participation in Christmas, Easter, ... it is more sinful than congratulating the Christians for their prostration to the crucifix\". It has also been ruled to be haram by the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia because of its alleged pagan roots stating \"Halloween is celebrated using a humorous theme mixed with horror to entertain and resist the spirit of death that influence humans\". Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah disagrees provided the celebration is not referred to as an 'eid' and that behaviour remains in line with Islamic principles.",
"title": "Analogous celebrations and perspectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Hindus remember the dead during the festival of Pitru Paksha, during which Hindus pay homage to and perform a ceremony \"to keep the souls of their ancestors at rest\". It is celebrated in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada, usually in mid-September. The celebration of the Hindu festival Diwali sometimes conflicts with the date of Halloween; but some Hindus choose to participate in the popular customs of Halloween. Other Hindus, such as Soumya Dasgupta, have opposed the celebration on the grounds that Western holidays like Halloween have \"begun to adversely affect our indigenous festivals\".",
"title": "Analogous celebrations and perspectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "There is no consistent rule or view on Halloween amongst those who describe themselves as Neopagans or Wiccans. Some Neopagans do not observe Halloween, but instead observe Samhain on 1 November, some neopagans do enjoy Halloween festivities, stating that one can observe both \"the solemnity of Samhain in addition to the fun of Halloween\". Some neopagans are opposed to the celebration of Hallowe'en, stating that it \"trivializes Samhain\", and \"avoid Halloween, because of the interruptions from trick or treaters\". The Manitoban writes that \"Wiccans don't officially celebrate Halloween, despite the fact that 31 Oct. will still have a star beside it in any good Wiccan's day planner. Starting at sundown, Wiccans celebrate a holiday known as Samhain. Samhain actually comes from old Celtic traditions and is not exclusive to Neopagan religions like Wicca. While the traditions of this holiday originate in Celtic countries, modern day Wiccans don't try to historically replicate Samhain celebrations. Some traditional Samhain rituals are still practised, but at its core, the period is treated as a time to celebrate darkness and the dead – a possible reason why Samhain can be confused with Halloween celebrations.\"",
"title": "Analogous celebrations and perspectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The traditions and importance of Halloween vary greatly among countries that observe it. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include children dressing up in costume going \"guising\", holding parties, while other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays. In Brittany children would play practical jokes by setting candles inside skulls in graveyards to frighten visitors. Mass transatlantic immigration in the 19th century popularized Halloween in North America, and celebration in the United States and Canada has had a significant impact on how the event is observed in other nations. This larger North American influence, particularly in iconic and commercial elements, has extended to places such as Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, (most) continental Europe, Finland, Japan, and other parts of East Asia.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to spend $12.2 billion on Halloween in 2023, up from $10.6 billion in 2022. Of this amount, $3.9 billion is projected to be spent on home decorations, up from $2.7 billion in 2019. The popularity of Halloween decorations has been growing in recent years, with retailers offering a wider range of increasingly elaborate and oversized decorations.",
"title": "Cost"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Halloween or Hallowe'en is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It is at the beginning of the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. In popular culture, the day has become a celebration of horror, being associated with the macabre and supernatural. One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots. Some go further and suggest that Samhain may have been Christianized as All Hallow's Day, along with its eve, by the early Church. Other academics believe Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, being the vigil of All Hallow's Day. Celebrated in Ireland and Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants took many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century, and then through American influence various Halloween customs spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century. Popular Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films. Some people practice the Christian observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, although it is a secular celebration for others. Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes. | 2001-10-11T13:40:48Z | 2023-12-16T15:46:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween |
13,859 | Hayling Island | Hayling Island is an island off the south coast of England, in the borough of Havant in the county of Hampshire, east of Portsmouth.
An Iron Age shrine in the north of Hayling Island was later developed into a Roman temple in the 1st century BC and was first recorded in Richard Scott's Topographical and Historical Account of Hayling Island (1826). The site was dug between 1897 and 1907 and again from 1976 to 1978. The remains are now buried under farmland. The first coin credited to Commius that was found in an archaeological dig was found at the temple. This Commius was probably the son of the Commius mentioned by Julius Caesar, although it is possible the coin was issued by the same Commius.
Salt production was an industry on the island from the 11th century, and the Domesday Book records a saltpan on the island. This industry continued until the late 19th century.
The monks of Jumièges Abbey, Normandy, began to build Northwode Chapel about 1140; this became the site of the present St Peter's Church, now the oldest surviving church on the island. St Peter's three bells, cast in about 1350, are one of the oldest peals in England. St Mary's Church is a standard design for the churches of its era, but the walls were built with a mortar of local shells and beach pebbles. The ancient yew tree in the churchyard is believed to be the oldest yew in the country, with a girth of some nine metres (30 feet). Estimates of its age range from over a thousand to nearly two thousand years old.
The grave of Princess Catherine Yurievskaya (1878–1959), a daughter of Alexander II of Russia, who lived in North Hayling for many years, is in St Peter's churchyard; and that of George Glas Sandeman, nephew of the founder of Sandeman Port and second head of that company, is prominent in the north-east part of St Mary's graveyard.
In May 1944, the island was the location of a mock invasion during the military Exercise Fabius, rehearsing the preparations for D-Day.
In 1982, the English Court of Appeal recognised prior art by Peter Chilvers, who in 1958 as a 12-year-old boy on Hayling Island assembled his first board combined with a sail. It had all the elements of the modern windsurfer. The court found that later innovations were "merely an obvious extension" and upheld the defendant's claim based on film footage. This court case set a significant precedent for patent law in the United Kingdom, in terms of Inventive step and non-obviousness. The case, Chilvers, Hayling, and a replica of Chilvers's original board were featured on an episode of the BBC's The One Show in 2009.
On 20 October 2013, at least one hundred properties on the island were damaged when it was hit by a tornado. No injuries were reported.
Hayling Island is a true island, surrounded by water. Looking at its north to south orientation, it is shaped like an inverted T, about 6.5 km (4 miles) long and 6.5 km (4 miles) wide. A road bridge connects its northern end to the mainland of England at Langstone. The Hayling Ferry is a small pedestrian ferry connecting to the Eastney area of the city of Portsmouth on the neighbouring Portsea Island. To the west is Langstone Harbour and to the east is Chichester Harbour.
The natural beach at Hayling was predominantly sandy, but in recent years it has been mechanically topped with shingle dredged from the bed of the Solent in an effort to reduce beach erosion and reduce the potential to flood low-lying land. At low tide, the East Winner sandbank is visible, extending a mile out to sea. The coastline in this area has substantially changed since Roman times: it is believed much land has been lost from the coasts of Hayling and Selsey by erosion and subsequent flooding.
As with the rest of the British Isles and Southern England, Hayling Island experiences a maritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. Temperatures have never fallen into double figures below freezing, illustrating the relative warmth of the island – comparable to the far southwest of England and its neighbour, the Isle of Wight. Temperature extremes between 1960 and 2010 have ranged from −9.4 °C (15.1 °F) during January 1963, up to 32.1 °C (89.8 °F) during June 1976.
Hayling Island has a non-League football club, Hayling United F.C., which plays at Hayling Park.
Although largely residential, Hayling is also a holiday, windsurfing and sailing centre, the site where windsurfing was invented.
In summer 2010, the Hayling Island Sailing Club hosted the 2010 World Laser Standard Senior and Junior Championships (27 August – 5 September). The Senior championship was won by Australian Tom Slingsby, whilst Dane Thorbjoern Schierup won the Junior competition. Today it is home to many different types of sailing, including a growing Fireball fleet.
As a consequence of the island's popularity for water activities, there are two lifeboat services: Hayling Island Lifeboat Station, run by the RNLI and Hayling Island Rescue Service, an independent service run by retired RNLI helmsman, Frank Dunster.
The island hosts one of the few active Real Tennis courts in the UK. Founded in 1911, Seacourt Tennis club is one of only a handful in the UK where it is possible to play every recognised racquet sport. The racquets court itself was opened by Sir Colin Cowdrey.
Seacourt Tennis Club also hosts a weekly fencing club featuring all ages, levels and weapons.
Hayling Golf Club has been voted in the top 100 golf courses in the UK. A traditional links course, although relatively short by modern standards, the strong prevailing south-westerly winds, fast greens, gorse bushes and traditional deep links bunkers make this a stern test for any golfer.
Funland, an amusement park situated at Beachlands, is open year-round, as is the Hayling Seaside Railway which runs from the funfair to Eastoke corner.
The 5-mile (8.0 km) Hayling Billy Trail is a former light rail right-of-way which has been converted to one of many footpaths on the island. The Ordnance Survey Explorer 120 map covers the area and the local tourist information office supplies leaflets of local interest walks.
The Station Theatre hosts a variety of plays staged by the Hayling Island Amateur Dramatics Society, Hayling Musical Society, musical events and films throughout the year.
The island has several churches of different denominations including three Anglican churches; St Peter's at Northney, St Mary's at Gable Head and the more recently built St Andrew's in South Hayling.
Hayling Ferry links Portsmouth and Hayling Island. The ferry is busy in summer in good weather, bringing tourists and cyclists to Hayling. In winter, there was a significant reduction of use. The ferry service to and from Portsea Island was subsidised by the local authorities, leaving it under constant threat of closure due to limited resources. The ferry service ceased when the company running the ferry went into administration in March 2015. It was reopened in August 2016 by Baker Trayte Marine Ltd.
During the ferry's closure, the only public connection between Hayling Island and the mainland was the single carriageway road linking Northney to Langstone Havant. In summer, in particular, this road can become very congested, rendering the journey between the bridge and South Hayling (the most populated area) anything from 30 minutes to an hour. A proposed Millennium project to create a new shared pedestrian and cycle bridge was unsuccessful.
A railway to the island was active in the 19th and 20th centuries. It opened on 17 July 1867, coinciding with the local races. Terrier steam locomotives pulled carriages along the 5-mile (8 km) Hayling Billy Line from Havant Station on the mainland to a station which was located at the northern end of Staunton Avenue, passing through Langstone where there was a Halt. The railway was popular with tourists throughout the summer, though it saw little service in winter, and at peak times ran up to 24 services per day. Despite its popularity, the line was marked for closure in the Beeching Report owing to the prohibitive cost of replacing Langstone Bridge, which connected the island to the mainland, estimated at up to £400,000 to repair. Services ended on 3 November 1963, and the bridge was demolished in 1966. The remaining railway buildings are a goods shed, which has now been converted into a theatre run by HIADS, and a station, opposite the Ship Inn over the bridge. A railway gatehouse, located opposite Mill Lane, was burned down on 15 November 2018; no other building is believed to survive.
A tourist attraction, the East Hayling Light Railway, is a 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railway which runs for just over 1 mile (1.6 km) from Beachlands Station to Eastoke Corner with aspirations to extend the route to Ferry Point within the next few years.
The nearest railway station to Hayling Island is Havant, just on to the mainland off Hayling Island. Alternatively, Portsmouth & Southsea is another railway station, used for connections to Bristol Temple Meads and Cardiff.
Oysters have been fished on the Hayling oysterbeds, at the northwest corner of the island, from as long ago as Roman times, documented in town records since 1615. The oysters were actively farmed between as early as 1819 until the 1970s. Oysters became a delicacy that was exported throughout the country under the classification of "Emsworth Oysters". Large complexes consisting of several pens separated by a series of bund walls and sluice gates were built to contain the oysters at varying stages of growth. Although large sections of the walls have since collapsed into the harbour, much of shape and scale of the beds can still be seen today.
In 1996, the oyster beds on the north west coast of Hayling Island were restored by the Havant Borough Council, creating a wildlife haven which has become an important seabird breeding site. The Design Council awarded this project 'Millennium Product' status for the renovation.
Hayling Island started twinning with Gorron, France, in 1997, after many years of social exchanges between the two communities rather than the normal council-led route. Charters were signed and exchanged in 1998 and are now displayed in the library in Elm Grove. In recognition of the twinning Gorron appears on the welcome signs, there is also a 'twinning' tree outside the library and a Gorron roundabout at Beachlands. Gorron has similar recognitions including the 'Rue de Hayling Island' – previously Rue Victor Hugo.
The island is the home of the Hayling Charity Cycle Ride which organises an annual charity cycle ride most often from Hayling Island to Paris and back. This event, run entirely by local unpaid volunteers, was started in 1986 by local cyclist Peter McQuade and has been run every year since. Up to 2023 over £1,800,000 had been collected for more than 500 good causes. Entrants have come from 15 different countries on five continents. Based on their research the organisers believe it may be the oldest long distance charity ride in the world.
In the mid- to late 20th century, Hayling Island's population was known to double during the summer months, due to a large influx of holiday makers and the associated tourism employees to accommodate. As domestic holidays have declined and Hayling's prominence as a traditional English seaside resort have followed in parallel, the population only swells by approximately 20%–25% (English Tourist Board estimate, 2001).
The island's place-names are discussed in an online work by Richard Coates (2007). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hayling Island is an island off the south coast of England, in the borough of Havant in the county of Hampshire, east of Portsmouth.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "An Iron Age shrine in the north of Hayling Island was later developed into a Roman temple in the 1st century BC and was first recorded in Richard Scott's Topographical and Historical Account of Hayling Island (1826). The site was dug between 1897 and 1907 and again from 1976 to 1978. The remains are now buried under farmland. The first coin credited to Commius that was found in an archaeological dig was found at the temple. This Commius was probably the son of the Commius mentioned by Julius Caesar, although it is possible the coin was issued by the same Commius.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Salt production was an industry on the island from the 11th century, and the Domesday Book records a saltpan on the island. This industry continued until the late 19th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The monks of Jumièges Abbey, Normandy, began to build Northwode Chapel about 1140; this became the site of the present St Peter's Church, now the oldest surviving church on the island. St Peter's three bells, cast in about 1350, are one of the oldest peals in England. St Mary's Church is a standard design for the churches of its era, but the walls were built with a mortar of local shells and beach pebbles. The ancient yew tree in the churchyard is believed to be the oldest yew in the country, with a girth of some nine metres (30 feet). Estimates of its age range from over a thousand to nearly two thousand years old.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The grave of Princess Catherine Yurievskaya (1878–1959), a daughter of Alexander II of Russia, who lived in North Hayling for many years, is in St Peter's churchyard; and that of George Glas Sandeman, nephew of the founder of Sandeman Port and second head of that company, is prominent in the north-east part of St Mary's graveyard.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In May 1944, the island was the location of a mock invasion during the military Exercise Fabius, rehearsing the preparations for D-Day.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1982, the English Court of Appeal recognised prior art by Peter Chilvers, who in 1958 as a 12-year-old boy on Hayling Island assembled his first board combined with a sail. It had all the elements of the modern windsurfer. The court found that later innovations were \"merely an obvious extension\" and upheld the defendant's claim based on film footage. This court case set a significant precedent for patent law in the United Kingdom, in terms of Inventive step and non-obviousness. The case, Chilvers, Hayling, and a replica of Chilvers's original board were featured on an episode of the BBC's The One Show in 2009.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On 20 October 2013, at least one hundred properties on the island were damaged when it was hit by a tornado. No injuries were reported.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hayling Island is a true island, surrounded by water. Looking at its north to south orientation, it is shaped like an inverted T, about 6.5 km (4 miles) long and 6.5 km (4 miles) wide. A road bridge connects its northern end to the mainland of England at Langstone. The Hayling Ferry is a small pedestrian ferry connecting to the Eastney area of the city of Portsmouth on the neighbouring Portsea Island. To the west is Langstone Harbour and to the east is Chichester Harbour.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The natural beach at Hayling was predominantly sandy, but in recent years it has been mechanically topped with shingle dredged from the bed of the Solent in an effort to reduce beach erosion and reduce the potential to flood low-lying land. At low tide, the East Winner sandbank is visible, extending a mile out to sea. The coastline in this area has substantially changed since Roman times: it is believed much land has been lost from the coasts of Hayling and Selsey by erosion and subsequent flooding.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As with the rest of the British Isles and Southern England, Hayling Island experiences a maritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. Temperatures have never fallen into double figures below freezing, illustrating the relative warmth of the island – comparable to the far southwest of England and its neighbour, the Isle of Wight. Temperature extremes between 1960 and 2010 have ranged from −9.4 °C (15.1 °F) during January 1963, up to 32.1 °C (89.8 °F) during June 1976.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hayling Island has a non-League football club, Hayling United F.C., which plays at Hayling Park.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Although largely residential, Hayling is also a holiday, windsurfing and sailing centre, the site where windsurfing was invented.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In summer 2010, the Hayling Island Sailing Club hosted the 2010 World Laser Standard Senior and Junior Championships (27 August – 5 September). The Senior championship was won by Australian Tom Slingsby, whilst Dane Thorbjoern Schierup won the Junior competition. Today it is home to many different types of sailing, including a growing Fireball fleet.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "As a consequence of the island's popularity for water activities, there are two lifeboat services: Hayling Island Lifeboat Station, run by the RNLI and Hayling Island Rescue Service, an independent service run by retired RNLI helmsman, Frank Dunster.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The island hosts one of the few active Real Tennis courts in the UK. Founded in 1911, Seacourt Tennis club is one of only a handful in the UK where it is possible to play every recognised racquet sport. The racquets court itself was opened by Sir Colin Cowdrey.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Seacourt Tennis Club also hosts a weekly fencing club featuring all ages, levels and weapons.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Hayling Golf Club has been voted in the top 100 golf courses in the UK. A traditional links course, although relatively short by modern standards, the strong prevailing south-westerly winds, fast greens, gorse bushes and traditional deep links bunkers make this a stern test for any golfer.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Funland, an amusement park situated at Beachlands, is open year-round, as is the Hayling Seaside Railway which runs from the funfair to Eastoke corner.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The 5-mile (8.0 km) Hayling Billy Trail is a former light rail right-of-way which has been converted to one of many footpaths on the island. The Ordnance Survey Explorer 120 map covers the area and the local tourist information office supplies leaflets of local interest walks.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Station Theatre hosts a variety of plays staged by the Hayling Island Amateur Dramatics Society, Hayling Musical Society, musical events and films throughout the year.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The island has several churches of different denominations including three Anglican churches; St Peter's at Northney, St Mary's at Gable Head and the more recently built St Andrew's in South Hayling.",
"title": "Sport and leisure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hayling Ferry links Portsmouth and Hayling Island. The ferry is busy in summer in good weather, bringing tourists and cyclists to Hayling. In winter, there was a significant reduction of use. The ferry service to and from Portsea Island was subsidised by the local authorities, leaving it under constant threat of closure due to limited resources. The ferry service ceased when the company running the ferry went into administration in March 2015. It was reopened in August 2016 by Baker Trayte Marine Ltd.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During the ferry's closure, the only public connection between Hayling Island and the mainland was the single carriageway road linking Northney to Langstone Havant. In summer, in particular, this road can become very congested, rendering the journey between the bridge and South Hayling (the most populated area) anything from 30 minutes to an hour. A proposed Millennium project to create a new shared pedestrian and cycle bridge was unsuccessful.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A railway to the island was active in the 19th and 20th centuries. It opened on 17 July 1867, coinciding with the local races. Terrier steam locomotives pulled carriages along the 5-mile (8 km) Hayling Billy Line from Havant Station on the mainland to a station which was located at the northern end of Staunton Avenue, passing through Langstone where there was a Halt. The railway was popular with tourists throughout the summer, though it saw little service in winter, and at peak times ran up to 24 services per day. Despite its popularity, the line was marked for closure in the Beeching Report owing to the prohibitive cost of replacing Langstone Bridge, which connected the island to the mainland, estimated at up to £400,000 to repair. Services ended on 3 November 1963, and the bridge was demolished in 1966. The remaining railway buildings are a goods shed, which has now been converted into a theatre run by HIADS, and a station, opposite the Ship Inn over the bridge. A railway gatehouse, located opposite Mill Lane, was burned down on 15 November 2018; no other building is believed to survive.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A tourist attraction, the East Hayling Light Railway, is a 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railway which runs for just over 1 mile (1.6 km) from Beachlands Station to Eastoke Corner with aspirations to extend the route to Ferry Point within the next few years.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The nearest railway station to Hayling Island is Havant, just on to the mainland off Hayling Island. Alternatively, Portsmouth & Southsea is another railway station, used for connections to Bristol Temple Meads and Cardiff.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Oysters have been fished on the Hayling oysterbeds, at the northwest corner of the island, from as long ago as Roman times, documented in town records since 1615. The oysters were actively farmed between as early as 1819 until the 1970s. Oysters became a delicacy that was exported throughout the country under the classification of \"Emsworth Oysters\". Large complexes consisting of several pens separated by a series of bund walls and sluice gates were built to contain the oysters at varying stages of growth. Although large sections of the walls have since collapsed into the harbour, much of shape and scale of the beds can still be seen today.",
"title": "Hayling oysterbeds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1996, the oyster beds on the north west coast of Hayling Island were restored by the Havant Borough Council, creating a wildlife haven which has become an important seabird breeding site. The Design Council awarded this project 'Millennium Product' status for the renovation.",
"title": "Hayling oysterbeds"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hayling Island started twinning with Gorron, France, in 1997, after many years of social exchanges between the two communities rather than the normal council-led route. Charters were signed and exchanged in 1998 and are now displayed in the library in Elm Grove. In recognition of the twinning Gorron appears on the welcome signs, there is also a 'twinning' tree outside the library and a Gorron roundabout at Beachlands. Gorron has similar recognitions including the 'Rue de Hayling Island' – previously Rue Victor Hugo.",
"title": "Twinning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The island is the home of the Hayling Charity Cycle Ride which organises an annual charity cycle ride most often from Hayling Island to Paris and back. This event, run entirely by local unpaid volunteers, was started in 1986 by local cyclist Peter McQuade and has been run every year since. Up to 2023 over £1,800,000 had been collected for more than 500 good causes. Entrants have come from 15 different countries on five continents. Based on their research the organisers believe it may be the oldest long distance charity ride in the world.",
"title": "Paris to Hayling cycle ride"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the mid- to late 20th century, Hayling Island's population was known to double during the summer months, due to a large influx of holiday makers and the associated tourism employees to accommodate. As domestic holidays have declined and Hayling's prominence as a traditional English seaside resort have followed in parallel, the population only swells by approximately 20%–25% (English Tourist Board estimate, 2001).",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The island's place-names are discussed in an online work by Richard Coates (2007).",
"title": "List of settlements"
}
]
| Hayling Island is an island off the south coast of England, in the borough of Havant in the county of Hampshire, east of Portsmouth. | 2001-10-03T21:46:27Z | 2023-10-01T08:32:05Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayling_Island |
13,860 | Hahn–Banach theorem | The Hahn–Banach theorem is a central tool in functional analysis. It allows the extension of bounded linear functionals defined on a subspace of some vector space to the whole space, and it also shows that there are "enough" continuous linear functionals defined on every normed vector space to make the study of the dual space "interesting". Another version of the Hahn–Banach theorem is known as the Hahn–Banach separation theorem or the hyperplane separation theorem, and has numerous uses in convex geometry.
The theorem is named for the mathematicians Hans Hahn and Stefan Banach, who proved it independently in the late 1920s. The special case of the theorem for the space C [ a , b ] {\displaystyle C[a,b]} of continuous functions on an interval was proved earlier (in 1912) by Eduard Helly, and a more general extension theorem, the M. Riesz extension theorem, from which the Hahn–Banach theorem can be derived, was proved in 1923 by Marcel Riesz.
The first Hahn–Banach theorem was proved by Eduard Helly in 1912 who showed that certain linear functionals defined on a subspace of a certain type of normed space ( C N {\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{\mathbb {N} }} ) had an extension of the same norm. Helly did this through the technique of first proving that a one-dimensional extension exists (where the linear functional has its domain extended by one dimension) and then using induction. In 1927, Hahn defined general Banach spaces and used Helly's technique to prove a norm-preserving version of Hahn–Banach theorem for Banach spaces (where a bounded linear functional on a subspace has a bounded linear extension of the same norm to the whole space). In 1929, Banach, who was unaware of Hahn's result, generalized it by replacing the norm-preserving version with the dominated extension version that uses sublinear functions. Whereas Helly's proof used mathematical induction, Hahn and Banach both used transfinite induction.
The Hahn–Banach theorem arose from attempts to solve infinite systems of linear equations. This is needed to solve problems such as the moment problem, whereby given all the potential moments of a function one must determine if a function having these moments exists, and, if so, find it in terms of those moments. Another such problem is the Fourier cosine series problem, whereby given all the potential Fourier cosine coefficients one must determine if a function having those coefficients exists, and, again, find it if so.
Riesz and Helly solved the problem for certain classes of spaces (such as L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} and C ( [ a , b ] ) {\displaystyle C([a,b])} ) where they discovered that the existence of a solution was equivalent to the existence and continuity of certain linear functionals. In effect, they needed to solve the following problem:
If X {\displaystyle X} happens to be a reflexive space then to solve the vector problem, it suffices to solve the following dual problem:
Riesz went on to define L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} space ( 1 < p < ∞ {\displaystyle 1<p<\infty } ) in 1910 and the ℓ p {\displaystyle \ell ^{p}} spaces in 1913. While investigating these spaces he proved a special case of the Hahn–Banach theorem. Helly also proved a special case of the Hahn–Banach theorem in 1912. In 1910, Riesz solved the functional problem for some specific spaces and in 1912, Helly solved it for a more general class of spaces. It wasn't until 1932 that Banach, in one of the first important applications of the Hahn–Banach theorem, solved the general functional problem. The following theorem states the general functional problem and characterizes its solution.
Theorem (The functional problem) — Let ( x i ) i ∈ I {\displaystyle \left(x_{i}\right)_{i\in I}} be vectors in a real or complex normed space X {\displaystyle X} and let ( c i ) i ∈ I {\displaystyle \left(c_{i}\right)_{i\in I}} be scalars also indexed by I ≠ ∅ . {\displaystyle I\neq \varnothing .}
There exists a continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on X {\displaystyle X} such that f ( x i ) = c i {\displaystyle f\left(x_{i}\right)=c_{i}} for all i ∈ I {\displaystyle i\in I} if and only if there exists a K > 0 {\displaystyle K>0} such that for any choice of scalars ( s i ) i ∈ I {\displaystyle \left(s_{i}\right)_{i\in I}} where all but finitely many s i {\displaystyle s_{i}} are 0 , {\displaystyle 0,} the following holds:
The Hahn–Banach theorem can be deduced from the above theorem. If X {\displaystyle X} is reflexive then this theorem solves the vector problem.
A real-valued function f : M → R {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {R} } defined on a subset M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} is said to be dominated (above) by a function p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } if f ( m ) ≤ p ( m ) {\displaystyle f(m)\leq p(m)} for every m ∈ M . {\displaystyle m\in M.} Hence the reason why the following version of the Hahn-Banach theorem is called the dominated extension theorem.
Hahn–Banach dominated extension theorem (for real linear functionals) — If p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a sublinear function (such as a norm or seminorm for example) defined on a real vector space X {\displaystyle X} then any linear functional defined on a vector subspace of X {\displaystyle X} that is dominated above by p {\displaystyle p} has at least one linear extension to all of X {\displaystyle X} that is also dominated above by p . {\displaystyle p.}
Explicitly, if p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a sublinear function, which by definition means that it satisfies
and if f : M → R {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {R} } is a linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} such that
then there exists a linear functional F : X → R {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {R} } such that
Moreover, if p {\displaystyle p} is a seminorm then | F ( x ) | ≤ p ( x ) {\displaystyle |F(x)|\leq p(x)} necessarily holds for all x ∈ X . {\displaystyle x\in X.}
The theorem remains true if the requirements on p {\displaystyle p} are relaxed to require only that p {\displaystyle p} be a convex function:
A function p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is convex and satisfies p ( 0 ) ≤ 0 {\displaystyle p(0)\leq 0} if and only if p ( a x + b y ) ≤ a p ( x ) + b p ( y ) {\displaystyle p(ax+by)\leq ap(x)+bp(y)} for all vectors x , y ∈ X {\displaystyle x,y\in X} and all non-negative real a , b ≥ 0 {\displaystyle a,b\geq 0} such that a + b ≤ 1. {\displaystyle a+b\leq 1.} Every sublinear function is a convex function. On the other hand, if p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is convex with p ( 0 ) ≥ 0 , {\displaystyle p(0)\geq 0,} then the function defined by p 0 ( x ) = def inf t > 0 p ( t x ) t {\displaystyle p_{0}(x)\;{\stackrel {\scriptscriptstyle {\text{def}}}{=}}\;\inf _{t>0}{\frac {p(tx)}{t}}} is positively homogeneous (because for all x {\displaystyle x} and r > 0 {\displaystyle r>0} one has p 0 ( r x ) = inf t > 0 p ( t r x ) t ) = r inf t > 0 p ( t r x ) t r = r inf τ > 0 p ( τ x ) τ = r p 0 ( x ) {\displaystyle p_{0}(rx)=\inf _{t>0}{\frac {p(trx)}{t}})=r\inf _{t>0}{\frac {p(trx)}{tr}}=r\inf _{\tau >0}{\frac {p(\tau x)}{\tau }}=rp_{0}(x)} ), hence, being convex, it is sublinear. It is also bounded above by p 0 ≤ p , {\displaystyle p_{0}\leq p,} and satisfies F ≤ p 0 {\displaystyle F\leq p_{0}} for every linear functional F ≤ p . {\displaystyle F\leq p.} So the extension of the Hahn–Banach theorem to convex functionals does not have a much larger content than the classical one stated for sublinear functionals.
If F : X → R {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {R} } is linear then F ≤ p {\displaystyle F\leq p} if and only if
which is the (equivalent) conclusion that some authors write instead of F ≤ p . {\displaystyle F\leq p.} It follows that if p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is also symmetric, meaning that p ( − x ) = p ( x ) {\displaystyle p(-x)=p(x)} holds for all x ∈ X , {\displaystyle x\in X,} then F ≤ p {\displaystyle F\leq p} if and only | F | ≤ p . {\displaystyle |F|\leq p.} Every norm is a seminorm and both are symmetric balanced sublinear functions. A sublinear function is a seminorm if and only if it is a balanced function. On a real vector space (although not on a complex vector space), a sublinear function is a seminorm if and only if it is symmetric. The identity function R → R {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} \to \mathbb {R} } on X := R {\displaystyle X:=\mathbb {R} } is an example of a sublinear function that is not a seminorm.
The dominated extension theorem for real linear functionals implies the following alternative statement of the Hahn–Banach theorem that can be applied to linear functionals on real or complex vector spaces.
Hahn–Banach theorem — Suppose p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } a seminorm on a vector space X {\displaystyle X} over the field K , {\displaystyle \mathbf {K} ,} which is either R {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} } or C . {\displaystyle \mathbb {C} .} If f : M → K {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbf {K} } is a linear functional on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} such that
then there exists a linear functional F : X → K {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbf {K} } such that
The theorem remains true if the requirements on p {\displaystyle p} are relaxed to require only that for all x , y ∈ X {\displaystyle x,y\in X} and all scalars a {\displaystyle a} and b {\displaystyle b} satisfying | a | + | b | ≤ 1 , {\displaystyle |a|+|b|\leq 1,}
This condition holds if and only if p {\displaystyle p} is a convex and balanced function satisfying p ( 0 ) ≤ 0 , {\displaystyle p(0)\leq 0,} or equivalently, if and only if it is convex, satisfies p ( 0 ) ≤ 0 , {\displaystyle p(0)\leq 0,} and p ( u x ) ≤ p ( x ) {\displaystyle p(ux)\leq p(x)} for all x ∈ X {\displaystyle x\in X} and all unit length scalars u . {\displaystyle u.}
A complex-valued functional F {\displaystyle F} is said to be dominated by p {\displaystyle p} if | F ( x ) | ≤ p ( x ) {\displaystyle |F(x)|\leq p(x)} for all x {\displaystyle x} in the domain of F . {\displaystyle F.} With this terminology, the above statements of the Hahn–Banach theorem can be restated more succinctly:
Proof
The following observations allow the Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces to be applied to (complex-valued) linear functionals on complex vector spaces.
Every linear functional F : X → C {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {C} } on a complex vector space is completely determined by its real part Re F : X → R {\displaystyle \;\operatorname {Re} F:X\to \mathbb {R} \;} through the formula
and moreover, if ‖ ⋅ ‖ {\displaystyle \|\cdot \|} is a norm on X {\displaystyle X} then their dual norms are equal: ‖ F ‖ = ‖ Re F ‖ . {\displaystyle \|F\|=\|\operatorname {Re} F\|.} In particular, a linear functional on X {\displaystyle X} extends another one defined on M ⊆ X {\displaystyle M\subseteq X} if and only if their real parts are equal on M {\displaystyle M} (in other words, a linear functional F {\displaystyle F} extends f {\displaystyle f} if and only if Re F {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} F} extends Re f {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} f} ). The real part of a linear functional on X {\displaystyle X} is always a real-linear functional (meaning that it is linear when X {\displaystyle X} is considered as a real vector space) and if R : X → R {\displaystyle R:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a real-linear functional on a complex vector space then x ↦ R ( x ) − i R ( i x ) {\displaystyle x\mapsto R(x)-iR(ix)} defines the unique linear functional on X {\displaystyle X} whose real part is R . {\displaystyle R.}
If F {\displaystyle F} is a linear functional on a (complex or real) vector space X {\displaystyle X} and if p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a seminorm then
Stated in simpler language, a linear functional is dominated by a seminorm p {\displaystyle p} if and only if its real part is dominated above by p . {\displaystyle p.}
Suppose p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a seminorm on a complex vector space X {\displaystyle X} and let f : M → C {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {C} } be a linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} that satisfies | f | ≤ p {\displaystyle |f|\leq p} on M . {\displaystyle M.} Consider X {\displaystyle X} as a real vector space and apply the Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces to the real-linear functional Re f : M → R {\displaystyle \;\operatorname {Re} f:M\to \mathbb {R} \;} to obtain a real-linear extension R : X → R {\displaystyle R:X\to \mathbb {R} } that is also dominated above by p , {\displaystyle p,} so that it satisfies R ≤ p {\displaystyle R\leq p} on X {\displaystyle X} and R = Re f {\displaystyle R=\operatorname {Re} f} on M . {\displaystyle M.} The map F : X → C {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {C} } defined by F ( x ) = R ( x ) − i R ( i x ) {\displaystyle F(x)\;=\;R(x)-iR(ix)} is a linear functional on X {\displaystyle X} that extends f {\displaystyle f} (because their real parts agree on M {\displaystyle M} ) and satisfies | F | ≤ p {\displaystyle |F|\leq p} on X {\displaystyle X} (because Re F ≤ p {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} F\leq p} and p {\displaystyle p} is a seminorm). ◼ {\displaystyle \blacksquare }
The proof above shows that when p {\displaystyle p} is a seminorm then there is a one-to-one correspondence between dominated linear extensions of f : M → C {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {C} } and dominated real-linear extensions of Re f : M → R ; {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} f:M\to \mathbb {R} ;} the proof even gives a formula for explicitly constructing a linear extension of f {\displaystyle f} from any given real-linear extension of its real part.
Continuity
A linear functional F {\displaystyle F} on a topological vector space is continuous if and only if this is true of its real part Re F ; {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} F;} if the domain is a normed space then ‖ F ‖ = ‖ Re F ‖ {\displaystyle \|F\|=\|\operatorname {Re} F\|} (where one side is infinite if and only if the other side is infinite). Assume X {\displaystyle X} is a topological vector space and p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is sublinear function. If p {\displaystyle p} is a continuous sublinear function that dominates a linear functional F {\displaystyle F} then F {\displaystyle F} is necessarily continuous. Moreover, a linear functional F {\displaystyle F} is continuous if and only if its absolute value | F | {\displaystyle |F|} (which is a seminorm that dominates F {\displaystyle F} ) is continuous. In particular, a linear functional is continuous if and only if it is dominated by some continuous sublinear function.
The Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces ultimately follows from Helly's initial result for the special case where the linear functional is extended from M {\displaystyle M} to a larger vector space in which M {\displaystyle M} has codimension 1. {\displaystyle 1.}
Lemma (One–dimensional dominated extension theorem) — Let p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real vector space X , {\displaystyle X,} let f : M → R {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {R} } a linear functional on a proper vector subspace M ⊊ X {\displaystyle M\subsetneq X} such that f ≤ p {\displaystyle f\leq p} on M {\displaystyle M} (meaning f ( m ) ≤ p ( m ) {\displaystyle f(m)\leq p(m)} for all m ∈ M {\displaystyle m\in M} ), and let x ∈ X {\displaystyle x\in X} be a vector not in M {\displaystyle M} (so M ⊕ R x = span { M , x } {\displaystyle M\oplus \mathbb {R} x=\operatorname {span} \{M,x\}} ). There exists a linear extension F : M ⊕ R x → R {\displaystyle F:M\oplus \mathbb {R} x\to \mathbb {R} } of f {\displaystyle f} such that F ≤ p {\displaystyle F\leq p} on M ⊕ R x . {\displaystyle M\oplus \mathbb {R} x.}
Given any real number b , {\displaystyle b,} the map F b : M ⊕ R x → R {\displaystyle F_{b}:M\oplus \mathbb {R} x\to \mathbb {R} } defined by F b ( m + r x ) = f ( m ) + r b {\displaystyle F_{b}(m+rx)=f(m)+rb} is always a linear extension of f {\displaystyle f} to M ⊕ R x {\displaystyle M\oplus \mathbb {R} x} but it might not satisfy F b ≤ p . {\displaystyle F_{b}\leq p.} It will be shown that b {\displaystyle b} can always be chosen so as to guarantee that F b ≤ p , {\displaystyle F_{b}\leq p,} which will complete the proof.
If m , n ∈ M {\displaystyle m,n\in M} then
which implies
So define
where a ≤ c {\displaystyle a\leq c} are real numbers. To guarantee F b ≤ p , {\displaystyle F_{b}\leq p,} it suffices that a ≤ b ≤ c {\displaystyle a\leq b\leq c} (in fact, this is also necessary) because then b {\displaystyle b} satisfies "the decisive inequality"
To see that f ( m ) + r b ≤ p ( m + r x ) {\displaystyle f(m)+rb\leq p(m+rx)} follows, assume r ≠ 0 {\displaystyle r\neq 0} and substitute 1 r m {\displaystyle {\tfrac {1}{r}}m} in for both m {\displaystyle m} and n {\displaystyle n} to obtain
If r > 0 {\displaystyle r>0} (respectively, if r < 0 {\displaystyle r<0} ) then the right (respectively, the left) hand side equals 1 r [ p ( m + r x ) − f ( m ) ] {\displaystyle {\tfrac {1}{r}}\left[p(m+rx)-f(m)\right]} so that multiplying by r {\displaystyle r} gives r b ≤ p ( m + r x ) − f ( m ) . {\displaystyle rb\leq p(m+rx)-f(m).} ◼ {\displaystyle \blacksquare }
This lemma remains true if p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } is merely a convex function instead of a sublinear function.
The lemma above is the key step in deducing the dominated extension theorem from Zorn's lemma.
The set of all possible dominated linear extensions of f {\displaystyle f} are partially ordered by extension of each other, so there is a maximal extension F . {\displaystyle F.} By the codimension-1 result, if F {\displaystyle F} is not defined on all of X , {\displaystyle X,} then it can be further extended. Thus F {\displaystyle F} must be defined everywhere, as claimed. ◼ {\displaystyle \blacksquare }
When M {\displaystyle M} has countable codimension, then using induction and the lemma completes the proof of the Hahn–Banach theorem. The standard proof of the general case uses Zorn's lemma although the strictly weaker ultrafilter lemma (which is equivalent to the compactness theorem and to the Boolean prime ideal theorem) may be used instead. Hahn-Banach can also be proved using Tychonoff's theorem for compact Hausdorff spaces (which is also equivalent to the ultrafilter lemma)
The Mizar project has completely formalized and automatically checked the proof of the Hahn–Banach theorem in the HAHNBAN file.
The Hahn–Banach theorem can be used to guarantee the existence of continuous linear extensions of continuous linear functionals.
Hahn–Banach continuous extension theorem — Every continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of a (real or complex) locally convex topological vector space X {\displaystyle X} has a continuous linear extension F {\displaystyle F} to all of X . {\displaystyle X.} If in addition X {\displaystyle X} is a normed space, then this extension can be chosen so that its dual norm is equal to that of f . {\displaystyle f.}
In category-theoretic terms, the underlying field of the vector space is an injective object in the category of locally convex vector spaces.
On a normed (or seminormed) space, a linear extension F {\displaystyle F} of a bounded linear functional f {\displaystyle f} is said to be norm-preserving if it has the same dual norm as the original functional: ‖ F ‖ = ‖ f ‖ . {\displaystyle \|F\|=\|f\|.} Because of this terminology, the second part of the above theorem is sometimes referred to as the "norm-preserving" version of the Hahn–Banach theorem. Explicitly:
Norm-preserving Hahn–Banach continuous extension theorem — Every continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of a (real or complex) normed space X {\displaystyle X} has a continuous linear extension F {\displaystyle F} to all of X {\displaystyle X} that satisfies ‖ f ‖ = ‖ F ‖ . {\displaystyle \|f\|=\|F\|.}
The following observations allow the continuous extension theorem to be deduced from the Hahn–Banach theorem.
The absolute value of a linear functional is always a seminorm. A linear functional F {\displaystyle F} on a topological vector space X {\displaystyle X} is continuous if and only if its absolute value | F | {\displaystyle |F|} is continuous, which happens if and only if there exists a continuous seminorm p {\displaystyle p} on X {\displaystyle X} such that | F | ≤ p {\displaystyle |F|\leq p} on the domain of F . {\displaystyle F.} If X {\displaystyle X} is a locally convex space then this statement remains true when the linear functional F {\displaystyle F} is defined on a proper vector subspace of X . {\displaystyle X.}
Let f {\displaystyle f} be a continuous linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of a locally convex topological vector space X . {\displaystyle X.} Because X {\displaystyle X} is locally convex, there exists a continuous seminorm p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } on X {\displaystyle X} that dominates f {\displaystyle f} (meaning that | f ( m ) | ≤ p ( m ) {\displaystyle |f(m)|\leq p(m)} for all m ∈ M {\displaystyle m\in M} ). By the Hahn–Banach theorem, there exists a linear extension of f {\displaystyle f} to X , {\displaystyle X,} call it F , {\displaystyle F,} that satisfies | F | ≤ p {\displaystyle |F|\leq p} on X . {\displaystyle X.} This linear functional F {\displaystyle F} is continuous since | F | ≤ p {\displaystyle |F|\leq p} and p {\displaystyle p} is a continuous seminorm.
Proof for normed spaces
A linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on a normed space is continuous if and only if it is bounded, which means that its dual norm
is finite, in which case | f ( m ) | ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ m ‖ {\displaystyle |f(m)|\leq \|f\|\|m\|} holds for every point m {\displaystyle m} in its domain. Moreover, if c ≥ 0 {\displaystyle c\geq 0} is such that | f ( m ) | ≤ c ‖ m ‖ {\displaystyle |f(m)|\leq c\|m\|} for all m {\displaystyle m} in the functional's domain, then necessarily ‖ f ‖ ≤ c . {\displaystyle \|f\|\leq c.} If F {\displaystyle F} is a linear extension of a linear functional f {\displaystyle f} then their dual norms always satisfy ‖ f ‖ ≤ ‖ F ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|\leq \|F\|} so that equality ‖ f ‖ = ‖ F ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|=\|F\|} is equivalent to ‖ F ‖ ≤ ‖ f ‖ , {\displaystyle \|F\|\leq \|f\|,} which holds if and only if | F ( x ) | ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\displaystyle |F(x)|\leq \|f\|\|x\|} for every point x {\displaystyle x} in the extension's domain. This can be restated in terms of the function ‖ f ‖ ‖ ⋅ ‖ : X → R {\displaystyle \|f\|\,\|\cdot \|:X\to \mathbb {R} } defined by x ↦ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ , {\displaystyle x\mapsto \|f\|\,\|x\|,} which is always a seminorm:
Applying the Hahn–Banach theorem to f {\displaystyle f} with this seminorm ‖ f ‖ ‖ ⋅ ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|\,\|\cdot \|} thus produces a dominated linear extension whose norm is (necessarily) equal to that of f , {\displaystyle f,} which proves the theorem:
Let f {\displaystyle f} be a continuous linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of a normed space X . {\displaystyle X.} Then the function p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } defined by p ( x ) = ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\displaystyle p(x)=\|f\|\,\|x\|} is a seminorm on X {\displaystyle X} that dominates f , {\displaystyle f,} meaning that | f ( m ) | ≤ p ( m ) {\displaystyle |f(m)|\leq p(m)} holds for every m ∈ M . {\displaystyle m\in M.} By the Hahn–Banach theorem, there exists a linear functional F {\displaystyle F} on X {\displaystyle X} that extends f {\displaystyle f} (which guarantees ‖ f ‖ ≤ ‖ F ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|\leq \|F\|} ) and that is also dominated by p , {\displaystyle p,} meaning that | F ( x ) | ≤ p ( x ) {\displaystyle |F(x)|\leq p(x)} for every x ∈ X . {\displaystyle x\in X.} The fact that ‖ f ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|} is a real number such that | F ( x ) | ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\displaystyle |F(x)|\leq \|f\|\|x\|} for every x ∈ X , {\displaystyle x\in X,} guarantees ‖ F ‖ ≤ ‖ f ‖ . {\displaystyle \|F\|\leq \|f\|.} Since ‖ F ‖ = ‖ f ‖ {\displaystyle \|F\|=\|f\|} is finite, the linear functional F {\displaystyle F} is bounded and thus continuous.
The continuous extension theorem might fail if the topological vector space (TVS) X {\displaystyle X} is not locally convex. For example, for 0 < p < 1 , {\displaystyle 0<p<1,} the Lebesgue space L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} is a complete metrizable TVS (an F-space) that is not locally convex (in fact, its only convex open subsets are itself L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} and the empty set) and the only continuous linear functional on L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} is the constant 0 {\displaystyle 0} function (Rudin 1991, §1.47). Since L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} is Hausdorff, every finite-dimensional vector subspace M ⊆ L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\displaystyle M\subseteq L^{p}([0,1])} is linearly homeomorphic to Euclidean space R dim M {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{\dim M}} or C dim M {\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{\dim M}} (by F. Riesz's theorem) and so every non-zero linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on M {\displaystyle M} is continuous but none has a continuous linear extension to all of L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) . {\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1]).} However, it is possible for a TVS X {\displaystyle X} to not be locally convex but nevertheless have enough continuous linear functionals that its continuous dual space X ∗ {\displaystyle X^{*}} separates points; for such a TVS, a continuous linear functional defined on a vector subspace might have a continuous linear extension to the whole space.
If the TVS X {\displaystyle X} is not locally convex then there might not exist any continuous seminorm p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } defined on X {\displaystyle X} (not just on M {\displaystyle M} ) that dominates f , {\displaystyle f,} in which case the Hahn–Banach theorem can not be applied as it was in the above proof of the continuous extension theorem. However, the proof's argument can be generalized to give a characterization of when a continuous linear functional has a continuous linear extension: If X {\displaystyle X} is any TVS (not necessarily locally convex), then a continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} has a continuous linear extension F {\displaystyle F} to all of X {\displaystyle X} if and only if there exists some continuous seminorm p {\displaystyle p} on X {\displaystyle X} that dominates f . {\displaystyle f.} Specifically, if given a continuous linear extension F {\displaystyle F} then p := | F | {\displaystyle p:=|F|} is a continuous seminorm on X {\displaystyle X} that dominates f ; {\displaystyle f;} and conversely, if given a continuous seminorm p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } on X {\displaystyle X} that dominates f {\displaystyle f} then any dominated linear extension of f {\displaystyle f} to X {\displaystyle X} (the existence of which is guaranteed by the Hahn–Banach theorem) will be a continuous linear extension.
The key element of the Hahn–Banach theorem is fundamentally a result about the separation of two convex sets: { − p ( − x − n ) − f ( n ) : n ∈ M } , {\displaystyle \{-p(-x-n)-f(n):n\in M\},} and { p ( m + x ) − f ( m ) : m ∈ M } . {\displaystyle \{p(m+x)-f(m):m\in M\}.} This sort of argument appears widely in convex geometry, optimization theory, and economics. Lemmas to this end derived from the original Hahn–Banach theorem are known as the Hahn–Banach separation theorems. They are generalizations of the hyperplane separation theorem, which states that two disjoint nonempty convex subsets of a finite-dimensional space R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} can be separated by some affine hyperplane, which is a fiber (level set) of the form f − 1 ( s ) = { x : f ( x ) = s } {\displaystyle f^{-1}(s)=\{x:f(x)=s\}} where f ≠ 0 {\displaystyle f\neq 0} is a non-zero linear functional and s {\displaystyle s} is a scalar.
Theorem — Let A {\displaystyle A} and B {\displaystyle B} be non-empty convex subsets of a real locally convex topological vector space X . {\displaystyle X.} If Int A ≠ ∅ {\displaystyle \operatorname {Int} A\neq \varnothing } and B ∩ Int A = ∅ {\displaystyle B\cap \operatorname {Int} A=\varnothing } then there exists a continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on X {\displaystyle X} such that sup f ( A ) ≤ inf f ( B ) {\displaystyle \sup f(A)\leq \inf f(B)} and f ( a ) < inf f ( B ) {\displaystyle f(a)<\inf f(B)} for all a ∈ Int A {\displaystyle a\in \operatorname {Int} A} (such an f {\displaystyle f} is necessarily non-zero).
When the convex sets have additional properties, such as being open or compact for example, then the conclusion can be substantially strengthened:
Theorem — Let A {\displaystyle A} and B {\displaystyle B} be convex non-empty disjoint subsets of a real topological vector space X . {\displaystyle X.}
If X {\displaystyle X} is complex (rather than real) then the same claims hold, but for the real part of f . {\displaystyle f.}
Then following important corollary is known as the Geometric Hahn–Banach theorem or Mazur's theorem (also known as Ascoli–Mazur theorem). It follows from the first bullet above and the convexity of M . {\displaystyle M.}
Theorem (Mazur) — Let M {\displaystyle M} be a vector subspace of the topological vector space X {\displaystyle X} and suppose K {\displaystyle K} is a non-empty convex open subset of X {\displaystyle X} with K ∩ M = ∅ . {\displaystyle K\cap M=\varnothing .} Then there is a closed hyperplane (codimension-1 vector subspace) N ⊆ X {\displaystyle N\subseteq X} that contains M , {\displaystyle M,} but remains disjoint from K . {\displaystyle K.}
Mazur's theorem clarifies that vector subspaces (even those that are not closed) can be characterized by linear functionals.
Corollary (Separation of a subspace and an open convex set) — Let M {\displaystyle M} be a vector subspace of a locally convex topological vector space X , {\displaystyle X,} and U {\displaystyle U} be a non-empty open convex subset disjoint from M . {\displaystyle M.} Then there exists a continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on X {\displaystyle X} such that f ( m ) = 0 {\displaystyle f(m)=0} for all m ∈ M {\displaystyle m\in M} and Re f > 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} f>0} on U . {\displaystyle U.}
Since points are trivially convex, geometric Hahn-Banach implies that functionals can detect the boundary of a set. In particular, let X {\displaystyle X} be a real topological vector space and A ⊆ X {\displaystyle A\subseteq X} be convex with Int A ≠ ∅ . {\displaystyle \operatorname {Int} A\neq \varnothing .} If a 0 ∈ A ∖ Int A {\displaystyle a_{0}\in A\setminus \operatorname {Int} A} then there is a functional that is vanishing at a 0 , {\displaystyle a_{0},} but supported on the interior of A . {\displaystyle A.}
Call a normed space X {\displaystyle X} smooth if at each point x {\displaystyle x} in its unit ball there exists a unique closed hyperplane to the unit ball at x . {\displaystyle x.} Köthe showed in 1983 that a normed space is smooth at a point x {\displaystyle x} if and only if the norm is Gateaux differentiable at that point.
Let U {\displaystyle U} be a convex balanced neighborhood of the origin in a locally convex topological vector space X {\displaystyle X} and suppose x ∈ X {\displaystyle x\in X} is not an element of U . {\displaystyle U.} Then there exists a continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on X {\displaystyle X} such that sup | f ( U ) | ≤ | f ( x ) | . {\displaystyle \sup |f(U)|\leq |f(x)|.}
The Hahn–Banach theorem is the first sign of an important philosophy in functional analysis: to understand a space, one should understand its continuous functionals.
For example, linear subspaces are characterized by functionals: if X is a normed vector space with linear subspace M (not necessarily closed) and if z {\displaystyle z} is an element of X not in the closure of M, then there exists a continuous linear map f : X → K {\displaystyle f:X\to \mathbf {K} } with f ( m ) = 0 {\displaystyle f(m)=0} for all m ∈ M , {\displaystyle m\in M,} f ( z ) = 1 , {\displaystyle f(z)=1,} and ‖ f ‖ = dist ( z , M ) − 1 . {\displaystyle \|f\|=\operatorname {dist} (z,M)^{-1}.} (To see this, note that dist ( ⋅ , M ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {dist} (\cdot ,M)} is a sublinear function.) Moreover, if z {\displaystyle z} is an element of X, then there exists a continuous linear map f : X → K {\displaystyle f:X\to \mathbf {K} } such that f ( z ) = ‖ z ‖ {\displaystyle f(z)=\|z\|} and ‖ f ‖ ≤ 1. {\displaystyle \|f\|\leq 1.} This implies that the natural injection J {\displaystyle J} from a normed space X into its double dual V ∗ ∗ {\displaystyle V^{**}} is isometric.
That last result also suggests that the Hahn–Banach theorem can often be used to locate a "nicer" topology in which to work. For example, many results in functional analysis assume that a space is Hausdorff or locally convex. However, suppose X is a topological vector space, not necessarily Hausdorff or locally convex, but with a nonempty, proper, convex, open set M. Then geometric Hahn-Banach implies that there is a hyperplane separating M from any other point. In particular, there must exist a nonzero functional on X — that is, the continuous dual space X ∗ {\displaystyle X^{*}} is non-trivial. Considering X with the weak topology induced by X ∗ , {\displaystyle X^{*},} then X becomes locally convex; by the second bullet of geometric Hahn-Banach, the weak topology on this new space separates points. Thus X with this weak topology becomes Hausdorff. This sometimes allows some results from locally convex topological vector spaces to be applied to non-Hausdorff and non-locally convex spaces.
The Hahn–Banach theorem is often useful when one wishes to apply the method of a priori estimates. Suppose that we wish to solve the linear differential equation P u = f {\displaystyle Pu=f} for u , {\displaystyle u,} with f {\displaystyle f} given in some Banach space X. If we have control on the size of u {\displaystyle u} in terms of ‖ f ‖ X {\displaystyle \|f\|_{X}} and we can think of u {\displaystyle u} as a bounded linear functional on some suitable space of test functions g , {\displaystyle g,} then we can view f {\displaystyle f} as a linear functional by adjunction: ( f , g ) = ( u , P ∗ g ) . {\displaystyle (f,g)=(u,P^{*}g).} At first, this functional is only defined on the image of P , {\displaystyle P,} but using the Hahn–Banach theorem, we can try to extend it to the entire codomain X. The resulting functional is often defined to be a weak solution to the equation.
Theorem — A real Banach space is reflexive if and only if every pair of non-empty disjoint closed convex subsets, one of which is bounded, can be strictly separated by a hyperplane.
To illustrate an actual application of the Hahn–Banach theorem, we will now prove a result that follows almost entirely from the Hahn–Banach theorem.
Proposition — Suppose X {\displaystyle X} is a Hausdorff locally convex TVS over the field K {\displaystyle \mathbf {K} } and Y {\displaystyle Y} is a vector subspace of X {\displaystyle X} that is TVS–isomorphic to K I {\displaystyle \mathbf {K} ^{I}} for some set I . {\displaystyle I.} Then Y {\displaystyle Y} is a closed and complemented vector subspace of X . {\displaystyle X.}
Since K I {\displaystyle \mathbf {K} ^{I}} is a complete TVS so is Y , {\displaystyle Y,} and since any complete subset of a Hausdorff TVS is closed, Y {\displaystyle Y} is a closed subset of X . {\displaystyle X.} Let f = ( f i ) i ∈ I : Y → K I {\displaystyle f=\left(f_{i}\right)_{i\in I}:Y\to \mathbf {K} ^{I}} be a TVS isomorphism, so that each f i : Y → K {\displaystyle f_{i}:Y\to \mathbf {K} } is a continuous surjective linear functional. By the Hahn–Banach theorem, we may extend each f i {\displaystyle f_{i}} to a continuous linear functional F i : X → K {\displaystyle F_{i}:X\to \mathbf {K} } on X . {\displaystyle X.} Let F := ( F i ) i ∈ I : X → K I {\displaystyle F:=\left(F_{i}\right)_{i\in I}:X\to \mathbf {K} ^{I}} so F {\displaystyle F} is a continuous linear surjection such that its restriction to Y {\displaystyle Y} is F | Y = ( F i | Y ) i ∈ I = ( f i ) i ∈ I = f . {\displaystyle F{\big \vert }_{Y}=\left(F_{i}{\big \vert }_{Y}\right)_{i\in I}=\left(f_{i}\right)_{i\in I}=f.} Let P := f − 1 ∘ F : X → Y , {\displaystyle P:=f^{-1}\circ F:X\to Y,} which is a continuous linear map whose restriction to Y {\displaystyle Y} is P | Y = f − 1 ∘ F | Y = f − 1 ∘ f = 1 Y , {\displaystyle P{\big \vert }_{Y}=f^{-1}\circ F{\big \vert }_{Y}=f^{-1}\circ f=\mathbf {1} _{Y},} where 1 Y {\displaystyle \mathbb {1} _{Y}} denotes the identity map on Y . {\displaystyle Y.} This shows that P {\displaystyle P} is a continuous linear projection onto Y {\displaystyle Y} (that is, P ∘ P = P {\displaystyle P\circ P=P} ). Thus Y {\displaystyle Y} is complemented in X {\displaystyle X} and X = Y ⊕ ker P {\displaystyle X=Y\oplus \ker P} in the category of TVSs. ◼ {\displaystyle \blacksquare }
The above result may be used to show that every closed vector subspace of R N {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{\mathbb {N} }} is complemented because any such space is either finite dimensional or else TVS–isomorphic to R N . {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{\mathbb {N} }.}
General template
There are now many other versions of the Hahn–Banach theorem. The general template for the various versions of the Hahn–Banach theorem presented in this article is as follows:
Theorem — If D {\displaystyle D} is an absorbing disk in a real or complex vector space X {\displaystyle X} and if f {\displaystyle f} be a linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} such that | f | ≤ 1 {\displaystyle |f|\leq 1} on M ∩ D , {\displaystyle M\cap D,} then there exists a linear functional F {\displaystyle F} on X {\displaystyle X} extending f {\displaystyle f} such that | F | ≤ 1 {\displaystyle |F|\leq 1} on D . {\displaystyle D.}
Hahn–Banach theorem for seminorms — If p : M → R {\displaystyle p:M\to \mathbb {R} } is a seminorm defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X , {\displaystyle X,} and if q : X → R {\displaystyle q:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a seminorm on X {\displaystyle X} such that p ≤ q | M , {\displaystyle p\leq q{\big \vert }_{M},} then there exists a seminorm P : X → R {\displaystyle P:X\to \mathbb {R} } on X {\displaystyle X} such that P | M = p {\displaystyle P{\big \vert }_{M}=p} on M {\displaystyle M} and P ≤ q {\displaystyle P\leq q} on X . {\displaystyle X.}
Let S {\displaystyle S} be the convex hull of { m ∈ M : p ( m ) ≤ 1 } ∪ { x ∈ X : q ( x ) ≤ 1 } . {\displaystyle \{m\in M:p(m)\leq 1\}\cup \{x\in X:q(x)\leq 1\}.} Because S {\displaystyle S} is an absorbing disk in X , {\displaystyle X,} its Minkowski functional P {\displaystyle P} is a seminorm. Then p = P {\displaystyle p=P} on M {\displaystyle M} and P ≤ q {\displaystyle P\leq q} on X . {\displaystyle X.}
So for example, suppose that f {\displaystyle f} is a bounded linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of a normed space X , {\displaystyle X,} so its the operator norm ‖ f ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|} is a non-negative real number. Then the linear functional's absolute value p := | f | {\displaystyle p:=|f|} is a seminorm on M {\displaystyle M} and the map q : X → R {\displaystyle q:X\to \mathbb {R} } defined by q ( x ) = ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\displaystyle q(x)=\|f\|\,\|x\|} is a seminorm on X {\displaystyle X} that satisfies p ≤ q | M {\displaystyle p\leq q{\big \vert }_{M}} on M . {\displaystyle M.} The Hahn–Banach theorem for seminorms guarantees the existence of a seminorm P : X → R {\displaystyle P:X\to \mathbb {R} } that is equal to | f | {\displaystyle |f|} on M {\displaystyle M} (since P | M = p = | f | {\displaystyle P{\big \vert }_{M}=p=|f|} ) and is bounded above by P ( x ) ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\displaystyle P(x)\leq \|f\|\,\|x\|} everywhere on X {\displaystyle X} (since P ≤ q {\displaystyle P\leq q} ).
Hahn–Banach sandwich theorem — Let p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real vector space X , {\displaystyle X,} let S ⊆ X {\displaystyle S\subseteq X} be any subset of X , {\displaystyle X,} and let f : S → R {\displaystyle f:S\to \mathbb {R} } be any map. If there exist positive real numbers a {\displaystyle a} and b {\displaystyle b} such that
then there exists a linear functional F : X → R {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {R} } on X {\displaystyle X} such that F ≤ p {\displaystyle F\leq p} on X {\displaystyle X} and f ≤ F ≤ p {\displaystyle f\leq F\leq p} on S . {\displaystyle S.}
Theorem (Andenaes, 1970) — Let p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real vector space X , {\displaystyle X,} let f : M → R {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {R} } be a linear functional on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} such that f ≤ p {\displaystyle f\leq p} on M , {\displaystyle M,} and let S ⊆ X {\displaystyle S\subseteq X} be any subset of X . {\displaystyle X.} Then there exists a linear functional F : X → R {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {R} } on X {\displaystyle X} that extends f , {\displaystyle f,} satisfies F ≤ p {\displaystyle F\leq p} on X , {\displaystyle X,} and is (pointwise) maximal on S {\displaystyle S} in the following sense: if F ^ : X → R {\displaystyle {\widehat {F}}:X\to \mathbb {R} } is a linear functional on X {\displaystyle X} that extends f {\displaystyle f} and satisfies F ^ ≤ p {\displaystyle {\widehat {F}}\leq p} on X , {\displaystyle X,} then F ≤ F ^ {\displaystyle F\leq {\widehat {F}}} on S {\displaystyle S} implies F = F ^ {\displaystyle F={\widehat {F}}} on S . {\displaystyle S.}
If S = { s } {\displaystyle S=\{s\}} is a singleton set (where s ∈ X {\displaystyle s\in X} is some vector) and if F : X → R {\displaystyle F:X\to \mathbb {R} } is such a maximal dominated linear extension of f : M → R , {\displaystyle f:M\to \mathbb {R} ,} then F ( s ) = inf m ∈ M [ f ( s ) + p ( s − m ) ] . {\displaystyle F(s)=\inf _{m\in M}[f(s)+p(s-m)].}
Vector–valued Hahn–Banach theorem — If X {\displaystyle X} and Y {\displaystyle Y} are vector spaces over the same field and if f : M → Y {\displaystyle f:M\to Y} be a linear map defined on a vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X , {\displaystyle X,} then there exists a linear map F : X → Y {\displaystyle F:X\to Y} that extends f . {\displaystyle f.}
A set Γ {\displaystyle \Gamma } of maps X → X {\displaystyle X\to X} is commutative (with respect to function composition ∘ {\displaystyle \,\circ \,} ) if F ∘ G = G ∘ F {\displaystyle F\circ G=G\circ F} for all F , G ∈ Γ . {\displaystyle F,G\in \Gamma .} Say that a function f {\displaystyle f} defined on a subset M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} is Γ {\displaystyle \Gamma } -invariant if L ( M ) ⊆ M {\displaystyle L(M)\subseteq M} and f ∘ L = f {\displaystyle f\circ L=f} on M {\displaystyle M} for every L ∈ Γ . {\displaystyle L\in \Gamma .}
An invariant Hahn–Banach theorem — Suppose Γ {\displaystyle \Gamma } is a commutative set of continuous linear maps from a normed space X {\displaystyle X} into itself and let f {\displaystyle f} be a continuous linear functional defined some vector subspace M {\displaystyle M} of X {\displaystyle X} that is Γ {\displaystyle \Gamma } -invariant, which means that L ( M ) ⊆ M {\displaystyle L(M)\subseteq M} and f ∘ L = f {\displaystyle f\circ L=f} on M {\displaystyle M} for every L ∈ Γ . {\displaystyle L\in \Gamma .} Then f {\displaystyle f} has a continuous linear extension F {\displaystyle F} to all of X {\displaystyle X} that has the same operator norm ‖ f ‖ = ‖ F ‖ {\displaystyle \|f\|=\|F\|} and is also Γ {\displaystyle \Gamma } -invariant, meaning that F ∘ L = F {\displaystyle F\circ L=F} on X {\displaystyle X} for every L ∈ Γ . {\displaystyle L\in \Gamma .}
This theorem may be summarized:
The following theorem of Mazur–Orlicz (1953) is equivalent to the Hahn–Banach theorem.
Mazur–Orlicz theorem — Let p : X → R {\displaystyle p:X\to \mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real or complex vector space X , {\displaystyle X,} let T {\displaystyle T} be any set, and let R : T → R {\displaystyle R:T\to \mathbb {R} } and v : T → X {\displaystyle v:T\to X} be any maps. The following statements are equivalent:
The following theorem characterizes when any scalar function on X {\displaystyle X} (not necessarily linear) has a continuous linear extension to all of X . {\displaystyle X.}
Theorem (The extension principle) — Let f {\displaystyle f} a scalar-valued function on a subset S {\displaystyle S} of a topological vector space X . {\displaystyle X.} Then there exists a continuous linear functional F {\displaystyle F} on X {\displaystyle X} extending f {\displaystyle f} if and only if there exists a continuous seminorm p {\displaystyle p} on X {\displaystyle X} such that
for all positive integers n {\displaystyle n} and all finite sequences a 1 , … , a n {\displaystyle a_{1},\ldots ,a_{n}} of scalars and elements s 1 , … , s n {\displaystyle s_{1},\ldots ,s_{n}} of S . {\displaystyle S.}
Let X be a topological vector space. A vector subspace M of X has the extension property if any continuous linear functional on M can be extended to a continuous linear functional on X, and we say that X has the Hahn–Banach extension property (HBEP) if every vector subspace of X has the extension property.
The Hahn–Banach theorem guarantees that every Hausdorff locally convex space has the HBEP. For complete metrizable topological vector spaces there is a converse, due to Kalton: every complete metrizable TVS with the Hahn–Banach extension property is locally convex. On the other hand, a vector space X of uncountable dimension, endowed with the finest vector topology, then this is a topological vector spaces with the Hahn-Banach extension property that is neither locally convex nor metrizable.
A vector subspace M of a TVS X has the separation property if for every element of X such that x ∉ M , {\displaystyle x\not \in M,} there exists a continuous linear functional f {\displaystyle f} on X such that f ( x ) ≠ 0 {\displaystyle f(x)\neq 0} and f ( m ) = 0 {\displaystyle f(m)=0} for all m ∈ M . {\displaystyle m\in M.} Clearly, the continuous dual space of a TVS X separates points on X if and only if { 0 } , {\displaystyle \{0\},} has the separation property. In 1992, Kakol proved that any infinite dimensional vector space X, there exist TVS-topologies on X that do not have the HBEP despite having enough continuous linear functionals for the continuous dual space to separate points on X. However, if X is a TVS then every vector subspace of X has the extension property if and only if every vector subspace of X has the separation property.
The proof of the Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces (HB) commonly uses Zorn's lemma, which in the axiomatic framework of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF) is equivalent to the axiom of choice (AC). It was discovered by Łoś and Ryll-Nardzewski and independently by Luxemburg that HB can be proved using the ultrafilter lemma (UL), which is equivalent (under ZF) to the Boolean prime ideal theorem (BPI). BPI is strictly weaker than the axiom of choice and it was later shown that HB is strictly weaker than BPI.
The ultrafilter lemma is equivalent (under ZF) to the Banach–Alaoglu theorem, which is another foundational theorem in functional analysis. Although the Banach–Alaoglu theorem implies HB, it is not equivalent to it (said differently, the Banach–Alaoglu theorem is strictly stronger than HB). However, HB is equivalent to a certain weakened version of the Banach–Alaoglu theorem for normed spaces. The Hahn–Banach theorem is also equivalent to the following statement:
(BPI is equivalent to the statement that there are always non-constant probability charges which take only the values 0 and 1.)
In ZF, the Hahn–Banach theorem suffices to derive the existence of a non-Lebesgue measurable set. Moreover, the Hahn–Banach theorem implies the Banach–Tarski paradox.
For separable Banach spaces, D. K. Brown and S. G. Simpson proved that the Hahn–Banach theorem follows from WKL0, a weak subsystem of second-order arithmetic that takes a form of Kőnig's lemma restricted to binary trees as an axiom. In fact, they prove that under a weak set of assumptions, the two are equivalent, an example of reverse mathematics.
Proofs | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem is a central tool in functional analysis. It allows the extension of bounded linear functionals defined on a subspace of some vector space to the whole space, and it also shows that there are \"enough\" continuous linear functionals defined on every normed vector space to make the study of the dual space \"interesting\". Another version of the Hahn–Banach theorem is known as the Hahn–Banach separation theorem or the hyperplane separation theorem, and has numerous uses in convex geometry.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The theorem is named for the mathematicians Hans Hahn and Stefan Banach, who proved it independently in the late 1920s. The special case of the theorem for the space C [ a , b ] {\\displaystyle C[a,b]} of continuous functions on an interval was proved earlier (in 1912) by Eduard Helly, and a more general extension theorem, the M. Riesz extension theorem, from which the Hahn–Banach theorem can be derived, was proved in 1923 by Marcel Riesz.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The first Hahn–Banach theorem was proved by Eduard Helly in 1912 who showed that certain linear functionals defined on a subspace of a certain type of normed space ( C N {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {C} ^{\\mathbb {N} }} ) had an extension of the same norm. Helly did this through the technique of first proving that a one-dimensional extension exists (where the linear functional has its domain extended by one dimension) and then using induction. In 1927, Hahn defined general Banach spaces and used Helly's technique to prove a norm-preserving version of Hahn–Banach theorem for Banach spaces (where a bounded linear functional on a subspace has a bounded linear extension of the same norm to the whole space). In 1929, Banach, who was unaware of Hahn's result, generalized it by replacing the norm-preserving version with the dominated extension version that uses sublinear functions. Whereas Helly's proof used mathematical induction, Hahn and Banach both used transfinite induction.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem arose from attempts to solve infinite systems of linear equations. This is needed to solve problems such as the moment problem, whereby given all the potential moments of a function one must determine if a function having these moments exists, and, if so, find it in terms of those moments. Another such problem is the Fourier cosine series problem, whereby given all the potential Fourier cosine coefficients one must determine if a function having those coefficients exists, and, again, find it if so.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Riesz and Helly solved the problem for certain classes of spaces (such as L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} and C ( [ a , b ] ) {\\displaystyle C([a,b])} ) where they discovered that the existence of a solution was equivalent to the existence and continuity of certain linear functionals. In effect, they needed to solve the following problem:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "If X {\\displaystyle X} happens to be a reflexive space then to solve the vector problem, it suffices to solve the following dual problem:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Riesz went on to define L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} space ( 1 < p < ∞ {\\displaystyle 1<p<\\infty } ) in 1910 and the ℓ p {\\displaystyle \\ell ^{p}} spaces in 1913. While investigating these spaces he proved a special case of the Hahn–Banach theorem. Helly also proved a special case of the Hahn–Banach theorem in 1912. In 1910, Riesz solved the functional problem for some specific spaces and in 1912, Helly solved it for a more general class of spaces. It wasn't until 1932 that Banach, in one of the first important applications of the Hahn–Banach theorem, solved the general functional problem. The following theorem states the general functional problem and characterizes its solution.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Theorem (The functional problem) — Let ( x i ) i ∈ I {\\displaystyle \\left(x_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}} be vectors in a real or complex normed space X {\\displaystyle X} and let ( c i ) i ∈ I {\\displaystyle \\left(c_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}} be scalars also indexed by I ≠ ∅ . {\\displaystyle I\\neq \\varnothing .}",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "There exists a continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on X {\\displaystyle X} such that f ( x i ) = c i {\\displaystyle f\\left(x_{i}\\right)=c_{i}} for all i ∈ I {\\displaystyle i\\in I} if and only if there exists a K > 0 {\\displaystyle K>0} such that for any choice of scalars ( s i ) i ∈ I {\\displaystyle \\left(s_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}} where all but finitely many s i {\\displaystyle s_{i}} are 0 , {\\displaystyle 0,} the following holds:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem can be deduced from the above theorem. If X {\\displaystyle X} is reflexive then this theorem solves the vector problem.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "A real-valued function f : M → R {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} } defined on a subset M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} is said to be dominated (above) by a function p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } if f ( m ) ≤ p ( m ) {\\displaystyle f(m)\\leq p(m)} for every m ∈ M . {\\displaystyle m\\in M.} Hence the reason why the following version of the Hahn-Banach theorem is called the dominated extension theorem.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hahn–Banach dominated extension theorem (for real linear functionals) — If p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a sublinear function (such as a norm or seminorm for example) defined on a real vector space X {\\displaystyle X} then any linear functional defined on a vector subspace of X {\\displaystyle X} that is dominated above by p {\\displaystyle p} has at least one linear extension to all of X {\\displaystyle X} that is also dominated above by p . {\\displaystyle p.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Explicitly, if p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a sublinear function, which by definition means that it satisfies",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "and if f : M → R {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} such that",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "then there exists a linear functional F : X → R {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } such that",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Moreover, if p {\\displaystyle p} is a seminorm then | F ( x ) | ≤ p ( x ) {\\displaystyle |F(x)|\\leq p(x)} necessarily holds for all x ∈ X . {\\displaystyle x\\in X.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The theorem remains true if the requirements on p {\\displaystyle p} are relaxed to require only that p {\\displaystyle p} be a convex function:",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "A function p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is convex and satisfies p ( 0 ) ≤ 0 {\\displaystyle p(0)\\leq 0} if and only if p ( a x + b y ) ≤ a p ( x ) + b p ( y ) {\\displaystyle p(ax+by)\\leq ap(x)+bp(y)} for all vectors x , y ∈ X {\\displaystyle x,y\\in X} and all non-negative real a , b ≥ 0 {\\displaystyle a,b\\geq 0} such that a + b ≤ 1. {\\displaystyle a+b\\leq 1.} Every sublinear function is a convex function. On the other hand, if p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is convex with p ( 0 ) ≥ 0 , {\\displaystyle p(0)\\geq 0,} then the function defined by p 0 ( x ) = def inf t > 0 p ( t x ) t {\\displaystyle p_{0}(x)\\;{\\stackrel {\\scriptscriptstyle {\\text{def}}}{=}}\\;\\inf _{t>0}{\\frac {p(tx)}{t}}} is positively homogeneous (because for all x {\\displaystyle x} and r > 0 {\\displaystyle r>0} one has p 0 ( r x ) = inf t > 0 p ( t r x ) t ) = r inf t > 0 p ( t r x ) t r = r inf τ > 0 p ( τ x ) τ = r p 0 ( x ) {\\displaystyle p_{0}(rx)=\\inf _{t>0}{\\frac {p(trx)}{t}})=r\\inf _{t>0}{\\frac {p(trx)}{tr}}=r\\inf _{\\tau >0}{\\frac {p(\\tau x)}{\\tau }}=rp_{0}(x)} ), hence, being convex, it is sublinear. It is also bounded above by p 0 ≤ p , {\\displaystyle p_{0}\\leq p,} and satisfies F ≤ p 0 {\\displaystyle F\\leq p_{0}} for every linear functional F ≤ p . {\\displaystyle F\\leq p.} So the extension of the Hahn–Banach theorem to convex functionals does not have a much larger content than the classical one stated for sublinear functionals.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "If F : X → R {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is linear then F ≤ p {\\displaystyle F\\leq p} if and only if",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "which is the (equivalent) conclusion that some authors write instead of F ≤ p . {\\displaystyle F\\leq p.} It follows that if p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is also symmetric, meaning that p ( − x ) = p ( x ) {\\displaystyle p(-x)=p(x)} holds for all x ∈ X , {\\displaystyle x\\in X,} then F ≤ p {\\displaystyle F\\leq p} if and only | F | ≤ p . {\\displaystyle |F|\\leq p.} Every norm is a seminorm and both are symmetric balanced sublinear functions. A sublinear function is a seminorm if and only if it is a balanced function. On a real vector space (although not on a complex vector space), a sublinear function is a seminorm if and only if it is symmetric. The identity function R → R {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} \\to \\mathbb {R} } on X := R {\\displaystyle X:=\\mathbb {R} } is an example of a sublinear function that is not a seminorm.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The dominated extension theorem for real linear functionals implies the following alternative statement of the Hahn–Banach theorem that can be applied to linear functionals on real or complex vector spaces.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Hahn–Banach theorem — Suppose p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } a seminorm on a vector space X {\\displaystyle X} over the field K , {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {K} ,} which is either R {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} } or C . {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {C} .} If f : M → K {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbf {K} } is a linear functional on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} such that",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "then there exists a linear functional F : X → K {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbf {K} } such that",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The theorem remains true if the requirements on p {\\displaystyle p} are relaxed to require only that for all x , y ∈ X {\\displaystyle x,y\\in X} and all scalars a {\\displaystyle a} and b {\\displaystyle b} satisfying | a | + | b | ≤ 1 , {\\displaystyle |a|+|b|\\leq 1,}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "This condition holds if and only if p {\\displaystyle p} is a convex and balanced function satisfying p ( 0 ) ≤ 0 , {\\displaystyle p(0)\\leq 0,} or equivalently, if and only if it is convex, satisfies p ( 0 ) ≤ 0 , {\\displaystyle p(0)\\leq 0,} and p ( u x ) ≤ p ( x ) {\\displaystyle p(ux)\\leq p(x)} for all x ∈ X {\\displaystyle x\\in X} and all unit length scalars u . {\\displaystyle u.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A complex-valued functional F {\\displaystyle F} is said to be dominated by p {\\displaystyle p} if | F ( x ) | ≤ p ( x ) {\\displaystyle |F(x)|\\leq p(x)} for all x {\\displaystyle x} in the domain of F . {\\displaystyle F.} With this terminology, the above statements of the Hahn–Banach theorem can be restated more succinctly:",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Proof",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The following observations allow the Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces to be applied to (complex-valued) linear functionals on complex vector spaces.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Every linear functional F : X → C {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {C} } on a complex vector space is completely determined by its real part Re F : X → R {\\displaystyle \\;\\operatorname {Re} F:X\\to \\mathbb {R} \\;} through the formula",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "and moreover, if ‖ ⋅ ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|\\cdot \\|} is a norm on X {\\displaystyle X} then their dual norms are equal: ‖ F ‖ = ‖ Re F ‖ . {\\displaystyle \\|F\\|=\\|\\operatorname {Re} F\\|.} In particular, a linear functional on X {\\displaystyle X} extends another one defined on M ⊆ X {\\displaystyle M\\subseteq X} if and only if their real parts are equal on M {\\displaystyle M} (in other words, a linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} extends f {\\displaystyle f} if and only if Re F {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Re} F} extends Re f {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Re} f} ). The real part of a linear functional on X {\\displaystyle X} is always a real-linear functional (meaning that it is linear when X {\\displaystyle X} is considered as a real vector space) and if R : X → R {\\displaystyle R:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a real-linear functional on a complex vector space then x ↦ R ( x ) − i R ( i x ) {\\displaystyle x\\mapsto R(x)-iR(ix)} defines the unique linear functional on X {\\displaystyle X} whose real part is R . {\\displaystyle R.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "If F {\\displaystyle F} is a linear functional on a (complex or real) vector space X {\\displaystyle X} and if p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a seminorm then",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Stated in simpler language, a linear functional is dominated by a seminorm p {\\displaystyle p} if and only if its real part is dominated above by p . {\\displaystyle p.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Suppose p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a seminorm on a complex vector space X {\\displaystyle X} and let f : M → C {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {C} } be a linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} that satisfies | f | ≤ p {\\displaystyle |f|\\leq p} on M . {\\displaystyle M.} Consider X {\\displaystyle X} as a real vector space and apply the Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces to the real-linear functional Re f : M → R {\\displaystyle \\;\\operatorname {Re} f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} \\;} to obtain a real-linear extension R : X → R {\\displaystyle R:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } that is also dominated above by p , {\\displaystyle p,} so that it satisfies R ≤ p {\\displaystyle R\\leq p} on X {\\displaystyle X} and R = Re f {\\displaystyle R=\\operatorname {Re} f} on M . {\\displaystyle M.} The map F : X → C {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {C} } defined by F ( x ) = R ( x ) − i R ( i x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)\\;=\\;R(x)-iR(ix)} is a linear functional on X {\\displaystyle X} that extends f {\\displaystyle f} (because their real parts agree on M {\\displaystyle M} ) and satisfies | F | ≤ p {\\displaystyle |F|\\leq p} on X {\\displaystyle X} (because Re F ≤ p {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Re} F\\leq p} and p {\\displaystyle p} is a seminorm). ◼ {\\displaystyle \\blacksquare }",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The proof above shows that when p {\\displaystyle p} is a seminorm then there is a one-to-one correspondence between dominated linear extensions of f : M → C {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {C} } and dominated real-linear extensions of Re f : M → R ; {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Re} f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} ;} the proof even gives a formula for explicitly constructing a linear extension of f {\\displaystyle f} from any given real-linear extension of its real part.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Continuity",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} on a topological vector space is continuous if and only if this is true of its real part Re F ; {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Re} F;} if the domain is a normed space then ‖ F ‖ = ‖ Re F ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|F\\|=\\|\\operatorname {Re} F\\|} (where one side is infinite if and only if the other side is infinite). Assume X {\\displaystyle X} is a topological vector space and p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is sublinear function. If p {\\displaystyle p} is a continuous sublinear function that dominates a linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} then F {\\displaystyle F} is necessarily continuous. Moreover, a linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} is continuous if and only if its absolute value | F | {\\displaystyle |F|} (which is a seminorm that dominates F {\\displaystyle F} ) is continuous. In particular, a linear functional is continuous if and only if it is dominated by some continuous sublinear function.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces ultimately follows from Helly's initial result for the special case where the linear functional is extended from M {\\displaystyle M} to a larger vector space in which M {\\displaystyle M} has codimension 1. {\\displaystyle 1.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Lemma (One–dimensional dominated extension theorem) — Let p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real vector space X , {\\displaystyle X,} let f : M → R {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} } a linear functional on a proper vector subspace M ⊊ X {\\displaystyle M\\subsetneq X} such that f ≤ p {\\displaystyle f\\leq p} on M {\\displaystyle M} (meaning f ( m ) ≤ p ( m ) {\\displaystyle f(m)\\leq p(m)} for all m ∈ M {\\displaystyle m\\in M} ), and let x ∈ X {\\displaystyle x\\in X} be a vector not in M {\\displaystyle M} (so M ⊕ R x = span { M , x } {\\displaystyle M\\oplus \\mathbb {R} x=\\operatorname {span} \\{M,x\\}} ). There exists a linear extension F : M ⊕ R x → R {\\displaystyle F:M\\oplus \\mathbb {R} x\\to \\mathbb {R} } of f {\\displaystyle f} such that F ≤ p {\\displaystyle F\\leq p} on M ⊕ R x . {\\displaystyle M\\oplus \\mathbb {R} x.}",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Given any real number b , {\\displaystyle b,} the map F b : M ⊕ R x → R {\\displaystyle F_{b}:M\\oplus \\mathbb {R} x\\to \\mathbb {R} } defined by F b ( m + r x ) = f ( m ) + r b {\\displaystyle F_{b}(m+rx)=f(m)+rb} is always a linear extension of f {\\displaystyle f} to M ⊕ R x {\\displaystyle M\\oplus \\mathbb {R} x} but it might not satisfy F b ≤ p . {\\displaystyle F_{b}\\leq p.} It will be shown that b {\\displaystyle b} can always be chosen so as to guarantee that F b ≤ p , {\\displaystyle F_{b}\\leq p,} which will complete the proof.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "If m , n ∈ M {\\displaystyle m,n\\in M} then",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "which implies",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "So define",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "where a ≤ c {\\displaystyle a\\leq c} are real numbers. To guarantee F b ≤ p , {\\displaystyle F_{b}\\leq p,} it suffices that a ≤ b ≤ c {\\displaystyle a\\leq b\\leq c} (in fact, this is also necessary) because then b {\\displaystyle b} satisfies \"the decisive inequality\"",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "To see that f ( m ) + r b ≤ p ( m + r x ) {\\displaystyle f(m)+rb\\leq p(m+rx)} follows, assume r ≠ 0 {\\displaystyle r\\neq 0} and substitute 1 r m {\\displaystyle {\\tfrac {1}{r}}m} in for both m {\\displaystyle m} and n {\\displaystyle n} to obtain",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "If r > 0 {\\displaystyle r>0} (respectively, if r < 0 {\\displaystyle r<0} ) then the right (respectively, the left) hand side equals 1 r [ p ( m + r x ) − f ( m ) ] {\\displaystyle {\\tfrac {1}{r}}\\left[p(m+rx)-f(m)\\right]} so that multiplying by r {\\displaystyle r} gives r b ≤ p ( m + r x ) − f ( m ) . {\\displaystyle rb\\leq p(m+rx)-f(m).} ◼ {\\displaystyle \\blacksquare }",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "This lemma remains true if p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is merely a convex function instead of a sublinear function.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The lemma above is the key step in deducing the dominated extension theorem from Zorn's lemma.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The set of all possible dominated linear extensions of f {\\displaystyle f} are partially ordered by extension of each other, so there is a maximal extension F . {\\displaystyle F.} By the codimension-1 result, if F {\\displaystyle F} is not defined on all of X , {\\displaystyle X,} then it can be further extended. Thus F {\\displaystyle F} must be defined everywhere, as claimed. ◼ {\\displaystyle \\blacksquare }",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "When M {\\displaystyle M} has countable codimension, then using induction and the lemma completes the proof of the Hahn–Banach theorem. The standard proof of the general case uses Zorn's lemma although the strictly weaker ultrafilter lemma (which is equivalent to the compactness theorem and to the Boolean prime ideal theorem) may be used instead. Hahn-Banach can also be proved using Tychonoff's theorem for compact Hausdorff spaces (which is also equivalent to the ultrafilter lemma)",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Mizar project has completely formalized and automatically checked the proof of the Hahn–Banach theorem in the HAHNBAN file.",
"title": "Hahn–Banach theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem can be used to guarantee the existence of continuous linear extensions of continuous linear functionals.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Hahn–Banach continuous extension theorem — Every continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of a (real or complex) locally convex topological vector space X {\\displaystyle X} has a continuous linear extension F {\\displaystyle F} to all of X . {\\displaystyle X.} If in addition X {\\displaystyle X} is a normed space, then this extension can be chosen so that its dual norm is equal to that of f . {\\displaystyle f.}",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In category-theoretic terms, the underlying field of the vector space is an injective object in the category of locally convex vector spaces.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "On a normed (or seminormed) space, a linear extension F {\\displaystyle F} of a bounded linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} is said to be norm-preserving if it has the same dual norm as the original functional: ‖ F ‖ = ‖ f ‖ . {\\displaystyle \\|F\\|=\\|f\\|.} Because of this terminology, the second part of the above theorem is sometimes referred to as the \"norm-preserving\" version of the Hahn–Banach theorem. Explicitly:",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Norm-preserving Hahn–Banach continuous extension theorem — Every continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of a (real or complex) normed space X {\\displaystyle X} has a continuous linear extension F {\\displaystyle F} to all of X {\\displaystyle X} that satisfies ‖ f ‖ = ‖ F ‖ . {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|=\\|F\\|.}",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The following observations allow the continuous extension theorem to be deduced from the Hahn–Banach theorem.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The absolute value of a linear functional is always a seminorm. A linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} on a topological vector space X {\\displaystyle X} is continuous if and only if its absolute value | F | {\\displaystyle |F|} is continuous, which happens if and only if there exists a continuous seminorm p {\\displaystyle p} on X {\\displaystyle X} such that | F | ≤ p {\\displaystyle |F|\\leq p} on the domain of F . {\\displaystyle F.} If X {\\displaystyle X} is a locally convex space then this statement remains true when the linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} is defined on a proper vector subspace of X . {\\displaystyle X.}",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Let f {\\displaystyle f} be a continuous linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of a locally convex topological vector space X . {\\displaystyle X.} Because X {\\displaystyle X} is locally convex, there exists a continuous seminorm p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } on X {\\displaystyle X} that dominates f {\\displaystyle f} (meaning that | f ( m ) | ≤ p ( m ) {\\displaystyle |f(m)|\\leq p(m)} for all m ∈ M {\\displaystyle m\\in M} ). By the Hahn–Banach theorem, there exists a linear extension of f {\\displaystyle f} to X , {\\displaystyle X,} call it F , {\\displaystyle F,} that satisfies | F | ≤ p {\\displaystyle |F|\\leq p} on X . {\\displaystyle X.} This linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} is continuous since | F | ≤ p {\\displaystyle |F|\\leq p} and p {\\displaystyle p} is a continuous seminorm.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Proof for normed spaces",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "A linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on a normed space is continuous if and only if it is bounded, which means that its dual norm",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "is finite, in which case | f ( m ) | ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ m ‖ {\\displaystyle |f(m)|\\leq \\|f\\|\\|m\\|} holds for every point m {\\displaystyle m} in its domain. Moreover, if c ≥ 0 {\\displaystyle c\\geq 0} is such that | f ( m ) | ≤ c ‖ m ‖ {\\displaystyle |f(m)|\\leq c\\|m\\|} for all m {\\displaystyle m} in the functional's domain, then necessarily ‖ f ‖ ≤ c . {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|\\leq c.} If F {\\displaystyle F} is a linear extension of a linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} then their dual norms always satisfy ‖ f ‖ ≤ ‖ F ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|\\leq \\|F\\|} so that equality ‖ f ‖ = ‖ F ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|=\\|F\\|} is equivalent to ‖ F ‖ ≤ ‖ f ‖ , {\\displaystyle \\|F\\|\\leq \\|f\\|,} which holds if and only if | F ( x ) | ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\\displaystyle |F(x)|\\leq \\|f\\|\\|x\\|} for every point x {\\displaystyle x} in the extension's domain. This can be restated in terms of the function ‖ f ‖ ‖ ⋅ ‖ : X → R {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|\\,\\|\\cdot \\|:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } defined by x ↦ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ , {\\displaystyle x\\mapsto \\|f\\|\\,\\|x\\|,} which is always a seminorm:",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Applying the Hahn–Banach theorem to f {\\displaystyle f} with this seminorm ‖ f ‖ ‖ ⋅ ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|\\,\\|\\cdot \\|} thus produces a dominated linear extension whose norm is (necessarily) equal to that of f , {\\displaystyle f,} which proves the theorem:",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Let f {\\displaystyle f} be a continuous linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of a normed space X . {\\displaystyle X.} Then the function p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } defined by p ( x ) = ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\\displaystyle p(x)=\\|f\\|\\,\\|x\\|} is a seminorm on X {\\displaystyle X} that dominates f , {\\displaystyle f,} meaning that | f ( m ) | ≤ p ( m ) {\\displaystyle |f(m)|\\leq p(m)} holds for every m ∈ M . {\\displaystyle m\\in M.} By the Hahn–Banach theorem, there exists a linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} on X {\\displaystyle X} that extends f {\\displaystyle f} (which guarantees ‖ f ‖ ≤ ‖ F ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|\\leq \\|F\\|} ) and that is also dominated by p , {\\displaystyle p,} meaning that | F ( x ) | ≤ p ( x ) {\\displaystyle |F(x)|\\leq p(x)} for every x ∈ X . {\\displaystyle x\\in X.} The fact that ‖ f ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|} is a real number such that | F ( x ) | ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\\displaystyle |F(x)|\\leq \\|f\\|\\|x\\|} for every x ∈ X , {\\displaystyle x\\in X,} guarantees ‖ F ‖ ≤ ‖ f ‖ . {\\displaystyle \\|F\\|\\leq \\|f\\|.} Since ‖ F ‖ = ‖ f ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|F\\|=\\|f\\|} is finite, the linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} is bounded and thus continuous.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The continuous extension theorem might fail if the topological vector space (TVS) X {\\displaystyle X} is not locally convex. For example, for 0 < p < 1 , {\\displaystyle 0<p<1,} the Lebesgue space L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} is a complete metrizable TVS (an F-space) that is not locally convex (in fact, its only convex open subsets are itself L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} and the empty set) and the only continuous linear functional on L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} is the constant 0 {\\displaystyle 0} function (Rudin 1991, §1.47). Since L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1])} is Hausdorff, every finite-dimensional vector subspace M ⊆ L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) {\\displaystyle M\\subseteq L^{p}([0,1])} is linearly homeomorphic to Euclidean space R dim M {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} ^{\\dim M}} or C dim M {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {C} ^{\\dim M}} (by F. Riesz's theorem) and so every non-zero linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on M {\\displaystyle M} is continuous but none has a continuous linear extension to all of L p ( [ 0 , 1 ] ) . {\\displaystyle L^{p}([0,1]).} However, it is possible for a TVS X {\\displaystyle X} to not be locally convex but nevertheless have enough continuous linear functionals that its continuous dual space X ∗ {\\displaystyle X^{*}} separates points; for such a TVS, a continuous linear functional defined on a vector subspace might have a continuous linear extension to the whole space.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "If the TVS X {\\displaystyle X} is not locally convex then there might not exist any continuous seminorm p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } defined on X {\\displaystyle X} (not just on M {\\displaystyle M} ) that dominates f , {\\displaystyle f,} in which case the Hahn–Banach theorem can not be applied as it was in the above proof of the continuous extension theorem. However, the proof's argument can be generalized to give a characterization of when a continuous linear functional has a continuous linear extension: If X {\\displaystyle X} is any TVS (not necessarily locally convex), then a continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} has a continuous linear extension F {\\displaystyle F} to all of X {\\displaystyle X} if and only if there exists some continuous seminorm p {\\displaystyle p} on X {\\displaystyle X} that dominates f . {\\displaystyle f.} Specifically, if given a continuous linear extension F {\\displaystyle F} then p := | F | {\\displaystyle p:=|F|} is a continuous seminorm on X {\\displaystyle X} that dominates f ; {\\displaystyle f;} and conversely, if given a continuous seminorm p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } on X {\\displaystyle X} that dominates f {\\displaystyle f} then any dominated linear extension of f {\\displaystyle f} to X {\\displaystyle X} (the existence of which is guaranteed by the Hahn–Banach theorem) will be a continuous linear extension.",
"title": "Continuous extension theorem"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The key element of the Hahn–Banach theorem is fundamentally a result about the separation of two convex sets: { − p ( − x − n ) − f ( n ) : n ∈ M } , {\\displaystyle \\{-p(-x-n)-f(n):n\\in M\\},} and { p ( m + x ) − f ( m ) : m ∈ M } . {\\displaystyle \\{p(m+x)-f(m):m\\in M\\}.} This sort of argument appears widely in convex geometry, optimization theory, and economics. Lemmas to this end derived from the original Hahn–Banach theorem are known as the Hahn–Banach separation theorems. They are generalizations of the hyperplane separation theorem, which states that two disjoint nonempty convex subsets of a finite-dimensional space R n {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} ^{n}} can be separated by some affine hyperplane, which is a fiber (level set) of the form f − 1 ( s ) = { x : f ( x ) = s } {\\displaystyle f^{-1}(s)=\\{x:f(x)=s\\}} where f ≠ 0 {\\displaystyle f\\neq 0} is a non-zero linear functional and s {\\displaystyle s} is a scalar.",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Theorem — Let A {\\displaystyle A} and B {\\displaystyle B} be non-empty convex subsets of a real locally convex topological vector space X . {\\displaystyle X.} If Int A ≠ ∅ {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Int} A\\neq \\varnothing } and B ∩ Int A = ∅ {\\displaystyle B\\cap \\operatorname {Int} A=\\varnothing } then there exists a continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on X {\\displaystyle X} such that sup f ( A ) ≤ inf f ( B ) {\\displaystyle \\sup f(A)\\leq \\inf f(B)} and f ( a ) < inf f ( B ) {\\displaystyle f(a)<\\inf f(B)} for all a ∈ Int A {\\displaystyle a\\in \\operatorname {Int} A} (such an f {\\displaystyle f} is necessarily non-zero).",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "When the convex sets have additional properties, such as being open or compact for example, then the conclusion can be substantially strengthened:",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Theorem — Let A {\\displaystyle A} and B {\\displaystyle B} be convex non-empty disjoint subsets of a real topological vector space X . {\\displaystyle X.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "If X {\\displaystyle X} is complex (rather than real) then the same claims hold, but for the real part of f . {\\displaystyle f.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Then following important corollary is known as the Geometric Hahn–Banach theorem or Mazur's theorem (also known as Ascoli–Mazur theorem). It follows from the first bullet above and the convexity of M . {\\displaystyle M.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Theorem (Mazur) — Let M {\\displaystyle M} be a vector subspace of the topological vector space X {\\displaystyle X} and suppose K {\\displaystyle K} is a non-empty convex open subset of X {\\displaystyle X} with K ∩ M = ∅ . {\\displaystyle K\\cap M=\\varnothing .} Then there is a closed hyperplane (codimension-1 vector subspace) N ⊆ X {\\displaystyle N\\subseteq X} that contains M , {\\displaystyle M,} but remains disjoint from K . {\\displaystyle K.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Mazur's theorem clarifies that vector subspaces (even those that are not closed) can be characterized by linear functionals.",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Corollary (Separation of a subspace and an open convex set) — Let M {\\displaystyle M} be a vector subspace of a locally convex topological vector space X , {\\displaystyle X,} and U {\\displaystyle U} be a non-empty open convex subset disjoint from M . {\\displaystyle M.} Then there exists a continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on X {\\displaystyle X} such that f ( m ) = 0 {\\displaystyle f(m)=0} for all m ∈ M {\\displaystyle m\\in M} and Re f > 0 {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Re} f>0} on U . {\\displaystyle U.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Since points are trivially convex, geometric Hahn-Banach implies that functionals can detect the boundary of a set. In particular, let X {\\displaystyle X} be a real topological vector space and A ⊆ X {\\displaystyle A\\subseteq X} be convex with Int A ≠ ∅ . {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Int} A\\neq \\varnothing .} If a 0 ∈ A ∖ Int A {\\displaystyle a_{0}\\in A\\setminus \\operatorname {Int} A} then there is a functional that is vanishing at a 0 , {\\displaystyle a_{0},} but supported on the interior of A . {\\displaystyle A.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Call a normed space X {\\displaystyle X} smooth if at each point x {\\displaystyle x} in its unit ball there exists a unique closed hyperplane to the unit ball at x . {\\displaystyle x.} Köthe showed in 1983 that a normed space is smooth at a point x {\\displaystyle x} if and only if the norm is Gateaux differentiable at that point.",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Let U {\\displaystyle U} be a convex balanced neighborhood of the origin in a locally convex topological vector space X {\\displaystyle X} and suppose x ∈ X {\\displaystyle x\\in X} is not an element of U . {\\displaystyle U.} Then there exists a continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on X {\\displaystyle X} such that sup | f ( U ) | ≤ | f ( x ) | . {\\displaystyle \\sup |f(U)|\\leq |f(x)|.}",
"title": "Geometric Hahn–Banach (the Hahn–Banach separation theorems)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem is the first sign of an important philosophy in functional analysis: to understand a space, one should understand its continuous functionals.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "For example, linear subspaces are characterized by functionals: if X is a normed vector space with linear subspace M (not necessarily closed) and if z {\\displaystyle z} is an element of X not in the closure of M, then there exists a continuous linear map f : X → K {\\displaystyle f:X\\to \\mathbf {K} } with f ( m ) = 0 {\\displaystyle f(m)=0} for all m ∈ M , {\\displaystyle m\\in M,} f ( z ) = 1 , {\\displaystyle f(z)=1,} and ‖ f ‖ = dist ( z , M ) − 1 . {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|=\\operatorname {dist} (z,M)^{-1}.} (To see this, note that dist ( ⋅ , M ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {dist} (\\cdot ,M)} is a sublinear function.) Moreover, if z {\\displaystyle z} is an element of X, then there exists a continuous linear map f : X → K {\\displaystyle f:X\\to \\mathbf {K} } such that f ( z ) = ‖ z ‖ {\\displaystyle f(z)=\\|z\\|} and ‖ f ‖ ≤ 1. {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|\\leq 1.} This implies that the natural injection J {\\displaystyle J} from a normed space X into its double dual V ∗ ∗ {\\displaystyle V^{**}} is isometric.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "That last result also suggests that the Hahn–Banach theorem can often be used to locate a \"nicer\" topology in which to work. For example, many results in functional analysis assume that a space is Hausdorff or locally convex. However, suppose X is a topological vector space, not necessarily Hausdorff or locally convex, but with a nonempty, proper, convex, open set M. Then geometric Hahn-Banach implies that there is a hyperplane separating M from any other point. In particular, there must exist a nonzero functional on X — that is, the continuous dual space X ∗ {\\displaystyle X^{*}} is non-trivial. Considering X with the weak topology induced by X ∗ , {\\displaystyle X^{*},} then X becomes locally convex; by the second bullet of geometric Hahn-Banach, the weak topology on this new space separates points. Thus X with this weak topology becomes Hausdorff. This sometimes allows some results from locally convex topological vector spaces to be applied to non-Hausdorff and non-locally convex spaces.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem is often useful when one wishes to apply the method of a priori estimates. Suppose that we wish to solve the linear differential equation P u = f {\\displaystyle Pu=f} for u , {\\displaystyle u,} with f {\\displaystyle f} given in some Banach space X. If we have control on the size of u {\\displaystyle u} in terms of ‖ f ‖ X {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|_{X}} and we can think of u {\\displaystyle u} as a bounded linear functional on some suitable space of test functions g , {\\displaystyle g,} then we can view f {\\displaystyle f} as a linear functional by adjunction: ( f , g ) = ( u , P ∗ g ) . {\\displaystyle (f,g)=(u,P^{*}g).} At first, this functional is only defined on the image of P , {\\displaystyle P,} but using the Hahn–Banach theorem, we can try to extend it to the entire codomain X. The resulting functional is often defined to be a weak solution to the equation.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Theorem — A real Banach space is reflexive if and only if every pair of non-empty disjoint closed convex subsets, one of which is bounded, can be strictly separated by a hyperplane.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "To illustrate an actual application of the Hahn–Banach theorem, we will now prove a result that follows almost entirely from the Hahn–Banach theorem.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Proposition — Suppose X {\\displaystyle X} is a Hausdorff locally convex TVS over the field K {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {K} } and Y {\\displaystyle Y} is a vector subspace of X {\\displaystyle X} that is TVS–isomorphic to K I {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {K} ^{I}} for some set I . {\\displaystyle I.} Then Y {\\displaystyle Y} is a closed and complemented vector subspace of X . {\\displaystyle X.}",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Since K I {\\displaystyle \\mathbf {K} ^{I}} is a complete TVS so is Y , {\\displaystyle Y,} and since any complete subset of a Hausdorff TVS is closed, Y {\\displaystyle Y} is a closed subset of X . {\\displaystyle X.} Let f = ( f i ) i ∈ I : Y → K I {\\displaystyle f=\\left(f_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}:Y\\to \\mathbf {K} ^{I}} be a TVS isomorphism, so that each f i : Y → K {\\displaystyle f_{i}:Y\\to \\mathbf {K} } is a continuous surjective linear functional. By the Hahn–Banach theorem, we may extend each f i {\\displaystyle f_{i}} to a continuous linear functional F i : X → K {\\displaystyle F_{i}:X\\to \\mathbf {K} } on X . {\\displaystyle X.} Let F := ( F i ) i ∈ I : X → K I {\\displaystyle F:=\\left(F_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}:X\\to \\mathbf {K} ^{I}} so F {\\displaystyle F} is a continuous linear surjection such that its restriction to Y {\\displaystyle Y} is F | Y = ( F i | Y ) i ∈ I = ( f i ) i ∈ I = f . {\\displaystyle F{\\big \\vert }_{Y}=\\left(F_{i}{\\big \\vert }_{Y}\\right)_{i\\in I}=\\left(f_{i}\\right)_{i\\in I}=f.} Let P := f − 1 ∘ F : X → Y , {\\displaystyle P:=f^{-1}\\circ F:X\\to Y,} which is a continuous linear map whose restriction to Y {\\displaystyle Y} is P | Y = f − 1 ∘ F | Y = f − 1 ∘ f = 1 Y , {\\displaystyle P{\\big \\vert }_{Y}=f^{-1}\\circ F{\\big \\vert }_{Y}=f^{-1}\\circ f=\\mathbf {1} _{Y},} where 1 Y {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {1} _{Y}} denotes the identity map on Y . {\\displaystyle Y.} This shows that P {\\displaystyle P} is a continuous linear projection onto Y {\\displaystyle Y} (that is, P ∘ P = P {\\displaystyle P\\circ P=P} ). Thus Y {\\displaystyle Y} is complemented in X {\\displaystyle X} and X = Y ⊕ ker P {\\displaystyle X=Y\\oplus \\ker P} in the category of TVSs. ◼ {\\displaystyle \\blacksquare }",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The above result may be used to show that every closed vector subspace of R N {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} ^{\\mathbb {N} }} is complemented because any such space is either finite dimensional or else TVS–isomorphic to R N . {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {R} ^{\\mathbb {N} }.}",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "General template",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "There are now many other versions of the Hahn–Banach theorem. The general template for the various versions of the Hahn–Banach theorem presented in this article is as follows:",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Theorem — If D {\\displaystyle D} is an absorbing disk in a real or complex vector space X {\\displaystyle X} and if f {\\displaystyle f} be a linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} such that | f | ≤ 1 {\\displaystyle |f|\\leq 1} on M ∩ D , {\\displaystyle M\\cap D,} then there exists a linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} on X {\\displaystyle X} extending f {\\displaystyle f} such that | F | ≤ 1 {\\displaystyle |F|\\leq 1} on D . {\\displaystyle D.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Hahn–Banach theorem for seminorms — If p : M → R {\\displaystyle p:M\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a seminorm defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X , {\\displaystyle X,} and if q : X → R {\\displaystyle q:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a seminorm on X {\\displaystyle X} such that p ≤ q | M , {\\displaystyle p\\leq q{\\big \\vert }_{M},} then there exists a seminorm P : X → R {\\displaystyle P:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } on X {\\displaystyle X} such that P | M = p {\\displaystyle P{\\big \\vert }_{M}=p} on M {\\displaystyle M} and P ≤ q {\\displaystyle P\\leq q} on X . {\\displaystyle X.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Let S {\\displaystyle S} be the convex hull of { m ∈ M : p ( m ) ≤ 1 } ∪ { x ∈ X : q ( x ) ≤ 1 } . {\\displaystyle \\{m\\in M:p(m)\\leq 1\\}\\cup \\{x\\in X:q(x)\\leq 1\\}.} Because S {\\displaystyle S} is an absorbing disk in X , {\\displaystyle X,} its Minkowski functional P {\\displaystyle P} is a seminorm. Then p = P {\\displaystyle p=P} on M {\\displaystyle M} and P ≤ q {\\displaystyle P\\leq q} on X . {\\displaystyle X.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "So for example, suppose that f {\\displaystyle f} is a bounded linear functional defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of a normed space X , {\\displaystyle X,} so its the operator norm ‖ f ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|} is a non-negative real number. Then the linear functional's absolute value p := | f | {\\displaystyle p:=|f|} is a seminorm on M {\\displaystyle M} and the map q : X → R {\\displaystyle q:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } defined by q ( x ) = ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\\displaystyle q(x)=\\|f\\|\\,\\|x\\|} is a seminorm on X {\\displaystyle X} that satisfies p ≤ q | M {\\displaystyle p\\leq q{\\big \\vert }_{M}} on M . {\\displaystyle M.} The Hahn–Banach theorem for seminorms guarantees the existence of a seminorm P : X → R {\\displaystyle P:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } that is equal to | f | {\\displaystyle |f|} on M {\\displaystyle M} (since P | M = p = | f | {\\displaystyle P{\\big \\vert }_{M}=p=|f|} ) and is bounded above by P ( x ) ≤ ‖ f ‖ ‖ x ‖ {\\displaystyle P(x)\\leq \\|f\\|\\,\\|x\\|} everywhere on X {\\displaystyle X} (since P ≤ q {\\displaystyle P\\leq q} ).",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Hahn–Banach sandwich theorem — Let p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real vector space X , {\\displaystyle X,} let S ⊆ X {\\displaystyle S\\subseteq X} be any subset of X , {\\displaystyle X,} and let f : S → R {\\displaystyle f:S\\to \\mathbb {R} } be any map. If there exist positive real numbers a {\\displaystyle a} and b {\\displaystyle b} such that",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "then there exists a linear functional F : X → R {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } on X {\\displaystyle X} such that F ≤ p {\\displaystyle F\\leq p} on X {\\displaystyle X} and f ≤ F ≤ p {\\displaystyle f\\leq F\\leq p} on S . {\\displaystyle S.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Theorem (Andenaes, 1970) — Let p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real vector space X , {\\displaystyle X,} let f : M → R {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} } be a linear functional on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} such that f ≤ p {\\displaystyle f\\leq p} on M , {\\displaystyle M,} and let S ⊆ X {\\displaystyle S\\subseteq X} be any subset of X . {\\displaystyle X.} Then there exists a linear functional F : X → R {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } on X {\\displaystyle X} that extends f , {\\displaystyle f,} satisfies F ≤ p {\\displaystyle F\\leq p} on X , {\\displaystyle X,} and is (pointwise) maximal on S {\\displaystyle S} in the following sense: if F ^ : X → R {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {F}}:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is a linear functional on X {\\displaystyle X} that extends f {\\displaystyle f} and satisfies F ^ ≤ p {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {F}}\\leq p} on X , {\\displaystyle X,} then F ≤ F ^ {\\displaystyle F\\leq {\\widehat {F}}} on S {\\displaystyle S} implies F = F ^ {\\displaystyle F={\\widehat {F}}} on S . {\\displaystyle S.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "If S = { s } {\\displaystyle S=\\{s\\}} is a singleton set (where s ∈ X {\\displaystyle s\\in X} is some vector) and if F : X → R {\\displaystyle F:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } is such a maximal dominated linear extension of f : M → R , {\\displaystyle f:M\\to \\mathbb {R} ,} then F ( s ) = inf m ∈ M [ f ( s ) + p ( s − m ) ] . {\\displaystyle F(s)=\\inf _{m\\in M}[f(s)+p(s-m)].}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Vector–valued Hahn–Banach theorem — If X {\\displaystyle X} and Y {\\displaystyle Y} are vector spaces over the same field and if f : M → Y {\\displaystyle f:M\\to Y} be a linear map defined on a vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X , {\\displaystyle X,} then there exists a linear map F : X → Y {\\displaystyle F:X\\to Y} that extends f . {\\displaystyle f.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "A set Γ {\\displaystyle \\Gamma } of maps X → X {\\displaystyle X\\to X} is commutative (with respect to function composition ∘ {\\displaystyle \\,\\circ \\,} ) if F ∘ G = G ∘ F {\\displaystyle F\\circ G=G\\circ F} for all F , G ∈ Γ . {\\displaystyle F,G\\in \\Gamma .} Say that a function f {\\displaystyle f} defined on a subset M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} is Γ {\\displaystyle \\Gamma } -invariant if L ( M ) ⊆ M {\\displaystyle L(M)\\subseteq M} and f ∘ L = f {\\displaystyle f\\circ L=f} on M {\\displaystyle M} for every L ∈ Γ . {\\displaystyle L\\in \\Gamma .}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "An invariant Hahn–Banach theorem — Suppose Γ {\\displaystyle \\Gamma } is a commutative set of continuous linear maps from a normed space X {\\displaystyle X} into itself and let f {\\displaystyle f} be a continuous linear functional defined some vector subspace M {\\displaystyle M} of X {\\displaystyle X} that is Γ {\\displaystyle \\Gamma } -invariant, which means that L ( M ) ⊆ M {\\displaystyle L(M)\\subseteq M} and f ∘ L = f {\\displaystyle f\\circ L=f} on M {\\displaystyle M} for every L ∈ Γ . {\\displaystyle L\\in \\Gamma .} Then f {\\displaystyle f} has a continuous linear extension F {\\displaystyle F} to all of X {\\displaystyle X} that has the same operator norm ‖ f ‖ = ‖ F ‖ {\\displaystyle \\|f\\|=\\|F\\|} and is also Γ {\\displaystyle \\Gamma } -invariant, meaning that F ∘ L = F {\\displaystyle F\\circ L=F} on X {\\displaystyle X} for every L ∈ Γ . {\\displaystyle L\\in \\Gamma .}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "This theorem may be summarized:",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The following theorem of Mazur–Orlicz (1953) is equivalent to the Hahn–Banach theorem.",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Mazur–Orlicz theorem — Let p : X → R {\\displaystyle p:X\\to \\mathbb {R} } be a sublinear function on a real or complex vector space X , {\\displaystyle X,} let T {\\displaystyle T} be any set, and let R : T → R {\\displaystyle R:T\\to \\mathbb {R} } and v : T → X {\\displaystyle v:T\\to X} be any maps. The following statements are equivalent:",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The following theorem characterizes when any scalar function on X {\\displaystyle X} (not necessarily linear) has a continuous linear extension to all of X . {\\displaystyle X.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Theorem (The extension principle) — Let f {\\displaystyle f} a scalar-valued function on a subset S {\\displaystyle S} of a topological vector space X . {\\displaystyle X.} Then there exists a continuous linear functional F {\\displaystyle F} on X {\\displaystyle X} extending f {\\displaystyle f} if and only if there exists a continuous seminorm p {\\displaystyle p} on X {\\displaystyle X} such that",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "for all positive integers n {\\displaystyle n} and all finite sequences a 1 , … , a n {\\displaystyle a_{1},\\ldots ,a_{n}} of scalars and elements s 1 , … , s n {\\displaystyle s_{1},\\ldots ,s_{n}} of S . {\\displaystyle S.}",
"title": "Generalizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Let X be a topological vector space. A vector subspace M of X has the extension property if any continuous linear functional on M can be extended to a continuous linear functional on X, and we say that X has the Hahn–Banach extension property (HBEP) if every vector subspace of X has the extension property.",
"title": "Converse"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The Hahn–Banach theorem guarantees that every Hausdorff locally convex space has the HBEP. For complete metrizable topological vector spaces there is a converse, due to Kalton: every complete metrizable TVS with the Hahn–Banach extension property is locally convex. On the other hand, a vector space X of uncountable dimension, endowed with the finest vector topology, then this is a topological vector spaces with the Hahn-Banach extension property that is neither locally convex nor metrizable.",
"title": "Converse"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "A vector subspace M of a TVS X has the separation property if for every element of X such that x ∉ M , {\\displaystyle x\\not \\in M,} there exists a continuous linear functional f {\\displaystyle f} on X such that f ( x ) ≠ 0 {\\displaystyle f(x)\\neq 0} and f ( m ) = 0 {\\displaystyle f(m)=0} for all m ∈ M . {\\displaystyle m\\in M.} Clearly, the continuous dual space of a TVS X separates points on X if and only if { 0 } , {\\displaystyle \\{0\\},} has the separation property. In 1992, Kakol proved that any infinite dimensional vector space X, there exist TVS-topologies on X that do not have the HBEP despite having enough continuous linear functionals for the continuous dual space to separate points on X. However, if X is a TVS then every vector subspace of X has the extension property if and only if every vector subspace of X has the separation property.",
"title": "Converse"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The proof of the Hahn–Banach theorem for real vector spaces (HB) commonly uses Zorn's lemma, which in the axiomatic framework of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF) is equivalent to the axiom of choice (AC). It was discovered by Łoś and Ryll-Nardzewski and independently by Luxemburg that HB can be proved using the ultrafilter lemma (UL), which is equivalent (under ZF) to the Boolean prime ideal theorem (BPI). BPI is strictly weaker than the axiom of choice and it was later shown that HB is strictly weaker than BPI.",
"title": "Relation to axiom of choice and other theorems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The ultrafilter lemma is equivalent (under ZF) to the Banach–Alaoglu theorem, which is another foundational theorem in functional analysis. Although the Banach–Alaoglu theorem implies HB, it is not equivalent to it (said differently, the Banach–Alaoglu theorem is strictly stronger than HB). However, HB is equivalent to a certain weakened version of the Banach–Alaoglu theorem for normed spaces. The Hahn–Banach theorem is also equivalent to the following statement:",
"title": "Relation to axiom of choice and other theorems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "(BPI is equivalent to the statement that there are always non-constant probability charges which take only the values 0 and 1.)",
"title": "Relation to axiom of choice and other theorems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In ZF, the Hahn–Banach theorem suffices to derive the existence of a non-Lebesgue measurable set. Moreover, the Hahn–Banach theorem implies the Banach–Tarski paradox.",
"title": "Relation to axiom of choice and other theorems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "For separable Banach spaces, D. K. Brown and S. G. Simpson proved that the Hahn–Banach theorem follows from WKL0, a weak subsystem of second-order arithmetic that takes a form of Kőnig's lemma restricted to binary trees as an axiom. In fact, they prove that under a weak set of assumptions, the two are equivalent, an example of reverse mathematics.",
"title": "Relation to axiom of choice and other theorems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Proofs",
"title": "Notes"
}
]
| The Hahn–Banach theorem is a central tool in functional analysis. It allows the extension of bounded linear functionals defined on a subspace of some vector space to the whole space, and it also shows that there are "enough" continuous linear functionals defined on every normed vector space to make the study of the dual space "interesting". Another version of the Hahn–Banach theorem is known as the Hahn–Banach separation theorem or the hyperplane separation theorem, and has numerous uses in convex geometry. | 2001-09-29T15:03:40Z | 2023-12-27T17:31:04Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hahn%E2%80%93Banach_theorem |
13,861 | Hampshire | Hampshire (/ˈhæmpʃər/, /-ʃɪər/ ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, Dorset to the west, and Wiltshire to the north-west. The city of Southampton is the largest settlement, and the county town is the city of Winchester.
The county has an area of 3,769 km (1,455 sq mi) and a population of 1,844,245, making it the 5th-most populous in England. The South Hampshire built-up area in the south-east of the county has a population of 855,569 and contains the cities of Southampton (269,781) and Portsmouth (208,100). In the north-east, the Farnborough/Aldershot conurbation extends into Berkshire and Surrey and has a population of 252,937. The next-largest settlements are Basingstoke (113,776), Andover (50,887), and Winchester (45,184). The centre and south-west of the county are rural. The county contains thirteen local government districts; eleven are part of Hampshire, a two-tier non-metropolitan county, and the districts of Portsmouth and Southampton are part of unitary authority areas. The county historically contained the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch, which are now part of Dorset, and the Isle of Wight.
Undulating hills characterise much of the county. A belt of chalk crosses the county from north-west, where it forms the Hampshire Downs, to south-east, where it is part of the South Downs. The county's major rivers rise in these hills; the Loddon and Wey drain north, into the Thames, and the Itchen and Test flow south into Southampton Water, a large estuary. In the south-east are Portsmouth Harbour, Langstone Harbour, and the western edge of Chichester Harbour, three large rias. The south-west contains the New Forest, which includes pasture, heath, and forest and is of the largest expanses of ancient woodland remaining in England.
Settled about 14,000 years ago, Hampshire's recorded history dates to Roman Britain, when its chief town was Venta Belgarum (now Winchester). The county was recorded in Domesday Book as divided into 44 hundreds. From the 12th century, the ports settlements grew due to increasing trade with the European mainland resulting from the wool and cloth, fishing, and shipbuilding industries. This meant by the 16th century, Southampton had become more populous than Winchester. In 20th century conflicts, including World War One and Two, Hampshire played a crucial military role due to its ports.
The Saxon settlement at Southampton was known as Hamtun, while the surrounding area or scīr was called Hamtunscīr. The old name was recorded in the Domesday book as Hantescire, and it is from this spelling that the modern abbreviation "Hants" derives. From 1889 until 1959, the administrative county was named the County of Southampton. It has also been called Southamptonshire.
Hampshire was a departure point for several groups of colonists who left England to settle on the east coast of North America during the 17th century, and many inhabitants of Hampshire settled there, naming the land New Hampshire in honour of their original homeland.
The region is believed to have been continuously occupied since the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 BCE. At that time sea levels were lower and Britain was still attached by a land bridge to the European continent and predominantly covered with deciduous woodland. The first inhabitants were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The majority of the population would have been concentrated around the river valleys. Over several thousand years the climate became progressively warmer and sea levels rose; the English Channel, which started out as a river, was a major inlet by 8000 BCE, although Britain was still connected to Europe by a land bridge across the North Sea until 6500 BCE. Notable sites from this period include Bouldnor Cliff.
Agriculture was being practised in southern Britain by 4000 BCE and with it a neolithic culture. Some deforestation took place at that time, although during the Bronze Age, beginning in 2200 BCE, it became more widespread and systematic. Hampshire has few monuments to show from those early periods, although nearby Stonehenge was built in several phases at some time between 3100 and 2200 BCE. In the very late Bronze Age fortified hilltop settlements known as hillforts began to appear in large numbers in many parts of Britain including Hampshire, and they became more and more important in the early and middle Iron Age; many of them are still visible in the landscape today and can be visited, notably Danebury Rings, the subject of a major study by archaeologist Barry Cunliffe. By that period the people of Britain predominantly spoke a Celtic language, and their culture shared much in common with the Celts described by classical writers. The town of Bitterne (Byterne in a reference from the late 11th century.) shares the same root as the River Erne, suggesting the name refers to the Iverni.
Hillforts largely declined in importance in the second half of the second century BCE, with many being abandoned. Probably around that period the first recorded invasion of Britain took place, as southern Britain was largely conquered by warrior-elites from Belgic tribes of northeastern Gaul, but whether those two events were linked to the decline of hillforts is unknown. By the time of the Roman conquest the oppidum at Venta Belgarum, modern-day Winchester, was the de facto regional administrative centre; Winchester was, however, of secondary importance to the Roman-style town of Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, built further north by a dominant Belgic polity known as the Atrebates in the 50s BCE. Julius Caesar invaded south-eastern England briefly in 55 and again in 54 BCE, but he never reached Hampshire. Notable sites from this period include Hengistbury Head (now in Dorset), which was a major port.
The Romans invaded Britain again in 43 CE and Hampshire was incorporated into the Roman province of Britannia very quickly. It is generally believed their political leaders allowed themselves to be incorporated peacefully. Venta became the capital of the administrative polity of the Belgae, which included most of Hampshire and Wiltshire and reached as far as Bath. Whether the people of Hampshire played any role in Boudicca's rebellion of 60–61 is not recorded, but evidence of burning is seen in Winchester dated to around that period. For most of the next three centuries southern Britain enjoyed relative peace. During the later part of the Roman period most towns built defensive walls; a pottery industry based in the New Forest exported items widely across southern Britain. A fortification near Southampton was called Clausentum, part of the Saxon Shore forts, traditionally seen as defences against maritime raids by Germanic tribes.
Portus Adurni was a Roman fort situated at the north end of Portsmouth Harbour. It was part of the Saxon Shore, and is the best-preserved Roman fort north of the Alps. Around an eighth of the fort has been excavated. A Norman keep was added in the Middle Ages, now known as Portchester Castle. The Romans withdrew from Britain in 410.
Two major Roman roads, Ermin Way and Port Way, cross the north of the county connecting Calleva Atrebatum with Corinium Dobunnorum, modern Cirencester, and Old Sarum respectively. Other roads connected Venta Belgarum with Old Sarum, Wickham and Clausentum. A road presumed to diverge from the Chichester to Silchester Way at Wickham connected Noviomagus Reginorum, modern Chichester, with Clausentum.
Records are sparse for the next 300 years, but later chroniclers speak of an influx of Jutes – an amalgam of Cimbri, Teutons, Gutones and Charudes called Eudoses, Eotenas, Iutae or Euthiones in other sources - and recorded by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in the early eighth century:
Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight.
They initially settled Hampshire under Visigothic authority sometime after 476 AD, forming several distinct folklands organized around a central geographical feature. Various place-names identify locations as Jutish, including Bishopstoke (Ytingstoc), the River Itchen (Ytene) and the Meon Valley (Ytedene). There in fact appear to be at least two Jutish folklands in Hampshire: one established along the River Itchen and one along the River Meon. Evidence of an early Germanic settlement has been found at Clausentum, dated to the fifth century and likely the Visigothic center of power in the area, either independently or in conjunction with powerful Romano-British trading ports. Nevertheless, Visigothic authority waned after 517 A.D and the settlements were gradually encroached upon by South Saxons.
The West Saxons moved south in the late seventh century and incorporated Hampshire into their kingdom. Around this period, the administrative region of "Hampshire" seems to appear - the name is attested as Hamwic and "Hamtunscir" in 755 AD - and suggests that control over the Solent was the motivating factor for establishment of the settlement.
Wessex, with its capital at Winchester, gradually expanded westwards into Brythonic Dorset and Somerset. A statue in Winchester celebrates the powerful King Alfred, who repulsed the Vikings and stabilised the region in the 9th century. A scholar as well as a soldier, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a powerful tool in the development of the English identity, was commissioned in his reign. King Alfred proclaimed himself "King of England" in 886 AD; but Athelstan of Wessex did not officially control the whole of England until 927 AD.
By the Norman conquest, London had overtaken Winchester as the largest city in England and after the Norman Conquest, King William I made London his capital. While the centre of political power moved away from Hampshire, Winchester remained an important city; the proximity of the New Forest to Winchester made it a prized royal hunting forest; King William Rufus was killed while hunting there in 1100. There were 44 hundreds, covering 483 named places, recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 which are in present-day Hampshire and part of Sussex. From the 12th century, the ports grew in importance, fuelled by trade with the continent, wool and cloth manufacture in the county, and the fishing industry, and a shipbuilding industry was established. By 1523 at the latest, the population of Southampton had outstripped that of Winchester.
Over several centuries, a series of castles and forts was constructed along the coast of the Solent to defend the harbours at Southampton and Portsmouth. These include the Roman Portchester Castle which overlooks Portsmouth Harbour, and a series of forts built by Henry VIII including Hurst Castle, situated on a sand spit at the mouth of the Solent, Calshot Castle on another spit at the mouth of Southampton Water, and Netley Castle. Southampton and Portsmouth remained important harbours when rivals, such as Poole and Bristol, declined, as they are amongst the few locations that combine shelter with deep water. Mayflower and Speedwell set sail for America from Southampton in 1620.
During the English Civil War (1642–1651) there were several skirmishes in Hampshire between the Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. Principal engagements were the Siege of Basing House between 1643 and 1645, and the Battle of Cheriton in 1644; both were significant Parliamentarian victories. Other clashes included the Battle of Alton in 1643, where the commander of the Royalist forces was killed in the pulpit of the parish church, and the Siege of Portsmouth in 1642.
By the mid-19th century, with the county's population at 219,210 (double that at the beginning of the century) in more than 86,000 dwellings, agriculture was the principal industry (10 per cent of the county was still forest) with cereals, peas, hops, honey, sheep and hogs important. Due to Hampshire's long association with pigs and boars, natives of the county have been known as Hampshire hogs since the 18th century. In the eastern part of the county the principal port was Portsmouth (with its naval base, population 95,000), while several ports (including Southampton, with its steam docks, population 47,000) in the western part were significant. In 1868, the number of people employed in manufacture exceeded those in agriculture, engaged in silk, paper, sugar and lace industries, ship building and salt works. Coastal towns engaged in fishing and exporting agricultural produce. Several places were popular for seasonal sea bathing. The ports employed large numbers of workers, both land-based and seagoing; Titanic, lost on her maiden voyage in 1912, was crewed largely by residents of Southampton.
On 16 October 1908, Samuel Franklin Cody made the first powered flight of 400 yd (370 m) in the United Kingdom at Farnborough, then home to the Army Balloon Factory.
Hampshire played a crucial role in both World Wars due to the large Royal Navy naval base at Portsmouth, the army camp at Aldershot, and the military Netley Hospital on Southampton Water, as well as its proximity to the army training ranges on Salisbury Plain and the Isle of Purbeck. Supermarine, the designers of the Spitfire and other military aircraft, were based in Southampton, which led to severe bombing of the city in World War II. Aldershot remains one of the British Army's main permanent camps. Farnborough is a major centre for the aviation industry.
During World War II, the Beaulieu estate of Lord Montagu in the New Forest was the site of several group B finishing schools for agents operated by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) between 1941 and 1945. (One of the trainers was Kim Philby who was later found to be part of a spy ring passing information to the Soviets.) In 2005, a special exhibition was established at the Estate, with a video showing photographs from that era as well as voice recordings of former SOE trainers and agents.
Although the Isle of Wight has at times been part of Hampshire, it has been administratively independent for over a century, obtaining a county council of its own in 1890. The Isle of Wight became a full ceremonial county in 1974. Apart from a shared police force, no formal administrative links now exist between the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, though many organisations still combine Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
In the 1970s, local government reorganisation led to a reduction in Hampshire's size; in 1974, the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch were transferred to Dorset.
Hampshire is bordered by Dorset to the west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, and West Sussex to the east. The southern boundary is the coastline of the English Channel and the Solent, facing the Isle of Wight. It is the largest county in South East England and remains the third largest shire county in the United Kingdom despite losing more land than any other English county in all contemporary boundary changes. At its greatest size in 1890, Hampshire was the fifth-largest county in England. It now has an overall area of 3,700 km (1,400 sq mi), and measures about 86 km (53 mi) east–west and 76 km (47 mi) north–south.
Hampshire's geology falls into two categories. In the south, along the coast is the "Hampshire Basin", an area of relatively non-resistant Eocene and Oligocene clays and gravels which are protected from sea erosion by the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, and the Isle of Wight. These low, flat lands support heathland and woodland habitats, a large area of which forms part of the New Forest. The New Forest has a mosaic of heathland, grassland, coniferous and deciduous woodland habitats that host diverse wildlife. The forest is protected as a national park, limiting development and agricultural use to protect the landscape and wildlife. Large areas of the New Forest are open common lands kept as a grassland plagioclimax by grazing animals, including domesticated cattle, pigs and horses, and several wild deer species. Erosion of the weak rock and sea level change flooding the low land has carved several large estuaries and rias, notably the 16 km (9.9 mi) long Southampton Water and the large convoluted Portsmouth Harbour. The Isle of Wight lies off the coast of Hampshire where the non-resistant rock has been eroded away, forming the Solent.
A 2014 study found that Hampshire shares significant reserves of shale oil with other neighbouring counties, totalling 4.4 billion barrels of oil, which then Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said "will bring jobs and business opportunities" and significantly help with UK energy self-sufficiency. Fracking in the area is required to achieve these objectives, which has been opposed by environmental groups.
Natural England identifies a number of national character areas that lie wholly or partially in Hampshire: the Hampshire Downs, New Forest, South Hampshire Lowlands, South Coast Plain, South Downs, Low Weald and Thames Basin Heaths
Hampshire contains all its green belt in the New Forest district, in the southwest of the county, from the boundary with Dorset along the coastline to Lymington and northwards to Ringwood. Its boundary is contiguous with the New Forest National Park. The Hampshire portion was first created in 1958. Its function is to control expansion in the South East Dorset conurbation and outlying towns and villages.
The highest point in Hampshire is Pilot Hill at 286 m (938 ft), in the northwest corner of the county, bordering Berkshire, and there are some 20 other hills exceeding 200 m (660 ft). Butser Hill, at 271 m (889 ft), where the A3 crosses the South Downs, is probably the best known. In the north and centre of the county the substrate is the rocks of the Chalk Group, which form the Hampshire Downs and the South Downs. These are high hills with steep slopes where they border the clays to the south. The hills dip steeply forming a scarp onto the Thames valley to the north, and dip gently to the south. The highest village in Hampshire at about 240 m (790 ft) above sea level is Ashmansworth, located between Andover and Newbury.
The Itchen and Test are trout rivers that flow from the chalk through wooded valleys into Southampton Water. Other important watercourses are the Hamble, Meon, Beaulieu and Lymington rivers. The Hampshire Avon, which links Stonehenge to the sea, passes through Fordingbridge and Ringwood and then forms the modern border between Hampshire and Dorset. The northern branch of the River Wey has its source near Alton and flows east past Bentley. The River Loddon rises at West Ham Farm and flows north through Basingstoke.
Hampshire's downland supports a calcareous grassland habitat, important for wild flowers and insects. A large area of the downs is now protected from further agricultural damage by the East Hampshire Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The River Test has a growing number of otters as, increasingly, does the Itchen, although other areas of the county have quite low numbers. There are wild boar kept for meat in the New Forest, which is known for its ponies and herds of fallow deer, red deer, roe deer, and sika deer as well as a small number of muntjac deer. The deer had been hunted for some 900 years until 1997. An unwelcome relative newcomer is the mink population, descended from animals that escaped or were deliberately released from fur farms since the 1950s, which cause havoc amongst native wildlife.
Farlington Marshes, 125 ha (310 acres) of flower-rich grazing marsh and saline lagoon at the north end of Langstone Harbour, is a nature reserve and an internationally important overwintering site for wildfowl. In a valley on the downs is Selborne; the countryside surrounding the village was the location of Gilbert White's pioneering observations on natural history. Hampshire's county flower is the Dog Rose.
Hampshire contains two national parks; the New Forest is wholly within the county, and the South Downs National Park embraces parts of Hampshire, West Sussex and East Sussex; they are each overseen by a national park authority.
Hampshire has a milder climate than most areas of the British Isles, being in the far south with the climate stabilising effect of the sea, but protected against the more extreme weather of the Atlantic coast. Hampshire has a higher average annual temperature than the UK average at 9.8 to 12 °C (49.6 to 53.6 °F), average rainfall at 640–1,060 mm (25–42 in) per year, and holds higher than average sunshine totals of around 1,750 hours of sunshine per year.
For the complete list of settlements see List of places in Hampshire and List of settlements in Hampshire by population.
Hampshire's county town is Winchester, a historic city that was once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Wessex and of England until the Norman conquest of England. The port cities of Southampton and Portsmouth were split off as independent unitary authorities in 1997, although they are still included in Hampshire for ceremonial purposes. Fareham, Gosport and Havant have grown into a conurbation that stretches along the coast between the two main cities. The three cities are all university cities, Southampton being home to the University of Southampton and Southampton Solent University (formerly Southampton Institute), Portsmouth to the University of Portsmouth, and Winchester to the University of Winchester (formerly known as University College Winchester; King Alfred's College). The northeast of the county houses the Blackwater Valley conurbation, which includes the towns of Farnborough, Aldershot, Blackwater and Yateley and borders both Berkshire and Surrey.
Hampshire lies outside the green belt area of restricted development around London, but has good railway and motorway links to the capital, and in common with the rest of the south-east has seen the growth of dormitory towns since the 1960s. Basingstoke, in the northern part of the county, has grown from a country town into a business and financial centre. Aldershot, Portsmouth, and Farnborough have strong military associations with the Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force respectively. The county also includes several market towns: Alresford, Alton, Andover, Bishop's Waltham, Lymington, New Milton, Petersfield, Ringwood, Romsey and Whitchurch.
At the 2001 census the ceremonial county recorded a population of 1,644,249, of which 1,240,103 were in the administrative county, 217,445 were in the unitary authority of Southampton, and 186,701 were in Portsmouth. The population of the administrative county grew 5.6 per cent from the 1991 census and Southampton grew 6.2 per cent (Portsmouth remained unchanged), compared with 2.6 per cent for England and Wales as a whole. Eastleigh and Winchester grew fastest at 9 per cent each.
Southampton and Portsmouth are the main settlements within the South Hampshire conurbation, which is home to about half of the ceremonial county's population. The larger South Hampshire metropolitan area has a population of 1,547,000.
Cities and towns by population size: (2001 census)
The table below shows the population change up to the 2011 census, contrasting the previous census. It also shows the proportion of residents in each district reliant upon lowest income and/or joblessness benefits, the national average proportion of which was 4.5 per cent (August 2012). The most populous district of Hampshire is New Forest District.
At the 2011 census, about 89 per cent of residents were white British, falling to 85.87 per cent in Southampton. The significant ethnic minorities were Asian at 2.6 per cent and mixed race at 1.4 per cent; 10 per cent of residents were born outside the UK. 59.7 per cent stated their religion as Christian and 29.5 per cent as not religious. Significant minority religions were Islam (1.46 per cent) and Hinduism (0.73 per cent).
The Church of England Diocese of Winchester was founded in 676AD and covers about two thirds of Hampshire and extends into Dorset. Smaller parts of Hampshire are covered by the dioceses of Portsmouth, Guildford and Oxford.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth covers Hampshire as well as the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.
With the exceptions of the unitary authorities of Portsmouth and Southampton, Hampshire is governed by Hampshire County Council based at Castle Hill in Winchester, with eleven non-metropolitan districts beneath it and, for the majority of the county, parish councils or town councils at the local level.
In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, nearly 55% of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight) voted in favour of Brexit. Gosport was the area that voted to Leave with the highest majority (64%), while Winchester was the area that voted to Remain with the highest majority (59%). Hart and East Hampshire also voted to Remain.
Hampshire elects eighteen Members of Parliament. As of the 2019 General Election, sixteen MPs are Conservative and two MPs are Labour.
In the 2019 General Election there were no seat changes, with the 16 Conservative constituencies and 2 Labour constituencies holding on to the same seats won or held in 2017. This is despite the Liberal Democrats gaining 57,876 more votes (an increase of 50.4%) compared to 2017, and Labour losing 72,278 votes (29.9%) compared to 2017.
At the 2017 General Election, the Conservatives won 16 seats, continuing their dominance in the county. Labour took two seats, Southampton Test and Portsmouth South. In the 2015 general election, every Hampshire seat except Southampton Test (Labour) was won by the Conservatives. In 2010, 14 constituencies were represented by Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs), two by the Liberal Democrats, and two by Labour. Labour represented the largest urban centre, holding both Southampton constituencies (Test and Itchen). The Liberal Democrats held Portsmouth South and Eastleigh.
The Conservatives represent a mix of rural and urban areas: Aldershot, Basingstoke, East Hampshire, Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Meon Valley, North East Hampshire, North West Hampshire, New Forest East, New Forest West, Portsmouth North, Romsey and Southampton North and Winchester.
At the 2013 local elections for Hampshire County Council, the Conservative Party had a 37.51 per cent share of the votes, the Liberal Democrats 21.71 per cent, the UK Independence Party 24.61 per cent and Labour 10 per cent. As a result, 45 Conservatives, 17 Liberal Democrats, 10 UKIP, four Labour and one Community Campaign councillor sit on the County Council. Southampton City Council, which is a separate Unitary Authority, has 28 Labour, 16 Conservative, 2 Councillors Against the Cuts and 2 Liberal Democrat councillors. Portsmouth City Council, also a UA, has 25 Liberal Democrat, 12 Conservative and 5 Labour councillors.
Hampshire has its own County Youth Council (HCYC) and is an independent youth-run organisation. It meets once a month around Hampshire and aims to give the young people of Hampshire a voice. It also has numerous district and borough youth councils including Basingstoke's "Basingstoke & Deane Youth Council".
Hampshire is one of the most affluent counties in the country, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of £29 billion, excluding Southampton and Portsmouth. In 2018, Hampshire had a GDP per capita of £22,100, comparable with the UK as a whole.
Portsmouth and Winchester have the highest job densities in the county; 38 per cent of workplace workers in Portsmouth commuted into the city in 2011. Southampton has the highest number of total jobs and commuting both into and out of the city is high. The county has a lower level of unemployment than the national average, at 1.3 per cent when the national rate is 2.1 per cent, as of February 2018. About one third are employed by large firms. Hampshire has a considerably higher than national average employment in high-tech industries, but average levels in knowledge-based industry. About 25 per cent of the population work in the public sector. Tourism accounts for some 60,000 jobs in the county, around 9 per cent of the total.
One of the principal companies in the high tech sector is IBM which has its research and development laboratories at Hursley and its UK headquarters at Cosham.
Many rural areas of Hampshire have traditionally been reliant on agriculture, particularly dairy farming, although the significance of agriculture as a rural employer and rural wealth creator has declined since the first half of the 20th century and agriculture currently employs 1.32 per cent of the rural population.
The extractive industries deal principally with sand, gravel, clay and hydrocarbons. There are three active oilfields in Hampshire with one being also used as a natural gas store. These are in the west of the county in the Wessex Basin. The Weald Basin to the east has potential as a source of shale oil but is not currently exploited.
The New Forest area is a national park, and tourism is a significant economic segment in this area, with 7.5 million visitors in 1992. The South Downs and the cities of Portsmouth, Southampton, and Winchester also attract tourists to the county. Southampton Boat Show is one of the biggest annual events held in the county, and attracts visitors from throughout the country. In 2003, the county had a total of 31 million day visits, and 4.2 million longer stays.
The cities of Southampton and Portsmouth are both significant ports, with Southampton Docks handling a large proportion of the national container freight traffic as well as being a major base for cruise liners, and Portsmouth Harbour accommodating one of the Royal Navy's main bases and a terminal for cross-channel ferries to France and Spain. The docks have traditionally been large employers in these cities, though mechanisation of cargo handling has led to a reduction in manpower needed.
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch has its principal offices in Southampton, while the Air Accidents Investigation Branch has its head office in Farnborough in Rushmoor District . The Rail Accident Investigation Branch has one of its two offices at Farnborough.
Southampton Airport, with an accompanying main line railway station, is an international airport situated in the Borough of Eastleigh, close to Swaythling in the city of Southampton. The Farnborough International Airshow is a week-long event that combines a major trade exhibition for the aerospace and defence industries with a public airshow. The event is held in mid-July in even-numbered years at Farnborough Airport. The first five days (Monday to Friday) are dedicated to trade, with the final two days open to the public.
Cross-channel and cross-Solent ferries from Southampton, Portsmouth and Lymington link the county to the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands and continental Europe.
The South West Main Line (operated by South Western Railway) from London to Weymouth runs through Winchester and Southampton, and the Wessex Main Line from Bristol to Portsmouth also runs through the county, as does the Portsmouth Direct Line.
The M3 motorway bisects the county from the southwest, at the edge of the New Forest near Southampton, to the northeast, on its way to connect with the M25 London orbital motorway. At its southern end it links with the M27 south coast motorway. The construction of the Twyford Down cutting near Winchester caused major controversy by cutting through a series of ancient trackways and other features of archaeological significance. The M27 serves as a bypass for the major conurbations and as a link to other settlements on the south coast. Other important roads include the A27, A3, A31, A34, A36 and A303.
The county has a high level of car ownership, with only 15.7 per cent having no access to a private car compared with 26.8 per cent for England and Wales. The county has a lower than average use of trains (3.2 compared with 4.1 per cent for commuting) and buses (3.2 to 7.4 per cent), but a higher than average use of bicycles (3.5 to 2.7 per cent) and cars (63.5 to 55.3 per cent).
Hampshire formerly had several canals, but most of these have been abandoned and their routes built over. The Basingstoke Canal has been extensively restored, and is now navigable for most of its route, but the Salisbury and Southampton Canal, Andover Canal and Portsmouth and Arundel Canal have all disappeared. Restoration of the Itchen Navigation, linking Southampton and Winchester, primarily as a wildlife corridor, began in 2008.
The school system in Hampshire (including Southampton and Portsmouth) is comprehensive. Geographically inside the Hampshire LEA are 24 independent schools, Southampton has three and Portsmouth has four. Few Hampshire schools have sixth forms, which varies by district council. There are 14 further education colleges within the Hampshire LEA, including six graded as 'outstanding' by Ofsted: Alton College, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, Brockenhurst College, Farnborough College of Technology, Farnborough Sixth Form College, Peter Symonds College, Queen Mary's College, and South Downs College.
Notable independent schools in the county include Winchester College, allegedly England's oldest public school, founded in 1382, and the pioneering co-educational Bedales School, founded in 1893.
The four universities are the University of Southampton, Solent University, the University of Portsmouth, and the University of Winchester (which also had a small campus in Basingstoke until 2011). Farnborough College of Technology awards University of Surrey-accredited degrees.
There are major NHS hospitals in each of the cities, and smaller hospitals in several towns, as well as a number of private hospitals. Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust coordinates public health services, while Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust coordinates hospital services.
The Flag of Hampshire was officially added to the Flag Institute's registry of flags on 12 March 2019 after receiving support from Hampshire County Council, the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, and many local organisations. The county day and flag day is 15 July, St Swithun's Day; St Swithun was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester.
Hampshire is the home of many orchestras, bands, and groups. Musician Laura Marling hails originally from Hampshire. The Hampshire County Youth Choir is based in Winchester, and has had successful tours of Canada and Italy in recent years. The Hampshire County Youth Orchestra (with its associated chamber orchestra and string orchestra) is based at Thornden Hall.
There are a number of local museums, such as the City Museum in Winchester, which covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period over three floors. A "Museum of the Iron Age" is in Andover. Solent Sky Museum depicts the story of aviation in Hampshire and the Solent region, with more than 20 airframes from the golden age. Southampton's Sea City Museum is primarily focused on the city's links with the Titanic. Basingstoke's Milestones Museum records the county's industrial heritage. There are also a number of national museums in Hampshire. The National Motor Museum is located in the New Forest at Beaulieu. The Royal Navy Museum is part of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Other military museums include The Submarine Museum at Gosport, the Royal Marines Museum, originally in Southsea but was due to transfer to the Dockyard in 2019, the Aldershot Military Museum, the D-Day Story by Southsea Castle and the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop. Several museums and historic buildings in Hampshire are the responsibility of the Hampshire Cultural Trust. Specialist museums include the Gilbert White museum in his old home in Selborne, which also includes The Oates Collection, dedicated to the explorer Lawrence Oates.
The New Forest and Hampshire County Show takes place annually at the end of July; 2020 will mark its centenary. The largest gathering of Muslims in Western Europe, Jalsa Salana, takes place near Alton, with 37,000 visitors in 2017. The ancient festival of Beltain takes place at Butser Ancient Farm in the spring.
There are 187 Grade I listed buildings in the county, ranging from statues to farm buildings and churches to castles, 511 buildings listed Grade II*, and many more listed in the Grade II category. National Heritage's figures include the Isle of Wight, listing 208 Grade I buildings, 578 Grade II*and 10,372 Grade II, 731 scheduled monuments, two wrecks, 91 parks and gardens, and a battlefield: the Battle of Cheriton, which took place in 1644, near Winchester.
The game of cricket was largely developed in south-east England, with one of the first teams forming at Hambledon in 1750, with the Hambledon Club creating many of cricket's early laws. Hampshire County Cricket Club is a first-class team. The main county ground is the Ageas Bowl in West End, which has hosted one day internationals and which, following redevelopment, hosted its first test match in 2011.
The world's oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, which was first used in 1299.
Hampshire's relatively safe waters have allowed the county to develop as one of the busiest sailing areas in the country, with many yacht clubs and several manufacturers on the Solent. The Hamble, Beaulieu and Lymington rivers are major centres for both competitive and recreational sailing, along with Hythe and Ocean Village marinas. The sport of windsurfing was invented at Hayling Island in the south east of the county.
Hampshire has several association football teams, including EFL Championship side Southampton, EFL League One side Portsmouth and National League sides Aldershot Town, Eastleigh and Havant & Waterlooville. Portsmouth and Southampton have traditionally been fierce rivals. Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 1939 and 2008 and the Football League title in 1949 and 1950. Southampton won the FA Cup in 1976 and reached the final in 1900, 1902, and 2003, as well as finishing second in the Football League in 1984. Aldershot were members of the Football League from 1932 until they folded in 1992. They were succeeded by Aldershot Town, who in 2008 were crowned the Conference Premier champions and promoted to the Football League but were relegated back to the Conference at the end of the 2012–13 season. Hampshire has a number of Non League football teams. Bashley, Gosport Borough and AFC Totton play in the Southern Football League Premier Division, and Sholing and Winchester City play in the Southern Football League Division One South and West.
Thruxton Circuit, in the north of the county, is Hampshire's premier motor racing circuit, with a karting circuit; there are other karting circuits at Southampton and Gosport. The other main circuit was the Ringwood Raceway at Matchams.
Lasham Airfield, near Alton, is a major centre for gliding, hosting both regional and national annual competitions.
The county's television news is covered by BBC South Today from its studios in Southampton and ITV Meridian from a studio in Whiteley, though both BBC London and ITV London can be received in northern and eastern parts of the county. A local independent television station, That's Hampshire, started transmitting in May 2017.
Around 25 commercial radio stations cover the area, including BBC Radio Solent, BBC Radio Berkshire and BBC Radio Surrey. University journalism students "broadcast" bulletins on line for local areas, such as the University of Winchester's WINOL (Winchester News Online), run by students on its BA (Hons) Journalism course.
Southampton and Portsmouth support daily newspapers; the Southern Daily Echo and The News respectively. The Basingstoke Gazette is published three times a week, and there are a number of other papers that publish on a weekly basis, notably the Hampshire Chronicle, one of the oldest newspapers in the country.
Possibly the most notable resident was the Duke of Wellington, who lived at Stratfield Saye House in the north of the county from 1817. An eminent Victorian, who made her mark and "came home" to Hampshire for burial at East Wellow was Florence Nightingale.
Hampshire's literary connections include the birthplace of authors Jane Austen, Wilbert Awdry and Charles Dickens, and the residence of others, such as Charles Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell. Austen lived most of her life in Hampshire, where her father was rector of Steventon, and wrote all of her novels in the county. Alice Liddell, also known as Alice Hargreaves, the inspiration for Alice in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, lived in and around Lyndhurst, Hampshire after her marriage to Reginald Hargreaves, and is buried in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angels Church in the town. Hampshire also has many visual art connections, claiming the painter John Everett Millais as a native, and the cities and countryside have been the subject of paintings by L. S. Lowry and J. M. W. Turner. Selborne was the home of Gilbert White. Journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens was born into a naval family in Portsmouth. Broadcasters Philippa Forrester, Amanda Lamb and Scott Mills also are from the county. American actor and gameshow host, Richard Dawson, was born and raised here. Richard St. Barbe Baker Founder of the International Tree Foundation and responsible for planting over two billion trees was born in West End. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hampshire (/ˈhæmpʃər/, /-ʃɪər/ ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, Dorset to the west, and Wiltshire to the north-west. The city of Southampton is the largest settlement, and the county town is the city of Winchester.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The county has an area of 3,769 km (1,455 sq mi) and a population of 1,844,245, making it the 5th-most populous in England. The South Hampshire built-up area in the south-east of the county has a population of 855,569 and contains the cities of Southampton (269,781) and Portsmouth (208,100). In the north-east, the Farnborough/Aldershot conurbation extends into Berkshire and Surrey and has a population of 252,937. The next-largest settlements are Basingstoke (113,776), Andover (50,887), and Winchester (45,184). The centre and south-west of the county are rural. The county contains thirteen local government districts; eleven are part of Hampshire, a two-tier non-metropolitan county, and the districts of Portsmouth and Southampton are part of unitary authority areas. The county historically contained the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch, which are now part of Dorset, and the Isle of Wight.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Undulating hills characterise much of the county. A belt of chalk crosses the county from north-west, where it forms the Hampshire Downs, to south-east, where it is part of the South Downs. The county's major rivers rise in these hills; the Loddon and Wey drain north, into the Thames, and the Itchen and Test flow south into Southampton Water, a large estuary. In the south-east are Portsmouth Harbour, Langstone Harbour, and the western edge of Chichester Harbour, three large rias. The south-west contains the New Forest, which includes pasture, heath, and forest and is of the largest expanses of ancient woodland remaining in England.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Settled about 14,000 years ago, Hampshire's recorded history dates to Roman Britain, when its chief town was Venta Belgarum (now Winchester). The county was recorded in Domesday Book as divided into 44 hundreds. From the 12th century, the ports settlements grew due to increasing trade with the European mainland resulting from the wool and cloth, fishing, and shipbuilding industries. This meant by the 16th century, Southampton had become more populous than Winchester. In 20th century conflicts, including World War One and Two, Hampshire played a crucial military role due to its ports.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Saxon settlement at Southampton was known as Hamtun, while the surrounding area or scīr was called Hamtunscīr. The old name was recorded in the Domesday book as Hantescire, and it is from this spelling that the modern abbreviation \"Hants\" derives. From 1889 until 1959, the administrative county was named the County of Southampton. It has also been called Southamptonshire.",
"title": "Toponymy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Hampshire was a departure point for several groups of colonists who left England to settle on the east coast of North America during the 17th century, and many inhabitants of Hampshire settled there, naming the land New Hampshire in honour of their original homeland.",
"title": "Toponymy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The region is believed to have been continuously occupied since the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 BCE. At that time sea levels were lower and Britain was still attached by a land bridge to the European continent and predominantly covered with deciduous woodland. The first inhabitants were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The majority of the population would have been concentrated around the river valleys. Over several thousand years the climate became progressively warmer and sea levels rose; the English Channel, which started out as a river, was a major inlet by 8000 BCE, although Britain was still connected to Europe by a land bridge across the North Sea until 6500 BCE. Notable sites from this period include Bouldnor Cliff.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Agriculture was being practised in southern Britain by 4000 BCE and with it a neolithic culture. Some deforestation took place at that time, although during the Bronze Age, beginning in 2200 BCE, it became more widespread and systematic. Hampshire has few monuments to show from those early periods, although nearby Stonehenge was built in several phases at some time between 3100 and 2200 BCE. In the very late Bronze Age fortified hilltop settlements known as hillforts began to appear in large numbers in many parts of Britain including Hampshire, and they became more and more important in the early and middle Iron Age; many of them are still visible in the landscape today and can be visited, notably Danebury Rings, the subject of a major study by archaeologist Barry Cunliffe. By that period the people of Britain predominantly spoke a Celtic language, and their culture shared much in common with the Celts described by classical writers. The town of Bitterne (Byterne in a reference from the late 11th century.) shares the same root as the River Erne, suggesting the name refers to the Iverni.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hillforts largely declined in importance in the second half of the second century BCE, with many being abandoned. Probably around that period the first recorded invasion of Britain took place, as southern Britain was largely conquered by warrior-elites from Belgic tribes of northeastern Gaul, but whether those two events were linked to the decline of hillforts is unknown. By the time of the Roman conquest the oppidum at Venta Belgarum, modern-day Winchester, was the de facto regional administrative centre; Winchester was, however, of secondary importance to the Roman-style town of Calleva Atrebatum, modern Silchester, built further north by a dominant Belgic polity known as the Atrebates in the 50s BCE. Julius Caesar invaded south-eastern England briefly in 55 and again in 54 BCE, but he never reached Hampshire. Notable sites from this period include Hengistbury Head (now in Dorset), which was a major port.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Romans invaded Britain again in 43 CE and Hampshire was incorporated into the Roman province of Britannia very quickly. It is generally believed their political leaders allowed themselves to be incorporated peacefully. Venta became the capital of the administrative polity of the Belgae, which included most of Hampshire and Wiltshire and reached as far as Bath. Whether the people of Hampshire played any role in Boudicca's rebellion of 60–61 is not recorded, but evidence of burning is seen in Winchester dated to around that period. For most of the next three centuries southern Britain enjoyed relative peace. During the later part of the Roman period most towns built defensive walls; a pottery industry based in the New Forest exported items widely across southern Britain. A fortification near Southampton was called Clausentum, part of the Saxon Shore forts, traditionally seen as defences against maritime raids by Germanic tribes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Portus Adurni was a Roman fort situated at the north end of Portsmouth Harbour. It was part of the Saxon Shore, and is the best-preserved Roman fort north of the Alps. Around an eighth of the fort has been excavated. A Norman keep was added in the Middle Ages, now known as Portchester Castle. The Romans withdrew from Britain in 410.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Two major Roman roads, Ermin Way and Port Way, cross the north of the county connecting Calleva Atrebatum with Corinium Dobunnorum, modern Cirencester, and Old Sarum respectively. Other roads connected Venta Belgarum with Old Sarum, Wickham and Clausentum. A road presumed to diverge from the Chichester to Silchester Way at Wickham connected Noviomagus Reginorum, modern Chichester, with Clausentum.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Records are sparse for the next 300 years, but later chroniclers speak of an influx of Jutes – an amalgam of Cimbri, Teutons, Gutones and Charudes called Eudoses, Eotenas, Iutae or Euthiones in other sources - and recorded by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in the early eighth century:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "They initially settled Hampshire under Visigothic authority sometime after 476 AD, forming several distinct folklands organized around a central geographical feature. Various place-names identify locations as Jutish, including Bishopstoke (Ytingstoc), the River Itchen (Ytene) and the Meon Valley (Ytedene). There in fact appear to be at least two Jutish folklands in Hampshire: one established along the River Itchen and one along the River Meon. Evidence of an early Germanic settlement has been found at Clausentum, dated to the fifth century and likely the Visigothic center of power in the area, either independently or in conjunction with powerful Romano-British trading ports. Nevertheless, Visigothic authority waned after 517 A.D and the settlements were gradually encroached upon by South Saxons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The West Saxons moved south in the late seventh century and incorporated Hampshire into their kingdom. Around this period, the administrative region of \"Hampshire\" seems to appear - the name is attested as Hamwic and \"Hamtunscir\" in 755 AD - and suggests that control over the Solent was the motivating factor for establishment of the settlement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Wessex, with its capital at Winchester, gradually expanded westwards into Brythonic Dorset and Somerset. A statue in Winchester celebrates the powerful King Alfred, who repulsed the Vikings and stabilised the region in the 9th century. A scholar as well as a soldier, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a powerful tool in the development of the English identity, was commissioned in his reign. King Alfred proclaimed himself \"King of England\" in 886 AD; but Athelstan of Wessex did not officially control the whole of England until 927 AD.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "By the Norman conquest, London had overtaken Winchester as the largest city in England and after the Norman Conquest, King William I made London his capital. While the centre of political power moved away from Hampshire, Winchester remained an important city; the proximity of the New Forest to Winchester made it a prized royal hunting forest; King William Rufus was killed while hunting there in 1100. There were 44 hundreds, covering 483 named places, recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 which are in present-day Hampshire and part of Sussex. From the 12th century, the ports grew in importance, fuelled by trade with the continent, wool and cloth manufacture in the county, and the fishing industry, and a shipbuilding industry was established. By 1523 at the latest, the population of Southampton had outstripped that of Winchester.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Over several centuries, a series of castles and forts was constructed along the coast of the Solent to defend the harbours at Southampton and Portsmouth. These include the Roman Portchester Castle which overlooks Portsmouth Harbour, and a series of forts built by Henry VIII including Hurst Castle, situated on a sand spit at the mouth of the Solent, Calshot Castle on another spit at the mouth of Southampton Water, and Netley Castle. Southampton and Portsmouth remained important harbours when rivals, such as Poole and Bristol, declined, as they are amongst the few locations that combine shelter with deep water. Mayflower and Speedwell set sail for America from Southampton in 1620.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "During the English Civil War (1642–1651) there were several skirmishes in Hampshire between the Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. Principal engagements were the Siege of Basing House between 1643 and 1645, and the Battle of Cheriton in 1644; both were significant Parliamentarian victories. Other clashes included the Battle of Alton in 1643, where the commander of the Royalist forces was killed in the pulpit of the parish church, and the Siege of Portsmouth in 1642.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "By the mid-19th century, with the county's population at 219,210 (double that at the beginning of the century) in more than 86,000 dwellings, agriculture was the principal industry (10 per cent of the county was still forest) with cereals, peas, hops, honey, sheep and hogs important. Due to Hampshire's long association with pigs and boars, natives of the county have been known as Hampshire hogs since the 18th century. In the eastern part of the county the principal port was Portsmouth (with its naval base, population 95,000), while several ports (including Southampton, with its steam docks, population 47,000) in the western part were significant. In 1868, the number of people employed in manufacture exceeded those in agriculture, engaged in silk, paper, sugar and lace industries, ship building and salt works. Coastal towns engaged in fishing and exporting agricultural produce. Several places were popular for seasonal sea bathing. The ports employed large numbers of workers, both land-based and seagoing; Titanic, lost on her maiden voyage in 1912, was crewed largely by residents of Southampton.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On 16 October 1908, Samuel Franklin Cody made the first powered flight of 400 yd (370 m) in the United Kingdom at Farnborough, then home to the Army Balloon Factory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hampshire played a crucial role in both World Wars due to the large Royal Navy naval base at Portsmouth, the army camp at Aldershot, and the military Netley Hospital on Southampton Water, as well as its proximity to the army training ranges on Salisbury Plain and the Isle of Purbeck. Supermarine, the designers of the Spitfire and other military aircraft, were based in Southampton, which led to severe bombing of the city in World War II. Aldershot remains one of the British Army's main permanent camps. Farnborough is a major centre for the aviation industry.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During World War II, the Beaulieu estate of Lord Montagu in the New Forest was the site of several group B finishing schools for agents operated by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) between 1941 and 1945. (One of the trainers was Kim Philby who was later found to be part of a spy ring passing information to the Soviets.) In 2005, a special exhibition was established at the Estate, with a video showing photographs from that era as well as voice recordings of former SOE trainers and agents.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Although the Isle of Wight has at times been part of Hampshire, it has been administratively independent for over a century, obtaining a county council of its own in 1890. The Isle of Wight became a full ceremonial county in 1974. Apart from a shared police force, no formal administrative links now exist between the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, though many organisations still combine Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the 1970s, local government reorganisation led to a reduction in Hampshire's size; in 1974, the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch were transferred to Dorset.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Hampshire is bordered by Dorset to the west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, and West Sussex to the east. The southern boundary is the coastline of the English Channel and the Solent, facing the Isle of Wight. It is the largest county in South East England and remains the third largest shire county in the United Kingdom despite losing more land than any other English county in all contemporary boundary changes. At its greatest size in 1890, Hampshire was the fifth-largest county in England. It now has an overall area of 3,700 km (1,400 sq mi), and measures about 86 km (53 mi) east–west and 76 km (47 mi) north–south.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hampshire's geology falls into two categories. In the south, along the coast is the \"Hampshire Basin\", an area of relatively non-resistant Eocene and Oligocene clays and gravels which are protected from sea erosion by the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, and the Isle of Wight. These low, flat lands support heathland and woodland habitats, a large area of which forms part of the New Forest. The New Forest has a mosaic of heathland, grassland, coniferous and deciduous woodland habitats that host diverse wildlife. The forest is protected as a national park, limiting development and agricultural use to protect the landscape and wildlife. Large areas of the New Forest are open common lands kept as a grassland plagioclimax by grazing animals, including domesticated cattle, pigs and horses, and several wild deer species. Erosion of the weak rock and sea level change flooding the low land has carved several large estuaries and rias, notably the 16 km (9.9 mi) long Southampton Water and the large convoluted Portsmouth Harbour. The Isle of Wight lies off the coast of Hampshire where the non-resistant rock has been eroded away, forming the Solent.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "A 2014 study found that Hampshire shares significant reserves of shale oil with other neighbouring counties, totalling 4.4 billion barrels of oil, which then Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said \"will bring jobs and business opportunities\" and significantly help with UK energy self-sufficiency. Fracking in the area is required to achieve these objectives, which has been opposed by environmental groups.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Natural England identifies a number of national character areas that lie wholly or partially in Hampshire: the Hampshire Downs, New Forest, South Hampshire Lowlands, South Coast Plain, South Downs, Low Weald and Thames Basin Heaths",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hampshire contains all its green belt in the New Forest district, in the southwest of the county, from the boundary with Dorset along the coastline to Lymington and northwards to Ringwood. Its boundary is contiguous with the New Forest National Park. The Hampshire portion was first created in 1958. Its function is to control expansion in the South East Dorset conurbation and outlying towns and villages.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The highest point in Hampshire is Pilot Hill at 286 m (938 ft), in the northwest corner of the county, bordering Berkshire, and there are some 20 other hills exceeding 200 m (660 ft). Butser Hill, at 271 m (889 ft), where the A3 crosses the South Downs, is probably the best known. In the north and centre of the county the substrate is the rocks of the Chalk Group, which form the Hampshire Downs and the South Downs. These are high hills with steep slopes where they border the clays to the south. The hills dip steeply forming a scarp onto the Thames valley to the north, and dip gently to the south. The highest village in Hampshire at about 240 m (790 ft) above sea level is Ashmansworth, located between Andover and Newbury.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Itchen and Test are trout rivers that flow from the chalk through wooded valleys into Southampton Water. Other important watercourses are the Hamble, Meon, Beaulieu and Lymington rivers. The Hampshire Avon, which links Stonehenge to the sea, passes through Fordingbridge and Ringwood and then forms the modern border between Hampshire and Dorset. The northern branch of the River Wey has its source near Alton and flows east past Bentley. The River Loddon rises at West Ham Farm and flows north through Basingstoke.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hampshire's downland supports a calcareous grassland habitat, important for wild flowers and insects. A large area of the downs is now protected from further agricultural damage by the East Hampshire Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The River Test has a growing number of otters as, increasingly, does the Itchen, although other areas of the county have quite low numbers. There are wild boar kept for meat in the New Forest, which is known for its ponies and herds of fallow deer, red deer, roe deer, and sika deer as well as a small number of muntjac deer. The deer had been hunted for some 900 years until 1997. An unwelcome relative newcomer is the mink population, descended from animals that escaped or were deliberately released from fur farms since the 1950s, which cause havoc amongst native wildlife.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Farlington Marshes, 125 ha (310 acres) of flower-rich grazing marsh and saline lagoon at the north end of Langstone Harbour, is a nature reserve and an internationally important overwintering site for wildfowl. In a valley on the downs is Selborne; the countryside surrounding the village was the location of Gilbert White's pioneering observations on natural history. Hampshire's county flower is the Dog Rose.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Hampshire contains two national parks; the New Forest is wholly within the county, and the South Downs National Park embraces parts of Hampshire, West Sussex and East Sussex; they are each overseen by a national park authority.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Hampshire has a milder climate than most areas of the British Isles, being in the far south with the climate stabilising effect of the sea, but protected against the more extreme weather of the Atlantic coast. Hampshire has a higher average annual temperature than the UK average at 9.8 to 12 °C (49.6 to 53.6 °F), average rainfall at 640–1,060 mm (25–42 in) per year, and holds higher than average sunshine totals of around 1,750 hours of sunshine per year.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "For the complete list of settlements see List of places in Hampshire and List of settlements in Hampshire by population.",
"title": "Settlements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Hampshire's county town is Winchester, a historic city that was once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Wessex and of England until the Norman conquest of England. The port cities of Southampton and Portsmouth were split off as independent unitary authorities in 1997, although they are still included in Hampshire for ceremonial purposes. Fareham, Gosport and Havant have grown into a conurbation that stretches along the coast between the two main cities. The three cities are all university cities, Southampton being home to the University of Southampton and Southampton Solent University (formerly Southampton Institute), Portsmouth to the University of Portsmouth, and Winchester to the University of Winchester (formerly known as University College Winchester; King Alfred's College). The northeast of the county houses the Blackwater Valley conurbation, which includes the towns of Farnborough, Aldershot, Blackwater and Yateley and borders both Berkshire and Surrey.",
"title": "Settlements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Hampshire lies outside the green belt area of restricted development around London, but has good railway and motorway links to the capital, and in common with the rest of the south-east has seen the growth of dormitory towns since the 1960s. Basingstoke, in the northern part of the county, has grown from a country town into a business and financial centre. Aldershot, Portsmouth, and Farnborough have strong military associations with the Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force respectively. The county also includes several market towns: Alresford, Alton, Andover, Bishop's Waltham, Lymington, New Milton, Petersfield, Ringwood, Romsey and Whitchurch.",
"title": "Settlements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "At the 2001 census the ceremonial county recorded a population of 1,644,249, of which 1,240,103 were in the administrative county, 217,445 were in the unitary authority of Southampton, and 186,701 were in Portsmouth. The population of the administrative county grew 5.6 per cent from the 1991 census and Southampton grew 6.2 per cent (Portsmouth remained unchanged), compared with 2.6 per cent for England and Wales as a whole. Eastleigh and Winchester grew fastest at 9 per cent each.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Southampton and Portsmouth are the main settlements within the South Hampshire conurbation, which is home to about half of the ceremonial county's population. The larger South Hampshire metropolitan area has a population of 1,547,000.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Cities and towns by population size: (2001 census)",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The table below shows the population change up to the 2011 census, contrasting the previous census. It also shows the proportion of residents in each district reliant upon lowest income and/or joblessness benefits, the national average proportion of which was 4.5 per cent (August 2012). The most populous district of Hampshire is New Forest District.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "At the 2011 census, about 89 per cent of residents were white British, falling to 85.87 per cent in Southampton. The significant ethnic minorities were Asian at 2.6 per cent and mixed race at 1.4 per cent; 10 per cent of residents were born outside the UK. 59.7 per cent stated their religion as Christian and 29.5 per cent as not religious. Significant minority religions were Islam (1.46 per cent) and Hinduism (0.73 per cent).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Church of England Diocese of Winchester was founded in 676AD and covers about two thirds of Hampshire and extends into Dorset. Smaller parts of Hampshire are covered by the dioceses of Portsmouth, Guildford and Oxford.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth covers Hampshire as well as the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "With the exceptions of the unitary authorities of Portsmouth and Southampton, Hampshire is governed by Hampshire County Council based at Castle Hill in Winchester, with eleven non-metropolitan districts beneath it and, for the majority of the county, parish councils or town councils at the local level.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, nearly 55% of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight) voted in favour of Brexit. Gosport was the area that voted to Leave with the highest majority (64%), while Winchester was the area that voted to Remain with the highest majority (59%). Hart and East Hampshire also voted to Remain.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Hampshire elects eighteen Members of Parliament. As of the 2019 General Election, sixteen MPs are Conservative and two MPs are Labour.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In the 2019 General Election there were no seat changes, with the 16 Conservative constituencies and 2 Labour constituencies holding on to the same seats won or held in 2017. This is despite the Liberal Democrats gaining 57,876 more votes (an increase of 50.4%) compared to 2017, and Labour losing 72,278 votes (29.9%) compared to 2017.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "At the 2017 General Election, the Conservatives won 16 seats, continuing their dominance in the county. Labour took two seats, Southampton Test and Portsmouth South. In the 2015 general election, every Hampshire seat except Southampton Test (Labour) was won by the Conservatives. In 2010, 14 constituencies were represented by Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs), two by the Liberal Democrats, and two by Labour. Labour represented the largest urban centre, holding both Southampton constituencies (Test and Itchen). The Liberal Democrats held Portsmouth South and Eastleigh.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Conservatives represent a mix of rural and urban areas: Aldershot, Basingstoke, East Hampshire, Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Meon Valley, North East Hampshire, North West Hampshire, New Forest East, New Forest West, Portsmouth North, Romsey and Southampton North and Winchester.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "At the 2013 local elections for Hampshire County Council, the Conservative Party had a 37.51 per cent share of the votes, the Liberal Democrats 21.71 per cent, the UK Independence Party 24.61 per cent and Labour 10 per cent. As a result, 45 Conservatives, 17 Liberal Democrats, 10 UKIP, four Labour and one Community Campaign councillor sit on the County Council. Southampton City Council, which is a separate Unitary Authority, has 28 Labour, 16 Conservative, 2 Councillors Against the Cuts and 2 Liberal Democrat councillors. Portsmouth City Council, also a UA, has 25 Liberal Democrat, 12 Conservative and 5 Labour councillors.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Hampshire has its own County Youth Council (HCYC) and is an independent youth-run organisation. It meets once a month around Hampshire and aims to give the young people of Hampshire a voice. It also has numerous district and borough youth councils including Basingstoke's \"Basingstoke & Deane Youth Council\".",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Hampshire is one of the most affluent counties in the country, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of £29 billion, excluding Southampton and Portsmouth. In 2018, Hampshire had a GDP per capita of £22,100, comparable with the UK as a whole.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Portsmouth and Winchester have the highest job densities in the county; 38 per cent of workplace workers in Portsmouth commuted into the city in 2011. Southampton has the highest number of total jobs and commuting both into and out of the city is high. The county has a lower level of unemployment than the national average, at 1.3 per cent when the national rate is 2.1 per cent, as of February 2018. About one third are employed by large firms. Hampshire has a considerably higher than national average employment in high-tech industries, but average levels in knowledge-based industry. About 25 per cent of the population work in the public sector. Tourism accounts for some 60,000 jobs in the county, around 9 per cent of the total.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "One of the principal companies in the high tech sector is IBM which has its research and development laboratories at Hursley and its UK headquarters at Cosham.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Many rural areas of Hampshire have traditionally been reliant on agriculture, particularly dairy farming, although the significance of agriculture as a rural employer and rural wealth creator has declined since the first half of the 20th century and agriculture currently employs 1.32 per cent of the rural population.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The extractive industries deal principally with sand, gravel, clay and hydrocarbons. There are three active oilfields in Hampshire with one being also used as a natural gas store. These are in the west of the county in the Wessex Basin. The Weald Basin to the east has potential as a source of shale oil but is not currently exploited.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The New Forest area is a national park, and tourism is a significant economic segment in this area, with 7.5 million visitors in 1992. The South Downs and the cities of Portsmouth, Southampton, and Winchester also attract tourists to the county. Southampton Boat Show is one of the biggest annual events held in the county, and attracts visitors from throughout the country. In 2003, the county had a total of 31 million day visits, and 4.2 million longer stays.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The cities of Southampton and Portsmouth are both significant ports, with Southampton Docks handling a large proportion of the national container freight traffic as well as being a major base for cruise liners, and Portsmouth Harbour accommodating one of the Royal Navy's main bases and a terminal for cross-channel ferries to France and Spain. The docks have traditionally been large employers in these cities, though mechanisation of cargo handling has led to a reduction in manpower needed.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Marine Accident Investigation Branch has its principal offices in Southampton, while the Air Accidents Investigation Branch has its head office in Farnborough in Rushmoor District . The Rail Accident Investigation Branch has one of its two offices at Farnborough.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Southampton Airport, with an accompanying main line railway station, is an international airport situated in the Borough of Eastleigh, close to Swaythling in the city of Southampton. The Farnborough International Airshow is a week-long event that combines a major trade exhibition for the aerospace and defence industries with a public airshow. The event is held in mid-July in even-numbered years at Farnborough Airport. The first five days (Monday to Friday) are dedicated to trade, with the final two days open to the public.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Cross-channel and cross-Solent ferries from Southampton, Portsmouth and Lymington link the county to the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands and continental Europe.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The South West Main Line (operated by South Western Railway) from London to Weymouth runs through Winchester and Southampton, and the Wessex Main Line from Bristol to Portsmouth also runs through the county, as does the Portsmouth Direct Line.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The M3 motorway bisects the county from the southwest, at the edge of the New Forest near Southampton, to the northeast, on its way to connect with the M25 London orbital motorway. At its southern end it links with the M27 south coast motorway. The construction of the Twyford Down cutting near Winchester caused major controversy by cutting through a series of ancient trackways and other features of archaeological significance. The M27 serves as a bypass for the major conurbations and as a link to other settlements on the south coast. Other important roads include the A27, A3, A31, A34, A36 and A303.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The county has a high level of car ownership, with only 15.7 per cent having no access to a private car compared with 26.8 per cent for England and Wales. The county has a lower than average use of trains (3.2 compared with 4.1 per cent for commuting) and buses (3.2 to 7.4 per cent), but a higher than average use of bicycles (3.5 to 2.7 per cent) and cars (63.5 to 55.3 per cent).",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Hampshire formerly had several canals, but most of these have been abandoned and their routes built over. The Basingstoke Canal has been extensively restored, and is now navigable for most of its route, but the Salisbury and Southampton Canal, Andover Canal and Portsmouth and Arundel Canal have all disappeared. Restoration of the Itchen Navigation, linking Southampton and Winchester, primarily as a wildlife corridor, began in 2008.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The school system in Hampshire (including Southampton and Portsmouth) is comprehensive. Geographically inside the Hampshire LEA are 24 independent schools, Southampton has three and Portsmouth has four. Few Hampshire schools have sixth forms, which varies by district council. There are 14 further education colleges within the Hampshire LEA, including six graded as 'outstanding' by Ofsted: Alton College, Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, Brockenhurst College, Farnborough College of Technology, Farnborough Sixth Form College, Peter Symonds College, Queen Mary's College, and South Downs College.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Notable independent schools in the county include Winchester College, allegedly England's oldest public school, founded in 1382, and the pioneering co-educational Bedales School, founded in 1893.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The four universities are the University of Southampton, Solent University, the University of Portsmouth, and the University of Winchester (which also had a small campus in Basingstoke until 2011). Farnborough College of Technology awards University of Surrey-accredited degrees.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "There are major NHS hospitals in each of the cities, and smaller hospitals in several towns, as well as a number of private hospitals. Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust coordinates public health services, while Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust coordinates hospital services.",
"title": "Health"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Flag of Hampshire was officially added to the Flag Institute's registry of flags on 12 March 2019 after receiving support from Hampshire County Council, the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, and many local organisations. The county day and flag day is 15 July, St Swithun's Day; St Swithun was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Hampshire is the home of many orchestras, bands, and groups. Musician Laura Marling hails originally from Hampshire. The Hampshire County Youth Choir is based in Winchester, and has had successful tours of Canada and Italy in recent years. The Hampshire County Youth Orchestra (with its associated chamber orchestra and string orchestra) is based at Thornden Hall.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "There are a number of local museums, such as the City Museum in Winchester, which covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period over three floors. A \"Museum of the Iron Age\" is in Andover. Solent Sky Museum depicts the story of aviation in Hampshire and the Solent region, with more than 20 airframes from the golden age. Southampton's Sea City Museum is primarily focused on the city's links with the Titanic. Basingstoke's Milestones Museum records the county's industrial heritage. There are also a number of national museums in Hampshire. The National Motor Museum is located in the New Forest at Beaulieu. The Royal Navy Museum is part of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Other military museums include The Submarine Museum at Gosport, the Royal Marines Museum, originally in Southsea but was due to transfer to the Dockyard in 2019, the Aldershot Military Museum, the D-Day Story by Southsea Castle and the Museum of Army Flying at Middle Wallop. Several museums and historic buildings in Hampshire are the responsibility of the Hampshire Cultural Trust. Specialist museums include the Gilbert White museum in his old home in Selborne, which also includes The Oates Collection, dedicated to the explorer Lawrence Oates.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The New Forest and Hampshire County Show takes place annually at the end of July; 2020 will mark its centenary. The largest gathering of Muslims in Western Europe, Jalsa Salana, takes place near Alton, with 37,000 visitors in 2017. The ancient festival of Beltain takes place at Butser Ancient Farm in the spring.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "There are 187 Grade I listed buildings in the county, ranging from statues to farm buildings and churches to castles, 511 buildings listed Grade II*, and many more listed in the Grade II category. National Heritage's figures include the Isle of Wight, listing 208 Grade I buildings, 578 Grade II*and 10,372 Grade II, 731 scheduled monuments, two wrecks, 91 parks and gardens, and a battlefield: the Battle of Cheriton, which took place in 1644, near Winchester.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The game of cricket was largely developed in south-east England, with one of the first teams forming at Hambledon in 1750, with the Hambledon Club creating many of cricket's early laws. Hampshire County Cricket Club is a first-class team. The main county ground is the Ageas Bowl in West End, which has hosted one day internationals and which, following redevelopment, hosted its first test match in 2011.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The world's oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, which was first used in 1299.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Hampshire's relatively safe waters have allowed the county to develop as one of the busiest sailing areas in the country, with many yacht clubs and several manufacturers on the Solent. The Hamble, Beaulieu and Lymington rivers are major centres for both competitive and recreational sailing, along with Hythe and Ocean Village marinas. The sport of windsurfing was invented at Hayling Island in the south east of the county.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Hampshire has several association football teams, including EFL Championship side Southampton, EFL League One side Portsmouth and National League sides Aldershot Town, Eastleigh and Havant & Waterlooville. Portsmouth and Southampton have traditionally been fierce rivals. Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 1939 and 2008 and the Football League title in 1949 and 1950. Southampton won the FA Cup in 1976 and reached the final in 1900, 1902, and 2003, as well as finishing second in the Football League in 1984. Aldershot were members of the Football League from 1932 until they folded in 1992. They were succeeded by Aldershot Town, who in 2008 were crowned the Conference Premier champions and promoted to the Football League but were relegated back to the Conference at the end of the 2012–13 season. Hampshire has a number of Non League football teams. Bashley, Gosport Borough and AFC Totton play in the Southern Football League Premier Division, and Sholing and Winchester City play in the Southern Football League Division One South and West.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Thruxton Circuit, in the north of the county, is Hampshire's premier motor racing circuit, with a karting circuit; there are other karting circuits at Southampton and Gosport. The other main circuit was the Ringwood Raceway at Matchams.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Lasham Airfield, near Alton, is a major centre for gliding, hosting both regional and national annual competitions.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The county's television news is covered by BBC South Today from its studios in Southampton and ITV Meridian from a studio in Whiteley, though both BBC London and ITV London can be received in northern and eastern parts of the county. A local independent television station, That's Hampshire, started transmitting in May 2017.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Around 25 commercial radio stations cover the area, including BBC Radio Solent, BBC Radio Berkshire and BBC Radio Surrey. University journalism students \"broadcast\" bulletins on line for local areas, such as the University of Winchester's WINOL (Winchester News Online), run by students on its BA (Hons) Journalism course.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Southampton and Portsmouth support daily newspapers; the Southern Daily Echo and The News respectively. The Basingstoke Gazette is published three times a week, and there are a number of other papers that publish on a weekly basis, notably the Hampshire Chronicle, one of the oldest newspapers in the country.",
"title": "Culture, arts and sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Possibly the most notable resident was the Duke of Wellington, who lived at Stratfield Saye House in the north of the county from 1817. An eminent Victorian, who made her mark and \"came home\" to Hampshire for burial at East Wellow was Florence Nightingale.",
"title": "Notable people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Hampshire's literary connections include the birthplace of authors Jane Austen, Wilbert Awdry and Charles Dickens, and the residence of others, such as Charles Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell. Austen lived most of her life in Hampshire, where her father was rector of Steventon, and wrote all of her novels in the county. Alice Liddell, also known as Alice Hargreaves, the inspiration for Alice in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, lived in and around Lyndhurst, Hampshire after her marriage to Reginald Hargreaves, and is buried in the graveyard of St Michael and All Angels Church in the town. Hampshire also has many visual art connections, claiming the painter John Everett Millais as a native, and the cities and countryside have been the subject of paintings by L. S. Lowry and J. M. W. Turner. Selborne was the home of Gilbert White. Journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens was born into a naval family in Portsmouth. Broadcasters Philippa Forrester, Amanda Lamb and Scott Mills also are from the county. American actor and gameshow host, Richard Dawson, was born and raised here. Richard St. Barbe Baker Founder of the International Tree Foundation and responsible for planting over two billion trees was born in West End.",
"title": "Notable people"
}
]
| Hampshire is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, Dorset to the west, and Wiltshire to the north-west. The city of Southampton is the largest settlement, and the county town is the city of Winchester. The county has an area of 3,769 km2 (1,455 sq mi) and a population of 1,844,245, making it the 5th-most populous in England. The South Hampshire built-up area in the south-east of the county has a population of 855,569 and contains the cities of Southampton (269,781) and Portsmouth (208,100). In the north-east, the Farnborough/Aldershot conurbation extends into Berkshire and Surrey and has a population of 252,937. The next-largest settlements are Basingstoke (113,776), Andover (50,887), and Winchester (45,184). The centre and south-west of the county are rural. The county contains thirteen local government districts; eleven are part of Hampshire, a two-tier non-metropolitan county, and the districts of Portsmouth and Southampton are part of unitary authority areas. The county historically contained the towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch, which are now part of Dorset, and the Isle of Wight. Undulating hills characterise much of the county. A belt of chalk crosses the county from north-west, where it forms the Hampshire Downs, to south-east, where it is part of the South Downs. The county's major rivers rise in these hills; the Loddon and Wey drain north, into the Thames, and the Itchen and Test flow south into Southampton Water, a large estuary. In the south-east are Portsmouth Harbour, Langstone Harbour, and the western edge of Chichester Harbour, three large rias. The south-west contains the New Forest, which includes pasture, heath, and forest and is of the largest expanses of ancient woodland remaining in England. Settled about 14,000 years ago, Hampshire's recorded history dates to Roman Britain, when its chief town was Venta Belgarum. The county was recorded in Domesday Book as divided into 44 hundreds. From the 12th century, the ports settlements grew due to increasing trade with the European mainland resulting from the wool and cloth, fishing, and shipbuilding industries. This meant by the 16th century, Southampton had become more populous than Winchester. In 20th century conflicts, including World War One and Two, Hampshire played a crucial military role due to its ports. | 2001-10-12T17:54:01Z | 2023-12-18T12:33:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampshire |
13,862 | Hard science fiction | Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's Islands of Space in the November issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction, first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as "hard" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.
Stories revolving around scientific and technical consistency were written as early as the 1870s with the publication of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in 1870, among other stories. The attention to detail in Verne's work became an inspiration for many future scientists and explorers, although Verne himself denied writing as a scientist or seriously predicting machines and technology of the future.
Hugo Gernsback believed from the beginning of his involvement with science fiction in the 1920s that the stories should be instructive, although it was not long before he found it necessary to print fantastical and unscientific fiction in Amazing Stories to attract readers. During Gernsback's long absence from SF publishing, from 1936 to 1953, the field evolved away from his focus on facts and education. The Golden Age of Science Fiction is generally considered to have started in the late 1930s and lasted until the mid-1940s, bringing with it "a quantum jump in quality, perhaps the greatest in the history of the genre", according to science fiction historians Peter Nicholls and Mike Ashley.
However, Gernsback's views were unchanged. In his editorial in the first issue of Science-Fiction Plus, he gave his view of the modern SF story: "the fairy tale brand, the weird or fantastic type of what mistakenly masquerades under the name of Science-Fiction today!" and he stated his preference for "truly scientific, prophetic Science-Fiction with the full accent on SCIENCE". In the same editorial, Gernsback called for patent reform to give science fiction authors the right to create patents for ideas without having patent models because many of their ideas predated the technical progress needed to develop specifications for their ideas. The introduction referenced the numerous prescient technologies described throughout Ralph 124C 41+.
The heart of the "hard science fiction" designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and (for some readers, at least) the "hardness" or rigor of the science itself. One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically or theoretically possible. For example, the development of concrete proposals for spaceships, space stations, space missions, and a US space program in the 1950s and 1960s influenced a widespread proliferation of "hard" space stories. Later discoveries do not necessarily invalidate the label of hard SF, as evidenced by P. Schuyler Miller, who called Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust hard SF, and the designation remains valid even though a crucial plot element, the existence of deep pockets of "moondust" in lunar craters, is now known to be incorrect.
There is a degree of flexibility in how far from "real science" a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF. Hard science fiction authors only include more controversial devices when the ideas draw from well-known scientific and mathematical principles. In contrast, authors writing softer SF use such devices without a scientific basis (sometimes referred to as "enabling devices", since they allow the story to take place).
Readers of "hard SF" often try to find inaccuracies in stories. For example, a group at MIT concluded that the planet Mesklin in Hal Clement's 1953 novel Mission of Gravity would have had a sharp edge at the equator, and a Florida high school class calculated that in Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld the topsoil would have slid into the seas in a few thousand years. Niven fixed these errors in his sequel The Ringworld Engineers, and noted them in the foreword.
Films set in outer space that aspire to the hard SF label try to minimize the artistic liberties taken for the sake of practicality of effect. Such considerations to be made when shooting may include:
Arranged chronologically by publication year. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's Islands of Space in the November issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction, first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the \"hard\" (natural) and \"soft\" (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as \"hard\" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Stories revolving around scientific and technical consistency were written as early as the 1870s with the publication of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in 1870, among other stories. The attention to detail in Verne's work became an inspiration for many future scientists and explorers, although Verne himself denied writing as a scientist or seriously predicting machines and technology of the future.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hugo Gernsback believed from the beginning of his involvement with science fiction in the 1920s that the stories should be instructive, although it was not long before he found it necessary to print fantastical and unscientific fiction in Amazing Stories to attract readers. During Gernsback's long absence from SF publishing, from 1936 to 1953, the field evolved away from his focus on facts and education. The Golden Age of Science Fiction is generally considered to have started in the late 1930s and lasted until the mid-1940s, bringing with it \"a quantum jump in quality, perhaps the greatest in the history of the genre\", according to science fiction historians Peter Nicholls and Mike Ashley.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "However, Gernsback's views were unchanged. In his editorial in the first issue of Science-Fiction Plus, he gave his view of the modern SF story: \"the fairy tale brand, the weird or fantastic type of what mistakenly masquerades under the name of Science-Fiction today!\" and he stated his preference for \"truly scientific, prophetic Science-Fiction with the full accent on SCIENCE\". In the same editorial, Gernsback called for patent reform to give science fiction authors the right to create patents for ideas without having patent models because many of their ideas predated the technical progress needed to develop specifications for their ideas. The introduction referenced the numerous prescient technologies described throughout Ralph 124C 41+.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The heart of the \"hard science fiction\" designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and (for some readers, at least) the \"hardness\" or rigor of the science itself. One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically or theoretically possible. For example, the development of concrete proposals for spaceships, space stations, space missions, and a US space program in the 1950s and 1960s influenced a widespread proliferation of \"hard\" space stories. Later discoveries do not necessarily invalidate the label of hard SF, as evidenced by P. Schuyler Miller, who called Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust hard SF, and the designation remains valid even though a crucial plot element, the existence of deep pockets of \"moondust\" in lunar craters, is now known to be incorrect.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "There is a degree of flexibility in how far from \"real science\" a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF. Hard science fiction authors only include more controversial devices when the ideas draw from well-known scientific and mathematical principles. In contrast, authors writing softer SF use such devices without a scientific basis (sometimes referred to as \"enabling devices\", since they allow the story to take place).",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Readers of \"hard SF\" often try to find inaccuracies in stories. For example, a group at MIT concluded that the planet Mesklin in Hal Clement's 1953 novel Mission of Gravity would have had a sharp edge at the equator, and a Florida high school class calculated that in Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld the topsoil would have slid into the seas in a few thousand years. Niven fixed these errors in his sequel The Ringworld Engineers, and noted them in the foreword.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Films set in outer space that aspire to the hard SF label try to minimize the artistic liberties taken for the sake of practicality of effect. Such considerations to be made when shooting may include:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Arranged chronologically by publication year.",
"title": "Representative works"
}
]
| Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's Islands of Space in the November issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction, first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as "hard" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful. | 2001-09-29T17:58:23Z | 2023-12-06T16:16:33Z | [
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13,863 | Handloading | Handloading, or reloading, is the practice of making firearm cartridges by assembling the individual components (case, primer, propellant, and projectile), rather than purchasing mass-assembled, factory-loaded ammunition. (It should not be confused with the reloading of a firearm with cartridges, such as by swapping magazines or using a speedloader.)
The term handloading is the more general term, and refers generically to the manual assembly of ammunition. Reloading refers more specifically to handloading using previously fired cases and shells. The terms are often used interchangeably however, as the techniques are largely the same, whether the handloader is using new or recycled components. The differences lie in the initial preparation of cases and shells; new components are generally ready to load, while previously fired components often need additional procedures, such as cleaning, removal of expended primers, or the reshaping and resizing of brass cases.
Economy, increased performance and accuracy, commercial ammunition shortages, and hobby interests are all common motives for handloading both cartridges and shotshells. Handloading ammunition waives the user off the labor costs of commercial production lines, reducing the expenditure to only the cost of purchasing components and equipment. Reloading used cartridge cases can save the shooter money, providing not only a greater quantity, but also a higher quality of ammunition within a given budget. Reloading may not however be cost effective for occasional shooters, as it takes time to recoup the cost of needed equipment, but those who shoot more frequently will see cost-savings over time, as the brass cartridge cases and shotgun shell hulls, which are often the most expensive components, can be reused with proper maintenance. Additionally, most handloading components can be acquired at discounted prices when purchased in bulk, so handloaders are often less affected by changes in ammunition availability.
The opportunity to customize performance is another common goal for many handloaders. Hunters for instance, may desire cartridges with specialized bullets with specific terminal performance. Target shooters often experiment extensively with component combinations in an effort to achieve the best and most consistent bullet trajectories, often using cartridge cases that have been fire formed in order to best fit the chamber of a specific firearm. Shotgun enthusiasts can make specialty rounds unavailable through commercial inventories at any price. Some handloaders even customize cartridges and shotshells simply to lower recoil, for instance for younger shooters who might otherwise avoid shooting sports because of the high recoil of certain firearms. It is also a not infrequent practice for handloaders to make increased-power ammunition (i.e. "hot loads") if higher muzzle velocities (hence flatter trajectories) are desired. Rather than purchasing a special purpose rifle, which a novice or adolescent shooter might outgrow, a single rifle can be used with special handloaded rounds until such time more powerful rounds become appropriate. This use of specialized handloading techniques often provides significant cost savings as well, for instance when a hunter in a family already has a full-power rifle and a new hunter in the family wishes to learn the sport. This technique also enables hunters to use the same rifle and caliber to hunt a greater diversity of game.
Where the most extreme accuracy is demanded, such as in rifle benchrest shooting, handloading is a fundamental prerequisite for success, but can only be done consistently accurately once load development has been done to determine what cartridge parameters works best with a specific rifle. Additionally, collectors of rare, antique and foreign-made firearms must often turn to handloading because the appropriate cartridges and shotshells are no longer commercially available. Handloaders can also create cartridges for which no commercial equivalent has ever existed — the so-called wildcat cartridges, some of which can eventually acquire mainstream acceptance if the ballistic performance is proven to be good enough. However, as with any hobby, the pure enjoyment of the reloading process may be the most important benefit.
Recurring shortages of commercial ammunition are also reasons to reload cartridges and shotshells. When commercial supplies dry up, and store-bought ammunition is not available at any price, having the ability to reload one's own cartridges and shotshells economically provides an ability to continue shooting despite shortages.
There are three aspects to ballistics: internal ballistics, external ballistics, and terminal ballistics. Internal ballistics refers to things that happen inside the firearm during and after firing, but before the bullet leaves the muzzle. The handloading process can realize increased accuracy and precision through improved consistency of manufacture, by selecting the optimal bullet weight and design, and tailoring bullet velocity to the purpose. Each cartridge reloaded can have each component carefully matched to the rest of the cartridges in the batch. Brass cases can be matched by volume, weight, and concentricity, bullets by weight and design, powder charges by weight, type, case filling (amount of total usable case capacity filled by charge), and packing scheme (characteristics of granule packing).
In addition to these critical items, the equipment used to assemble the cartridge also has an effect on its uniformity/consistency and optimal shape/size; dies used to size the cartridges can be matched to the chamber of a given gun. Modern handloading equipment enables a firearm owner to tailor fresh ammunition to a specific firearm, and to precisely measured tolerances far improving the comparatively wide tolerances within which commercial ammunition manufacturers must operate.
Inexpensive "tong" tools have been used for reloading since the mid-19th century. They resemble a large pair of pliers and can be caliber-specific or have interchangeable dies.
However, in modern days, handloading equipments are sophisticated machine tools that emphasize on precision and reliability, and often cost more than high-end shooting optics. There are also a myriad of various measuring tools and accessory products on the market for use in conjunction with handloading.
The quintessential handloading equipment is the press, which uses compound leverage to push the cases into a die that performs the loading operations. Presses vary from simple, inexpensive single-stage models, to complex "progressive" models that operate with each pull of the lever like an assembly line at rates up to 10 rounds per minute.
Loading presses are often categorized by the letter of the English alphabet that they most resemble in shape: "O", "C", and "H". The sturdiest presses, suitable for bullet swaging functions as well as for normal reloading die usage, are of the "O" type. Heavy steel completely encloses the single die on these presses. Equally sturdy presses for all but bullet swaging use often resemble the letter "C". Both steel and aluminum construction are seen with "C" presses. Some users prefer "C" style presses over "O" presses, as there is more room to place bullets into cartridge mouths on "C" presses. Shotshell style presses, intended for non-batch use, for which each shotshell or cartridge is cycled through the dies before commencing onto the next shotshell or cartridge to be reloaded, commonly resemble the letter "H".
Single-stage press, generally of the "O" or "C" types, is the simplest of press designs. These presses can only hold one die and perform a single procedure on a single case at any time. They are usually only used to crimp the case neck onto the bullet, and if the user wants to perform any different procedures with the press (e.g. priming, powder dispensing, neck resizing), the functioning die/module need to be manually removed and changed. When using a single-stage press, cases are loaded in batches, one step for each cartridge per batch at a time. The batch sizes are kept small, about 20–50 cases at a time, so the cases are never left in a partially completed state for long because extended exposure to humidity and light can degrade the powder. Single-stage presses are commonly most used for high-precision rifle cartridge handloading, but may be used for high-precision reloading of all cartridge types, and for fine-tuning loads (developing loading recipes) for ultimately mass-producing large numbers of cartridges on a progressive press.
Turret press, most commonly of the "C" type, is similar to a single-stage press, but has an indexed mounting disc that allows multiple dies to be quickly interchanged, with each die being fastened with lock rings. Batch operations are performed similar to a single-stage press, different procedures can be switched by simply rotating the turret and placing a different die into position. Although turret presses operate much like single-stage presses, they eliminate much of the setup time required in positioning individual dies correctly.
Progressive press is far more complex in design and can handle several cases at once. These presses have a rotating base that turns with each pull of the lever. All the dies/loading modules needed (often including a case hopper, a primer feed, a powder measure, and sometimes also a bullet feeder) are mounted in alignment with each case slot on the base disc, and often also include an additional vacant station where the powder levels are manually checked to prevent over- or under-charges. Progressive presses can load hundreds of cartridges sequentially with streamlined efficiency, and all the user has to do is pulling the lever, occasionally provide manual inputs such as placing the bullet in place on the case mouth (if a bullet feeder is not used).
Primer pocket swages can be either standalone, bench-mounted, specialized presses, or, alternatively, a special swage anvil die that can be mounted into a standard "O" style loading press, along with a special shell holder insert with either a large or a small primer pocket insert swage that is then inserted into the position on the "O" press where a normal shell holder is usually clicked into position. This way, both small and large primer pockets on different types of military cases can be properly processed to remove primer pocket crimps. Both types of presses can be used to remove either ring crimps or stab crimps found on military cartridges when reloading them. Reamers for removing primer pocket crimps are not associated with presses, being an alternative to using a press to remove military case primer pocket crimps.
Shotshell presses are generally a single unit of the "H" configuration that handles all functions, dedicated to reloading just one gauge of shotshell. Shotshell reloading is similar to cartridge reloading, except that, instead of a bullet, a wad and a measure of shot are used, and after loading the shot, the shell is crimped shut. Both 6 and 8 fold crimps are in use, for paper hulls and plastic hulls, respectively. Likewise, roll crimps are in use for metallic, paper, and plastic hulls. The shotshell loader contains stations to resize the shell, measure powder, load the wad, measure shot, and crimp the shell. Due to the low cost of modern plastic shotshells, and the additional complexity of reloading fired shells, shotshell handloading is not as popular as cartridge handloading. For example, unlike when handloading rifle and pistol cartridges, where all the various components (cases, gas checks, powder, primers, etc.) from different manufacturers are usually all interchangeable, shotshells typically are loaded for particular brands of shotshell cases (called hulls) only with one specific brand of wad, shot cup (if used), primer, and powder, further increasing the complexity and difficulty of reloading shotshells. Substitution of components is not considered safe, as changing just one component, such as a brand of primer, can increase pressures by as much as 3500 PSI, which may exceed SAAMI pressure limits. Reloading shotshells is therefore more along the lines of precisely following a recipe with non-fungible components. Where shotshell reloading remains popular, however, is for making specialized shotgun shells, such as for providing lowered recoil, when making low-cost "poppers" used for training retrievers before hunting season to acclimate hunting dogs to the sound of a gun firing without actually shooting projectiles, for achieving better shot patterning, or for providing other improvements or features not available in commercially loaded shotshells at any price, such as when handloading obsolete shotshells with brass cases for gauges of shotshells that are no longer commercially manufactured.
Rifle and pistol loading presses are usually not dedicated to reloading a single caliber of cartridge, although they can be, but are configured for reloading various cartridge calibers as needed. In contrast, shotshell presses are most often configured for reloading just one gauge of shotshell, e.g., 12 gauge, and are rarely, if ever, reconfigured for reloading other gauges of shotshells, as the cost of buying all new dies, shot bar, and powder bushing as required to switch gauges on a shotshell press often exceeds the cost of buying a new shotshell press outright, as shotshell presses typically come from the factory already set up to reload one gauge or bore of shotshell. Hence, it is common to use a dedicated shotshell press for reloading each gauge or bore of shotshell used. Likewise, the price of shot for reloading shotshells over the last several years has also risen significantly, such that lead shot that was readily available for around $0.50/lb. (c. 2005) now reaches $2.00 per pound (2013.) Due to this large increase in the price of lead shot, the economy of reloading 12 gauge shotshells vs. just using promotional (low-cost) 12 gauge shotshells only starts to make economic sense for higher volume shooters, who may shoot more than 50,000 rounds a year. In contrast, the reloading of shotshells that are usually not available in low-cost, promotional pricings, such as .410 bore, 12 ga. slugs, 16 ga, 20 ga., and 28 ga., becomes more economical to reload in much smaller quantities, perhaps within only 3-5 boxes of shells per year. Reloading .410 bore, 12 ga. slugs, 16 ga., 20 ga, and 28 ga. shells, therefore, remains relatively common, more so than the reloading of 12 gauge shotshells, for which promotional shotshells are usually readily available from many retailers. These smaller bore and gauge shotshells also require much less lead shot, further lessening the effect of the rapid rises seen in the price of lead shot. The industry change to steel shot, arising from the US and Canadian Federal bans on using lead shotshells while hunting migratory wildfowl, has also affected reloading shotshells, as the shot bar and powder bushing required on a dedicated shotshell press also must be changed for each hull type reloaded, and are different than what would be used for reloading shotshells with lead shot, further complicating the reloading of shotshells.
With the recent rampant rise in lead shot prices, though, a major change in handloading shotshells has also occurred. Namely, a transition among high volume 12 gauge shooters from loading traditional 1-1/8 oz. shot loads to 7/8 oz. shot loads or even 24 gm. (so-called International) shot loads have occurred. At 1-1/8 oz. per shotshell, a 25 lb. bag of lead shot can only reload approximately 355 shotshells. At 7/8 oz. per shotshell, a 25 lb. of lead shot can reload 457 shotshells. At 24 grams per shotshell, a 25 lb of lead shot can reload approximately 472 shotshells. Stretching the number of hulls that it is possible to reload from an industry-standard 25 lb. bag of lead shot by 117 shells has significantly helped mitigate the large increase in the price of lead shot. That this change has also resulted in minimal changes to scores in shooting sports such as skeet and trap has only expedited the switch among high volume shooters to shooting 24 gm. shotshells with their lesser amounts of shot.
With the recent shortages over 2012–2013 of 12 gauge shotshells in the United States (among all other types of rifle and pistol ammunition), the popularity of reloading 12 gauge shotshells has seen a widespread resurgence. Field use of the International 24 gm. 12 gauge shells has proven them to be effective on small game, while stretching the number of reloads possible from a bag of shot, and they have subsequently become popular for hunting small game. Since shot shells are typically reloaded at least 5 times, although upwards of 15 times are often possible for lightly loaded shells, this transition to field use of 24 gm. loads has helped mitigate ammunition shortages for hunters.
Shotshell presses typically use a charge bar to drop precise amounts of shot and powder. Most commonly, these charge bars are fixed in their capacities, with a single charge bar rated at, say, 1-1/8 oz. of lead shot, with a switchable powder bushing that permits dropping precisely measured fixed amounts of different types of powder repetitively (e.g., MEC.) On the other hand, some charge bars are drilled to accept bushings for dropping different fixed amounts of both shot and powder (e.g. Texan.) For the ultimate in flexibility, though, universal charge bars with micrometers dropping fixed volumes of powder and shot are also available; these are able to select differing fixed amounts of both powder and shot, and are popular for handloaders who load more than just a few published recipes, or, especially, among those who wish to experiment with numerous different published recipes. Fixed charge bars are rated for either lead or steel shot, but not for both. Universal charge bars, on the other hand, are capable of reloading both lead and steel shot, being adjustable.
Like their pistol and rifle counterparts, shotshell presses are available in both single-stage and progressive varieties. For shooters shooting fewer than approximately 500 shells a month, and especially shooting fewer than 100 shells a month, a single-stage press is often found to be adequate. For shooters shooting larger numbers of shells a month, progressive presses are often chosen. A single-stage press can typically reload 100 hulls in approximately an hour. Progressive presses can typically reload upwards of 400 or 500 hulls an hour.
Shotshell presses are most commonly operated in non-batch modes. That is, a single hull will often be deprimed, reshaped, primed, loaded with powder, have a wad pressed in, be loaded with shot, be pre-crimped, and then be final crimped before being removed and a new hull being placed on the shotshell press at station 1. An alternative, somewhat faster method, often used on a single stage press is to work on 5 hulls in parallel sequentially, with but a single processed hull being located at each of the 5 stations available on a single stage shotshell press, while manually removing the finished shotshell from station 5 and then moving the 4 in-process hulls to the next station (1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to 5) before adding a new hull at the deprimer (station 1) location. Both these modes of shotshell reloading are in distinct contrast to the common practice used with reloading pistol and rifle cartridges on a single-stage press, which is most often processed in batch modes, where a common operation will commonly be done on a batch of up to 50 or 100 cartridges at a time, before proceeding to the next processing step. This difference is largely a result of shotshell presses having 5 stations available for use simultaneously, unlike a single-stage cartridge press which typically has but one station available for use.
In general, though, shotshell reloading is far more complex than rifle and pistol cartridge reloading, and hence far fewer shotshell presses are therefore used relative to rifle and pistol cartridge reloading presses.
Reloading presses for reloading .50 BMG and larger cartridges are also typically caliber-specific, much like shotshell presses, as standard-size rifle and pistol reloading presses are not capable of being pressed into such exotic reloading service. The reloading of such large cartridges is also much more complex, as developing a load using a specific lot of powder can require nearly all of a 5 lb. bottle of powder and a load must be developed with a single load of powder for reasons of safety.
Dies are generally sold in sets of two or three units, depending on the shape of the case. A three-die set is needed for straight cases, while a two-die set is used for bottlenecked cases. The first die of either set performs the sizing and decapping operation, except in some cases in the 3-die set, where decapping may be done by the second die. The middle die in a three-die set is used to expand the case mouth of straight cases (and decap in the case where this is not done by the first die), while in a two-die set the entire neck is expanded as the case is extracted from the first die. The last die in the set seats the bullet and may apply a crimp. Special crimping dies are often used to apply a stronger crimp after the bullet is seated. Progressive presses sometimes use an additional "die" to meter powder into the case (though it is arguably not a real die as it does not shape the case).
Standard dies are made from hardened steel, and require that the case be lubricated, for the resizing operation, which requires a large amount of force. Rifle cartridges require lubrication of every case, due to the large amount of force required, while smaller, thinner handgun cartridges can get away with alternating lubricated and unlubricated cases. Carbide dies have a ring of tungsten carbide, which is far harder and slicker than tool steel, and so carbide dies do not require lubrication.
Modern reloading dies are generally standardized with 7/8-14 (or, for the case of .50 BMG dies, with 1-1/4×12) threads and are interchangeable with all common brands of presses, although older dies may use other threads and be press-specific.
Dies for bottleneck cases usually are supplied in sets of at least two dies, though sometimes a third is added for crimping. This is an extra operation and is not needed unless a gun's magazine or action design requires crimped ammunition for safe operation, such as autoloading firearms, where the cycling of the action may push the bullet back in the case, resulting in poor accuracy and increased pressures. Crimping is also sometimes recommended to achieve full velocity for bullets, through increasing pressures so as to make powders burn more efficiently, and for heavy recoiling loads, to prevent bullets from moving under recoil. For FMJ bullets mounted in bottleneck cases, roll crimping is generally not ever used unless a cannelure is present on the bullet, to prevent causing bullet deformation when crimping. Rimless, straight wall cases, on the other hand, require a taper crimp, because they have headspace on the case mouth; roll crimping causes headspacing problems on these cartridges. Rimmed, belted, or bottleneck cartridges, however, generally can safely be roll crimped when needed. Three dies are normally supplied for straight-walled cases, with an optional fourth die for crimping. Crimps for straight wall cases may be taper crimps, suitable for rimless cartridges used in autoloaders, or roll crimps, which are best for rimmed cartridges such as are used in revolvers.
There are also specialty dies. Bump dies are designed to move the shoulder of a bottleneck case back just a bit to facilitate chambering. These are frequently used in conjunction with neck dies, as the bump die itself does not manipulate the neck of the case whatsoever. A bump die can be a very useful tool to anyone who owns a fine shooting rifle with a chamber that is cut to minimum headspace dimensions, as the die allows the case to be fitted to this unique chamber. Another die is the "hand die". A hand die has no threads and is operated—as the name suggests—by hand or by use of a hand-operated arbor press. Hand dies are available for most popular cartridges, and although available as full-length resizing dies, they are most commonly seen as neck sizing dies. These use an interchangeable insert to size the neck, and these inserts come in 1/1000-inch steps so that the user can custom fit the neck of the case to his own chamber or have greater control over neck tension on the bullet.
A shell holder, generally sold separately, is needed to hold the case in place as it is forced into and out of the dies. The reason shellholders are sold separately is that many cartridges share the same base dimensions, and a single shell holder can service many different cases. Shellholders are also specialized, and will generally only fit a certain make of reloading press, while modern dies are standardized and will fit a wide variety of presses. Different shell holders than those used for dies are also required for use with some hand priming tools (e.g., Lee Autoprime tool.)
A precision weighing scale is a near necessity for reloading. While it is possible to load using nothing but a powder measure and a weight-to-volume conversion chart, this greatly limits the precision with which a load can be adjusted, increasing the danger of accidentally overloading cartridges with powder for loads near or at the maximum safe load. With a powder scale, an adjustable powder measure can be calibrated more precisely for the powder in question, and spot checks can be made during loading to make sure that the measure is not drifting. With a powder trickler, a charge can be measured directly into the scale, giving the most accurate measure.
A scale also allows bullets and cases to be sorted by weight, which can increase consistency further. Sorting bullets by weight has obvious benefits, as each set of matched bullets will perform more consistently. Sorting cases by weight is done to group cases by case wall thickness, and match cases with similar interior volumes. Military cases, for example, tend to be thicker, while cases that have been reloaded numerous times will have thinner walls due to brass flowing forward under firing, and excess case length being later trimmed from the case mouth.
There are 3 types of reloading scales:
Single-stage presses often do not provide an easy way of installing primers to ("priming") cases. Various add-on tools can be used for priming the case on the down-stroke, or a separate tool can be used. Since cases loaded by a single-stage press are done in steps, with the die being changed between steps, a purpose-made priming tool (so-called "primer" tool) — is often faster than trying to integrate a priming step to a press step, and also often more robust than a model that needs to be mounted and fitted onto a press, resulting in a more consistent primer seating depth.
Beginning reloading kits often include a weight-to-volume conversion chart for a selection of common powders and a set of powder volume measures graduated in small increments. By adding the various measures of powder the desired charge can be measured with a safe degree of accuracy. However, since multiple measures of powder are often needed, and since powder lots may vary slightly in density, a powder measure accurate to 1⁄10 grain (6.5 mg) is desirable.
Like any complex process, mistakes in handloading are easy to make, and a bullet puller device allows the handloader to disassemble mistakes. Most pullers use inertia to pull the bullet, and are often shaped like hammers. When in use, the case is locked in place in a head-down fashion inside the far end of the "hammer", and then the device is swung and struck against a firm surface. The sharp impact will suddenly decelerate the case, but the inertia exerted by the heavier mass of the bullet will keep it moving and thus pull it free from the case in a few blows, while the powder and bullet will get caught by a trapping container within the puller after the separation. Collet-type pullers are also available, which use a caliber-specific clamp to grip the bullet, while a loading press is used to pull the case downwards. It is essential that the collet be a good match for the bullet diameter because a poor match can result in significant deformation of the bullet.
Bullet pullers are also used to disassemble loaded ammunition of questionable provenance or undesirable configuration so that the components can be salvaged for re-use. Surplus military ammunition is often pulled for components, particularly cartridge cases, which are often difficult to obtain for older foreign military rifles. Military ammunition is often tightly sealed, to make it resistant to water and rough handling, such as in machine gun feeding mechanisms. In this case, the seal between the bullet and cartridge can prevent the bullet puller from functioning. Pushing the bullet into the case slightly with a seating die will break the seal, and allow the bullet to be pulled.
Primers are a more problematic issue. If a primer is not seated deeply enough, the cartridge (if loaded) can be pulled, and the primer re-seated with the seating tool. Primers that must be removed are frequently deactivated first—either firing the primed case in the appropriate firearm or soaking in penetrating oil, which penetrates the water-resistant coatings in the primer.
Components pulled from loaded cartridges should be reused with care. Unknown or potentially contaminated powders, contaminated primers, and bullets that are damaged or incorrectly sized can all cause dangerous conditions upon firing.
Cases, especially bottleneck cases, will stretch upon firing. How much a case will stretch depends upon load pressure, cartridge design, chamber size, functional cartridge headspace (usually the most important factor), and other variables. Periodically cases need to be trimmed to bring them back to proper specifications. Most reloading manuals list both a trim size and a max length. Long cases can create a safety hazard through improper headspace and possible increased pressure.
Several kinds of case trimmers are available. Die-based trimmers have an open top and allow the case to be trimmed with a file during the loading process. Manual trimmers usually have a base that has a shellholder at one end and a cutting bit at the opposite end, with a locking mechanism to hold the case tight and in alignment with the axis of the cutter, similar to a small lathe. Typically the device is cranked by hand, but sometimes they have attachments to allow the use of a drill or powered screwdriver. Powered case trimmers are also available. They usually consist of a motor (electric drills are sometimes used) and special dies or fittings that hold the case to be trimmed at the appropriate length, letting the motor do the work of trimming.
Primer pocket cleaning tools are used to remove residual combustion debris remaining in the primer pocket; both brush designs and single blade designs are commonly used. Dirty primer pockets can prevent setting primers at, or below, the cartridge head. Primer pocket reamers or swagers are used to remove military crimps in primer pockets.
Primer pocket uniformer tools are used to achieve a uniform primer pocket depth. These are small endmills with a fixed depth-spacing ring attached, and are mounted either in a handle for use as a handtool, or are sometimes mounted in a battery-operated screwdriver. Some commercial cartridges (notably Sellier & Bellot) use large rifle primers that are thinner than the SAAMI standards common in the United States, and will not permit seating a Boxer primer manufactured to U.S. standards; the use of a primer pocket uniformer tool on such brass avoids setting Boxer primers high when reloading, which would be a safety issue. Two sizes of primer pocket uniformer tools exist, the larger one is for large rifle (0.130-inch nominal depth) primer pockets and the smaller one is used for uniforming small rifle/pistol primer pockets.
Flash hole uniforming tools are used to remove any burrs, which are residual brass remaining from the manufacturing punching operation used in creating flash holes. These tools resemble primer pocket uniformer tools, except being thinner, and commonly include deburring, chamfering, and uniforming functions. The purpose of these tools is to achieve a more equal distribution of flame from the primer to ignite the powder charge, resulting in consistent ignition from case to case.
Bottleneck rifle cartridges are particularly prone to encounter incipient head separations if they are full-length re-sized and re-trimmed to their maximum permitted case lengths each time they are reloaded. In some such cartridges, such as the .303 British when used in Enfield rifles, as few as 1 or 2 reloadings can be the limit before the head of the cartridge will physically separate from the body of the cartridge when fired. The solution to this problem, of avoiding overstretching of the brass case, and thereby avoiding the excessive thinning of the wall thickness of the brass case due to case stretching, is to use what is called a "headspace gauge". Contrary to its name, it does not actually measure a rifle's headspace. Rather, it measures the distance from the head of the cartridge to the middle of the shoulder of the bottleneck cartridge case. For semi-automatic and automatic rifles, the customary practice is to move the midpoint of this shoulder back by no more than 0.005 inches, for reliable operation, when resizing the case. For bolt-action rifles, with their additional camming action, the customary practice is to move this shoulder back by only 0.001 to 0.002 inches when resizing the case. In contrast to full-length resizing of bottleneck rifle cartridges, which can rapidly thin out the wall thickness of bottleneck rifle cartridges due to case stretching that occurs each time when fired, partial length re-sizing of the bottleneck case pushes shoulders back only a few thousandths of an inch will often permit a case to be safely reloaded 5 times or more, even up to 10 times, or more for very light loads.
Similarly, by using modified case gauges, it is possible to measure precisely the distance from a bullet ogive to the start of rifling in a particular rifle for a given bottleneck cartridge. Maximum accuracy for a rifle is often found to occur for only one particular fixed distance from the start of rifling in a bore to a datum line on a bullet ogive. Measuring the overall cartridge length does not permit setting such fixed distances accurately, as different bullets from different manufacturers will often have a different ogive shape. It is only by measuring from a fixed diameter point on a bullet ogive to the start of a bore's rifling that proper spacing can be determined to maximize accuracy. A modified case gauge can provide the means by which to achieve an improvement in accuracy with precision handloads.
Such head space gauges and modified case gauges can, respectively, permit greatly increasing the number of times a rifle bottleneck case can be reloaded safely, as well as improve greatly the accuracy of such handloads. Unlike the situation with using expensive factory ammunition, handloaded match ammunition can be made that is vastly more accurate, and, through reloading, that can be much more affordable than anything that can be purchased, being customized for a particular rifle.
The following materials are needed for handloading ammunition:
Case lubrication may also be needed depending on the dies used. Carbide pistol dies do not require case lubricant. For this reason, they are preferred by many, being inherently less messy in operation. In contrast, all dies for bottleneck cartridges, whether made of high-strength steel or carbide, and steel dies for pistols do require the use of a case lubricant to prevent a case become stuck in a die. (In the event that a case does ever become stuck in a die, there are stuck case remover tools that are available to remove a stuck case from the die, albeit at the loss of the particular case that became stuck.) Powder should always be stored in original containers since they are designed to split open at low pressure to prevent a dangerous pressure buildup, and any cabinet they are stored in should similarly prevent pressure buildup by allowing venting and expansion.
The operations performed when handloading cartridges are:
When previously fired cases are used, they must be inspected before loading. Cases that are dirty or tarnished are often polished in a tumbler to remove oxidation and allow easier inspection of the case. Cleaning in a tumbler will also clean the interior of cases, which is often considered important for handloading high-precision target rounds. Cracked necks, non-reloadable cases (steel, aluminum, or Berdan primed cases), and signs of head separation are all reasons to reject a case. Cases are measured for length, and any that are over the recommended length is trimmed down to the minimum length. Competition shooters will also sort cases by brand and weight to ensure consistency.
Removal of the primer, called decapping or depriming, is usually done with a die containing a steel pin that punches out the primer from inside the case. Berdan primed cases require a different technique, either a hydraulic ram or a hook that punctures the case and levers it out from the bottom. Military cases often have crimped-in primers, and decapping them leaves a slightly indented ring (most common) or, for some military cartridges, a set of stabbed ridges located on the edge of the primer pocket opening that inhibits or prevents seating a new primer into a decapped case. A reamer or a swage is used to remove both these styles of crimp, whether ring crimps or stab crimps. The purpose of all such primer crimps is to make military ammunition more reliable under more extreme environmental conditions. Some military cartridges also have sealants placed around primers, in addition to crimps, to provide additional protection against moisture intrusion that could deactivate the primer for any ammunition exposed to water under battlefield conditions. Decapping dies, though, easily overcome the additional resistance of sealed primers, with no significant difficulty beyond that encountered when removing non-sealed primers.
When a cartridge is fired, the internal pressure expands the case to fit the chamber in a process called obturation. To allow ease of chambering the cartridge when it is reloaded, the case is swaged back to size. Competition shooters, using bolt-action rifles that are capable of camming a tight case into place, often resize only the neck of the cartridge, called neck sizing, as opposed to the normal full-length resizing process. Neck sizing is only useful for cartridges to be re-fired in the same firearm, as the brass may be slightly oversized in some dimensions for other chambers, but the precise fit of the case to the chamber will allow greater consistency and therefore greater potential accuracy. Some believe that neck sizing will permit a larger number of reloads with a given case in contrast to full-size resizing, although this is controversial. Semi-automatic rifles and rifles with SAAMI minimum chamber dimensions often require a special small base resizing die, that sizes further down the case than normal dies, and allows for more reliable feeding.
Once the case is sized down, the inside of the neck of the case will actually be slightly smaller than the bullet's diameter. To allow the bullet to be seated, the end of the neck is slightly expanded to allow the bullet to start into the case. Boattailed bullets need very little expansion, while unjacketed lead bullets require more expansion to prevent shaving of lead when the bullet is seated.
Priming the case is the most dangerous step of the loading process since the primers are pressure-sensitive. The use of safety glasses or goggles during priming operations can provide valuable protection in the rare event that an accidental detonation takes place. Seating a Boxer primer not only places the primer in the case, but it also seats the anvil of the primer down onto the priming compound, in effect arming the primer. A correctly seated primer will sit slightly below the surface of the case. A primer that protrudes from the case may cause a number of problems, including what is known as a slam fire, which is the firing of a case before the action is properly locked when chambering a round. This may either damage the gun and/or injure the shooter. A protruding primer will also tend to hang when feeding, and the anvil will not be seated correctly so the primer may not fire when hit by the firing pin. Primer pockets may need to be cleaned with a primer pocket brush to remove deposits that prevent the primer from being properly seated. Berdan primers must also be seated carefully, and since the anvil is part of the case, the anvil must be inspected before the primer is seated. For reloading cartridges intended for use in military-surplus firearms, rifles especially, "hard" primers are most commonly used instead of commercial "soft" primers. The use of "hard" primers avoids slamfires when loading finished cartridges in the military-surplus firearm. Such primers are available to handloaders commercially.
The quantity of gunpowder is specified by weight, but almost always measured by volume, especially in larger-scale operations. A powder scale is needed to determine the correct mass thrown by the powder measure, as loads are specified with a precision of 0.10 grain (6.5 mg). One grain is 1/7000 of a pound. Competition shooters will generally throw a slightly underweight charge, and use a powder trickler to add a few granules of powder at a time to the charge to bring it to the exact weight desired for maximum consistency. Special care is needed when charging large-capacity cases with fast-burning, low-volume powders. In this instance, it is possible to put two charges of powder in a case without overflowing the case, which can lead to dangerously high pressures and a significant chance of bursting the chamber of the firearm. Non-magnum revolver cartridges are the easiest to do this with, as they generally have relatively large cases, and tend to perform well with small charges of fast powders. Some powders meter (measured by volume) better than others due to the shape of each granule. When using volume to meter each charge, it is important to regularly check the charge weight on a scale throughout the process.
Competition shooters also often sort bullets by weight, often down to 0.10 grain (6.5 mg) increments. The bullet is placed in the case mouth by hand and then seated with the press. At this point, the expanded case mouth is also sized back down. A crimp can optionally be added, either by the seating die or with a separate die. Taper crimps are used for cases that are held in the chamber by the case mouth, while roll crimps may be used for cases that have headspace on a rim or on the cartridge neck. Roll crimps hold the bullet far more securely, and are preferred in situations, such as magnum revolvers, where recoil velocities are significant. A tight crimp also helps to delay the start of the bullet's motion, which can increase chamber pressures, and help develop full power from slower burning powders (see internal ballistics).
Unlike the presses used for reloading metallic cartridges, the presses used for reloading shotgun shells have become standardized to contain 5 stations, with the exact configuration of these 5 stations arranged either in a circle or in a straight row. Nonetheless, the operations performed using the industry-standard 5 station shotshell presses when handloading shotshells with birdshot, although slightly different, are very similar as to when reloading metallic cartridges:
The exact details for accomplishing these steps on particular shotshell presses vary depending on the brand of the press, although the presence of 5 stations is standard among all modern presses.
The use of safety glasses or goggles while reloading shotshells can provide valuable protection in the rare event that an accidental detonation takes place during priming operations.
The quantities of both gunpowder and shot are specified by weight when loading shotshells, but almost always measured solely by volume. A powder scale is therefore needed to determine the correct mass thrown by the powder measure, and by the shot measure, as powder loads are specified with a precision of 0.10 grain (6.5 mg), but are usually thrown with a tolerance of 0.2 to 0.3 grains in most shotshell presses. Similarly, shot payloads in shells are generally held to within a tolerance of plus or minus 3-5 grains. One grain is 1/7000 of a pound.
Shotshell reloading for specialty purposes, such as for buckshot or slugs, or other specialty rounds, is often practiced but varies significantly from the process steps discussed previously for handloading birdshot shotshells. The primary difference is that large shot cannot be metered in a charge bar, and so must be manually dropped, a ball at a time, in a specific configuration. Likewise, the need for specialty wads or extra wads, in order to achieve the desired stackup distance to achieve a full and proper crimp for a fixed shell length, say 2-3/4", causes the steps to differ slightly when handloading such shells.
Modern shotshells are all uniformly sized for Type 209 primers. However, reloaders should be aware that older shotshells were sometimes primed with a Type 57 or Type 69 primer (now obsolete), meaning that shotgun shell reloading tends to be done only with modern (or recently produced) components. Being essentially "published recipe" dependent, antique shotshell reloading is not widely practiced, being more of a specialty, or niche, activity. Of course, when reloading for very old shotguns, such as those with Damascus barrels, special shotshell recipes that limit pressures to less than 4500 psi are still available, and these "recipes" are reloaded by some shotgunning enthusiasts. Typical shotshell pressures for handloads intended for modern shotguns range from approximately 4700 psi to 10,000 psi.
Brass shotshells are also reloaded, occasionally, but typically these are reloaded using standard rifle/pistol reloading presses with specialty dies, rather than with modern shotshell presses. Rather than plastic wads, traditional felt and paperboard wads are also generally used (both over powder and over shot) when reloading brass shotgun shells. Reloading brass shotshells is not widely practiced.
Shotguns, in general, operate at much lower pressures than pistols and rifles, typically operating at pressures of 10,000 psi, or less, for 12 gauge shells, whereas rifles and pistols routinely are operated at pressures in excess of 35,000 psi, and sometimes upwards of 50,000 psi. The SAAMI maximum permitted pressure limit is only 11,500 psi for 12 gauge 2-3/4 inch shells, so the typical operating pressures for many shotgun shells are only slightly below the maximum permitted pressures allowed for safe ammunition. Because of this small difference in typical operating vs. maximum industry allowed pressures and the fact that even small changes in components can cause pressure variances in excess of 4,000 psi, the components used in shotshell reloading must not be varied from published recipes, as the margin of safety relative to operating pressures for shotguns is much lower than for pistols and rifles. This lower operating pressure for shotguns and shells is also the reason why shotgun barrels have noticeably thinner walls than rifle and pistol barrels.
Since many countries heavily restrict the civilian possession of ammunition and ammunition components, including primers and smokeless powder, handloading may be explicitly or implicitly illegal in certain countries. Even without specific restrictions on powder and primers, they may be covered under other laws governing explosive materials. Handloading may require study and passing an exam to acquire a handloading permit prior to being allowed to handload ammunition in some jurisdictions. This is done to avoid catastrophic accidents caused by lack of knowledge/skill as much as possible, and also allows the government to maintain information on who reloads their own cartridges. The standards organization C.I.P. rules that the products of handloaders that do not comply with the C.I.P. ammunition approval rules for commercial ammunition manufacturers cannot be legally sold in C.I.P. member states.
Many firearms manufacturers explicitly advise against the use of handloaded ammunition. Generally, this means that the maker's warranty is void, and the manufacturer is not liable for any damage to the gun or personal injury if handloaded ammunition is used that exceeded established limits for a particular arm. This arises because firearm manufacturers point out that while they have some influence and scope for redress with ammunition manufacturers, they have no such influence over the actions of incompetent or overly ambitious individuals who assemble ammunition.
In the United States, handloading is not only legal and requires no permit, but is also quite popular. Experts point to potential legal liabilities (depending on the jurisdiction) that the shooter may incur if using handloaded ammunition for defense, such as an implied malice on the part of the shooter, as the use of handloaded ammunition may give the impression that "regular bullets weren't deadly enough". Additionally, forensic reconstruction of a shooting relies on using identical ammunition from the manufacturer, where handloaded ammunition cannot be guaranteed identical to the ammunition used in the shooting, since "the defendant literally manufactured the evidence". In particular, powder residue patterning is used by law enforcement to validate the distance between the firearm and the person shot using known facts from the manufacturer about powder type, content, and other factors.
Handloading is legal in Canada. The Explosives Act places limits on the amount of powder (either smokeless or black) that may be stored in a building, on the manner in which it is stored, and on how much powder may be available for use at any time. The Act is the responsibility of Natural Resources Canada. If the quantity of powder stored for personal use exceeds 75 kg, then a Propellant Magazine Licence (Type P) is required. There is no limit on the number of primers that may be stored for non-commercial use.
As an example of a European country, handloading in Germany requires a course, terminated in an exam, in handloading and handling of explosive propellants; often, this is offered in combination with a course and exam in muzzle-loading and black powder-shooting. The State's Ministry of the Interior conducts the exam. When passed and the reloader can provide a reason for his will to reload ("Bedürfnisprüfung"), he can apply for a permit to a quota of propellant for five years (after which time he has to extend the permit). Every propellant is recorded in the permit. Primers, cartridges, bullets, and reloading equipment are available without a permit.
As German law gives maximum pressures for every commercial caliber, the handloader is allowed to non-commercially give away his ammunition. He is liable for incorrect loading. His references are data books by propellant manufacturers (like RWS), bullet manufacturers (like Speer), reloading tool manufacturers (like Lyman) or neutral manufacturers institutions like the DEVA. Firearms manufacturers give guarantees as long as the handloaded ammunition is within the correct parameters.
The relevant rules for non-commercial application can be found in §27 of the Explosives Act ("Sprengstoffgesetz").
In order to investigate gun destruction – material fault or incorrectly loaded ammunition – , and for handloaders to get data for new loads, gun and/or handloaded cartridges can be sent to the DEVA institute (German institute for testing and examining of hunting and sporting guns); the DEVA returns a pressure diagram and a report whether this load is within legal range for this ammunition.
Handloading or reloading is allowed in South Africa as long as you are in possession of a competency certificate to possess a firearm as well as a license to possess such a firearm. Sport shooters load to make shooting sports more affordable and hunters load to obtain greater accuracy. Powder and primers are strictly controlled by law and can not exceed for 2 kg for powder and 2400 primers. The amount of ammunition you may have in your possession is also limited to 200 rounds per chambering. If you are a registered dedicated sportsman, the quantities are unlimited. Although the powder's quantity is unlimited if you are a dedicated sportsman, storage of excess amounts of powder is dangerous due to the potential of fire occurring from accidental ignition. A manual from a South African powder manufacturer Rheinmetall Denel Munition (previously Somchem) is available for reloaders with adequate information and guidelines.
Berdan primers, with their off-center flash holes and lack of self-contained anvil, are more difficult to work with than the easily removed Boxer primers. The primers may be punctured and pried out from the rear, or extracted with hydraulic pressure. Primers must be selected carefully, as there are more sizes of Berdan primers than the standard large and small pistol, large and small rifle of Boxer primers. The case must also be inspected carefully to make sure the anvil has not been damaged because this could result in a failure to fire.
Rimfire cartridges (e.g. 22 Long Rifle) are not generally hand-loaded in modern times, although there are some shooters that unload commercial rimfire cartridges, and use the primed case to make their own loads or to generate special rimfire wildcat cartridges. These cartridges are highly labor-intensive to produce. Historically, liquid priming material was available for reloading rimfire ammunition, but the extreme explosive hazard of bulk primer compound and complexity of the process (including "ironing out" the firing pin strike) caused the practice to decline.
Some shooters desiring to reload for obsolete rimfire cartridges alter the firearm in question to function as a centerfire, which allows them to reload. Often it is possible to reform cases from similarly sized ammunition which is in production, and this is the most economical way of obtaining brass for obscure or out-of-production calibers. Even if custom brass must be manufactured, this is often far less expensive than purchasing rare, out-of-production ammunition. Cartridges like the 56-50 Spencer, for example, are not readily obtainable in rimfire form, but can be made from shortened 50-70 cartridges or even purchased in loaded form from specialty dealers.
An unusual solution to the problem of obtaining ammunition for the very old pinfire cartridges is even available. This solution uses specialized cartridges that use a removable pin and anvil which hold a percussion cap of the type use in caplock firearms. To reload a fired case, the pin is removed, allowing the anvil to slide out; a percussion cap is placed in the anvil, it is re-inserted, and the pin serves to lock the anvil in place, as well as to ignite the percussion cap.
Shotshell reloading is sometimes done for scattershot loads, consisting of multiple wads separating groups of shot, which are intended for use at short-distance hunting of birds. Similarly, shotshell reloading for buckshot loads and non-lethal "bean bag" loads are sometimes handloaded. These types of shotshells are rarely handloaded.
Precision and consistency are key to developing accurate ammunition. Various methods are used to ensure that ammunition components are as consistent as possible. Since the firearm is also a variable in the accuracy equation, careful tuning of the load to a particular firearm can yield significant accuracy improvements.
The internal volume of the cartridge case, or case capacity, significantly affects the pressure developed during ignition, which significantly affects the velocity of the bullet. Cases from different manufacturers can vary in wall thickness, and as cases are repeatedly fired and reloaded the brass flows up to the neck and is trimmed off, increasing capacity as well as weakening the case. The first step to ensuring consistent case capacity is sorting the cases by headstamp, so each lot of cases is from the same manufacturer and/or year. A further step would be to then weigh these cases, and sort by case weight.
The neck of the case is another variable since this determines how tightly the bullet is held in place during ignition. Inconsistent neck thickness and neck tension will result in variations in pressure during ignition. These variables can be addressed by annealing and thinning the neck, as well as by careful control of the crimping operation.
Bullets must be well balanced and consistent in weight, shape, and seating depth to ensure that they correctly engage the rifling, exit the barrel at a consistent velocity, and fly straight. Buying bullets from a high-quality source will help ensure quality, but for ultimate accuracy, some shooters will measure even the best bullets, and reject all but the most consistent. Measurement of the weight is the easiest, and bullets that are out of round can be detected by rotating the bullet while measuring with a micrometer. There is even a device available that will detect changes in jacket thickness and internal voids in jacketed rifle bullets, though its high cost makes it prohibitively expensive for all but the most dedicated shooters.
The transition from the case to the barrel is also very important. If the bullets have to travel a varying distance from the case to the point where they engage the rifling, then this can result in variations in pressure and velocity. The bearing surface of the bullet should ideally be seated as close as possible to the rifling. Since it is the bearing surface that matters here, it is important that the bullets have a consistent bearing surface.
Tuning load to a gun can also yield great increases in accuracy, especially for standard, non-accurized rifles. Different rifles, even of the same make and model, will often react to the same ammunition in different ways. The handloader is afforded a wider selection of bullet weights than can readily be found in commercially loaded ammunition, and there are many different powders that can be used for any given cartridge. Trying a range of bullets and a variety of powders will determine what combination of bullet and powder gives the most consistent velocities and accuracies. Careful adjustment of the amount of powder can give the velocity that best fits the natural harmonics of the barrel (see accurize and internal ballistics). For ultimate accuracy and performance, the handloader also has the option of using a wildcat cartridge; wildcats are the result of shaping the cartridge and chamber themselves to a specific end, and the results push the envelope of velocity, energy, and accuracy. Most, but not all, reloads perform best when the powder selected fills 95% or more of the case (by volume).
Those who reload with the primary goal of maximizing accuracy or terminal performance may end up paying more per reloaded round than for commercial ammunition—this is especially true for military calibers which are commonly available as surplus. Maximum performance, however, requires the highest quality components, which are usually the most expensive. Reloaders who reload with the primary goal of saving money on ammunition, however, can make a few tradeoffs to realize significant cost savings with a minimal sacrifice in quality.
Since the case is the single most expensive part of a loaded round, the more times a case can be re-used, the better. Cases that are loaded to a moderate pressure will generally last longer, as they will not be work hardened or flow under pressure as much as cases loaded to higher pressures. Use of moderate pressure loads extends the life of the case significantly, not to mention saving quite a bit of wear and tear on the barrel. Work hardening can cause cracks to occur in the neck as the hardened brass loses its malleability, and is unable to survive swaging back into shape during the resizing operation. Rifle brass tends to flow towards the neck (this is why rifle brass must be trimmed periodically) and this takes brass away from the rear of the case. Eventually, this will show as a bright ring near the base of the cartridge, just in front of the thick web of brass at the base. If brass is used after this ring appears, it risks a crack, or worse, a complete head separation, which will leave the forward portion of the brass lodged in the chamber of the gun. This generally requires a special stuck case removal tool to extract, so it is very undesirable to have a head separation.
With bottlenecked cartridge cases, choosing the right sizing die can also be important. Full-length sizing of cartridges is often thought to greatly shorten case life by work hardening the full length of the case, which can cause the case neck to split, although some studies show that the number of reloads possible with a case is essentially the same for either full length sizing as for neck sizing only if the issue is one of neck hardening. If the reloaded cartridges are going to be used in the same firearm in which they were previously fired, though, and if that firearm has a bolt action or other action with a strong camming action on closing, then full-length resizing may not be needed. A collet neck sizing die can be used to size just the case neck enough to hold the bullet and leave the rest of the case unsized. The resulting cartridge will chamber into the specific rifle that previously fired it, though the fit might be tight and require more force to chamber than a full-length resized case. The use of a neck-sizing die in conjunction with moderate pressure loads may extend the life of the case significantly by minimizing the amount of case that is work hardened or stretched. This is especially true for reloads intended for military rifles with intentionally large chambers such as the Lee–Enfield in .303 British. The use of partial length or neck sizing for cartridges used in such large chambers permits effectively switching the headspacing from relying on the rim of a rimmed cartridge to the shoulder of the bottleneck transition instead, increasing the number of times a rimmed military cartridge can be reloaded from once to perhaps 5 or more times, all while avoiding dangerous incipient head separations. One final form of limiting case wear is limited strictly to benchrest shooters with custom-cut chambers. The chamber of these rifles is cut so that there is just enough room, typically just a few thousandths of an inch, in the neck area. The result of using this type of chamber is that fired rounds do not require any resizing whatsoever once the case is fired. The brass will 'spring back' a bit after firing, and will properly hold a new bullet without further manipulation. Some refer to this as a 'fitted' neck, however, it is a function of both the carefully cut precision neck and the case adjusted to fit with very little clearance.
Work hardening happens to all cases, even low-pressure handgun cases. The sudden increase in pressure upon firing hits the brass like a hammer, changing its crystalline structure and making it more brittle. The neck of the case, if it becomes too brittle, will be incapable of standing the strain of resizing, expanding, crimping, and firing, and will split during loading or firing. Since the case neck remains in tension while holding the bullet in place, aging ammunition may develop split necks in storage. While a neck split during firing is not a significant danger, a split neck will render the case incapable of holding the bullet in place, so the case must be discarded or recycled as a wildcat cartridge of shorter overall length, allowing the split section to be removed. The simplest way to decrease the effects of work hardening is to decrease the pressure in the case. Loading to the minimum power level listed in the reloading manual, instead of the maximum, can significantly increase case life. Slower powders generally also have lower pressure peaks and may be a good choice.
Annealing brass to make it softer and less brittle is fairly easy, but annealing cartridge cases is a more complex matter. Since the base of the case must be hard, it cannot be annealed. What is needed is a form of heat treatment called differential hardening, where heat is carefully applied to part of the case until the desired softness is reached, and then the heat treatment process is halted by rapidly cooling the case. Since annealing brass requires heating it to about 660 °F (350 °C), the heating must be done in such a way as to heat the neck to that temperature, while preventing the base of the case from being heated and losing its hardness. The traditional way is to stand the cases in a shallow pan full of water, then heat the necks of the cases with a torch, but this method makes it difficult to get an even heating of the entire case neck. A temperature-sensitive crayon can be used at the point to which it is to be annealed, which is just behind the shoulder for bottlenecked cartridges, or at the bottom of the bullet seating depth for straight-wall cartridges. The neck of the case is placed in a propane torch flame and heated it until the crayon mark changes color, indicating the correct temperature. Once the correct temperature is reached the case is completely quenched in water to stop the annealing process at the desired hardness. Failing to keep the base of the case cool can anneal the case near the head, where it must remain hard to function properly. Another approach is to immerse the case mouth in a molten alloy of lead that is at the desired annealing temperature for a few seconds, then quickly shake off the lead and quench the case.
Cases that have small cracks at the neck may not be a complete loss. Many cartridges, both commercial and wildcats, can be made by shortening a longer cartridge. For example, a 223 Remington can be shortened to become a .222 Remington, which can further be shortened to become a .221 Fireball. Similarly, .30-06 Springfield can become .308 Winchester, which can become any number of specialized benchrest shooting cartridges. Since the cracking is likely due to a brittle neck, the cases should be annealed before attempting to reform them, or the crack may propagate and ruin the newly formed shorter case as well.
Powder is another significant cost of reloading, and one over which the handloader has significant control. In addition to the obvious step of using a minimum charge, rather than a full power one, significant cost savings may be obtained through careful powder choice. Given the same bullet and cartridge, a faster burning powder will generally use a smaller charge of powder than required with a slower powder. For example, a 44 Magnum firing a 240-grain lead semi-wadcutter could be loaded with either Accurate Arms #2, a very fast pistol powder, or #9, a very slow pistol powder. When using the minimum loads, 9.0 grains (0.58 g) of AA #2 yield a velocity of 1126 ft/s (343 m/s), and 19.5 grains (1.26 g) of #9 yield 1364 ft/s (416 m/s). For the same amount of powder, AA #2 can produce approximately twice as many rounds, yet both powders cost the same per weight.
The tradeoff comes in terms of power and accuracy; AA #2 is designed for small cases and will burn inconsistently in the large 44 Magnum case. AA #9, however, will fill the case much better, and the slow burn rate of AA #9 is ideal for magnum handgun rounds, producing 20% higher velocities (at maximum levels) while still producing less pressure than the fast-burning AA #2. A medium-burning powder might actually be a better choice, as it could split the difference in powder weights while delivering more power and accuracy than the fastest powder.
One solution that is applicable to revolvers, in particular, is the possibility of using a reduced-volume case. Cartridges such as 357 Magnum and 44 Magnum are just longer versions of their parent rounds of .38 Special and .44 Special, and the shorter rounds will fire in the longer chambers with no problems. The reduced case capacity allows greater accuracy with even lighter loads. A 44 Special loaded with a minimum load of AA #2 uses only 4.2 grains (0.27 g) of powder, and produces a modest 771 ft/s (235 m/s). It is important to note that when reloading .38 Special and .44 Special, extreme care must be exercised to not exceed maximum powder specifications - i.e. a 357 Magnum load must never be used in a .38 special case, as even though the powder charge may fit, the difference in case volumes will likely create an overpressure scenario resulting in unsafe conditions.
While the case is usually the most expensive component of a cartridge, the bullet is usually the most expensive part of the reloaded round, especially with handgun ammunition. It is also the best place to save money with handgun ammunition. This is because the bullets are used one time, and the case lasts for many reloadings.
Other advantages of casting or swaging bullets from lead wire (which is pricier but avoids many quality-control issues of casting) is the ability to precisely control many attributes of the resulting bullet. Custom bullet molds are available from a number of sources, allowing the handloader to pick the exact weight, shape, and diameter of the bullet to fit the cartridge, firearm, and intended use. A good example of where this is useful is for shooters of older military surplus firearms, which often exhibit widely varying bore and groove diameters; by making bullets specifically intended for the firearm in question, the accuracy of the resulting cartridges can be significantly increased.
For the truly frugal, the cheapest method of obtaining bullets, buckshot, and slugs intended for reloading use at low to moderate velocities is casting them.
This requires a set of bullet, buckshot, or slug molds, which are available from a number of sources, and a source of known quality lead. Linotype and automotive wheelweights are often used as sources of lead that are blended together in a molten state to achieve the desired Brinell hardness. Other sources of scrap lead, such as recovered bullets, lead cable sheathing, lead pipe, or even lead–acid battery plates (EXTREME caution should be used as modern battery components, when melted, can yield hazardous, even deadly gases), can yield usable lead with some degree of effort, including purification and measuring of hardness.
Cast bullets are also the cheapest bullets to buy, though generally only handgun bullets are available in this form. Some firearms manufacturers, such as those using polygonal rifling like Glock and H&K, advise against the use of cast bullets. For shooters who would like to shoot cast bullets, aftermarket barrels are generally available for these models with conventional rifling, and the cost of the barrel can generally be recouped in ammunition savings after a few thousand rounds.
Soft lead bullets are generally used in handguns with velocities of 1000 ft/s (300 m/s) or lower, while harder cast bullets may be used, with careful powder selection, in rifles with velocities of 2000 ft/s (600 m/s) or slightly more. A modern solution to velocity limitations of cast projectiles is to powder coat the projectile, encasing it in a protective skin allowing higher velocities to be achieved with softer lead alloys with no lead build up in the firearm. The limit is the point at which the powder gas temperature and pressure starts to melt the base of the bullet, and leave a thin coating of molten and re-solidified lead in the bore of the gun—a process called leading the bore. Cast lead bullets may also be fired in full power magnum handgun rounds like the 44 Magnum with the addition of a gas check, which is a thin aluminum, zinc or copper washer or cup that is crimped over a tiny heel on the base of appropriate cast bullets. This provides protection for the base of the bullet, and allows velocities of over 1500 ft/s (450 m/s) in handguns, with little or no leading of the bore.
Such cast lead bullets, intended for use with a gas check, will have a reduced diameter at the rear of the cast lead bullet, onto which the gas check can be swaged using a lubricating/resizing press. All cast lead bullets, whether with or without a gas check, must still be lubricated, to prevent leading of the rifling of the barrel. A lubricating/resizing press, which is a special purpose bullet processing press, can be either a standalone press dedicated to lubricating and resizing bullets, or can be an add-on to a reloading press, at the option of the handloader. Not all handloaders resize cast lead bullets, although all handloaders do lubricate cast lead bullets. An option to using a lubricating press is simply to coat the bullets with bullet lube, which can be done either with a spray, in a tumbler, in a plastic bowel with a liquid lube, in a tray with melted bullet lube, or even with a manual lubricating process.
Slugs for shotgun shells are also commonly cast from pure lead by handloaders, for subsequent reloading into shotgun shells. Although roll crimps of shotgun hull cases are commonly used for handloading these cast lead slugs, in place of the fold crimps that are used when reloading shot into shotgun shells, some published recipes specifically do include fold crimps. For published recipes using fold crimps and shot wads used as sabots, slugs can be easily reloaded using standard shotshell presses and techniques, without requiring any roll crimp tools. Whether roll crimps or fold crimps are used, cast lead slugs are commonly used in jurisdictions where rifles are banned for hunting, under the reasoning that fired slugs will not travel but over short distances, unlike rifle bullets which can travel up to several miles when fired. Use of cast lead slugs is therefore very common when hunting large game near populated areas.
Similarly, cast lead buckshot is often cast by handloaders, for reloading into shotgun shells for hunting larger game animals. Such buckshot is then placed by hand into shotgun shells when handloaded, due to the necessity of having to stack the buckshot balls into specific configurations depending on the gauge of shotgun shell being reloaded, the choice of wad, the volume of powder, and the size of the buckshot (e.g., 00, 000, 0000 buckshot). Such cast lead buckshot is never simply dropped from a shotshell press charge bar into a shotgun shell when reloading.
Most shooters prefer jacketed bullets, especially in rifles and pistols. The hard jacket material, generally copper or brass, resists deformation and handles far higher pressures and temperatures than lead. Several companies offer swaging presses (both manual and hydraulic) that will manufacture on a small scale jacketed bullets that can rival or surpass the quality of commercial jacketed bullets. Two swaging equipment manufacturers offer equipment and dies designed to turn 22 Long Rifle cases into brass jackets for 22 caliber (5.56 mm) bullets.
Example variants of swage dies include:
Every bullet diameter, and most of the bullet types, need special dies, making swaging a rather investment-intensive enterprise.
Handloaders have the choice to swage but most choose to purchase pre-made jacketed bullets, due to the obscure nature of swaging and the specialized, expensive equipment. The process of manufacturing a jacketed bullet is far more complex than for a cast bullet; first, the jacket must be punched from a metal sheet of precise thickness, filled with a premeasured lead core, and then swaged into shape with a high pressure press in multiple steps. This involved process makes jacketed bullets far more expensive on average than cast bullets. Further complicating this are the requirements for controlled expansion bullets (see terminal ballistics), which require a tight bond between the jacket and the core. Premium expanding bullets are, with match grade bullets, at the top tier in expense.
A more economical alternative was made available to the handloader in the 1980s, the copper-plated bullet. Copper-plated bullets are lead bullets that are electroplated with a copper jacket. While thinner than a swaged bullet jacket, the plated jacket is far thicker than normal electroplate, and provides significant structural integrity to the bullet. Since the jacket provides the strength, soft lead can be used, which allows bullets to be swaged or cast into shape before plating. While not strong enough for most rifle cartridges, plated bullets work well in many handgun rounds, with a recommended maximum velocity of 1250 ft/s (375 m/s). Plated bullets fall between cast and traditional jacketed bullets in price.
While originally sold only to handloaders as an inexpensive substitute for jacketed bullets, the plated bullet has come far. The ammunition manufacturer Speer now offers the Gold Dot line, commercially loaded premium handgun ammunition using copper-plated hollow point bullets. The strong bond between jacket and core created by the electroplating process makes expanding bullets hold together very well, and the Gold Dot line is now in use by many police departments. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Handloading, or reloading, is the practice of making firearm cartridges by assembling the individual components (case, primer, propellant, and projectile), rather than purchasing mass-assembled, factory-loaded ammunition. (It should not be confused with the reloading of a firearm with cartridges, such as by swapping magazines or using a speedloader.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The term handloading is the more general term, and refers generically to the manual assembly of ammunition. Reloading refers more specifically to handloading using previously fired cases and shells. The terms are often used interchangeably however, as the techniques are largely the same, whether the handloader is using new or recycled components. The differences lie in the initial preparation of cases and shells; new components are generally ready to load, while previously fired components often need additional procedures, such as cleaning, removal of expended primers, or the reshaping and resizing of brass cases.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Economy, increased performance and accuracy, commercial ammunition shortages, and hobby interests are all common motives for handloading both cartridges and shotshells. Handloading ammunition waives the user off the labor costs of commercial production lines, reducing the expenditure to only the cost of purchasing components and equipment. Reloading used cartridge cases can save the shooter money, providing not only a greater quantity, but also a higher quality of ammunition within a given budget. Reloading may not however be cost effective for occasional shooters, as it takes time to recoup the cost of needed equipment, but those who shoot more frequently will see cost-savings over time, as the brass cartridge cases and shotgun shell hulls, which are often the most expensive components, can be reused with proper maintenance. Additionally, most handloading components can be acquired at discounted prices when purchased in bulk, so handloaders are often less affected by changes in ammunition availability.",
"title": "Reasons for handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The opportunity to customize performance is another common goal for many handloaders. Hunters for instance, may desire cartridges with specialized bullets with specific terminal performance. Target shooters often experiment extensively with component combinations in an effort to achieve the best and most consistent bullet trajectories, often using cartridge cases that have been fire formed in order to best fit the chamber of a specific firearm. Shotgun enthusiasts can make specialty rounds unavailable through commercial inventories at any price. Some handloaders even customize cartridges and shotshells simply to lower recoil, for instance for younger shooters who might otherwise avoid shooting sports because of the high recoil of certain firearms. It is also a not infrequent practice for handloaders to make increased-power ammunition (i.e. \"hot loads\") if higher muzzle velocities (hence flatter trajectories) are desired. Rather than purchasing a special purpose rifle, which a novice or adolescent shooter might outgrow, a single rifle can be used with special handloaded rounds until such time more powerful rounds become appropriate. This use of specialized handloading techniques often provides significant cost savings as well, for instance when a hunter in a family already has a full-power rifle and a new hunter in the family wishes to learn the sport. This technique also enables hunters to use the same rifle and caliber to hunt a greater diversity of game.",
"title": "Reasons for handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Where the most extreme accuracy is demanded, such as in rifle benchrest shooting, handloading is a fundamental prerequisite for success, but can only be done consistently accurately once load development has been done to determine what cartridge parameters works best with a specific rifle. Additionally, collectors of rare, antique and foreign-made firearms must often turn to handloading because the appropriate cartridges and shotshells are no longer commercially available. Handloaders can also create cartridges for which no commercial equivalent has ever existed — the so-called wildcat cartridges, some of which can eventually acquire mainstream acceptance if the ballistic performance is proven to be good enough. However, as with any hobby, the pure enjoyment of the reloading process may be the most important benefit.",
"title": "Reasons for handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Recurring shortages of commercial ammunition are also reasons to reload cartridges and shotshells. When commercial supplies dry up, and store-bought ammunition is not available at any price, having the ability to reload one's own cartridges and shotshells economically provides an ability to continue shooting despite shortages.",
"title": "Reasons for handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There are three aspects to ballistics: internal ballistics, external ballistics, and terminal ballistics. Internal ballistics refers to things that happen inside the firearm during and after firing, but before the bullet leaves the muzzle. The handloading process can realize increased accuracy and precision through improved consistency of manufacture, by selecting the optimal bullet weight and design, and tailoring bullet velocity to the purpose. Each cartridge reloaded can have each component carefully matched to the rest of the cartridges in the batch. Brass cases can be matched by volume, weight, and concentricity, bullets by weight and design, powder charges by weight, type, case filling (amount of total usable case capacity filled by charge), and packing scheme (characteristics of granule packing).",
"title": "Reasons for handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In addition to these critical items, the equipment used to assemble the cartridge also has an effect on its uniformity/consistency and optimal shape/size; dies used to size the cartridges can be matched to the chamber of a given gun. Modern handloading equipment enables a firearm owner to tailor fresh ammunition to a specific firearm, and to precisely measured tolerances far improving the comparatively wide tolerances within which commercial ammunition manufacturers must operate.",
"title": "Reasons for handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Inexpensive \"tong\" tools have been used for reloading since the mid-19th century. They resemble a large pair of pliers and can be caliber-specific or have interchangeable dies.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "However, in modern days, handloading equipments are sophisticated machine tools that emphasize on precision and reliability, and often cost more than high-end shooting optics. There are also a myriad of various measuring tools and accessory products on the market for use in conjunction with handloading.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The quintessential handloading equipment is the press, which uses compound leverage to push the cases into a die that performs the loading operations. Presses vary from simple, inexpensive single-stage models, to complex \"progressive\" models that operate with each pull of the lever like an assembly line at rates up to 10 rounds per minute.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Loading presses are often categorized by the letter of the English alphabet that they most resemble in shape: \"O\", \"C\", and \"H\". The sturdiest presses, suitable for bullet swaging functions as well as for normal reloading die usage, are of the \"O\" type. Heavy steel completely encloses the single die on these presses. Equally sturdy presses for all but bullet swaging use often resemble the letter \"C\". Both steel and aluminum construction are seen with \"C\" presses. Some users prefer \"C\" style presses over \"O\" presses, as there is more room to place bullets into cartridge mouths on \"C\" presses. Shotshell style presses, intended for non-batch use, for which each shotshell or cartridge is cycled through the dies before commencing onto the next shotshell or cartridge to be reloaded, commonly resemble the letter \"H\".",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Single-stage press, generally of the \"O\" or \"C\" types, is the simplest of press designs. These presses can only hold one die and perform a single procedure on a single case at any time. They are usually only used to crimp the case neck onto the bullet, and if the user wants to perform any different procedures with the press (e.g. priming, powder dispensing, neck resizing), the functioning die/module need to be manually removed and changed. When using a single-stage press, cases are loaded in batches, one step for each cartridge per batch at a time. The batch sizes are kept small, about 20–50 cases at a time, so the cases are never left in a partially completed state for long because extended exposure to humidity and light can degrade the powder. Single-stage presses are commonly most used for high-precision rifle cartridge handloading, but may be used for high-precision reloading of all cartridge types, and for fine-tuning loads (developing loading recipes) for ultimately mass-producing large numbers of cartridges on a progressive press.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Turret press, most commonly of the \"C\" type, is similar to a single-stage press, but has an indexed mounting disc that allows multiple dies to be quickly interchanged, with each die being fastened with lock rings. Batch operations are performed similar to a single-stage press, different procedures can be switched by simply rotating the turret and placing a different die into position. Although turret presses operate much like single-stage presses, they eliminate much of the setup time required in positioning individual dies correctly.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Progressive press is far more complex in design and can handle several cases at once. These presses have a rotating base that turns with each pull of the lever. All the dies/loading modules needed (often including a case hopper, a primer feed, a powder measure, and sometimes also a bullet feeder) are mounted in alignment with each case slot on the base disc, and often also include an additional vacant station where the powder levels are manually checked to prevent over- or under-charges. Progressive presses can load hundreds of cartridges sequentially with streamlined efficiency, and all the user has to do is pulling the lever, occasionally provide manual inputs such as placing the bullet in place on the case mouth (if a bullet feeder is not used).",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Primer pocket swages can be either standalone, bench-mounted, specialized presses, or, alternatively, a special swage anvil die that can be mounted into a standard \"O\" style loading press, along with a special shell holder insert with either a large or a small primer pocket insert swage that is then inserted into the position on the \"O\" press where a normal shell holder is usually clicked into position. This way, both small and large primer pockets on different types of military cases can be properly processed to remove primer pocket crimps. Both types of presses can be used to remove either ring crimps or stab crimps found on military cartridges when reloading them. Reamers for removing primer pocket crimps are not associated with presses, being an alternative to using a press to remove military case primer pocket crimps.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Shotshell presses are generally a single unit of the \"H\" configuration that handles all functions, dedicated to reloading just one gauge of shotshell. Shotshell reloading is similar to cartridge reloading, except that, instead of a bullet, a wad and a measure of shot are used, and after loading the shot, the shell is crimped shut. Both 6 and 8 fold crimps are in use, for paper hulls and plastic hulls, respectively. Likewise, roll crimps are in use for metallic, paper, and plastic hulls. The shotshell loader contains stations to resize the shell, measure powder, load the wad, measure shot, and crimp the shell. Due to the low cost of modern plastic shotshells, and the additional complexity of reloading fired shells, shotshell handloading is not as popular as cartridge handloading. For example, unlike when handloading rifle and pistol cartridges, where all the various components (cases, gas checks, powder, primers, etc.) from different manufacturers are usually all interchangeable, shotshells typically are loaded for particular brands of shotshell cases (called hulls) only with one specific brand of wad, shot cup (if used), primer, and powder, further increasing the complexity and difficulty of reloading shotshells. Substitution of components is not considered safe, as changing just one component, such as a brand of primer, can increase pressures by as much as 3500 PSI, which may exceed SAAMI pressure limits. Reloading shotshells is therefore more along the lines of precisely following a recipe with non-fungible components. Where shotshell reloading remains popular, however, is for making specialized shotgun shells, such as for providing lowered recoil, when making low-cost \"poppers\" used for training retrievers before hunting season to acclimate hunting dogs to the sound of a gun firing without actually shooting projectiles, for achieving better shot patterning, or for providing other improvements or features not available in commercially loaded shotshells at any price, such as when handloading obsolete shotshells with brass cases for gauges of shotshells that are no longer commercially manufactured.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Rifle and pistol loading presses are usually not dedicated to reloading a single caliber of cartridge, although they can be, but are configured for reloading various cartridge calibers as needed. In contrast, shotshell presses are most often configured for reloading just one gauge of shotshell, e.g., 12 gauge, and are rarely, if ever, reconfigured for reloading other gauges of shotshells, as the cost of buying all new dies, shot bar, and powder bushing as required to switch gauges on a shotshell press often exceeds the cost of buying a new shotshell press outright, as shotshell presses typically come from the factory already set up to reload one gauge or bore of shotshell. Hence, it is common to use a dedicated shotshell press for reloading each gauge or bore of shotshell used. Likewise, the price of shot for reloading shotshells over the last several years has also risen significantly, such that lead shot that was readily available for around $0.50/lb. (c. 2005) now reaches $2.00 per pound (2013.) Due to this large increase in the price of lead shot, the economy of reloading 12 gauge shotshells vs. just using promotional (low-cost) 12 gauge shotshells only starts to make economic sense for higher volume shooters, who may shoot more than 50,000 rounds a year. In contrast, the reloading of shotshells that are usually not available in low-cost, promotional pricings, such as .410 bore, 12 ga. slugs, 16 ga, 20 ga., and 28 ga., becomes more economical to reload in much smaller quantities, perhaps within only 3-5 boxes of shells per year. Reloading .410 bore, 12 ga. slugs, 16 ga., 20 ga, and 28 ga. shells, therefore, remains relatively common, more so than the reloading of 12 gauge shotshells, for which promotional shotshells are usually readily available from many retailers. These smaller bore and gauge shotshells also require much less lead shot, further lessening the effect of the rapid rises seen in the price of lead shot. The industry change to steel shot, arising from the US and Canadian Federal bans on using lead shotshells while hunting migratory wildfowl, has also affected reloading shotshells, as the shot bar and powder bushing required on a dedicated shotshell press also must be changed for each hull type reloaded, and are different than what would be used for reloading shotshells with lead shot, further complicating the reloading of shotshells.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "With the recent rampant rise in lead shot prices, though, a major change in handloading shotshells has also occurred. Namely, a transition among high volume 12 gauge shooters from loading traditional 1-1/8 oz. shot loads to 7/8 oz. shot loads or even 24 gm. (so-called International) shot loads have occurred. At 1-1/8 oz. per shotshell, a 25 lb. bag of lead shot can only reload approximately 355 shotshells. At 7/8 oz. per shotshell, a 25 lb. of lead shot can reload 457 shotshells. At 24 grams per shotshell, a 25 lb of lead shot can reload approximately 472 shotshells. Stretching the number of hulls that it is possible to reload from an industry-standard 25 lb. bag of lead shot by 117 shells has significantly helped mitigate the large increase in the price of lead shot. That this change has also resulted in minimal changes to scores in shooting sports such as skeet and trap has only expedited the switch among high volume shooters to shooting 24 gm. shotshells with their lesser amounts of shot.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "With the recent shortages over 2012–2013 of 12 gauge shotshells in the United States (among all other types of rifle and pistol ammunition), the popularity of reloading 12 gauge shotshells has seen a widespread resurgence. Field use of the International 24 gm. 12 gauge shells has proven them to be effective on small game, while stretching the number of reloads possible from a bag of shot, and they have subsequently become popular for hunting small game. Since shot shells are typically reloaded at least 5 times, although upwards of 15 times are often possible for lightly loaded shells, this transition to field use of 24 gm. loads has helped mitigate ammunition shortages for hunters.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Shotshell presses typically use a charge bar to drop precise amounts of shot and powder. Most commonly, these charge bars are fixed in their capacities, with a single charge bar rated at, say, 1-1/8 oz. of lead shot, with a switchable powder bushing that permits dropping precisely measured fixed amounts of different types of powder repetitively (e.g., MEC.) On the other hand, some charge bars are drilled to accept bushings for dropping different fixed amounts of both shot and powder (e.g. Texan.) For the ultimate in flexibility, though, universal charge bars with micrometers dropping fixed volumes of powder and shot are also available; these are able to select differing fixed amounts of both powder and shot, and are popular for handloaders who load more than just a few published recipes, or, especially, among those who wish to experiment with numerous different published recipes. Fixed charge bars are rated for either lead or steel shot, but not for both. Universal charge bars, on the other hand, are capable of reloading both lead and steel shot, being adjustable.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Like their pistol and rifle counterparts, shotshell presses are available in both single-stage and progressive varieties. For shooters shooting fewer than approximately 500 shells a month, and especially shooting fewer than 100 shells a month, a single-stage press is often found to be adequate. For shooters shooting larger numbers of shells a month, progressive presses are often chosen. A single-stage press can typically reload 100 hulls in approximately an hour. Progressive presses can typically reload upwards of 400 or 500 hulls an hour.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Shotshell presses are most commonly operated in non-batch modes. That is, a single hull will often be deprimed, reshaped, primed, loaded with powder, have a wad pressed in, be loaded with shot, be pre-crimped, and then be final crimped before being removed and a new hull being placed on the shotshell press at station 1. An alternative, somewhat faster method, often used on a single stage press is to work on 5 hulls in parallel sequentially, with but a single processed hull being located at each of the 5 stations available on a single stage shotshell press, while manually removing the finished shotshell from station 5 and then moving the 4 in-process hulls to the next station (1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to 5) before adding a new hull at the deprimer (station 1) location. Both these modes of shotshell reloading are in distinct contrast to the common practice used with reloading pistol and rifle cartridges on a single-stage press, which is most often processed in batch modes, where a common operation will commonly be done on a batch of up to 50 or 100 cartridges at a time, before proceeding to the next processing step. This difference is largely a result of shotshell presses having 5 stations available for use simultaneously, unlike a single-stage cartridge press which typically has but one station available for use.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In general, though, shotshell reloading is far more complex than rifle and pistol cartridge reloading, and hence far fewer shotshell presses are therefore used relative to rifle and pistol cartridge reloading presses.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Reloading presses for reloading .50 BMG and larger cartridges are also typically caliber-specific, much like shotshell presses, as standard-size rifle and pistol reloading presses are not capable of being pressed into such exotic reloading service. The reloading of such large cartridges is also much more complex, as developing a load using a specific lot of powder can require nearly all of a 5 lb. bottle of powder and a load must be developed with a single load of powder for reasons of safety.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Dies are generally sold in sets of two or three units, depending on the shape of the case. A three-die set is needed for straight cases, while a two-die set is used for bottlenecked cases. The first die of either set performs the sizing and decapping operation, except in some cases in the 3-die set, where decapping may be done by the second die. The middle die in a three-die set is used to expand the case mouth of straight cases (and decap in the case where this is not done by the first die), while in a two-die set the entire neck is expanded as the case is extracted from the first die. The last die in the set seats the bullet and may apply a crimp. Special crimping dies are often used to apply a stronger crimp after the bullet is seated. Progressive presses sometimes use an additional \"die\" to meter powder into the case (though it is arguably not a real die as it does not shape the case).",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Standard dies are made from hardened steel, and require that the case be lubricated, for the resizing operation, which requires a large amount of force. Rifle cartridges require lubrication of every case, due to the large amount of force required, while smaller, thinner handgun cartridges can get away with alternating lubricated and unlubricated cases. Carbide dies have a ring of tungsten carbide, which is far harder and slicker than tool steel, and so carbide dies do not require lubrication.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Modern reloading dies are generally standardized with 7/8-14 (or, for the case of .50 BMG dies, with 1-1/4×12) threads and are interchangeable with all common brands of presses, although older dies may use other threads and be press-specific.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Dies for bottleneck cases usually are supplied in sets of at least two dies, though sometimes a third is added for crimping. This is an extra operation and is not needed unless a gun's magazine or action design requires crimped ammunition for safe operation, such as autoloading firearms, where the cycling of the action may push the bullet back in the case, resulting in poor accuracy and increased pressures. Crimping is also sometimes recommended to achieve full velocity for bullets, through increasing pressures so as to make powders burn more efficiently, and for heavy recoiling loads, to prevent bullets from moving under recoil. For FMJ bullets mounted in bottleneck cases, roll crimping is generally not ever used unless a cannelure is present on the bullet, to prevent causing bullet deformation when crimping. Rimless, straight wall cases, on the other hand, require a taper crimp, because they have headspace on the case mouth; roll crimping causes headspacing problems on these cartridges. Rimmed, belted, or bottleneck cartridges, however, generally can safely be roll crimped when needed. Three dies are normally supplied for straight-walled cases, with an optional fourth die for crimping. Crimps for straight wall cases may be taper crimps, suitable for rimless cartridges used in autoloaders, or roll crimps, which are best for rimmed cartridges such as are used in revolvers.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "There are also specialty dies. Bump dies are designed to move the shoulder of a bottleneck case back just a bit to facilitate chambering. These are frequently used in conjunction with neck dies, as the bump die itself does not manipulate the neck of the case whatsoever. A bump die can be a very useful tool to anyone who owns a fine shooting rifle with a chamber that is cut to minimum headspace dimensions, as the die allows the case to be fitted to this unique chamber. Another die is the \"hand die\". A hand die has no threads and is operated—as the name suggests—by hand or by use of a hand-operated arbor press. Hand dies are available for most popular cartridges, and although available as full-length resizing dies, they are most commonly seen as neck sizing dies. These use an interchangeable insert to size the neck, and these inserts come in 1/1000-inch steps so that the user can custom fit the neck of the case to his own chamber or have greater control over neck tension on the bullet.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A shell holder, generally sold separately, is needed to hold the case in place as it is forced into and out of the dies. The reason shellholders are sold separately is that many cartridges share the same base dimensions, and a single shell holder can service many different cases. Shellholders are also specialized, and will generally only fit a certain make of reloading press, while modern dies are standardized and will fit a wide variety of presses. Different shell holders than those used for dies are also required for use with some hand priming tools (e.g., Lee Autoprime tool.)",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A precision weighing scale is a near necessity for reloading. While it is possible to load using nothing but a powder measure and a weight-to-volume conversion chart, this greatly limits the precision with which a load can be adjusted, increasing the danger of accidentally overloading cartridges with powder for loads near or at the maximum safe load. With a powder scale, an adjustable powder measure can be calibrated more precisely for the powder in question, and spot checks can be made during loading to make sure that the measure is not drifting. With a powder trickler, a charge can be measured directly into the scale, giving the most accurate measure.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "A scale also allows bullets and cases to be sorted by weight, which can increase consistency further. Sorting bullets by weight has obvious benefits, as each set of matched bullets will perform more consistently. Sorting cases by weight is done to group cases by case wall thickness, and match cases with similar interior volumes. Military cases, for example, tend to be thicker, while cases that have been reloaded numerous times will have thinner walls due to brass flowing forward under firing, and excess case length being later trimmed from the case mouth.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "There are 3 types of reloading scales:",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Single-stage presses often do not provide an easy way of installing primers to (\"priming\") cases. Various add-on tools can be used for priming the case on the down-stroke, or a separate tool can be used. Since cases loaded by a single-stage press are done in steps, with the die being changed between steps, a purpose-made priming tool (so-called \"primer\" tool) — is often faster than trying to integrate a priming step to a press step, and also often more robust than a model that needs to be mounted and fitted onto a press, resulting in a more consistent primer seating depth.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Beginning reloading kits often include a weight-to-volume conversion chart for a selection of common powders and a set of powder volume measures graduated in small increments. By adding the various measures of powder the desired charge can be measured with a safe degree of accuracy. However, since multiple measures of powder are often needed, and since powder lots may vary slightly in density, a powder measure accurate to 1⁄10 grain (6.5 mg) is desirable.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Like any complex process, mistakes in handloading are easy to make, and a bullet puller device allows the handloader to disassemble mistakes. Most pullers use inertia to pull the bullet, and are often shaped like hammers. When in use, the case is locked in place in a head-down fashion inside the far end of the \"hammer\", and then the device is swung and struck against a firm surface. The sharp impact will suddenly decelerate the case, but the inertia exerted by the heavier mass of the bullet will keep it moving and thus pull it free from the case in a few blows, while the powder and bullet will get caught by a trapping container within the puller after the separation. Collet-type pullers are also available, which use a caliber-specific clamp to grip the bullet, while a loading press is used to pull the case downwards. It is essential that the collet be a good match for the bullet diameter because a poor match can result in significant deformation of the bullet.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Bullet pullers are also used to disassemble loaded ammunition of questionable provenance or undesirable configuration so that the components can be salvaged for re-use. Surplus military ammunition is often pulled for components, particularly cartridge cases, which are often difficult to obtain for older foreign military rifles. Military ammunition is often tightly sealed, to make it resistant to water and rough handling, such as in machine gun feeding mechanisms. In this case, the seal between the bullet and cartridge can prevent the bullet puller from functioning. Pushing the bullet into the case slightly with a seating die will break the seal, and allow the bullet to be pulled.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Primers are a more problematic issue. If a primer is not seated deeply enough, the cartridge (if loaded) can be pulled, and the primer re-seated with the seating tool. Primers that must be removed are frequently deactivated first—either firing the primed case in the appropriate firearm or soaking in penetrating oil, which penetrates the water-resistant coatings in the primer.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Components pulled from loaded cartridges should be reused with care. Unknown or potentially contaminated powders, contaminated primers, and bullets that are damaged or incorrectly sized can all cause dangerous conditions upon firing.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Cases, especially bottleneck cases, will stretch upon firing. How much a case will stretch depends upon load pressure, cartridge design, chamber size, functional cartridge headspace (usually the most important factor), and other variables. Periodically cases need to be trimmed to bring them back to proper specifications. Most reloading manuals list both a trim size and a max length. Long cases can create a safety hazard through improper headspace and possible increased pressure.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Several kinds of case trimmers are available. Die-based trimmers have an open top and allow the case to be trimmed with a file during the loading process. Manual trimmers usually have a base that has a shellholder at one end and a cutting bit at the opposite end, with a locking mechanism to hold the case tight and in alignment with the axis of the cutter, similar to a small lathe. Typically the device is cranked by hand, but sometimes they have attachments to allow the use of a drill or powered screwdriver. Powered case trimmers are also available. They usually consist of a motor (electric drills are sometimes used) and special dies or fittings that hold the case to be trimmed at the appropriate length, letting the motor do the work of trimming.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Primer pocket cleaning tools are used to remove residual combustion debris remaining in the primer pocket; both brush designs and single blade designs are commonly used. Dirty primer pockets can prevent setting primers at, or below, the cartridge head. Primer pocket reamers or swagers are used to remove military crimps in primer pockets.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Primer pocket uniformer tools are used to achieve a uniform primer pocket depth. These are small endmills with a fixed depth-spacing ring attached, and are mounted either in a handle for use as a handtool, or are sometimes mounted in a battery-operated screwdriver. Some commercial cartridges (notably Sellier & Bellot) use large rifle primers that are thinner than the SAAMI standards common in the United States, and will not permit seating a Boxer primer manufactured to U.S. standards; the use of a primer pocket uniformer tool on such brass avoids setting Boxer primers high when reloading, which would be a safety issue. Two sizes of primer pocket uniformer tools exist, the larger one is for large rifle (0.130-inch nominal depth) primer pockets and the smaller one is used for uniforming small rifle/pistol primer pockets.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Flash hole uniforming tools are used to remove any burrs, which are residual brass remaining from the manufacturing punching operation used in creating flash holes. These tools resemble primer pocket uniformer tools, except being thinner, and commonly include deburring, chamfering, and uniforming functions. The purpose of these tools is to achieve a more equal distribution of flame from the primer to ignite the powder charge, resulting in consistent ignition from case to case.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Bottleneck rifle cartridges are particularly prone to encounter incipient head separations if they are full-length re-sized and re-trimmed to their maximum permitted case lengths each time they are reloaded. In some such cartridges, such as the .303 British when used in Enfield rifles, as few as 1 or 2 reloadings can be the limit before the head of the cartridge will physically separate from the body of the cartridge when fired. The solution to this problem, of avoiding overstretching of the brass case, and thereby avoiding the excessive thinning of the wall thickness of the brass case due to case stretching, is to use what is called a \"headspace gauge\". Contrary to its name, it does not actually measure a rifle's headspace. Rather, it measures the distance from the head of the cartridge to the middle of the shoulder of the bottleneck cartridge case. For semi-automatic and automatic rifles, the customary practice is to move the midpoint of this shoulder back by no more than 0.005 inches, for reliable operation, when resizing the case. For bolt-action rifles, with their additional camming action, the customary practice is to move this shoulder back by only 0.001 to 0.002 inches when resizing the case. In contrast to full-length resizing of bottleneck rifle cartridges, which can rapidly thin out the wall thickness of bottleneck rifle cartridges due to case stretching that occurs each time when fired, partial length re-sizing of the bottleneck case pushes shoulders back only a few thousandths of an inch will often permit a case to be safely reloaded 5 times or more, even up to 10 times, or more for very light loads.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Similarly, by using modified case gauges, it is possible to measure precisely the distance from a bullet ogive to the start of rifling in a particular rifle for a given bottleneck cartridge. Maximum accuracy for a rifle is often found to occur for only one particular fixed distance from the start of rifling in a bore to a datum line on a bullet ogive. Measuring the overall cartridge length does not permit setting such fixed distances accurately, as different bullets from different manufacturers will often have a different ogive shape. It is only by measuring from a fixed diameter point on a bullet ogive to the start of a bore's rifling that proper spacing can be determined to maximize accuracy. A modified case gauge can provide the means by which to achieve an improvement in accuracy with precision handloads.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Such head space gauges and modified case gauges can, respectively, permit greatly increasing the number of times a rifle bottleneck case can be reloaded safely, as well as improve greatly the accuracy of such handloads. Unlike the situation with using expensive factory ammunition, handloaded match ammunition can be made that is vastly more accurate, and, through reloading, that can be much more affordable than anything that can be purchased, being customized for a particular rifle.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The following materials are needed for handloading ammunition:",
"title": "Materials required"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Case lubrication may also be needed depending on the dies used. Carbide pistol dies do not require case lubricant. For this reason, they are preferred by many, being inherently less messy in operation. In contrast, all dies for bottleneck cartridges, whether made of high-strength steel or carbide, and steel dies for pistols do require the use of a case lubricant to prevent a case become stuck in a die. (In the event that a case does ever become stuck in a die, there are stuck case remover tools that are available to remove a stuck case from the die, albeit at the loss of the particular case that became stuck.) Powder should always be stored in original containers since they are designed to split open at low pressure to prevent a dangerous pressure buildup, and any cabinet they are stored in should similarly prevent pressure buildup by allowing venting and expansion.",
"title": "Materials required"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The operations performed when handloading cartridges are:",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "When previously fired cases are used, they must be inspected before loading. Cases that are dirty or tarnished are often polished in a tumbler to remove oxidation and allow easier inspection of the case. Cleaning in a tumbler will also clean the interior of cases, which is often considered important for handloading high-precision target rounds. Cracked necks, non-reloadable cases (steel, aluminum, or Berdan primed cases), and signs of head separation are all reasons to reject a case. Cases are measured for length, and any that are over the recommended length is trimmed down to the minimum length. Competition shooters will also sort cases by brand and weight to ensure consistency.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Removal of the primer, called decapping or depriming, is usually done with a die containing a steel pin that punches out the primer from inside the case. Berdan primed cases require a different technique, either a hydraulic ram or a hook that punctures the case and levers it out from the bottom. Military cases often have crimped-in primers, and decapping them leaves a slightly indented ring (most common) or, for some military cartridges, a set of stabbed ridges located on the edge of the primer pocket opening that inhibits or prevents seating a new primer into a decapped case. A reamer or a swage is used to remove both these styles of crimp, whether ring crimps or stab crimps. The purpose of all such primer crimps is to make military ammunition more reliable under more extreme environmental conditions. Some military cartridges also have sealants placed around primers, in addition to crimps, to provide additional protection against moisture intrusion that could deactivate the primer for any ammunition exposed to water under battlefield conditions. Decapping dies, though, easily overcome the additional resistance of sealed primers, with no significant difficulty beyond that encountered when removing non-sealed primers.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "When a cartridge is fired, the internal pressure expands the case to fit the chamber in a process called obturation. To allow ease of chambering the cartridge when it is reloaded, the case is swaged back to size. Competition shooters, using bolt-action rifles that are capable of camming a tight case into place, often resize only the neck of the cartridge, called neck sizing, as opposed to the normal full-length resizing process. Neck sizing is only useful for cartridges to be re-fired in the same firearm, as the brass may be slightly oversized in some dimensions for other chambers, but the precise fit of the case to the chamber will allow greater consistency and therefore greater potential accuracy. Some believe that neck sizing will permit a larger number of reloads with a given case in contrast to full-size resizing, although this is controversial. Semi-automatic rifles and rifles with SAAMI minimum chamber dimensions often require a special small base resizing die, that sizes further down the case than normal dies, and allows for more reliable feeding.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Once the case is sized down, the inside of the neck of the case will actually be slightly smaller than the bullet's diameter. To allow the bullet to be seated, the end of the neck is slightly expanded to allow the bullet to start into the case. Boattailed bullets need very little expansion, while unjacketed lead bullets require more expansion to prevent shaving of lead when the bullet is seated.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Priming the case is the most dangerous step of the loading process since the primers are pressure-sensitive. The use of safety glasses or goggles during priming operations can provide valuable protection in the rare event that an accidental detonation takes place. Seating a Boxer primer not only places the primer in the case, but it also seats the anvil of the primer down onto the priming compound, in effect arming the primer. A correctly seated primer will sit slightly below the surface of the case. A primer that protrudes from the case may cause a number of problems, including what is known as a slam fire, which is the firing of a case before the action is properly locked when chambering a round. This may either damage the gun and/or injure the shooter. A protruding primer will also tend to hang when feeding, and the anvil will not be seated correctly so the primer may not fire when hit by the firing pin. Primer pockets may need to be cleaned with a primer pocket brush to remove deposits that prevent the primer from being properly seated. Berdan primers must also be seated carefully, and since the anvil is part of the case, the anvil must be inspected before the primer is seated. For reloading cartridges intended for use in military-surplus firearms, rifles especially, \"hard\" primers are most commonly used instead of commercial \"soft\" primers. The use of \"hard\" primers avoids slamfires when loading finished cartridges in the military-surplus firearm. Such primers are available to handloaders commercially.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The quantity of gunpowder is specified by weight, but almost always measured by volume, especially in larger-scale operations. A powder scale is needed to determine the correct mass thrown by the powder measure, as loads are specified with a precision of 0.10 grain (6.5 mg). One grain is 1/7000 of a pound. Competition shooters will generally throw a slightly underweight charge, and use a powder trickler to add a few granules of powder at a time to the charge to bring it to the exact weight desired for maximum consistency. Special care is needed when charging large-capacity cases with fast-burning, low-volume powders. In this instance, it is possible to put two charges of powder in a case without overflowing the case, which can lead to dangerously high pressures and a significant chance of bursting the chamber of the firearm. Non-magnum revolver cartridges are the easiest to do this with, as they generally have relatively large cases, and tend to perform well with small charges of fast powders. Some powders meter (measured by volume) better than others due to the shape of each granule. When using volume to meter each charge, it is important to regularly check the charge weight on a scale throughout the process.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Competition shooters also often sort bullets by weight, often down to 0.10 grain (6.5 mg) increments. The bullet is placed in the case mouth by hand and then seated with the press. At this point, the expanded case mouth is also sized back down. A crimp can optionally be added, either by the seating die or with a separate die. Taper crimps are used for cases that are held in the chamber by the case mouth, while roll crimps may be used for cases that have headspace on a rim or on the cartridge neck. Roll crimps hold the bullet far more securely, and are preferred in situations, such as magnum revolvers, where recoil velocities are significant. A tight crimp also helps to delay the start of the bullet's motion, which can increase chamber pressures, and help develop full power from slower burning powders (see internal ballistics).",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Unlike the presses used for reloading metallic cartridges, the presses used for reloading shotgun shells have become standardized to contain 5 stations, with the exact configuration of these 5 stations arranged either in a circle or in a straight row. Nonetheless, the operations performed using the industry-standard 5 station shotshell presses when handloading shotshells with birdshot, although slightly different, are very similar as to when reloading metallic cartridges:",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The exact details for accomplishing these steps on particular shotshell presses vary depending on the brand of the press, although the presence of 5 stations is standard among all modern presses.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The use of safety glasses or goggles while reloading shotshells can provide valuable protection in the rare event that an accidental detonation takes place during priming operations.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The quantities of both gunpowder and shot are specified by weight when loading shotshells, but almost always measured solely by volume. A powder scale is therefore needed to determine the correct mass thrown by the powder measure, and by the shot measure, as powder loads are specified with a precision of 0.10 grain (6.5 mg), but are usually thrown with a tolerance of 0.2 to 0.3 grains in most shotshell presses. Similarly, shot payloads in shells are generally held to within a tolerance of plus or minus 3-5 grains. One grain is 1/7000 of a pound.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Shotshell reloading for specialty purposes, such as for buckshot or slugs, or other specialty rounds, is often practiced but varies significantly from the process steps discussed previously for handloading birdshot shotshells. The primary difference is that large shot cannot be metered in a charge bar, and so must be manually dropped, a ball at a time, in a specific configuration. Likewise, the need for specialty wads or extra wads, in order to achieve the desired stackup distance to achieve a full and proper crimp for a fixed shell length, say 2-3/4\", causes the steps to differ slightly when handloading such shells.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Modern shotshells are all uniformly sized for Type 209 primers. However, reloaders should be aware that older shotshells were sometimes primed with a Type 57 or Type 69 primer (now obsolete), meaning that shotgun shell reloading tends to be done only with modern (or recently produced) components. Being essentially \"published recipe\" dependent, antique shotshell reloading is not widely practiced, being more of a specialty, or niche, activity. Of course, when reloading for very old shotguns, such as those with Damascus barrels, special shotshell recipes that limit pressures to less than 4500 psi are still available, and these \"recipes\" are reloaded by some shotgunning enthusiasts. Typical shotshell pressures for handloads intended for modern shotguns range from approximately 4700 psi to 10,000 psi.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Brass shotshells are also reloaded, occasionally, but typically these are reloaded using standard rifle/pistol reloading presses with specialty dies, rather than with modern shotshell presses. Rather than plastic wads, traditional felt and paperboard wads are also generally used (both over powder and over shot) when reloading brass shotgun shells. Reloading brass shotshells is not widely practiced.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Shotguns, in general, operate at much lower pressures than pistols and rifles, typically operating at pressures of 10,000 psi, or less, for 12 gauge shells, whereas rifles and pistols routinely are operated at pressures in excess of 35,000 psi, and sometimes upwards of 50,000 psi. The SAAMI maximum permitted pressure limit is only 11,500 psi for 12 gauge 2-3/4 inch shells, so the typical operating pressures for many shotgun shells are only slightly below the maximum permitted pressures allowed for safe ammunition. Because of this small difference in typical operating vs. maximum industry allowed pressures and the fact that even small changes in components can cause pressure variances in excess of 4,000 psi, the components used in shotshell reloading must not be varied from published recipes, as the margin of safety relative to operating pressures for shotguns is much lower than for pistols and rifles. This lower operating pressure for shotguns and shells is also the reason why shotgun barrels have noticeably thinner walls than rifle and pistol barrels.",
"title": "Reloading process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Since many countries heavily restrict the civilian possession of ammunition and ammunition components, including primers and smokeless powder, handloading may be explicitly or implicitly illegal in certain countries. Even without specific restrictions on powder and primers, they may be covered under other laws governing explosive materials. Handloading may require study and passing an exam to acquire a handloading permit prior to being allowed to handload ammunition in some jurisdictions. This is done to avoid catastrophic accidents caused by lack of knowledge/skill as much as possible, and also allows the government to maintain information on who reloads their own cartridges. The standards organization C.I.P. rules that the products of handloaders that do not comply with the C.I.P. ammunition approval rules for commercial ammunition manufacturers cannot be legally sold in C.I.P. member states.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Many firearms manufacturers explicitly advise against the use of handloaded ammunition. Generally, this means that the maker's warranty is void, and the manufacturer is not liable for any damage to the gun or personal injury if handloaded ammunition is used that exceeded established limits for a particular arm. This arises because firearm manufacturers point out that while they have some influence and scope for redress with ammunition manufacturers, they have no such influence over the actions of incompetent or overly ambitious individuals who assemble ammunition.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In the United States, handloading is not only legal and requires no permit, but is also quite popular. Experts point to potential legal liabilities (depending on the jurisdiction) that the shooter may incur if using handloaded ammunition for defense, such as an implied malice on the part of the shooter, as the use of handloaded ammunition may give the impression that \"regular bullets weren't deadly enough\". Additionally, forensic reconstruction of a shooting relies on using identical ammunition from the manufacturer, where handloaded ammunition cannot be guaranteed identical to the ammunition used in the shooting, since \"the defendant literally manufactured the evidence\". In particular, powder residue patterning is used by law enforcement to validate the distance between the firearm and the person shot using known facts from the manufacturer about powder type, content, and other factors.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Handloading is legal in Canada. The Explosives Act places limits on the amount of powder (either smokeless or black) that may be stored in a building, on the manner in which it is stored, and on how much powder may be available for use at any time. The Act is the responsibility of Natural Resources Canada. If the quantity of powder stored for personal use exceeds 75 kg, then a Propellant Magazine Licence (Type P) is required. There is no limit on the number of primers that may be stored for non-commercial use.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "As an example of a European country, handloading in Germany requires a course, terminated in an exam, in handloading and handling of explosive propellants; often, this is offered in combination with a course and exam in muzzle-loading and black powder-shooting. The State's Ministry of the Interior conducts the exam. When passed and the reloader can provide a reason for his will to reload (\"Bedürfnisprüfung\"), he can apply for a permit to a quota of propellant for five years (after which time he has to extend the permit). Every propellant is recorded in the permit. Primers, cartridges, bullets, and reloading equipment are available without a permit.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "As German law gives maximum pressures for every commercial caliber, the handloader is allowed to non-commercially give away his ammunition. He is liable for incorrect loading. His references are data books by propellant manufacturers (like RWS), bullet manufacturers (like Speer), reloading tool manufacturers (like Lyman) or neutral manufacturers institutions like the DEVA. Firearms manufacturers give guarantees as long as the handloaded ammunition is within the correct parameters.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The relevant rules for non-commercial application can be found in §27 of the Explosives Act (\"Sprengstoffgesetz\").",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In order to investigate gun destruction – material fault or incorrectly loaded ammunition – , and for handloaders to get data for new loads, gun and/or handloaded cartridges can be sent to the DEVA institute (German institute for testing and examining of hunting and sporting guns); the DEVA returns a pressure diagram and a report whether this load is within legal range for this ammunition.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Handloading or reloading is allowed in South Africa as long as you are in possession of a competency certificate to possess a firearm as well as a license to possess such a firearm. Sport shooters load to make shooting sports more affordable and hunters load to obtain greater accuracy. Powder and primers are strictly controlled by law and can not exceed for 2 kg for powder and 2400 primers. The amount of ammunition you may have in your possession is also limited to 200 rounds per chambering. If you are a registered dedicated sportsman, the quantities are unlimited. Although the powder's quantity is unlimited if you are a dedicated sportsman, storage of excess amounts of powder is dangerous due to the potential of fire occurring from accidental ignition. A manual from a South African powder manufacturer Rheinmetall Denel Munition (previously Somchem) is available for reloaders with adequate information and guidelines.",
"title": "Legal aspects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Berdan primers, with their off-center flash holes and lack of self-contained anvil, are more difficult to work with than the easily removed Boxer primers. The primers may be punctured and pried out from the rear, or extracted with hydraulic pressure. Primers must be selected carefully, as there are more sizes of Berdan primers than the standard large and small pistol, large and small rifle of Boxer primers. The case must also be inspected carefully to make sure the anvil has not been damaged because this could result in a failure to fire.",
"title": "Atypical handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Rimfire cartridges (e.g. 22 Long Rifle) are not generally hand-loaded in modern times, although there are some shooters that unload commercial rimfire cartridges, and use the primed case to make their own loads or to generate special rimfire wildcat cartridges. These cartridges are highly labor-intensive to produce. Historically, liquid priming material was available for reloading rimfire ammunition, but the extreme explosive hazard of bulk primer compound and complexity of the process (including \"ironing out\" the firing pin strike) caused the practice to decline.",
"title": "Atypical handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Some shooters desiring to reload for obsolete rimfire cartridges alter the firearm in question to function as a centerfire, which allows them to reload. Often it is possible to reform cases from similarly sized ammunition which is in production, and this is the most economical way of obtaining brass for obscure or out-of-production calibers. Even if custom brass must be manufactured, this is often far less expensive than purchasing rare, out-of-production ammunition. Cartridges like the 56-50 Spencer, for example, are not readily obtainable in rimfire form, but can be made from shortened 50-70 cartridges or even purchased in loaded form from specialty dealers.",
"title": "Atypical handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "An unusual solution to the problem of obtaining ammunition for the very old pinfire cartridges is even available. This solution uses specialized cartridges that use a removable pin and anvil which hold a percussion cap of the type use in caplock firearms. To reload a fired case, the pin is removed, allowing the anvil to slide out; a percussion cap is placed in the anvil, it is re-inserted, and the pin serves to lock the anvil in place, as well as to ignite the percussion cap.",
"title": "Atypical handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Shotshell reloading is sometimes done for scattershot loads, consisting of multiple wads separating groups of shot, which are intended for use at short-distance hunting of birds. Similarly, shotshell reloading for buckshot loads and non-lethal \"bean bag\" loads are sometimes handloaded. These types of shotshells are rarely handloaded.",
"title": "Atypical handloading"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Precision and consistency are key to developing accurate ammunition. Various methods are used to ensure that ammunition components are as consistent as possible. Since the firearm is also a variable in the accuracy equation, careful tuning of the load to a particular firearm can yield significant accuracy improvements.",
"title": "Accuracy considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The internal volume of the cartridge case, or case capacity, significantly affects the pressure developed during ignition, which significantly affects the velocity of the bullet. Cases from different manufacturers can vary in wall thickness, and as cases are repeatedly fired and reloaded the brass flows up to the neck and is trimmed off, increasing capacity as well as weakening the case. The first step to ensuring consistent case capacity is sorting the cases by headstamp, so each lot of cases is from the same manufacturer and/or year. A further step would be to then weigh these cases, and sort by case weight.",
"title": "Accuracy considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The neck of the case is another variable since this determines how tightly the bullet is held in place during ignition. Inconsistent neck thickness and neck tension will result in variations in pressure during ignition. These variables can be addressed by annealing and thinning the neck, as well as by careful control of the crimping operation.",
"title": "Accuracy considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Bullets must be well balanced and consistent in weight, shape, and seating depth to ensure that they correctly engage the rifling, exit the barrel at a consistent velocity, and fly straight. Buying bullets from a high-quality source will help ensure quality, but for ultimate accuracy, some shooters will measure even the best bullets, and reject all but the most consistent. Measurement of the weight is the easiest, and bullets that are out of round can be detected by rotating the bullet while measuring with a micrometer. There is even a device available that will detect changes in jacket thickness and internal voids in jacketed rifle bullets, though its high cost makes it prohibitively expensive for all but the most dedicated shooters.",
"title": "Accuracy considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The transition from the case to the barrel is also very important. If the bullets have to travel a varying distance from the case to the point where they engage the rifling, then this can result in variations in pressure and velocity. The bearing surface of the bullet should ideally be seated as close as possible to the rifling. Since it is the bearing surface that matters here, it is important that the bullets have a consistent bearing surface.",
"title": "Accuracy considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Tuning load to a gun can also yield great increases in accuracy, especially for standard, non-accurized rifles. Different rifles, even of the same make and model, will often react to the same ammunition in different ways. The handloader is afforded a wider selection of bullet weights than can readily be found in commercially loaded ammunition, and there are many different powders that can be used for any given cartridge. Trying a range of bullets and a variety of powders will determine what combination of bullet and powder gives the most consistent velocities and accuracies. Careful adjustment of the amount of powder can give the velocity that best fits the natural harmonics of the barrel (see accurize and internal ballistics). For ultimate accuracy and performance, the handloader also has the option of using a wildcat cartridge; wildcats are the result of shaping the cartridge and chamber themselves to a specific end, and the results push the envelope of velocity, energy, and accuracy. Most, but not all, reloads perform best when the powder selected fills 95% or more of the case (by volume).",
"title": "Accuracy considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Those who reload with the primary goal of maximizing accuracy or terminal performance may end up paying more per reloaded round than for commercial ammunition—this is especially true for military calibers which are commonly available as surplus. Maximum performance, however, requires the highest quality components, which are usually the most expensive. Reloaders who reload with the primary goal of saving money on ammunition, however, can make a few tradeoffs to realize significant cost savings with a minimal sacrifice in quality.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Since the case is the single most expensive part of a loaded round, the more times a case can be re-used, the better. Cases that are loaded to a moderate pressure will generally last longer, as they will not be work hardened or flow under pressure as much as cases loaded to higher pressures. Use of moderate pressure loads extends the life of the case significantly, not to mention saving quite a bit of wear and tear on the barrel. Work hardening can cause cracks to occur in the neck as the hardened brass loses its malleability, and is unable to survive swaging back into shape during the resizing operation. Rifle brass tends to flow towards the neck (this is why rifle brass must be trimmed periodically) and this takes brass away from the rear of the case. Eventually, this will show as a bright ring near the base of the cartridge, just in front of the thick web of brass at the base. If brass is used after this ring appears, it risks a crack, or worse, a complete head separation, which will leave the forward portion of the brass lodged in the chamber of the gun. This generally requires a special stuck case removal tool to extract, so it is very undesirable to have a head separation.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "With bottlenecked cartridge cases, choosing the right sizing die can also be important. Full-length sizing of cartridges is often thought to greatly shorten case life by work hardening the full length of the case, which can cause the case neck to split, although some studies show that the number of reloads possible with a case is essentially the same for either full length sizing as for neck sizing only if the issue is one of neck hardening. If the reloaded cartridges are going to be used in the same firearm in which they were previously fired, though, and if that firearm has a bolt action or other action with a strong camming action on closing, then full-length resizing may not be needed. A collet neck sizing die can be used to size just the case neck enough to hold the bullet and leave the rest of the case unsized. The resulting cartridge will chamber into the specific rifle that previously fired it, though the fit might be tight and require more force to chamber than a full-length resized case. The use of a neck-sizing die in conjunction with moderate pressure loads may extend the life of the case significantly by minimizing the amount of case that is work hardened or stretched. This is especially true for reloads intended for military rifles with intentionally large chambers such as the Lee–Enfield in .303 British. The use of partial length or neck sizing for cartridges used in such large chambers permits effectively switching the headspacing from relying on the rim of a rimmed cartridge to the shoulder of the bottleneck transition instead, increasing the number of times a rimmed military cartridge can be reloaded from once to perhaps 5 or more times, all while avoiding dangerous incipient head separations. One final form of limiting case wear is limited strictly to benchrest shooters with custom-cut chambers. The chamber of these rifles is cut so that there is just enough room, typically just a few thousandths of an inch, in the neck area. The result of using this type of chamber is that fired rounds do not require any resizing whatsoever once the case is fired. The brass will 'spring back' a bit after firing, and will properly hold a new bullet without further manipulation. Some refer to this as a 'fitted' neck, however, it is a function of both the carefully cut precision neck and the case adjusted to fit with very little clearance.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Work hardening happens to all cases, even low-pressure handgun cases. The sudden increase in pressure upon firing hits the brass like a hammer, changing its crystalline structure and making it more brittle. The neck of the case, if it becomes too brittle, will be incapable of standing the strain of resizing, expanding, crimping, and firing, and will split during loading or firing. Since the case neck remains in tension while holding the bullet in place, aging ammunition may develop split necks in storage. While a neck split during firing is not a significant danger, a split neck will render the case incapable of holding the bullet in place, so the case must be discarded or recycled as a wildcat cartridge of shorter overall length, allowing the split section to be removed. The simplest way to decrease the effects of work hardening is to decrease the pressure in the case. Loading to the minimum power level listed in the reloading manual, instead of the maximum, can significantly increase case life. Slower powders generally also have lower pressure peaks and may be a good choice.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Annealing brass to make it softer and less brittle is fairly easy, but annealing cartridge cases is a more complex matter. Since the base of the case must be hard, it cannot be annealed. What is needed is a form of heat treatment called differential hardening, where heat is carefully applied to part of the case until the desired softness is reached, and then the heat treatment process is halted by rapidly cooling the case. Since annealing brass requires heating it to about 660 °F (350 °C), the heating must be done in such a way as to heat the neck to that temperature, while preventing the base of the case from being heated and losing its hardness. The traditional way is to stand the cases in a shallow pan full of water, then heat the necks of the cases with a torch, but this method makes it difficult to get an even heating of the entire case neck. A temperature-sensitive crayon can be used at the point to which it is to be annealed, which is just behind the shoulder for bottlenecked cartridges, or at the bottom of the bullet seating depth for straight-wall cartridges. The neck of the case is placed in a propane torch flame and heated it until the crayon mark changes color, indicating the correct temperature. Once the correct temperature is reached the case is completely quenched in water to stop the annealing process at the desired hardness. Failing to keep the base of the case cool can anneal the case near the head, where it must remain hard to function properly. Another approach is to immerse the case mouth in a molten alloy of lead that is at the desired annealing temperature for a few seconds, then quickly shake off the lead and quench the case.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Cases that have small cracks at the neck may not be a complete loss. Many cartridges, both commercial and wildcats, can be made by shortening a longer cartridge. For example, a 223 Remington can be shortened to become a .222 Remington, which can further be shortened to become a .221 Fireball. Similarly, .30-06 Springfield can become .308 Winchester, which can become any number of specialized benchrest shooting cartridges. Since the cracking is likely due to a brittle neck, the cases should be annealed before attempting to reform them, or the crack may propagate and ruin the newly formed shorter case as well.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Powder is another significant cost of reloading, and one over which the handloader has significant control. In addition to the obvious step of using a minimum charge, rather than a full power one, significant cost savings may be obtained through careful powder choice. Given the same bullet and cartridge, a faster burning powder will generally use a smaller charge of powder than required with a slower powder. For example, a 44 Magnum firing a 240-grain lead semi-wadcutter could be loaded with either Accurate Arms #2, a very fast pistol powder, or #9, a very slow pistol powder. When using the minimum loads, 9.0 grains (0.58 g) of AA #2 yield a velocity of 1126 ft/s (343 m/s), and 19.5 grains (1.26 g) of #9 yield 1364 ft/s (416 m/s). For the same amount of powder, AA #2 can produce approximately twice as many rounds, yet both powders cost the same per weight.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The tradeoff comes in terms of power and accuracy; AA #2 is designed for small cases and will burn inconsistently in the large 44 Magnum case. AA #9, however, will fill the case much better, and the slow burn rate of AA #9 is ideal for magnum handgun rounds, producing 20% higher velocities (at maximum levels) while still producing less pressure than the fast-burning AA #2. A medium-burning powder might actually be a better choice, as it could split the difference in powder weights while delivering more power and accuracy than the fastest powder.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "One solution that is applicable to revolvers, in particular, is the possibility of using a reduced-volume case. Cartridges such as 357 Magnum and 44 Magnum are just longer versions of their parent rounds of .38 Special and .44 Special, and the shorter rounds will fire in the longer chambers with no problems. The reduced case capacity allows greater accuracy with even lighter loads. A 44 Special loaded with a minimum load of AA #2 uses only 4.2 grains (0.27 g) of powder, and produces a modest 771 ft/s (235 m/s). It is important to note that when reloading .38 Special and .44 Special, extreme care must be exercised to not exceed maximum powder specifications - i.e. a 357 Magnum load must never be used in a .38 special case, as even though the powder charge may fit, the difference in case volumes will likely create an overpressure scenario resulting in unsafe conditions.",
"title": "Cost considerations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "While the case is usually the most expensive component of a cartridge, the bullet is usually the most expensive part of the reloaded round, especially with handgun ammunition. It is also the best place to save money with handgun ammunition. This is because the bullets are used one time, and the case lasts for many reloadings.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Other advantages of casting or swaging bullets from lead wire (which is pricier but avoids many quality-control issues of casting) is the ability to precisely control many attributes of the resulting bullet. Custom bullet molds are available from a number of sources, allowing the handloader to pick the exact weight, shape, and diameter of the bullet to fit the cartridge, firearm, and intended use. A good example of where this is useful is for shooters of older military surplus firearms, which often exhibit widely varying bore and groove diameters; by making bullets specifically intended for the firearm in question, the accuracy of the resulting cartridges can be significantly increased.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "For the truly frugal, the cheapest method of obtaining bullets, buckshot, and slugs intended for reloading use at low to moderate velocities is casting them.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "This requires a set of bullet, buckshot, or slug molds, which are available from a number of sources, and a source of known quality lead. Linotype and automotive wheelweights are often used as sources of lead that are blended together in a molten state to achieve the desired Brinell hardness. Other sources of scrap lead, such as recovered bullets, lead cable sheathing, lead pipe, or even lead–acid battery plates (EXTREME caution should be used as modern battery components, when melted, can yield hazardous, even deadly gases), can yield usable lead with some degree of effort, including purification and measuring of hardness.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Cast bullets are also the cheapest bullets to buy, though generally only handgun bullets are available in this form. Some firearms manufacturers, such as those using polygonal rifling like Glock and H&K, advise against the use of cast bullets. For shooters who would like to shoot cast bullets, aftermarket barrels are generally available for these models with conventional rifling, and the cost of the barrel can generally be recouped in ammunition savings after a few thousand rounds.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Soft lead bullets are generally used in handguns with velocities of 1000 ft/s (300 m/s) or lower, while harder cast bullets may be used, with careful powder selection, in rifles with velocities of 2000 ft/s (600 m/s) or slightly more. A modern solution to velocity limitations of cast projectiles is to powder coat the projectile, encasing it in a protective skin allowing higher velocities to be achieved with softer lead alloys with no lead build up in the firearm. The limit is the point at which the powder gas temperature and pressure starts to melt the base of the bullet, and leave a thin coating of molten and re-solidified lead in the bore of the gun—a process called leading the bore. Cast lead bullets may also be fired in full power magnum handgun rounds like the 44 Magnum with the addition of a gas check, which is a thin aluminum, zinc or copper washer or cup that is crimped over a tiny heel on the base of appropriate cast bullets. This provides protection for the base of the bullet, and allows velocities of over 1500 ft/s (450 m/s) in handguns, with little or no leading of the bore.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Such cast lead bullets, intended for use with a gas check, will have a reduced diameter at the rear of the cast lead bullet, onto which the gas check can be swaged using a lubricating/resizing press. All cast lead bullets, whether with or without a gas check, must still be lubricated, to prevent leading of the rifling of the barrel. A lubricating/resizing press, which is a special purpose bullet processing press, can be either a standalone press dedicated to lubricating and resizing bullets, or can be an add-on to a reloading press, at the option of the handloader. Not all handloaders resize cast lead bullets, although all handloaders do lubricate cast lead bullets. An option to using a lubricating press is simply to coat the bullets with bullet lube, which can be done either with a spray, in a tumbler, in a plastic bowel with a liquid lube, in a tray with melted bullet lube, or even with a manual lubricating process.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Slugs for shotgun shells are also commonly cast from pure lead by handloaders, for subsequent reloading into shotgun shells. Although roll crimps of shotgun hull cases are commonly used for handloading these cast lead slugs, in place of the fold crimps that are used when reloading shot into shotgun shells, some published recipes specifically do include fold crimps. For published recipes using fold crimps and shot wads used as sabots, slugs can be easily reloaded using standard shotshell presses and techniques, without requiring any roll crimp tools. Whether roll crimps or fold crimps are used, cast lead slugs are commonly used in jurisdictions where rifles are banned for hunting, under the reasoning that fired slugs will not travel but over short distances, unlike rifle bullets which can travel up to several miles when fired. Use of cast lead slugs is therefore very common when hunting large game near populated areas.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Similarly, cast lead buckshot is often cast by handloaders, for reloading into shotgun shells for hunting larger game animals. Such buckshot is then placed by hand into shotgun shells when handloaded, due to the necessity of having to stack the buckshot balls into specific configurations depending on the gauge of shotgun shell being reloaded, the choice of wad, the volume of powder, and the size of the buckshot (e.g., 00, 000, 0000 buckshot). Such cast lead buckshot is never simply dropped from a shotshell press charge bar into a shotgun shell when reloading.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Most shooters prefer jacketed bullets, especially in rifles and pistols. The hard jacket material, generally copper or brass, resists deformation and handles far higher pressures and temperatures than lead. Several companies offer swaging presses (both manual and hydraulic) that will manufacture on a small scale jacketed bullets that can rival or surpass the quality of commercial jacketed bullets. Two swaging equipment manufacturers offer equipment and dies designed to turn 22 Long Rifle cases into brass jackets for 22 caliber (5.56 mm) bullets.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Example variants of swage dies include:",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Every bullet diameter, and most of the bullet types, need special dies, making swaging a rather investment-intensive enterprise.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Handloaders have the choice to swage but most choose to purchase pre-made jacketed bullets, due to the obscure nature of swaging and the specialized, expensive equipment. The process of manufacturing a jacketed bullet is far more complex than for a cast bullet; first, the jacket must be punched from a metal sheet of precise thickness, filled with a premeasured lead core, and then swaged into shape with a high pressure press in multiple steps. This involved process makes jacketed bullets far more expensive on average than cast bullets. Further complicating this are the requirements for controlled expansion bullets (see terminal ballistics), which require a tight bond between the jacket and the core. Premium expanding bullets are, with match grade bullets, at the top tier in expense.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "A more economical alternative was made available to the handloader in the 1980s, the copper-plated bullet. Copper-plated bullets are lead bullets that are electroplated with a copper jacket. While thinner than a swaged bullet jacket, the plated jacket is far thicker than normal electroplate, and provides significant structural integrity to the bullet. Since the jacket provides the strength, soft lead can be used, which allows bullets to be swaged or cast into shape before plating. While not strong enough for most rifle cartridges, plated bullets work well in many handgun rounds, with a recommended maximum velocity of 1250 ft/s (375 m/s). Plated bullets fall between cast and traditional jacketed bullets in price.",
"title": "Bullets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "While originally sold only to handloaders as an inexpensive substitute for jacketed bullets, the plated bullet has come far. The ammunition manufacturer Speer now offers the Gold Dot line, commercially loaded premium handgun ammunition using copper-plated hollow point bullets. The strong bond between jacket and core created by the electroplating process makes expanding bullets hold together very well, and the Gold Dot line is now in use by many police departments.",
"title": "Bullets"
}
]
| Handloading, or reloading, is the practice of making firearm cartridges by assembling the individual components, rather than purchasing mass-assembled, factory-loaded ammunition. The term handloading is the more general term, and refers generically to the manual assembly of ammunition. Reloading refers more specifically to handloading using previously fired cases and shells. The terms are often used interchangeably however, as the techniques are largely the same, whether the handloader is using new or recycled components. The differences lie in the initial preparation of cases and shells; new components are generally ready to load, while previously fired components often need additional procedures, such as cleaning, removal of expended primers, or the reshaping and resizing of brass cases. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-09-27T06:53:09Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handloading |
13,864 | Houston Texans | The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their home games at NRG Stadium.
The Texans were founded in 1999, and were owned by Bob McNair until his death in 2018; following McNair's death, the majority ownership of the team went to his wife, Janice. The team replaced the city's previous NFL franchise, the Houston Oilers, who played from 1960 to 1996 before moving to Nashville and eventually becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Texans began play as an expansion team in 2002, making them the youngest franchise currently competing in the NFL.
While the Texans mainly struggled in the 2000s, their fortunes would take a turn for the better in the 2010s when they first found success in the 2011 season, winning their first division championship and clinching their first playoff berth. The Texans have gone on to win five more AFC South division championships in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. They are the only franchise to have never won a road playoff game along with the only one to have never appeared in a conference championship game; they are also one of four franchises to have never appeared in a Super Bowl, alongside the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, and division rival Jacksonville Jaguars.
According to an article by Forbes, the Houston Texans are the eleventh richest team in the NFL with a value of $4.7 billion in August 2022.
After the Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series, the Houston Texans became the only team in Texas without a big four championship.
In 1997, Houston entrepreneur Bob McNair had a failed bid to bring a National Hockey League (NHL) expansion team to the city, and Bud Adams relocated the city's NFL team, the Houston Oilers, to Nashville, Tennessee, where they were renamed the Tennessee Titans in 1999. In 1996, the Cleveland Browns had controversially relocated to become the Baltimore Ravens. As part of the settlement between the NFL, the city of Cleveland, and the team owned by Art Modell, the league promised to return football to Cleveland within the next three years.
In order to even out the franchises to 32, the NFL contemplated adding another expansion franchise. As Houston was one of the favorites for the extra franchise, along with Toronto and Los Angeles (the latter of whom had lost the Rams and the Raiders in 1995), McNair then decided to join the football project and founded Houston NFL Holdings with partner Steve Patterson. With Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, they would push for a domed stadium as part of the bid to lure the NFL back to Houston. On October 6, 1999, the NFL awarded the 32nd team to Houston at a cost of $700 million.
In the process of naming the new franchise leadership conducted an extensive review and research process; the final list of names was determined after several months of research conducted jointly by Houston NFL 2002 and NFL Properties. This included an online survey asking fans and the community to weigh in which received more than 65,000 responses in one week. On March 2, 2000, it was announced that the team name search had been narrowed down to five choices: Apollos, Bobcats, Stallions, Texans, and Wildcatters. On September 6, 2000, the NFL's 32nd franchise was officially christened the Houston Texans before thousands at a downtown rally in Houston. McNair explained that the name and logo were chosen to "embody the pride, strength, independence and achievement that make the people of Houston and our area special." The name "Texans" had been used by several now-defunct football teams, including the Canadian Football League franchise in San Antonio; the World Football League franchise in Houston, which moved to Louisiana to become the Shreveport Steamer; the Dallas Texans of the NFL which played in only the 1952 season; and by the precursor of the present-day Kansas City Chiefs, when they were the second incarnation of the Dallas Texans in the American Football League (AFL). Owner Bob McNair received permission from Chiefs' owner Lamar Hunt to use the Texans name for his new team. It is also a subtle homage to the naming style of the NHL team the Montreal Canadiens who also named their team after their respective demonym.
The Houston Texans joined the NFL in the 2002 season, playing at the newly opened Reliant Stadium under head coach Dom Capers. With their opening game victory over the Dallas Cowboys on September 8, 2002, the Texans became the first expansion team to win its opening game since the Minnesota Vikings beat the Chicago Bears in 1961.
While the team struggled in its early seasons, results began to improve when native Houstonian Gary Kubiak became the head coach in 2006. The Texans finished with a .500 season (8–8) in 2007 and 2008, and nearly qualified for the 2009–10 playoffs with a 9–7 result in 2009. The Texans started the 2010 season on a 4–2 record going into a Week 7 bye week, but promptly collapsed 2–8 in the second half of the season, finishing 6–10. In the 2011 NFL Draft, the Texans acquired Wisconsin star defensive end J. J. Watt 11th overall. The following season, former Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips was hired as the defensive coordinator for the Texans, and the improved defense led to them finishing 10–6, winning their first AFC South title. The Texans then beat wild card Cincinnati Bengals 31–10 in the first round of the 2011–12 playoffs, before a 20–13 defeat by the Ravens in the Divisional Round.
The Texans surged as the team to beat in the AFC South in 2012, starting 5–0 and holding an 11–1 record by week 14. However, they lost three of their last four games to finish 12–4; beating the rival Indianapolis Colts in that four-game stretch allowing them to clinch their 2nd AFC South title. The Texans beat the Bengals again in the wild-card round, but they lost in the Divisional Round to the New England Patriots.
In the 2013 NFL Draft, the Texans acquired Clemson wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins 27th overall. In 2013, the Texans started 2–0 but went into a tailspin and lost every game afterwards. Kubiak was fired as head coach after being swept by the rival Jacksonville Jaguars, who themselves started 0–8. Wade Phillips filled in as head coach, but the Texans' poor form did not change, and they finished 2–14, tying, with 2005, their worst record in franchise history. The 14-game losing streak is the worst in franchise history.
The Texans entered the 2014 season with a 14-game losing streak. Former Penn State head coach Bill O'Brien became the Texans' new head coach, and the third in franchise history, during the offseason. In 2014, the Texans won three of their first four games, defeating the Redskins in the season opener, the Raiders, and the Bills, losing to the New York Giants. They lost three of their next four games, losing to the Dallas Cowboys, the Indianapolis Colts, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively. The Texans went on to finish 9–7 in the 2014 season and barely missed the playoffs.
In the 2015 season, they were featured on HBO, on the show "Hard Knocks". That year, the Texans started with a 2–5 record. Quarterback Ryan Mallett was released amidst controversy regarding his benching in favor of Brian Hoyer during a loss against the Indianapolis Colts. After a poor start, the Texans finished with a 9–7 record and won their third AFC South title. However, they were shut out by the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card round 30–0, ending their championship hopes for the year.
On March 9, 2016, the Texans signed former Denver Broncos quarterback Brock Osweiler to a 4-year, $72 million deal. Despite Osweiler's lucrative deal, he struggled significantly during the 2016 season. After throwing two interceptions in Week 15 against the Jaguars, coach Bill O'Brien benched the offseason acquisition in favor of backup quarterback Tom Savage. Savage led a comeback effort against the Jaguars, and was named the starter for the remainder of the season. The Texans clinched their fourth AFC South division title in six years in Savage's first career start against the Bengals in Week 16. They defeated the wildcard Oakland Raiders 27–14 in the opening round of the playoffs with Osweiler as the starting quarterback due to Savage being out with a concussion. Osweiler started in the Divisional Playoffs game against the New England Patriots, throwing three interceptions in the second half. The Texans lost 34–16.
In the 2017 NFL Draft, the Texans traded up to the 12th overall selection to select Clemson star quarterback Deshaun Watson. Watson started six games his rookie year, going 3–3 and having arguably the greatest and most decorated rookie season by a quarterback in NFL history, eventually rising up to become the Texans' franchise quarterback. However, his success would come up very short, following a Week 8 41–38 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, Watson tore his ACL in practice and was ruled out the remainder of the season, which caused the Texans to have one of their worst seasons. Plagued by a series of unexpected injuries (including a second consecutive season-ending injury to J. J. Watt) and controversy involving the team's suspected violation of the league's concussion protocol, after backup quarterback Tom Savage suffered a seizure following a Week 14 game against the San Francisco 49ers, the Texans went 1–9 the rest of the season and eventually finish 4–12 and last in the AFC South in 2017, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2014 and giving Bill O'Brien his first losing season as Texans head coach.
In 2018, the Texans started the season 0–3, losing by a combined 15 points to the New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, and New York Giants, before winning a 37–34 overtime shootout on the road in Indianapolis. This win sparked a nine-game winning streak for the Texans, their first since starting 5–0 in 2012, which included a Week 8 win against the Miami Dolphins that included five touchdown passes from Deshaun Watson. This streak was the longest ever for a team that started the season 0–3; the previous record was a seven-game win-streak set by the New York Giants in 1918 after starting out 0–3.
On November 23, 2018, the owner of the Houston Texans, Bob McNair, died from skin cancer. On November 26, 2018, McNair's wife, Janice McNair, became the principal owner and Senior Chair of the Houston Texans, while their son, D. Cal McNair, became the Chairman and Chief Operating Officer.
The Texans finished the season 11–5, and won another AFC South division championship under Bill O'Brien. They then lost 21–7 in the first round of the playoffs to their AFC South division rival Indianapolis Colts.
In 2019, the Texans won the AFC South division championship and qualified for the NFL playoffs on the back of a 10–6 record. They went on to defeat the Buffalo Bills by a score of 22–19 in overtime in the AFC wild-card round. However, the Texans' 2019 season came to an end the following week, as they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 51–31 in the AFC divisional round.
On March 22, 2020, the Texans traded away all-pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and a fourth-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft to the Arizona Cardinals. In return, Houston received running back David Johnson, a 2020 second-round pick, and a 2021 fourth-round pick. The move was confusing and controversial among fans and sportswriters alike, as many claimed that the Texans should have received more valuable assets for Hopkins, who was among the best receivers in the NFL.
The Texans began the 2020 NFL season with a record of 0–4, and Bill O'Brien was consequentially fired following a disappointing loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Week 4. Romeo Crennel, who was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns from 2005 to 2008 and of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2011–12, was named the interim head coach for the remainder of the season. Crennel managed to win more than half of his first 7 games as Houston's head coach, giving Houston a record of 4–7. However, the Texans ended the season on a 5-game losing streak. With a final record of 4–12, the Texans were unable to make the playoffs.
On January 27, 2021, the Texans hired David Culley as the team's head coach. Culley most recently worked as the Baltimore Ravens assistant head coach, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. On February 12, 2021, the Texans released all-pro defensive end J.J. Watt. It was confirmed that Watt personally requested owner Cal McNair for his release.
On January 13, 2022, the Texans fired David Culley. as the team's head coach and promoted defensive coordinator Lovie Smith as the team's fifth head coach on February 7, 2022. The team traded away their starting quarterback Deshaun Watson to the Cleveland Browns and a 2024 fifth round pick for three 1st round picks, a 3rd round pick and a 4th round pick on March 20, 2022. The Texans opened their 2022 season in a tie game against the Indianapolis Colts, the franchise’s first tie in their 20 year existence. On January 9, 2023, the Texans announced that they were going in a different direction by firing Lovie Smith.
On January 31, 2023, the Texans hired former player and 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans as their new head coach, making him the sixth head coach in franchise history. With the second overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Texans selected Ohio State quarterback C. J. Stroud. Through 16 weeks of the 2023 season the team has posted a 8-7 record which was the teams best result since the 2019 season.
The Texans are the youngest expansion team in the NFL, having only been competing in the NFL since 2002. For that reason, they have not had the history or the reputation on which to build classic rivalries like the ones that often exist between older franchises. Despite this, the team has developed some rivalries. Its natural rivals are its fellow AFC South teams such as the Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Indianapolis Colts.
The Tennessee Titans, who were formerly the Houston Oilers before their relocation in 1996, are viewed by many Houston fans as the Texans' chief rival as members of the AFC South ever since the early 2000s.
Ever since the early 2000s, the Texans also have an AFC South Division rivalry with the Indianapolis Colts, whom the Texans had not defeated until the 2006 season. The first time that the Texans would sweep the Colts was in the 2016 NFL season. More recently, Houston has increased bitterness with the Indianapolis Colts due to their young Houston-native quarterback Andrew Luck having been drafted by the Colts in 2012 and the franchise's first ever sweep of the Colts against Luck in 2016. In 2018 the two teams met in the AFC Wild Card Playoffs, with the Colts winning 21–7.
Having begun play in 1995 and 2002, respectively, the Jaguars and Texans are among two of the most-recently established franchises in the NFL. The Jaguars relocated from the AFC Central to the newly created AFC South where the Texans were placed into and have competed as division rivals since. The Jaguars are the only division rival the Texans have a winning record against as the Texans lead the series 28–14.
The Texans also have an intrastate/interconference rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys, with whom they contest the so-called Governor's Cup every year (a tradition started between the cities prior to the Oilers relocating) either in the preseason or the regular season for bragging rights in the state of Texas. In 2017, the destruction and flooding caused during Hurricane Harvey a few days before their Week 4 pre-season match up time scheduled caused the game to be relocated to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. However, out of concern for the safety of the fans and the condition of the player's families & communities, the game was canceled.
The Texans are the newest team in the league, but they have been embraced by a fair amount of celebrities since joining the NFL in 2002. The team has also adopted a number of former Houston Oilers fans in search of a new home team. Despite the lacking playoff success, there have been a present amount of loyal fans and even various celebrities such as Ryan Trahan, George Foreman, Paul Wall, Rico Rodriguez, and Raini Rodriguez who have been strong supporters of the team. During the 2010s, the team adopted the moniker "Bulls on Parade" in honor of the Rage Against the Machine song, regularly used prior to the team's introduction before entering the field.
Along with the team name, McNair unveiled the team logo, an abstract depiction of a bull's head, split in such a way to resemble the flag of Texas and the state of Texas, including a lone star to stand for the eye, the five points of which representing pride, courage, strength, tradition and independence. McNair described the colors as "Deep Steel Blue", "Battle Red" and "Liberty White". A year later the Texans unveiled their uniforms during another downtown rally.
The Texans' helmet is dark blue with the Texans bull logo. The helmet was initially white when the team name and logo were unveiled, but was later changed to dark blue. The uniform design consists of red trim and either dark blue or white jerseys. The team typically wears white pants with its blue jerseys and blue pants with its white jerseys. Starting with the 2006 season, the Texans wore all-white for their home opener, and the team began to wear an all-blue combination for home games vs. the Indianapolis Colts. In 2003, the Texans introduced an alternative red jersey with blue trim; they wear this jersey at one home game each year, usually against a division rival. In 2007, the Texans introduced red pants for the first time, pairing them with the red jerseys for an all-red look. They would wear this look until 2010, but was brought back in 2023. In October 2008 the Texans paired blue socks (instead of the traditional red) with their blue pants and white jerseys, eventually becoming the team's primary road uniform combination. In 2016, the Texans unveiled a new uniform combo against the Jacksonville Jaguars, pairing the red jersey with blue pants and red socks. In 2017, the Texans unveiled a Color Rush uniform, using an all-blue uniform but with minimal white elements. In 2021, the Texans began sporting all-white socks on select home and road games. In 2022, the Texans began using an alternate red helmet, worn with either the red or Color Rush jerseys.
In 2002, the team wore a patch commemorating their inaugural season. Also, they celebrated 10 years as a franchise by wearing an anniversary patch throughout 2012. From 2018 to 2019, the Texans wore a memorial patch to honor Bob McNair after his death.
On November 19, 2017, Andre Johnson was the first-ever inductee into the Texans Ring of Honor. On October 6, 2019, Bob McNair was posthumously the second inductee into the Texans Ring of Honor. On October 1, 2023, J. J. Watt was the third inductee into the Texans Ring of Honor.
Only one member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame has spent any portion of their career with Texans. This is due in part to the requirements to be inducted and the Texans only having been established in 2002.
The team's official mascot is Toro, an anthropomorphic blue bull. The team also has a cheerleading squad simply named the Houston Texans Cheerleaders.
Community outreach by the Houston Texans is primarily operated by the Houston Texans Foundation, who works with multiple community partners. The Houston Texans organization is also a supporter of the character education program, Heart of a Champion. In 2017, the 15th annual Houston Texans Charity Golf Classic raised more than $380,000 for the Foundation. More than $27.2 million has been raised for the Foundation since its creation in 2002.
Former Texans DE J. J. Watt raised $41.6 million in relief funds for Hurricane Harvey after the storm devastated the city in 2017.
As of 2023, the Texans' flagship radio stations were KILT SportsRadio 610AM and KILT 100.3FM. The AM station has an all-sports format, while the FM station plays contemporary country music. Both are owned by Audacy. Marc Vandermeer is the play-by-play announcer. Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware provides color commentary, and SportsRadio 610 host Rich Lord serves as the sideline reporter. Preseason and regular season Monday night games from ESPN are telecast by KTRK, an ABC owned and operated station. Kevin Kugler calls the preseason games on TV, with former Texans defensive end N. D. Kalu providing color commentary. Regular season games are aired over CBS affiliate KHOU, FOX affiliate KRIV if the Texans host an NFC team, and NBC affiliate KPRC for Sunday night games.
Spanish-language radio broadcasts of the team's games are aired on KGOL ESPN Deportes 1180AM. Enrique Vásquez is the play-by-play announcer. José Jojo Padrón provides color commentary, and Fernando Hernández serves as sideline reporter.
Texans Radio Affiliates Archived December 27, 2019, at the Wayback Machine | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their home games at NRG Stadium.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Texans were founded in 1999, and were owned by Bob McNair until his death in 2018; following McNair's death, the majority ownership of the team went to his wife, Janice. The team replaced the city's previous NFL franchise, the Houston Oilers, who played from 1960 to 1996 before moving to Nashville and eventually becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Texans began play as an expansion team in 2002, making them the youngest franchise currently competing in the NFL.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "While the Texans mainly struggled in the 2000s, their fortunes would take a turn for the better in the 2010s when they first found success in the 2011 season, winning their first division championship and clinching their first playoff berth. The Texans have gone on to win five more AFC South division championships in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. They are the only franchise to have never won a road playoff game along with the only one to have never appeared in a conference championship game; they are also one of four franchises to have never appeared in a Super Bowl, alongside the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, and division rival Jacksonville Jaguars.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "According to an article by Forbes, the Houston Texans are the eleventh richest team in the NFL with a value of $4.7 billion in August 2022.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "After the Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series, the Houston Texans became the only team in Texas without a big four championship.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1997, Houston entrepreneur Bob McNair had a failed bid to bring a National Hockey League (NHL) expansion team to the city, and Bud Adams relocated the city's NFL team, the Houston Oilers, to Nashville, Tennessee, where they were renamed the Tennessee Titans in 1999. In 1996, the Cleveland Browns had controversially relocated to become the Baltimore Ravens. As part of the settlement between the NFL, the city of Cleveland, and the team owned by Art Modell, the league promised to return football to Cleveland within the next three years.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In order to even out the franchises to 32, the NFL contemplated adding another expansion franchise. As Houston was one of the favorites for the extra franchise, along with Toronto and Los Angeles (the latter of whom had lost the Rams and the Raiders in 1995), McNair then decided to join the football project and founded Houston NFL Holdings with partner Steve Patterson. With Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, they would push for a domed stadium as part of the bid to lure the NFL back to Houston. On October 6, 1999, the NFL awarded the 32nd team to Houston at a cost of $700 million.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the process of naming the new franchise leadership conducted an extensive review and research process; the final list of names was determined after several months of research conducted jointly by Houston NFL 2002 and NFL Properties. This included an online survey asking fans and the community to weigh in which received more than 65,000 responses in one week. On March 2, 2000, it was announced that the team name search had been narrowed down to five choices: Apollos, Bobcats, Stallions, Texans, and Wildcatters. On September 6, 2000, the NFL's 32nd franchise was officially christened the Houston Texans before thousands at a downtown rally in Houston. McNair explained that the name and logo were chosen to \"embody the pride, strength, independence and achievement that make the people of Houston and our area special.\" The name \"Texans\" had been used by several now-defunct football teams, including the Canadian Football League franchise in San Antonio; the World Football League franchise in Houston, which moved to Louisiana to become the Shreveport Steamer; the Dallas Texans of the NFL which played in only the 1952 season; and by the precursor of the present-day Kansas City Chiefs, when they were the second incarnation of the Dallas Texans in the American Football League (AFL). Owner Bob McNair received permission from Chiefs' owner Lamar Hunt to use the Texans name for his new team. It is also a subtle homage to the naming style of the NHL team the Montreal Canadiens who also named their team after their respective demonym.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Houston Texans joined the NFL in the 2002 season, playing at the newly opened Reliant Stadium under head coach Dom Capers. With their opening game victory over the Dallas Cowboys on September 8, 2002, the Texans became the first expansion team to win its opening game since the Minnesota Vikings beat the Chicago Bears in 1961.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "While the team struggled in its early seasons, results began to improve when native Houstonian Gary Kubiak became the head coach in 2006. The Texans finished with a .500 season (8–8) in 2007 and 2008, and nearly qualified for the 2009–10 playoffs with a 9–7 result in 2009. The Texans started the 2010 season on a 4–2 record going into a Week 7 bye week, but promptly collapsed 2–8 in the second half of the season, finishing 6–10. In the 2011 NFL Draft, the Texans acquired Wisconsin star defensive end J. J. Watt 11th overall. The following season, former Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips was hired as the defensive coordinator for the Texans, and the improved defense led to them finishing 10–6, winning their first AFC South title. The Texans then beat wild card Cincinnati Bengals 31–10 in the first round of the 2011–12 playoffs, before a 20–13 defeat by the Ravens in the Divisional Round.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Texans surged as the team to beat in the AFC South in 2012, starting 5–0 and holding an 11–1 record by week 14. However, they lost three of their last four games to finish 12–4; beating the rival Indianapolis Colts in that four-game stretch allowing them to clinch their 2nd AFC South title. The Texans beat the Bengals again in the wild-card round, but they lost in the Divisional Round to the New England Patriots.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the 2013 NFL Draft, the Texans acquired Clemson wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins 27th overall. In 2013, the Texans started 2–0 but went into a tailspin and lost every game afterwards. Kubiak was fired as head coach after being swept by the rival Jacksonville Jaguars, who themselves started 0–8. Wade Phillips filled in as head coach, but the Texans' poor form did not change, and they finished 2–14, tying, with 2005, their worst record in franchise history. The 14-game losing streak is the worst in franchise history.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Texans entered the 2014 season with a 14-game losing streak. Former Penn State head coach Bill O'Brien became the Texans' new head coach, and the third in franchise history, during the offseason. In 2014, the Texans won three of their first four games, defeating the Redskins in the season opener, the Raiders, and the Bills, losing to the New York Giants. They lost three of their next four games, losing to the Dallas Cowboys, the Indianapolis Colts, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively. The Texans went on to finish 9–7 in the 2014 season and barely missed the playoffs.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the 2015 season, they were featured on HBO, on the show \"Hard Knocks\". That year, the Texans started with a 2–5 record. Quarterback Ryan Mallett was released amidst controversy regarding his benching in favor of Brian Hoyer during a loss against the Indianapolis Colts. After a poor start, the Texans finished with a 9–7 record and won their third AFC South title. However, they were shut out by the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card round 30–0, ending their championship hopes for the year.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On March 9, 2016, the Texans signed former Denver Broncos quarterback Brock Osweiler to a 4-year, $72 million deal. Despite Osweiler's lucrative deal, he struggled significantly during the 2016 season. After throwing two interceptions in Week 15 against the Jaguars, coach Bill O'Brien benched the offseason acquisition in favor of backup quarterback Tom Savage. Savage led a comeback effort against the Jaguars, and was named the starter for the remainder of the season. The Texans clinched their fourth AFC South division title in six years in Savage's first career start against the Bengals in Week 16. They defeated the wildcard Oakland Raiders 27–14 in the opening round of the playoffs with Osweiler as the starting quarterback due to Savage being out with a concussion. Osweiler started in the Divisional Playoffs game against the New England Patriots, throwing three interceptions in the second half. The Texans lost 34–16.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the 2017 NFL Draft, the Texans traded up to the 12th overall selection to select Clemson star quarterback Deshaun Watson. Watson started six games his rookie year, going 3–3 and having arguably the greatest and most decorated rookie season by a quarterback in NFL history, eventually rising up to become the Texans' franchise quarterback. However, his success would come up very short, following a Week 8 41–38 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, Watson tore his ACL in practice and was ruled out the remainder of the season, which caused the Texans to have one of their worst seasons. Plagued by a series of unexpected injuries (including a second consecutive season-ending injury to J. J. Watt) and controversy involving the team's suspected violation of the league's concussion protocol, after backup quarterback Tom Savage suffered a seizure following a Week 14 game against the San Francisco 49ers, the Texans went 1–9 the rest of the season and eventually finish 4–12 and last in the AFC South in 2017, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2014 and giving Bill O'Brien his first losing season as Texans head coach.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2018, the Texans started the season 0–3, losing by a combined 15 points to the New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, and New York Giants, before winning a 37–34 overtime shootout on the road in Indianapolis. This win sparked a nine-game winning streak for the Texans, their first since starting 5–0 in 2012, which included a Week 8 win against the Miami Dolphins that included five touchdown passes from Deshaun Watson. This streak was the longest ever for a team that started the season 0–3; the previous record was a seven-game win-streak set by the New York Giants in 1918 after starting out 0–3.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On November 23, 2018, the owner of the Houston Texans, Bob McNair, died from skin cancer. On November 26, 2018, McNair's wife, Janice McNair, became the principal owner and Senior Chair of the Houston Texans, while their son, D. Cal McNair, became the Chairman and Chief Operating Officer.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Texans finished the season 11–5, and won another AFC South division championship under Bill O'Brien. They then lost 21–7 in the first round of the playoffs to their AFC South division rival Indianapolis Colts.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2019, the Texans won the AFC South division championship and qualified for the NFL playoffs on the back of a 10–6 record. They went on to defeat the Buffalo Bills by a score of 22–19 in overtime in the AFC wild-card round. However, the Texans' 2019 season came to an end the following week, as they lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 51–31 in the AFC divisional round.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On March 22, 2020, the Texans traded away all-pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and a fourth-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft to the Arizona Cardinals. In return, Houston received running back David Johnson, a 2020 second-round pick, and a 2021 fourth-round pick. The move was confusing and controversial among fans and sportswriters alike, as many claimed that the Texans should have received more valuable assets for Hopkins, who was among the best receivers in the NFL.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Texans began the 2020 NFL season with a record of 0–4, and Bill O'Brien was consequentially fired following a disappointing loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Week 4. Romeo Crennel, who was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns from 2005 to 2008 and of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2011–12, was named the interim head coach for the remainder of the season. Crennel managed to win more than half of his first 7 games as Houston's head coach, giving Houston a record of 4–7. However, the Texans ended the season on a 5-game losing streak. With a final record of 4–12, the Texans were unable to make the playoffs.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "On January 27, 2021, the Texans hired David Culley as the team's head coach. Culley most recently worked as the Baltimore Ravens assistant head coach, wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator. On February 12, 2021, the Texans released all-pro defensive end J.J. Watt. It was confirmed that Watt personally requested owner Cal McNair for his release.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "On January 13, 2022, the Texans fired David Culley. as the team's head coach and promoted defensive coordinator Lovie Smith as the team's fifth head coach on February 7, 2022. The team traded away their starting quarterback Deshaun Watson to the Cleveland Browns and a 2024 fifth round pick for three 1st round picks, a 3rd round pick and a 4th round pick on March 20, 2022. The Texans opened their 2022 season in a tie game against the Indianapolis Colts, the franchise’s first tie in their 20 year existence. On January 9, 2023, the Texans announced that they were going in a different direction by firing Lovie Smith.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "On January 31, 2023, the Texans hired former player and 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans as their new head coach, making him the sixth head coach in franchise history. With the second overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Texans selected Ohio State quarterback C. J. Stroud. Through 16 weeks of the 2023 season the team has posted a 8-7 record which was the teams best result since the 2019 season.",
"title": "Franchise history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Texans are the youngest expansion team in the NFL, having only been competing in the NFL since 2002. For that reason, they have not had the history or the reputation on which to build classic rivalries like the ones that often exist between older franchises. Despite this, the team has developed some rivalries. Its natural rivals are its fellow AFC South teams such as the Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Indianapolis Colts.",
"title": "Rivalries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Tennessee Titans, who were formerly the Houston Oilers before their relocation in 1996, are viewed by many Houston fans as the Texans' chief rival as members of the AFC South ever since the early 2000s.",
"title": "Rivalries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Ever since the early 2000s, the Texans also have an AFC South Division rivalry with the Indianapolis Colts, whom the Texans had not defeated until the 2006 season. The first time that the Texans would sweep the Colts was in the 2016 NFL season. More recently, Houston has increased bitterness with the Indianapolis Colts due to their young Houston-native quarterback Andrew Luck having been drafted by the Colts in 2012 and the franchise's first ever sweep of the Colts against Luck in 2016. In 2018 the two teams met in the AFC Wild Card Playoffs, with the Colts winning 21–7.",
"title": "Rivalries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Having begun play in 1995 and 2002, respectively, the Jaguars and Texans are among two of the most-recently established franchises in the NFL. The Jaguars relocated from the AFC Central to the newly created AFC South where the Texans were placed into and have competed as division rivals since. The Jaguars are the only division rival the Texans have a winning record against as the Texans lead the series 28–14.",
"title": "Rivalries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Texans also have an intrastate/interconference rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys, with whom they contest the so-called Governor's Cup every year (a tradition started between the cities prior to the Oilers relocating) either in the preseason or the regular season for bragging rights in the state of Texas. In 2017, the destruction and flooding caused during Hurricane Harvey a few days before their Week 4 pre-season match up time scheduled caused the game to be relocated to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. However, out of concern for the safety of the fans and the condition of the player's families & communities, the game was canceled.",
"title": "Rivalries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The Texans are the newest team in the league, but they have been embraced by a fair amount of celebrities since joining the NFL in 2002. The team has also adopted a number of former Houston Oilers fans in search of a new home team. Despite the lacking playoff success, there have been a present amount of loyal fans and even various celebrities such as Ryan Trahan, George Foreman, Paul Wall, Rico Rodriguez, and Raini Rodriguez who have been strong supporters of the team. During the 2010s, the team adopted the moniker \"Bulls on Parade\" in honor of the Rage Against the Machine song, regularly used prior to the team's introduction before entering the field.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Along with the team name, McNair unveiled the team logo, an abstract depiction of a bull's head, split in such a way to resemble the flag of Texas and the state of Texas, including a lone star to stand for the eye, the five points of which representing pride, courage, strength, tradition and independence. McNair described the colors as \"Deep Steel Blue\", \"Battle Red\" and \"Liberty White\". A year later the Texans unveiled their uniforms during another downtown rally.",
"title": "Logo and uniforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Texans' helmet is dark blue with the Texans bull logo. The helmet was initially white when the team name and logo were unveiled, but was later changed to dark blue. The uniform design consists of red trim and either dark blue or white jerseys. The team typically wears white pants with its blue jerseys and blue pants with its white jerseys. Starting with the 2006 season, the Texans wore all-white for their home opener, and the team began to wear an all-blue combination for home games vs. the Indianapolis Colts. In 2003, the Texans introduced an alternative red jersey with blue trim; they wear this jersey at one home game each year, usually against a division rival. In 2007, the Texans introduced red pants for the first time, pairing them with the red jerseys for an all-red look. They would wear this look until 2010, but was brought back in 2023. In October 2008 the Texans paired blue socks (instead of the traditional red) with their blue pants and white jerseys, eventually becoming the team's primary road uniform combination. In 2016, the Texans unveiled a new uniform combo against the Jacksonville Jaguars, pairing the red jersey with blue pants and red socks. In 2017, the Texans unveiled a Color Rush uniform, using an all-blue uniform but with minimal white elements. In 2021, the Texans began sporting all-white socks on select home and road games. In 2022, the Texans began using an alternate red helmet, worn with either the red or Color Rush jerseys.",
"title": "Logo and uniforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2002, the team wore a patch commemorating their inaugural season. Also, they celebrated 10 years as a franchise by wearing an anniversary patch throughout 2012. From 2018 to 2019, the Texans wore a memorial patch to honor Bob McNair after his death.",
"title": "Logo and uniforms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On November 19, 2017, Andre Johnson was the first-ever inductee into the Texans Ring of Honor. On October 6, 2019, Bob McNair was posthumously the second inductee into the Texans Ring of Honor. On October 1, 2023, J. J. Watt was the third inductee into the Texans Ring of Honor.",
"title": "Players of note"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Only one member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame has spent any portion of their career with Texans. This is due in part to the requirements to be inducted and the Texans only having been established in 2002.",
"title": "Players of note"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The team's official mascot is Toro, an anthropomorphic blue bull. The team also has a cheerleading squad simply named the Houston Texans Cheerleaders.",
"title": "Community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Community outreach by the Houston Texans is primarily operated by the Houston Texans Foundation, who works with multiple community partners. The Houston Texans organization is also a supporter of the character education program, Heart of a Champion. In 2017, the 15th annual Houston Texans Charity Golf Classic raised more than $380,000 for the Foundation. More than $27.2 million has been raised for the Foundation since its creation in 2002.",
"title": "Community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Former Texans DE J. J. Watt raised $41.6 million in relief funds for Hurricane Harvey after the storm devastated the city in 2017.",
"title": "Community"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "As of 2023, the Texans' flagship radio stations were KILT SportsRadio 610AM and KILT 100.3FM. The AM station has an all-sports format, while the FM station plays contemporary country music. Both are owned by Audacy. Marc Vandermeer is the play-by-play announcer. Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware provides color commentary, and SportsRadio 610 host Rich Lord serves as the sideline reporter. Preseason and regular season Monday night games from ESPN are telecast by KTRK, an ABC owned and operated station. Kevin Kugler calls the preseason games on TV, with former Texans defensive end N. D. Kalu providing color commentary. Regular season games are aired over CBS affiliate KHOU, FOX affiliate KRIV if the Texans host an NFC team, and NBC affiliate KPRC for Sunday night games.",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Spanish-language radio broadcasts of the team's games are aired on KGOL ESPN Deportes 1180AM. Enrique Vásquez is the play-by-play announcer. José Jojo Padrón provides color commentary, and Fernando Hernández serves as sideline reporter.",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Texans Radio Affiliates Archived December 27, 2019, at the Wayback Machine",
"title": "Radio and television"
}
]
| The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their home games at NRG Stadium. The Texans were founded in 1999, and were owned by Bob McNair until his death in 2018; following McNair's death, the majority ownership of the team went to his wife, Janice. The team replaced the city's previous NFL franchise, the Houston Oilers, who played from 1960 to 1996 before moving to Nashville and eventually becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Texans began play as an expansion team in 2002, making them the youngest franchise currently competing in the NFL. While the Texans mainly struggled in the 2000s, their fortunes would take a turn for the better in the 2010s when they first found success in the 2011 season, winning their first division championship and clinching their first playoff berth. The Texans have gone on to win five more AFC South division championships in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. They are the only franchise to have never won a road playoff game along with the only one to have never appeared in a conference championship game; they are also one of four franchises to have never appeared in a Super Bowl, alongside the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, and division rival Jacksonville Jaguars. According to an article by Forbes, the Houston Texans are the eleventh richest team in the NFL with a value of $4.7 billion in August 2022. After the Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series, the Houston Texans became the only team in Texas without a big four championship. | 2001-09-29T21:10:51Z | 2023-12-31T23:50:30Z | [
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13,865 | Heart of Oak | "Heart of Oak" is the official march of the Royal Navy. It is also the official march of several Commonwealth navies, including the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy. It was the official march of the Royal Australian Navy, but has now been replaced by the new march, "Royal Australian Navy".
The music of Heart of Oak was written in 1759 by composer William Boyce, the lyrics by actor David Garrick, for Garrick's pantomime Harlequin's Invasion, to which others contributed as well. The pantomime was first performed on New Year's Eve of that year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, with Handel soloist Samuel Thomas Champnes singing Heart of Oak.
The "wonderful year" referenced in the first verse was the Annus Mirabilis of 1759, during which British forces were victorious in several significant battles: the Battle of Minden on 1 August 1759; the Battle of Lagos on 19 August 1759; the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (outside Quebec City) on 13 September 1759; and the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759. The last battle foiled a French invasion project planned by the Duc de Choiseul to defeat Britain during the Seven Years' War, hence the reference in the song to 'flat-bottom' invasion barges. These victories were followed a few months later by the Battle of Wandiwash in India on 22 January 1760. Britain's continued success in the war boosted the song's popularity.
The oak in the song's title refers to the wood from which British warships were generally made during the age of sail. The "Heart of oak" is the strongest central wood of the tree. The reference to "freemen not slaves" echoes the refrain ("Britons never will be slaves!") of Rule, Britannia!, written and composed two decades earlier.
The song was written for the London stage in 1759 by William Boyce with words by David Garrick:
Come cheer up, my lads! 'tis to glory we steer, To add something more to this wonderful year; To honour we call you, as free men not slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Chorus: Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men; We always are ready, steady, boys, steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.
Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, To add something new to this wonderful year; To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Chorus: Heart of Oak are our ships, Jolly Tars are our men, We always are ready: Steady, boys, Steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.
We ne'er see our foes but we wish them to stay, They never see us but they wish us away; If they run, why we follow, and run them ashore, For if they won't fight us, what can we do more?
(Chorus)
They say they'll invade us, these terrible foes, They frighten our women, our children, our beaus, But if they in their flat-bottoms, in darkness set oar, Still Britons they'll find to receive them on shore.
(Chorus)
We still make them fear and we still make them flee, And drub them ashore as we drub them at sea, Then cheer up me lads with one heart let us sing, Our soldiers and sailors, our statesmen and king.
(Chorus)
Alternative first verse: Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, With heads carried high, we will banish all fear; To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Alternative last verse: Britannia triumphant her ships rule the seas, Her watchword is 'Justice' her password is 'Free', So come cheer up my lads, with one heart let us sing, Our soldiers, our sailors, our statesmen, our King [Queen].
Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, To add something new to this wonderful year; To honour we call you, not press you like slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Chorus: Heart of Oak are our ships, Jolly Tars are our men, We always are ready: Steady, boys, steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.
The first verse and chorus of this version of the song is heard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 3, Episode 18 "Allegiance"), sung in Ten Forward by Patrick Stewart, in-character as an alien doppelgänger of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Both are also sung by Peter Ustinov and Dean Jones in the 1968 Disney movie Blackbeard's Ghost.
A new version was presented on 16 April 1809 and published by Reverend Rylance.
When Alfred, our King, drove the Dane from this land, He planted an oak with his own royal hand; And he pray'd for Heaven's blessing to hallow the tree, As a sceptre for England, the queen of the sea.
Chorus:
The sapling shot up and stuck firm to the ground; It defied every tempest that bellow'd around; And still was it seen with fresh vigour to shoot, When the blood of our martyrs had moisten'd its root.
(Chorus)
But the worms of corruption had eaten their way Through its bark; till a Wardle has swept them away, He has sworn, no such reptiles our tree shall infest, And our patriots soon shall extirpate the nest.
(Chorus)
Yon tyrant, whose rule abject Europe bemoans — Yon brood of usurpers who sit on her thrones — Shall look on our country, and tremble with awe, Where a son of the Monarch has bow'd to the law,
(Chorus)
Now long live the Briton, who dar'd to revive The spirit which Britons scarce felt was alive; His name shall be carv'd, while of freedom we sing, On the oak that was planted by Alfred our King.
(Chorus) | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "\"Heart of Oak\" is the official march of the Royal Navy. It is also the official march of several Commonwealth navies, including the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy. It was the official march of the Royal Australian Navy, but has now been replaced by the new march, \"Royal Australian Navy\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The music of Heart of Oak was written in 1759 by composer William Boyce, the lyrics by actor David Garrick, for Garrick's pantomime Harlequin's Invasion, to which others contributed as well. The pantomime was first performed on New Year's Eve of that year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, with Handel soloist Samuel Thomas Champnes singing Heart of Oak.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The \"wonderful year\" referenced in the first verse was the Annus Mirabilis of 1759, during which British forces were victorious in several significant battles: the Battle of Minden on 1 August 1759; the Battle of Lagos on 19 August 1759; the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (outside Quebec City) on 13 September 1759; and the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759. The last battle foiled a French invasion project planned by the Duc de Choiseul to defeat Britain during the Seven Years' War, hence the reference in the song to 'flat-bottom' invasion barges. These victories were followed a few months later by the Battle of Wandiwash in India on 22 January 1760. Britain's continued success in the war boosted the song's popularity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The oak in the song's title refers to the wood from which British warships were generally made during the age of sail. The \"Heart of oak\" is the strongest central wood of the tree. The reference to \"freemen not slaves\" echoes the refrain (\"Britons never will be slaves!\") of Rule, Britannia!, written and composed two decades earlier.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The song was written for the London stage in 1759 by William Boyce with words by David Garrick:",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Come cheer up, my lads! 'tis to glory we steer, To add something more to this wonderful year; To honour we call you, as free men not slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Chorus: Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men; We always are ready, steady, boys, steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, To add something new to this wonderful year; To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Chorus: Heart of Oak are our ships, Jolly Tars are our men, We always are ready: Steady, boys, Steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "We ne'er see our foes but we wish them to stay, They never see us but they wish us away; If they run, why we follow, and run them ashore, For if they won't fight us, what can we do more?",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "They say they'll invade us, these terrible foes, They frighten our women, our children, our beaus, But if they in their flat-bottoms, in darkness set oar, Still Britons they'll find to receive them on shore.",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "We still make them fear and we still make them flee, And drub them ashore as we drub them at sea, Then cheer up me lads with one heart let us sing, Our soldiers and sailors, our statesmen and king.",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Alternative first verse: Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, With heads carried high, we will banish all fear; To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Alternative last verse: Britannia triumphant her ships rule the seas, Her watchword is 'Justice' her password is 'Free', So come cheer up my lads, with one heart let us sing, Our soldiers, our sailors, our statesmen, our King [Queen].",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer, To add something new to this wonderful year; To honour we call you, not press you like slaves, For who are so free as the sons of the waves?",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Chorus: Heart of Oak are our ships, Jolly Tars are our men, We always are ready: Steady, boys, steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The first verse and chorus of this version of the song is heard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 3, Episode 18 \"Allegiance\"), sung in Ten Forward by Patrick Stewart, in-character as an alien doppelgänger of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Both are also sung by Peter Ustinov and Dean Jones in the 1968 Disney movie Blackbeard's Ghost.",
"title": "Lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A new version was presented on 16 April 1809 and published by Reverend Rylance.",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "When Alfred, our King, drove the Dane from this land, He planted an oak with his own royal hand; And he pray'd for Heaven's blessing to hallow the tree, As a sceptre for England, the queen of the sea.",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Chorus:",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The sapling shot up and stuck firm to the ground; It defied every tempest that bellow'd around; And still was it seen with fresh vigour to shoot, When the blood of our martyrs had moisten'd its root.",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "But the worms of corruption had eaten their way Through its bark; till a Wardle has swept them away, He has sworn, no such reptiles our tree shall infest, And our patriots soon shall extirpate the nest.",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Yon tyrant, whose rule abject Europe bemoans — Yon brood of usurpers who sit on her thrones — Shall look on our country, and tremble with awe, Where a son of the Monarch has bow'd to the law,",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Now long live the Briton, who dar'd to revive The spirit which Britons scarce felt was alive; His name shall be carv'd, while of freedom we sing, On the oak that was planted by Alfred our King.",
"title": "New lyrics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "(Chorus)",
"title": "New lyrics"
}
]
| "Heart of Oak" is the official march of the Royal Navy. It is also the official march of several Commonwealth navies, including the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy. It was the official march of the Royal Australian Navy, but has now been replaced by the new march, "Royal Australian Navy". The music of Heart of Oak was written in 1759 by composer William Boyce, the lyrics by actor David Garrick, for Garrick's pantomime Harlequin's Invasion, to which others contributed as well. The pantomime was first performed on New Year's Eve of that year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, with Handel soloist Samuel Thomas Champnes singing Heart of Oak. The "wonderful year" referenced in the first verse was the Annus Mirabilis of 1759, during which British forces were victorious in several significant battles: the Battle of Minden on 1 August 1759; the Battle of Lagos on 19 August 1759; the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759; and the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759. The last battle foiled a French invasion project planned by the Duc de Choiseul to defeat Britain during the Seven Years' War, hence the reference in the song to 'flat-bottom' invasion barges. These victories were followed a few months later by the Battle of Wandiwash in India on 22 January 1760. Britain's continued success in the war boosted the song's popularity. The oak in the song's title refers to the wood from which British warships were generally made during the age of sail. The "Heart of oak" is the strongest central wood of the tree. The reference to "freemen not slaves" echoes the refrain of Rule, Britannia!, written and composed two decades earlier. | 2001-09-29T22:17:30Z | 2023-12-28T10:39:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Oak |
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